by Mark Zuehlke
Although the men were under strict orders to avoid unnecessary daytime movement that might betray the artillery presence to the Germans, the twenty-two-year-old from Cobourg soon set off on a pressing family mission. His older brother Jim had married in England and his bride Marjorie had written to see if Victor might be able to ship her any olive oil, impossible to get in wartime Britain. Bulger had learned there was a large cask of the oil stored in the attic of the Battery Office’s building. Rustling up a jar with a screw-top lid, Bulger slipped over to the house and asked Battery Sergeant Major “Badgy” Williams if he could take some oil. Distracted by the paperwork scattered across his desk, Williams said only, “Make sure you don’t spill any.” Bulger climbed the rickety ladder to the attic and was soon happily filling his jar. Just before it was full, however, he accidentally tipped the cask too far and a wave of oil boiled out, missed the jar, and rushed down the wall. He quickly righted the barrel and completed filling the jar. Descending the ladder, Bulger was horrified to see oil seeping down the wall and dripping all over Williams’s desk and papers while the sergeant desperately tried to drag his desk out of the way. “I knew I shouldn’t have let you go up there,” Williams moaned. “Look at the bloody mess you’ve made.” Bulger offered hasty apologies and beat a quick retreat back to his gun position, where he packaged up the jar of oil and sent it by army mail to his sister-in-law. He was pleased to hear a few weeks later that it had arrived unscathed, which was more than could be said for the sergeant’s papers.16
One thing Bulger noticed about their new position was the prevalence of mosquitoes. This raised concern about the risk of malaria among everyone who had been through the Sicily invasion, where the disease had infected many.17 The Canadian Medical Corps doctors obviously shared this concern, for no sooner were the troops in position than Mepadrine antimalarial tablets were issued throughout I Canadian Corps. As a result of the daily pills, only thirty-one new cases a week were reported, which was a ratio of infection of only 6 per 10,000 men. At the same time, however, some men in 1st Canadian Infantry Division were coming down with either recurrences of malaria or the first symptoms of malarial infections contracted during operations the previous autumn in southern Italy. This resulted in several hundred hospitalizations for malaria, with the outbreak peaking in mid-April but lingering still when the division moved into the Liri Valley.18 A couple of days after taking up the new position, Sergeant Jack Wilkes was struck with malarial fevers and hospitalized. Bulger was promoted to Acting Sergeant and put in charge of Wilkes’s gun crew.
Soon after his promotion, Bulger walked over to a deep well near the olive grove intending to get some water. Looking into the depths, he saw something shining on the surface. Striking a couple of matches, he dropped them into the well to see what was down there. From the depths came a sharp roaring sound and Bulger instinctively leapt back just in time to avoid a ball of flame that shot up out of the well. Bulger’s commander came running over and said he had dumped a gallon of gas into the well to kill the mosquitoes breeding in it. He explained that the gas should be less polluting than oil, but Bulger failed to see how the water could still be drinkable. He was grateful not to have been burned by the “silly bugger’s” stunt. The troop now had another problem. The well was the only source of fresh water on the site that could be reached during daylight without risk of being seen. Denied this source, they were reliant on the water trucked in each night. Supply runs bringing in water were few, however, as ammunition and food had priority. Finding time during the night to refill water bottles at the nearest stream was difficult, since the men were usually manning the guns for “cigarette” shoots or offloading and storing ammunition.19
Every third night, the gunners fired a “cigarette.” For up to six hours at a time, the 25-pounders hammered Monte Cairo and Monte Cassino with an endless concentration of smoke shells. The hours of firing put strain on the gun barrels and mechanisms and Lieutenant Harrison made a point during each shoot to rotate one gun at a time out of the line to allow it to cool down. One night, the guns had been firing for three hours at a rate of three to four rounds per minute. Just as Harrison was about to order No. 3 gun to take a rest, its loader shoved in another round, which exploded prematurely when it contacted the beginning of the rifling. The blast threw the loader backwards, his arm and hand nearly torn off in several places. Harrison quickly had the gun crew find a board. He then secured the man’s arm to the board by wrapping it in two shell dressings. After giving him a shot of morphine, Harrison loaded the gunner into a Jeep and raced him to the Medical Officer’s station. The MO told Harrison his quick response had saved the soldier from losing his arm or even any fingers.
