by Mark Zuehlke
Hoffmeister’s reply was immediate. “I would, sir. When do I take over?” Crerar seemed surprised by Hoffmeister’s self-assured manner, but the young officer was confident he could handle the job. The command was Hoffmeister’s, Crerar said, effective immediately. Then he warned Hoffmeister that the Canadians would soon take part in a major offensive “that was going to be the big battle in Italy up to that point.” The timetable for this attack, Crerar said, was still classified, but Hoffmeister should know he “didn’t have long to get ready for it.” Hoffmeister knew the 11th Canadian Infantry Brigade required rebuilding after the January 17 debacle. That would be his most pressing immediate task.
Meeting over, Hoffmeister drove back to 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade and arranged for his belongings to be moved to 5 CAD headquarters. Although he was eager to take up the job of commanding 5 CAD, it was hard for him to leave his infantry brigade. Hoffmeister had worked his way up through the brigade from an initial posting as a major in its headquarters in December 1941. In October 1942, he had been promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and taken command of the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada, the Vancouver militia regiment he had joined at the age of eleven. He led that regiment across Sicily and into Italy until being promoted to brigadier and commander of 2 CIB in September 1943.11
Hoffmeister’s promotion necessitated a reorganization of brigade command within 1 CID. Vokes shifted 3rd Canadian Infantry Brigade’s Brigadier Graeme Gibson over to command 2 CIB and promoted Lieutenant Colonel Paul Bernatchez, commander of the Royal 22e Regiment, to brigadier and commander of 3 CIB. Meanwhile, the interchange of officers between Britain and Italy flowed both ways as brigadiers Bill Ziegler and Eric Snow arrived to command respectively 1 CID’s artillery regiments and 11 CIB. The parachuting of battalion- and brigade-level commanders from Britain was controversial and a source of complaint for many seasoned Italian campaign officers denied promotion as a result. The fact that officers such as Snow and Ziegler had no previous combat experience often weakened their credibility.12
One officer who was left particularly embittered by his failure to be given permanent command of a regiment was Major Strome Galloway, who at the end of December had been commanding the Royal Canadian Regiment. Galloway’s courage and leadership ability were highly respected within the RCR and 1st Canadian Infantry Brigade, of which the regiment was part. The brigade’s commander, Brigadier Dan Spry, and Galloway had served together and were also friends. Spry had been promoted to brigadier during the December battle and after two more senior officers had been lost to wounds or sickness, RCR command had fallen to Galloway. He had been hoping to be confirmed as the regiment’s commander, but in early January Lieutenant Colonel Bill Mathers, who had been wounded by a sniper during the December fighting, was returned to the regiment and resumed command. Galloway went from acting lieutenant colonel back to major and became Mathers’s second-in-command.13
A small, blond man, Mathers was a Permanent Force officer and a spit-and-polish commander. During the height of the fighting before Ortona, he had, among other bizarre orders, demanded that everyone in the regiment find time to shave each morning and to keep their uniforms neat and tidy despite the muddy conditions and almost constant enemy shelling.14 Mathers was also given to bullying and continued to be unpopular among the RCR officers and other ranks alike. When Mathers returned to the regiment, Galloway went to see Spry. Noted for his Boy Scout politeness and gentlemanly manners, Spry told his friend: “You know, Strome, you can’t expect to command the battalion. You are not a Permanent Force officer. They have their post-war careers to think of. So they’ve got to have battalion command. So Mathers has got to have it.”15
To Galloway, this was yet another example of something he considered all too prevalent in the Canadian army — a determination by the Permanent Force officers to put their careers ahead of winning the war. The twenty-nine-year-old officer had been a newspaper reporter prior to the war, but had served in the militia through most of the 1930s and in war found he loved the army life. When peace returned, Galloway hoped to continue in the service, but was finding his ambitions hampered because he was militia rather than Permanent Force. He and other militia officers commented to each other, “There’s nothing you can do about it. The Permanent Force Protection Society will always look after its own first and bugger the results.” Galloway believed the results were too often the elevation to senior rank of officers who were incompetent, unimaginative, and given to needlessly squandering men’s lives.16
Burns had little time for this reluctance on the part of Italian front officers to trust those who had not proven themselves in either Sicily or Italy. He saw a disturbing tendency among officers in Italy to “assume that the history of modern warfare had begun on July 10, 1943, and that only the lessons which had been learned after that date had any relevance to the way the war in Italy ought to be fought.”17 When, as 5 CAD commander, Burns had reported to Crerar, the corps commander had told him, “This war is so much like the last one, it’s not even funny.”
