by Mark Zuehlke
On the night of May 11, the four bridging tanks and trucks carrying the two engineering platoons and parts for the still unassembled bridge slowly crept down a narrow, white-taped corridor toward the Gari River crossing point. Visibility increasingly worsened as fog and what seemed to be smoke fired by German artillery obscured the landscape. The trucks carrying the first platoon’s bridging material strayed off the narrow track and overturned one after the other into a ditch. Meanwhile, Kingsmill, Seymour, and MacLean, riding in the first platoon’s carrier, got lost when MacLean wandered to the left of the track. Soon the carrier’s tracks were entangled in long strips of white marking tape and Kingsmill realized the tank had torn up a great length of the left-hand marker line, a development that could result in the whole convoy’s going astray. He ordered a halt and sent Seymour back on foot to locate the other tanks and alert them to the situation.
Stumbling across the rough ground in the dark, Seymour ran back to where the track was and, following the right-hand marking tape, searched for the remainder of the two engineering platoons. He came across several overturned trucks and a couple of Military Police checkpoints. The MPs had no idea where the other tanks were. Realizing the entire operation was in a mess, Seymour headed back to fetch Kingsmill.
By the time he reached the spot where the tank had left the track, the Germans were pounding the area with Nebelwerfer fire. Seymour crept cross-country, trying to follow the tank’s path, but he was forced time and again to dive for cover as another stonk of Moaning Minnie rockets shrieked down and exploded. Seymour realized he was completely disoriented and huddled in a hole, trying to figure out what to do next.
Luckily, Kingsmill realized that Seymour must be lost and told MacLean to rev the tank engines loudly to attract the trooper’s attention. Seymour immediately ran toward the tank. The Germans, too, heard the motors and intensively mortared the area. Zigzagging through the exploding rounds, Seymour reached the tank and scrambled inside. He told Kingsmill that he had seen no sign of the other tanks.
Kingsmill climbed out of the tank and guided the carrier driver to back up the way they had come to the track. The party then rumbled forward and, much to Kingsmill’s relief, found the other three tanks in position near the river. The second bridging platoon came up a few minutes later with its bridging material intact. Kingsmill ordered the engineers to immediately assemble the Bailey bridge so it could be mounted onto the carrier tank. By now, the operation was badly behind schedule.14
At the riverbank, it was almost impossible for the bridging party to work. The smoke was so dense that Kingsmill could see nothing more than three feet away. With the Allied artillery firing relentlessly and the Germans replying with their own guns and mortars, the noise was so loud that he could not make himself heard even when he was yelling in a man’s ear. As dawn broke, the fog kept their position obscured, making it possible to continue.15 Kingsmill’s ears were ringing and he was half terrified. All around the launch site, wounded infantrymen were making their way toward the rear. Kingsmill felt sick watching “all those poor kids streaming back, many of them holding each other up, blood pouring out of terrible wounds. The whole operation seemed nothing but a disaster.”16
Things went from bad to worse. Despite the arrival of a smoke-generating team that was trying to keep the launching team’s activity concealed, the fog was burning off in the hot sunshine and visibility was up to about 200 yards. Time was definitely running out. The launching party set out, Kingsmill walking alongside the slow-moving carrier tank. As the tanks advanced, Kingsmill talked to the two drivers by radio. About halfway to the river, he climbed into the front tank to escape the German shelling. When the carrier was about fifteen feet from the river’s edge, Kingsmill ordered MacLean to stop and told the rear tank to start pushing the bridge forward. The bridge started going out like a drawbridge over the river. When it was about halfway across the water, Kingsmill noticed the carrier tank “was sinking into the mud and the bank of the river was starting to cave in due to the tremendous weight of the rig.”
