by Mark Zuehlke
On May 7, the 1st Canadian Armoured Brigade issued Operations Order No. 1, detailing the role the three Canadian tank battalions would play in the forthcoming attack, code-named Honker. XIII Corps would attack with two of its infantry divisions up front — the British 4th Division supported by the 26th British Armoured Brigade on the right, and the 8th Indian Division backed by 1 CAB on the left. The British 78th Division would be in reserve. The role for 1 CAB was to assist the 8th Indian Division in crossing the Gari River, securing a bridgehead, and seizing and then holding the San Angelo “Horseshoe” position as a preliminary to operations against the Adolf Hitler Line. The San Angelo Horseshoe described a series of rises along the ridgeline that loosely formed the shape of a horseshoe, with San Angelo anchoring the northern flank. The 17th Brigade and Ontario Tank Regiment on the right and the 19th Brigade and Calgary Tank Regiment on the left would lead the 8th Indian attack against this feature. Three troops of Three Rivers Tanks would support the crossing with direct fire while the rest of the regiment remained in reserve.10 Half of the regiment’s reconnaissance troop, which manned the light Stuart tanks, was assigned to accompany the Calgary regiment and the other half to follow the Ontario regiment. Corporal Gwilym Jones’s patrol of two Stuarts would work with the Ontario regiment.11
In the early evening of May 10, the Three Rivers tankers assembled in a large shack for a movie. Also present were many troops from the 8th Indian Division, with which they had been training for the past month. The film was Bataan, starring John Wayne and Humphrey Bogart. Jones, a twenty-three-year-old American who had enlisted in the Canadian Army in 1940, was soon laughing at the “stupidity of the producers and technical advisers in making such a film.” In one scene, Bogart stood and threw a grenade at a bridge. “It flew about half a mile through the air, landed in the middle of the bridge, and blew up the entire bridge — it just disintegrated.” The soldiers were so amused that they immediately started issuing wireless calls back to the supply depot for someone to “Send us up some of those Humphrey Bogart grenades.”12
Preparations continued the next day for the attack and at 1800 hours on May 11, two messages were read aloud to all Eighth Army regiments. The first was from Sir Oliver Leese. “Our plan is worked out in every detail — we attack in great strength, with large numbers of tanks and guns, supported by a powerful American Air Force and our own Desert Air Force,” the message read. “Let us live up to our great traditions and give news of fresh achievements. . . . I say to you all — Into action, with the light of battle in your eyes. Let every man do his duty throughout the fight and the day is ours!”
General Alexander’s message was longer, but no less a rallying cry. “From the East and the West, from the North and the South, blows are about to fall which will result in the final destruction of the Nazis and bring freedom once again to Europe, and hasten peace for us all. To us in Italy, has been given the honour to strike the first blow.
“We are going to destroy the German Armies in Italy. The fighting will be hard, bitter, and perhaps long, but you are warriors and soldiers of the highest order, who for more than a year have known victory. You have courage, determination and skill. You will be supported by overwhelming air forces, and in guns and tanks we far outnumber the Germans. No armies have ever entered battle before with a more just and righteous cause.
“So with God’s help and blessing, we take the field — confident of victory.”13
As darkness settled over the valley, the tankers ate a tense dinner and then climbed into their tanks. The three squadrons of Three Rivers Tanks that were to provide direct fire support to the 8th Indian Division crossing the river started their Sherman tank engines. The moment the Calgary and Ontario regiments moved to the riverbank and began crossing the Gari on bridges that were to be hastily erected by the engineers, these squadrons would concentrate on the eastern bank and fire their 75-millimetre main guns against visible enemy targets. The moon would not rise for several hours yet and the normal thick fog that settled into the valley virtually every spring night was building. Beach wrote, “it was very dark out; everyone waited, not anxiously, nor with fear. It was like a boxer feels before he enters the ring — just a certain tension.”14
While the tankers and infantrymen waited for the signal to attack, the Allied artillerymen stood by their guns awaiting orders to commence the most powerful barrage ever delivered by Western forces. Alexander’s trump card, the ace he counted on to drive this fourth attack through the Gustav Line, was an overwhelming weight of Allied firepower. At 2300 hours, 1,060 guns would open fire in support of the XIII Corps and II Polish Corps attack. Another 494 guns would support the Fifth U.S. Army divisions in their attack.15 The bombardment would begin with a forty-minute counter-battery program directed at known and suspected German artillery and mortar positions. Once this program ended, the guns would switch to a slow-moving creeping barrage to cover the infantry crossing the Gari River.16 The scheduled artillery barrage was to be the climactic moment in a combined air-artillery operation that had been planned to destroy the German ability to effectively counter the offensive.