Burns agreed that the Ortona battlefield was certainly reminiscent of Flanders and that battles such as the one fought in January by 11th CIB were depressingly similar to those that had been fought on the Somme River. But he thought the modern trappings of war made it very different from that of World War I. The modern infantryman, Burns later wrote, had artillery support, “which he could call for by radio and which came promptly, he could also call for bombing from aircraft hovering over the battlefront, and within minutes see the bombs fall. His own armament included many more machine guns and mortars; and tanks backed him up or preceded him. When infantry, tankmen, gunners and airmen had got to know one another through training together as a team, and when they were put into battle with the advantages of surprise and a concentration of superior force, victories could be won without paying such a high price in soldiers’ blood.”18 There would be no more Sommes or Passchendaeles, he believed.
Like Crerar, Burns was a veteran of World War I. Born in Montreal in 1897, he had entered Royal Military College in 1914 and remained there until his eighteenth birthday in June 1915. Commissioned as a lieutenant in the Royal Canadian Engineers, he went overseas as a signals officer and was posted to the 11th Canadian Infantry Brigade of the 4th Canadian Division in August 1916. He served with the brigade for eighteen months, was wounded twice, and awarded the Military Cross after personally repairing and laying signal cables while under enemy fire. On April 1, 1920, he joined the Permanent Force as a Royal Canadian Engineers captain and soon established a reputation as not only a capable peacetime officer but also an original military thinker. When World War II broke out, he seemed well positioned to rise to high command.19
The appointment of Burns to command the Canadian corps was welcomed by Leese. “I think he will be good,” Leese wrote. “I will be glad to get rid of Harry and get Burns installed & to get down to some degree of permanency.”20 Burns thought Leese an eccentric. Soon after his promotion, Burns called on Leese and ended up discussing important issues of command while his superior bathed naked in a large tub of water. While not as prudish as Crerar, Burns was still offended and shocked.21
Burns had been surprised by his own promotion, as Vokes had the modern combat experience he lacked. However, Crerar, like Montgomery, believed that Vokes had reached his ceiling as a divisional commander so had recommended Burns instead. Vokes’s impulsive womanizing, his caustic tongue, and the endless stream of profanities that punctuated his every sentence had regularly offended Crerar. Some said that Vokes was the inspiration behind a quip that if the words “fuck” and “frontal” were removed from military jargon, the entire Canadian army would be left both speechless and incapable of attack.22
Vokes told no one whether he was disappointed at not getting corps command. Hoffmeister, probably one of his closest and oldest friends in Italy, heard not a word of complaint from Vokes on the matter.23 Vokes had known Burns for years, having been taught by him as a Royal Military C
ollege cadet twenty-two years earlier. While he admired Burns for his intelligence, Vokes was uncomfortable in the man’s company. “His manner,” Vokes thought, “was shy, introverted and humourless. He seemed most unfriendly and distrustful.” Vokes wondered if this was because of his own “more extensive experience in operational command” and a fear that he might consequently “prove difficult to handle. For old times sake I determined to tread warily and give him my loyal support.”24
Burns’s introverted ways and the fact that he was, at forty-seven, the oldest Canadian active field officer did little to inspire officers who didn’t know him. Throughout the corps, Burns quickly won the nicknames of Laughing Boy and Smiling Sunray. The latter was derived from the radio protocol that designated any commander Sunray within his unit, but both referred derisively to the fact that Burns appeared perpetually grim and unsmiling. Vokes thought Burns’s habit of constantly acting “like a funeral director” made it hard for his subordinates to remain cheerful and so the grim business of war seemed even grimmer after Burns took command.25
Galloway was particularly struck by Burns’s humourless demeanour when the general visited RCR headquarters. Burns sported a black armoured corps beret, worn perfectly level above his eyebrows. At the moment of Burns’s arrival, Galloway was delivering a sand-table demonstration lecture to the other RCR officers, so he decided to have a little fun at the general’s expense. Snapping off a salute, he said, “Galloway here, Sir. I am just giving a talk on infantry-cum-tanks and I’m saying, ‘The only trouble is, Sir, the tanks never come.’” Laughter broke out in the room, lifted, checked, then trailed off as Burns fixed Galloway with a long, dour stare before departing without so much as a word.26