On nights when the battery was off the firing line, Harrison would meet Army Service Corps trucks coming up with ammunition. ‘C’ Battery, like other Eighth Army artillery units, was stockpiling ammunition all over its battery site in preparation for the offensive barrage. To reach his battery, the truckers had to cross a road junction that the Germans had accurately registered with their guns and routinely subjected to nightly bouts of harassing fire. Harrison would wait in the darkness on his side of the crossroads until he heard the sound of the trucks grinding up the dusty, rough road. The vehicles travelled without lights, so their pace was slow. When they finally hove into view Harrison waved them hurriedly through the crossroads and guided them to the gun position. Somehow their timing was always fortunate, for the crossroads were never fired on when one of these convoys was passing through, but several times it was plastered with shellfire only moments before or after.
Once the trucks arrived at the position, everyone worked madly to get the shells out of the trucks and into safe hides where they would be less likely to detonate if the position took enemy fire. With each ammunition delivery, the task of finding a safe place for the shells became more difficult. Soon ‘C’ Battery had 22,000 rounds of high explosive and 8,000 rounds of smoke in its overflowing position.
Knowing there were more than 1,000 guns arrayed across the breadth of the Liri Valley in preparation for the big barrage, Harrison understood why the position was known as Gun Alley.20 And in front of, behind, and on all sides of Gun Alley gathered thousands of infantry, tanks, antitank guns, reconnaissance vehicles, engineering units with their bridging equipment, and countless other men and equipment. Harrison was amazed to think the Germans were apparently unaware that just a few hundred yards from their front line an army assembled. That it remained largely hidden from the Germans was testimony to the effectiveness of the smokescreens and other camouflaging methods.
The strategists developing the offensive against the Gustav Line knew its success or failure hinged on how well the intelligence deceptions and the camouflaging effort prevented the Germans from anticipating the timing, location, and strength of the attack mustering before the Gari River. The dispersion of the Panzer Grenadier divisions away from the Liri Valley to guard the coast confirmed that the deception was working despite the immense logistical and engineering challenges required to screen the divisions massing right under German noses. The resourcefulness and thoroughness of the specially trained and deployed camouflaging teams awed Alexander, who had set the entire operation into action. In one section that was impossible to hide from observation posts on Monte Cassino, engineers erected a one-mile-long vertical wood and canvas screen covered in camouflage. This screen made it impossible for the Germans to monitor traffic using a road running from the rear to the headquarters of the Eighth Army’s 3rd Carpathian Division, which was part of II Polish Corps.
In XIII Corps’s sector, engineers silently worked through the night to cut new tracks by hand through the thick woods between their forward positions and the banks of the Gari River. These tracks would be essential for allowing the infantry divisions and supporting tanks to get up to the river on the day of the assault. As each dawn approached, the engineers meticulously covered their handiwork with brush. When armoured formations, such as 1st Canadian Armo
ured Brigade, tasked with supporting 8th Indian Division in its river crossing, moved up from rear positions, their movement was concealed by positioning dummy tanks and vehicles constructed of plywood in the abandoned position. So effective was the concealment of the Fifth Army’s Corps Expéditionnaire Français moving into position on the Eighth Army’s left flank to face the Garigliano River that, in a radius of only 4,000 yards, twenty battalions, five artillery batteries, and two divisional headquarters were hidden. Intercepted German intelligence reports revealed that they believed this area occupied by only one French division and that the rest of the corps was still well back.
Alexander knew, however, that the greatest feat of all was the concealment of the entire Canadian Corps.21 Even 5 CAD, forming up near Vitulazio about thirty miles south of the Liri Valley, undertook an extensive camouflaging effort. Major General Bert Hoffmeister issued a directive to all ranks cautioning that: “It is of paramount importance that the camouflage policy in this area be such that there is no disclosure of concentration and even more important that the type of our formation is not made known to the enemy.