Primary responsibility for the operation’s success had originally relied on an elaborate and intensive tactical bombing program begun on February 18 and continued with unrelenting intensity to May 11. While the artillery was only to provide the short-term suppression and destruction of immediate German targets threatening the crossing infantry and tank units, by the date of the attack the Allied air force was to have rendered it impossible for Kesselring to “maintain and operate his forces in Central Italy.”17 Officially dubbed Operation Strangle, the operation by the U.S. Strategic Air Force and the Desert Air Force had been the largest “interdiction” operation ever. British Air Marshal Sir John Cotesworth Slessor, Commander-in-Chief Royal Air Force Middle East, supported by his immediate superior, Lieutenant General Ira C. Eaker, Commander-in-Chief Mediterranean Allied Air Forces, had confidently predicted that air power alone would cripple the German army in Italy. In a mid-April Ultra intercept, Tenth Army’s daily consumption of vital supplies had been reported at 120 tons of ammunition, 200 cubic metres of gas, and 50 cubic metres of diesel.18 A week before this intercept, Eaker promised that “when our ground forces move northward it will, in fact, be following up a German withdrawal made necessary by his inadequate supply.”19
Between March 19 and May 11, about 65,000 sorties were flown and 33,000 tons of bombs dropped. Every form of bombing aircraft was implemented. Heavy bombers, such as B-17 Flying Fortresses, hammered the major rail marshalling areas in key cities from Rimini to Milan to Pisa. More then two-thirds of the sorties were directed against Italy’s rail network and repair facilities. Fighter-bombers, such as Typhoons, and Spitfire and Mustang P-41 fighters hunted for trains to strafe and bomb. The Typhoons also struck small road and rail bridges with rockets and light bombs.
Operation Strangle did put great stress on Kesselring’s supply network. He had also been compelled to transfer many of his trucks to other German operational theatres because OKW (Supreme Command of the Armed Forces) in Berlin believed he could rely primarily on the Italian rail system. Kesselring complained at the end of April that systematic air strikes were causing the “increasing destruction of railway supply routes.” He drafted Italian prisoners-of-war and impressed male civilians to repair the damage. “If operations are to be carried out, the Italian railways must remain in working order,” Kesselring warned OKW.20 Kesselring, however, made alternative arrangements to compensate for lost railroad efficiency. At his order, German troops commandeered vast numbers of Italian civilian vehicles, ranging from heavy trucks to the smallest models of cars. All were utilized to move supplies and men as needed. By April, tonnage moved by road increased to 12,000 tons from only 4,500 tons in December. Moving mostly at night, these vehicles were also immune from air attack.21
Despite the railroad damage, Operation Strangle failed to stop German supplies reaching front-line divisions. In fact, largely
due to the lull in fighting along the entire Italian front between March and May, German reserves had actually increased, so that by May 11, Tenth Army was in better shape than it had been at the beginning of the operation. On March 15, Tenth Army’s total ammunition supplies on hand had been 16,891 metric tonnes. On May 11, the total was 18,102 metric tonnes.22 Total ammunition stocks in Italy were higher than those held in any other German theatre and there were enough rations to feed the troops for at least two weeks.23
Well apprised of these reports through Ultra intercepts, Slessor admitted by mid-April that Operation Strangle alone could force neither a German withdrawal nor seriously hamper Kesselring’s ability to resupply his armies. The simple fact was that the Italian rail system was too efficient and developed to cripple beyond repair. Intelligence estimates showed that the rail system was capable of delivering to the front a daily quota of about 80,000 tons of supplies. The German front-line troops in Italy required only about 5,500 tons per day. Before the Tenth and Fourteenth armies could be forced to withdraw due to lack of supplies, almost 90 percent of the rail system would have to be knocked out of action.24
Slessor conceded that Kesselring was able “to keep up his reserves of supplies to a level that will enable him to put up a very stiff resistance when the attack comes. That may be inevitable, but it is unfortunate.”25 With the failure of Operation Strangle, it was now up to the army to either win or lose the battle. Air support would be available to the attacking units, but the implementation of aerial bombardment and strafing in a close-support role was still in its developmental stages and its effectiveness was limited.