Within days of taking over corps command, Burns travelled to the Cassino front so he could get some idea of the lay of the land in which the Canadians must soon fight. He became an observer of the bloody Third Battle for Cassino, which raged from March 15 to 24. Burns and a group of other senior Eighth Army officers had a spectacular view from a ridge on 1,400-foot-high Monte Trocchio, immediately southwest of Cassino. From this lofty perch, the officers watched the New Zealanders attack the ruined town and the Indians assault the Benedictine Abbey. Despite the advantage of their position, “little could be seen except the shellbursts, ragged smokescreens and perhaps an occasional tank. The infantry were invisible, except for a few figures now and then. But it was clear, from what we could see and the reports that came in belatedly, that in spite of the most gallant efforts the German position on the heights below the monastery was holding firm.” Burns believed that so long as the abbey remained in German hands, any advance up the Liri Valley, on the axis of the road to Rome, “could hardly be achieved.”27 Burns returned to the corps knowing the Canadians must soon carry out this advance. Time was short. He would have less than six weeks to prepare before leading the corps into its biggest battle. He urged Hoffmeister and Vokes to step up training and quickly make whatever organizational changes were required.
While Vokes had a fairly well-oiled and experienced team, Hoffmeister faced a challenge to build an efficient division capable of carrying out a major offensive operation. His major problem, as he had suspected, would be putting 11 CIB back on its feet. Shortly after taking command, he called the entire division out for an inspection and made a point of checking every rifle, Bren gun, tank, artillery piece, and man’s kit. He found the armoured regiments, which had been spared the terrible combat experience through which 11 CIB had passed, all well turned out. But the infantry was another matter entirely. The weapons in the brigade were filthy, the men generally sullen.28 The brigade could not be trusted in heavy combat.
Hoffmeister planned to restore morale by holding several divisional-level training exercises that would entail 11 CIB’s operating as an integral part of a strong, powerful armoured division. This way, the soldiers of the Perth, Irish, and Cape Breton regiments would come to understand that the January 17 battle had been exceptional and that nothing like it would happen to them again.
First, though, Hoffmeister ran the brigade through some smaller company-level exercises so he could “meet each company of the brigade in the field.” He made a point of being present as each company was led through a set-piece attack in which the men went in behind a live artillery barrage to seize a designated objective. Hoffmeister found “it took a lot of coaxing to get those shocked troops up to the point where they would get close to the barrage, just before the lift, and then it was up and at ’em again.” To push them on, he elected to get right up front with the leading platoons. Before they went in to the mock attack, he would give them a lecture, telling them “how important it was to keep right up to the shell bursts, that the first shells were all forward and there was absolutely no danger in keeping up.” After one such lecture, he started forward with a company of Cape Breton Highlanders only to have one of the first artillery rounds strike behind his group. Hoffmeister and everyone around him hit the dirt. Lying there with shrapnel flying overhead, Hoffmeister could see the men looking over at him “as if to say, ‘OK wise guy, what have you got to say about this?’”29
After the company-level exercises, Hoffmeister led the brigade through battalion-sized exercises, then brigade exercises, and finally launched a divisional exercise “to let them see first hand the formation of which they were a part.” Through this exercise, he believed, the brigade came to realize “the fact that there were these hundreds of tanks there to support them, an SP [self-propelled gun] regiment. We had tractor-drawn guns, we had the Westminster motor battalion, the Governor General’s Horse Guards — the armoured recce regiment. The punch, the club this division had, was just tremendous, and no person, private soldier, NCO, or officer could fail to be impressed by this.” Hoffmeister thought the exercise achieved its purpose for every battalion in the brigade except the Perth Regiment, where morale remained dangerously low.