He shouted into his radio for the drivers to go full speed ahead and the carrier tank slammed into the water, wallowed a short distance through the muddy river bottom, and then bogged down completely. The bridge dropped into place with such a large crash that Kingsmill feared it must have broken, but then he realized that “miraculously it was in one piece and was over the river.”17
Although Plymouth Bridge was across the river, it still rested on top of the mired carrier tank. This left the bridge canted like a teeter-totter, with the carrier tank serving as the balance point. While the end on the south bank of the river was resting on the ground, the bridge was three feet in the air above the northern bank.18
Kingsmill bailed out and made his way to shore. Meanwhile, the tank was flooding, leaving Seymour standing in waist-deep water. Just as Seymour thought he had better go down to make sure the driver wasn’t trapped, the hatch over the driver’s seat opened and MacLean popped to the surface and swam to shore. Seymour climbed out of the tank, grabbed the steel frame of the bridge’s understructure and with his body half in the water crawled hand over hand to the shoreline. The two men clambered up the bank, dripping wet and quickly growing cold in the chill dawn air. As they approached, the pusher tank was blown free and Kingsmill radioed Neroutsos that the bridge was ready for use.19 The time was 0950 hours.20 Seconds after Kingsmill gave his report, he saw three shadowy figures suddenly burst from a nearby thicket of rushes, run past some engineers, and charge across the bridge before anyone could issue a challenge. From the outline of their helmets, Kingsmill realized the figures were German infantry who must have been trapped on the wrong side of the river by the attack and had now escaped toward the German lines.21
Elsewhere along the Gari River, two other engineering units had experienced an equally difficult time getting their bridges into place. Three main bridges were to have been constructed during the night: Cardiff to the north of San Angelo, Oxford about three-quarters of a mile south of San Angelo, and Plymouth about a quarter of a mile farther south of Oxford. It had also been planned for engineers to establish eleven raft operations during the first night to ferry additional men and supplies across the river to support the initial assault forces. The following night, a fourth bridge called London was to be constructed on the site of a demolished bridge immediately south of San Angelo. Most of the work on the bridges and raft systems was carried out by engineers of the two infantry divisions, with some support provided by the smaller Canadian engineering elements attached to 1st Canadian Armoured Brigade.
The engineers working on Oxford were badly hampered by the fog, smoke, and direct fire from German machine-gun positions. But they were able to persevere despite heavy casualties, and at 0830 hours Oxford was ready to handle traffic.22 Ontario Tank Regiment Shermans started lumbering from their sheltered positions toward the bridge. Also manoeuvring down a taped track toward the bridge was Corporal Gwilym Jones in one of the Three Rivers Regiment reconnaissance squadron’s Stuarts, which were lightly armoured tanks, nicknamed Honeys, that mounted a 37-millimetre gun and three .30-calibre Browning machine guns. When the lead Stuart entered a small depression, it bottomed out on a Teller antitank mine that ripped a hole in the tank’s underside. The blast tore off the driver’s legs. Jones saw a panicked trooper jump out of the tank turret and land outside the taped pathway. As he hit the ground, a mine went off under his feet, killing him instantly. The reconnaissance squadron was stuck in place until the engineers could come up with a tractor to pull the badly damaged tank out of the way. Then the three remaining Stuarts moved on within the dubious safety of the marked path, which was supposed to have been free of mines.23
Twenty minutes after Oxford Bridge was opened, two troops of Ontario Tank Regiment’s ‘B’ Squadron rolled off into a wide strip of open, boggy ground. Although the squadron’s original orders were to advance directly from the river to a road that ran from San Apollinare through San Angelo to
Cassino, no route had been cleared of mines over the ground lying between the river and the road. Consequently, ‘B’ Squadron’s commander ordered the tanks south toward the Plymouth crossing where the road neared the river and a crossing should be more easily effected. A few minutes later, No. 4 Troop’s three tanks linked up with some 8th Indian infantry and supported their efforts to clear several German machine-gun positions that were barring their advance. The 75-millimetre main gun and .30-calibre Browning machine-gun fire from the tanks quickly silenced the German machine-gunners.
No sooner was this done than the squadron received orders to stop moving toward Plymouth and instead cut across to the San Apollinare–San Angelo lateral road. Once on the road, it was to move north and help the Gurkhas of the 1st Frontier Force Regiment to clear the village. Then it was to move north of San Angelo to support the 1st Royal Fusiliers Regiment, which was “having an extremely sticky time.” Although the squadron managed to cross the open ground without encountering any German antitank mines, eight of its tanks mired in the soft ground and were disabled. While the crews of the bogged-down tanks and men from the regiment’s engineering platoon tried to extract them from the mud, the remaining eight tanks pressed on and became heavily engaged on the approaches to San Angelo.24
‘C’ Squadron by now was to have crossed Oxford and come up to support ‘B’ Squadron. Because Cardiff Bridge had had to be abandoned, however, the Ontario Regiment’s crossing schedule was delayed to allow the Calgary Tanks’ ‘C’ Squadron to use Oxford and move to support 3rd Punjabi Regiment, engaged in the Plymouth bridge area. Leading the advance of ‘C’ Squadron was Corporal Bill McWithey, with Lieutenant Al Cawsey, his troop commander, directly behind. A hundred yards before the bridge, the ground turned extremely muddy and McWithey’s tank got stuck. No engineers were available to help extract the tank and the line of Canadian tanks was drawing heavy fire from German artillery, mortars, and machine guns.