The attack did, however, have the advantage of complete surprise. Kesselring and his subordinate generals had misjudged the Allied schedule, believing the attack would come much later in May. Because of the complex deception plan and camouflaging operations, German intelligence still held that I Canadian Corps was concentrated near Salerno and thought that XIII Corps headquarters was still based in Termoli on the Adriatic coast. They had also seriously underestimated the front-line strength of II Polish Corps and the Corps Expéditionnaire Français. Continuing to credit the threat of a Canadian amphibious landing at Civitavecchia, Kesselring wrote of his unit dispositions on May 11, “I feel that we have done all that is humanly possible.”26 General der Infanterie Frido von Senger und Etterlein, commanding the XIV Panzer Corps, was in Germany to be decorated by Hitler. Before he had left, von Senger advised his staff that nothing would happen before May 20. Tenth Army commander Generaloberst Heinrich von Vietinghoff told Kesselring during a telephone conversation on May 11 at 0905 hours: “There is nothing special going on. Yesterday I called at the HQ of the two corps. Both commanders told me they did not yet have the impression that anything was going on.”
The previous day, Tenth Army Chief of Staff Generalmajor Friedrich (Fritz) Wentzell had chatted at length with Oberst Beelitz, Kesserling’s acting chief of staff. “To my great pleasure everything is quiet,” Wentzell said. “Only I do not know what is going on. Things are becoming ever more uncertain.” He later added that, “I think it not impossible that things are going on of which we have no idea.” Wentzell, a highly experienced staff officer, was more uneasy than most of the high command in Italy.27 So confident was von Vietinghoff that the offensive would not come for some weeks that he spent much of May 11 preparing to depart the next day for a period of leave in Germany.
Not only were the Germans not expecting an attack but they had also concentrated their forces along the Cassino front in expectation that any major thrust would be directed against the Abbey of Monte Cassino rather than into the Liri Valley. As a result, the German dispositions behind the Gari River were both weak and poorly organized. Holding a one-mile line west of Cassino was 1st Parachute Division’s Machine Gun Battalion. West of this unit, responsibility for defending the Gari River all the way to its junction with the Liri River rested on two battalions of the 576th Panzer Grenadier Regiment and two battalions of the 115th Panzer Grenadier Regiment, which had been detached from its parent, 15th Panzer Grenadier Division.28
As was true for the entire German army in the spring of 1944, the divisions in Italy were drastically understrength. One Canadian intelligence report estimated the average company in the 115th Panzer Grenadier Regiment was only about sixty men per company or roughly half strength.29 This state of depletion was typical. A battalion of the 576th Panzer Grenadier Regiment was not only weak in numbers, but also considered of relatively low quality, composed of many foreigners drafted into service from nations conquered by Germany. Such troops were generally, and understandably, unreliable, prone to using any opportunity to surrender.