“The element of surprise must be preserved and to this end emphasis is therefore placed on concealment rather than dispersion. Siting and concealment will therefore be such that to the casual observer the extent of the concentration is not apparent.” To ensure the camouflaging was effective, officers from the camouflage units flew over the division’s positions. The officer in charge reported back to Hoffmeister that the division’s camouflaging activity “was the finest effort of its kind I have seen.”22
Eager to ensure a good view of the impending Liri Valley battlefield, Lieutenant General Tommy Burns had an observation post established on Monte Trocchio. The post was carefully constructed so that it mimicked a natural part of the rocky hillside, and a covered approach was created so that Burns and his staff members could come and go without fear of being observed. Huge amounts of ammunition, stores, and equipment were being pooled within the corps perimeter to allow rapid resupply of the attacking units in the midst of the battle. Corps staff tasked with camouflaging this matériel decided at the outset that it would be impossible to adequately conceal large supply depots so close to the enemy observation points. Their solution was to distribute supplies in the roadside ditches and shadowed edges of groves of trees and thickets of brush. When these small caches were covered with foliage-garnished camouflage netting, they were rendered virtually invisible.23
Burns was confident that I Canadian Corps was ready for the coming offensive, although 1 CID’s infantry battalions were still undergoing infantry-cum-tank tactical training with a regiment of British armour that was to support their advance. This training was scheduled to continue to the last moment before the division moved toward battle. That movement would not happen until the British XIII Corps broke the Gustav Line and opened the way for the Canadians to charge up the Liri Valley.
On May 5, Alexander issued his final operation order that defined the intention of the forthcoming engagement. The Allies in Italy were “to destroy the right wing of the German Tenth Army; to drive what remains of it and the German Fourteenth Army north of Rome; and to pursue the enemy to the Rimini-Pisa line, inflicting the maximum losses on him in the process.”24 This objective would be achieved by the combined might of the Fifth and Eighth armies overwhelming the German defensive line stretching from Cassino to the coast. The II U.S. Corps commanded by General Geoffrey Keyes would drive up the coastline, with the Corps Expéditionnaire Français under Marshal Alphonse-Pierre Juin pushing through the mountains on the American right. These mountains formed the southwestern flank of the Liri Valley, which ran roughly in a northwesterly line from Cassino almost to Rome. The British XIII Corps commanded by Lieutenant General Sir Sydney Kirkman would provide the offensive’s main thrust by breaking into the valley and opening a breach through which I Canadian Corps could advance. On the XIII Corps’s right, the II Polish Corps commanded by General Wladyslaw Anders would storm Monte Cassino and then Monte Cairo.
That was Phase One. The second phase would see 1st Canadian Infantry Division sever the Hitler Line so that 5th Canadian Armoured Division could pass through and undertake a rapid advance toward Rome by travelling across the good tank country that intelligence believed the valley provided. Meanwhile, the U.S. Fifth Army would fight its way toward Anzio, enabling Major General Lucian Truscott, who now commanded VI Corps, to break out of the encircled beachhead. With VI Corps on the loose, Alexander hoped that Phase Three would have the American corps establish a blocking position in the Alban Hills south of Rome at Valmontone, into which the advancing Eighth Army would drive the remnants of the German Tenth and Fourteenth armies. Alexander’s plan was for Truscott’s Americans to play the anvil to Leese’s Eighth Army hammer. If it worked, Alexander was confident he could smash the majority of the German divisions in Italy.25
While Operation Diadem was similar in many respects to the failed offensives conducted previously against the Gustav Line, a number of factors worked in its favour. Most significant was the sheer preponderance of massed force. Second, Alexander’s deception and camouflage operations had largely hidden the presence of XIII Corps and I Canadian Corps. Finally, the campaign had until now been fought in the middle of dreadful winter conditions. This time, there should be little mud to mire the advancing troops and the long-range forecast called for the skies to remain largely sunny and clear throughout the month.