After consulting with both the brigade’s new commander, Eric Snow, and the Perth commander, and receiving no satisfactory explanation for the problem or how to solve it, Hoffmeister decided to get to the heart of the matter himself. He issued an order that, at 0900 hours the next morning, two men of no rank higher than lance corporal would be drawn from each of the battalion’s platoons and would report to him directly. The men were ushered into a room and sat down in front of their major general. Hoffmeister told them there was a great danger in “going into a battle with this lack of confidence and the poor morale that existed in the Perth Regiment.” He was going to sit there with them until somebody explained what the root of the problem was. “I don’t have the names of any of you men,” he said, “and don’t want to know your names. Nothing you say here is being recorded. This is for my information and my information only, so that I in turn may take the necessary action to get this unit in shape to fight.” Then he sat down and looked at the men, who sat looking back. The minutes passed slowly. Nobody moved or spoke. After a long time, Hoffmeister said quietly, “Men, I’m serious when I say we’re going to stay here until I get the answers, and that there is no way in which you’re going to be implicated, and your lives and the lives of your comrades depend on it.”
Hesitantly, the men started talking, with Hoffmeister gently prodding them with questions. It emerged that there were four Perth officers who had performed poorly during the January 17 battle and as a result had jeopardized lives. The men told Hoffmeister they “had absolutely no confidence in them and were very reluctant to go into battle with them. That was the reason for the low morale in the regiment.” Hoffmeister dismissed the men, returned to his headquarters, and told Snow to “dispose of these officers forthwith.”30 No sooner had these officers been dispatched for assignment to other non-combat duties than the morale of the Perths improved remarkably. When the order came for I Canadian Corps to prepare for a major movement to the western coast of Italy preparatory to the launch of Operation Diadem, Hoffmeister thought his division ready to fight.
5
/> DECEPTIONS
On April 18, 1944, Canadian radio operators started systematically going off the air. By day’s end, not a single radio at I Canadian Corps headquarters in Raviscanina on the eastern Adriatic or at the headquarters of 5th Canadian Armoured Division at Castilnuova near Lucera was broadcasting. First Canadian Infantry Division, still in the line north of Ortona, maintained normal radio traffic. A cloak of silence settled over all the other units, effectively concealing the whereabouts of about 27,000 men who constituted the combined strength of the corps headquarters and its support elements and most of 5 CAD. Only the whereabouts of 11th Canadian Infantry Brigade and the attached Westminster Regiment, already deployed on International Ridge before Monte Cassino, remained known to German intelligence. At the same time the Canadian signallers were signing off the Eighth Army radio net, 36th U.S. Infantry Division ceased broadcasting on the Fifth Army system.1
Cessation of radio traffic by I Canadian Corps and its armoured division was so decisive and complete that the unusual silence could not help but be detected by the German Tenth Army’s intelligence staff. The message was clear — the Canadians must be on the move, for radio silence was a normal precursor to major movements of Allied formations. But where were they going? To the Liri Valley to participate in the inevitable offensive there? Or somewhere else? Four days later, German intelligence officers thought they had at least a partial answer when radio traffic started emanating from what appeared to be a newly established I Canadian Corps headquarters at Baronissi on the west coast, five miles north of Salerno. A few hours later, 5th Canadian Armoured Division HQ radios started broadcasting out of a site at nearby San Cipriano. Even more revealing, the missing U.S. infantry division was soon broadcasting from within the Canadian Corps wireless net. This implied that the American division was now attached to the Canadian Corps for some unknown future operation.2