Morale was also an issue. Although the core of the Panzer Grenadier, and the parachute divisions in particular, consisted of hardened veterans, these soldiers were increasingly skeptical about the chances of a German victory or even their own survival.30 Feldwebel Fritz Illi, a platoon commander in 6th Company, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Regiment of the 1st Parachute Division, knew the war was lost by the time his division transferred to the Cassino front after the Battle of Ortona. Illi believed the December 1943 fighting had convinced virtually every paratrooper involved that Germany could not continue to “fight the whole world.” Yet each man kept his silence about this because “the tolerance for defeatism in the regiment was absolutely zero.” Discipline remained strong. The men, Illi thought, “fought on for our country, for our honour, and for each other.”31
Other divisions voiced their cynicism sardonically through song. A popular piece of doggerel among the troops of 362nd Infantry Division, commanded by General Heinz Greiner, who were involved in containing the Anzio beachhead, aptly captured the fears of many German veterans. Translated, the chorus went: “This Division of Greiner / Gets chopped ever finer / Till roll call’s a one-liner / Which simply reads Greiner.”32
This did not mean that the German army in Italy was verging on collapse or wallowing in defeatism. Its soldiers continued to resist with tenacity and skill, despite the weakened unit strengths and a general belief that the war was ultimately lost. Elite divisions proved particularly capable of quickly reorganizing and putting up stout resistance no matter how heavy their losses. For this reason, Eighth Army intelligence staff recognized that the regiments manning the Gustav sector that was about to be hit by two of XIII Corps’s divisions could be expected to mount a fierce defence, even though they were meeting the attack with slightly less than the strength of a single division. It was also recognized that the preponderance of machine guns deployed by the Panzer Grenadier regiments and the 1st Parachute Machine Gun Battalion gave the Germans a formidable superiority in automatic weapon firepower, further strengthened by their extremely strong defensive positions.
Despite these advantages, General der Gebirgetruppen Valentin Feuerstein, commander of the heavily drawn-down German divisions of the LI Mountain Corps that controlled the mountainous region east of the Liri Valley entrance over to the Adriatic shore, thought the entire Gustav Line too thinly manned. The sixty-year-old veteran, anticipating the forthcoming offensive, pleaded with Kesselring on May 10 for a withdrawal to the Senger Line. Such a withdrawal would allow creation of a mobile reserve, something at present entirely lacking. Everything was out front; there was no depth, no ability to shift a division to contain a breakthrough. Kesselring refused, citing Hitler’s order that all positions everywhere, no matter how vulnerable or impossible, must be held to the bitter end.33
At 2300 hours on May 11, time for discussion and adjustment of forces abruptly and unexpectedly ceased. For one German soldier in the line, who was listening to the familiar sounds of a patrol coming in and a mess party bringing up hot food, it was “as if a light had been switched on. There was a blaze of flame down the valley . . . and then ear-splitting screaming, whizzing, exploding, banging and crashing . . . I squeezed into the narrow cover-hold. Splinters buzzed over me; stones and clods of earth whirled through the air. The ground trembled under the f
orce of the blasts.”34 Germans all down the line dived desperately into their steel and concrete shelters as explosive blasts and flying shrapnel devastated an already scarred landscape.
As darkness fell on May 11, Lance Sergeant Victor Bulger and the other gunners of the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery’s ‘B’ Battery, ‘D’ Troop, had sawed through the last remaining fibres of the trees fronting their gun position and dropped them to the ground to clear their field of fire. Some lights had been used to help finalize the aiming of the guns and, just as the lights were turned off, Bulger heard the whistle of incoming shells. The gunners dived into their slit trenches as about twenty-five German rounds exploded all around them.35 Two shells scored direct hits on the well-dug-in regimental headquarters, but failed to cause any damage, as the previous day a work party had strengthened the roof with heavy timbers and a sheet of metal. Nobody was wounded and the guns remained unscathed.36 A few minutes later, precisely at Zero Hour, Bulger and the other gunners fired their 25-pounders. Bulger thought it seemed as if “the guns almost split the sky and the noise of those thousands of shells sounded like freight trains as they travelled overhead.” The men were firing five rounds per minute at first. Then, following the prepared plan, they gradually slacked off to three rounds a minute. “The sky was lit up for as far as we could see with the constant flashes,” Bulger later wrote, “and flares could be seen in the distance.”37