While spirits were running high among the British and Canadian troops preparing for the offensive, U.S. General Mark Clark was less enthusiastic. Clark thought the obstacles the Eighth Army faced in the Liri Valley were the same ones that the Americans had failed to crack. In fact, he felt the Germans had only had more time to strengthen their two major defensive lines there to make them more impregnable than ever. But Clark’s major point of disagreement with Alexander regarded Phase Three. Clark had little interest in seeing Truscott’s corps driving toward Valmontone. He thought Alexander’s hammer-anvil plan was too simplistic and doomed to failure. There were many, albeit poor, roads leading out of the Liri Valley to the north and east. A blocking force at Valmontone would cut only the major routes following Highway 6 toward Rome, leaving many routes by which the Germans could escape. If the Americans concentrated their efforts on fighting through the Alban Hills to Valmontone, Clark also believed they might be denied the honour of liberating Rome. The British might get there first.
“I know factually,” he confided to his diary, “that there are interests brewing for the Eighth Army to take Rome, and I might as well let Alexander know now that if he attempts any thing of that kind he will have another all-out battle on his hands, namely, with me.” Clark decided he would try to be in Rome before the opening of the invasion of northern Europe, which was scheduled for the end of May. The Americans, Clark said, “not only wanted the honour of capturing Rome, but we felt that we more than deserved it. Nothing was going to stop us on our push toward the Italian capital.”26
While Clark was telling Truscott to keep VI Corps ready during the breakout for a switch in the line of advance away from Valmontone toward Rome, Eighth Army commander General Sir Oliver Leese was enthusiastically briefing his Canadian generals on the tasks expected of I Canadian Corps. Leese’s meandering lecture utterly baffled Burns, who turned to Major General Chris Vokes and said, “What the hell is he talking about?”
“Our attack on the Hitler Line, sir,” Vokes whispered.
“Then why the hell doesn’t he say so instead of prancing about waving his hands like a whore in heat?”27 Vokes had no answer.
Luckily Leese appeared not to have overheard Burns, for he remained confident in the new corps commander. “The Canadians under Burns,” he wrote, “are developing into a fine Corps. He is an excellent commander and will, I feel sure, do well in battle.”28
Burns dourly dogged Leese around the corps, listening to the general give the sort of upbeat pep talks to selected formations of of
ficers that Montgomery had made common coin in the Eighth Army. Leese’s message, Burns thought, was always the same. “Eighth Army, together with the Fifth, was about to deliver a terrific blow against the enemy, and if we all did our utmost we could expect to drive him out of Italy, and perhaps, together with the Allied forces on other fronts, win final victory in 1944.”
Heartening troops before battle with promises “that a shining victory could be won by their bravery and constancy is a proven technique,” Burns realized. But he wondered “what the effect might be if, in fact, final victory in Italy and the whole Western theatre should not be won in 1944.”29
Even if the forthcoming attack delivered “a shining victory,” Burns knew that his divisions would inevitably absorb heavy casualties breaking through the Hitler Line and driving the Germans back toward Rome. Yet the corps was desperately ill prepared to replace casualties at the rate that could normally be expected from any major offensive operation.
On May 5, Burns travelled to Naples to see Brigadier Ted Weeks, who was in charge of the corps’s rear-echelon unit. Weeks delivered the bad news that a draft of reinforcements expected in mid-June had been reduced to only 250 men and that there was an insufficient number of reinforcements currently in the holding unit to replace probable casualties.30 Burns expected that the Canadians faced two months of “intense wastage rates, which amounts to about 325 men in the case of infantry battalions and proportionately less in the case of other arms.” At best, the corps would be out of reinforcements by mid-July “and no further reinforcements to speak of can be expected before that date, due to priorities in the other theatre.”31 The invasion of northern Europe was taking priority over everything and I Canadian Corps was largely left to fend for itself in keeping its units operational.