Cawsey knew he had to act quickly, because if the tanks failed to get over Oxford the Punjabi soldiers were likely to lose their tenuous hold on the bridgehead and be wiped out. Despite the risk of mines, he directed his tank out of the marked pathway and started inching around McWithey’s tank. Cawsey’s co-driver, Trooper Price, walked ahead of the tank, looking for telltale signs of mines. In this way, the tank was able to straddle three mines without triggering any. Once back on the track in front of McWithey’s tank, Price hooked the tow cable mounted on the rear of Cawsey’s Sherman to the stuck tank and pulled it clear. The two then proceeded to Oxford and crossed it, but the rest of the squadron could not immediately follow as the track was now too chewed up for further use without repairs.25 Instead, ‘C’ Squadron of the Ontario Regiment moved to the support of the regiment’s ‘B’ Squadron. Half of this squadron bogged down in the same field that had trapped so many tanks of Calgary’s ‘C’ Squadron.26
The first thing Cawsey saw after the two tanks came off the bridge were the many rotting corpses of American soldiers scattered through the brush and hanging on barbed-wire obstacles. The tanks turned hard left and followed the river south toward the Punjabi regiment. Soon Cawsey came across a company of Punjabi troops. He saw one soldier, wielding a bayonet on the end of his rifle, clearing a German machine-gun position single-handedly. When the man finished his bloody task, he ran over to Cawsey’s tank and told him where the company’s officer was located. Then the small soldier ran off over a hill, bayonet at the ready, conducting a one-man charge. Cawsey found the officer, the company adjutant. The wounded officer explained that of the eighty men in the company who had crossed the river, only ten were still alive and he was the only surviving officer. His battalion had been virtually eliminated. The man told Cawsey that the tanks would have to operate without support, as he had nothing left to give. Cawsey raised his squadron commander, Major Don Taylor, on the radio and reported. Taylor told him there was no point in his sitting there, so they should try for the original squadron objective of Panaccioni. The rest of ‘C’ Squadron would join Cawsey and McWithey there when it managed to get across Oxford.
The moment the two tanks left the infantry position, McWithey radioed Cawsey that there was a German 75-millimetre self-propelled gun manoeuvring into a firing position against them. Immediately spotting the enemy vehicle, Cawsey directed his main gun on it and his gunner scored a direct hit with the first round. The German crew bailed out and started running away, but McWithey cut them down with machine-gun fire. A few yards further along, Cawsey’s tank almost collided with another self-propelled gun sitting astride a sunken track. As his tank was too close to fire its gun at the vehicle, Cawsey popped out of the turret hatch and threw a grenade into the enemy’s open cupola. Then McWithey hit it with a main gun round. One crewman piled out with his hands up. With no infantry to take him prisoner, Cawsey motioned for him to jump on the back of the tank and stay there. Minutes later, the two tanks were caught in an artillery barrage and the German started trying to climb inside the tank while Cawsey, fearing the man might be armed with a grenade or pistol, tried to keep him out. The matter was resolved when Cawsey ducked down inside the cupola and McWithey shot the German off the tank with his machine gun. Immediately, another German self-propelled gun appeared about 250 yards off. Cawsey’s gunner scored another direct hit and knocked the weapon out of action. A few minutes later, they overran and destroyed a 75-millimetre antitank gun.
They were now on a small hill south of Panaccioni, still lacking any infantry support, and Cawsey was worried about running out of ammunition. He radioed back to Taylor for instructions. Taylor said Oxford had been temporarily knocked out of action and the squadron would not reach the two tanks for several more hours. Cawsey and McWithey should hunker down and call in artillery that would be put at their disposal against any German concentrations they spotted. Cawsey set about the task enthusiastically, wondering if he might not be able to bring down the might of the entire Eighth Army artillery if he liked.27
The first tank to follow the German infantrymen across Plymouth Bridge was that of Calgary Regiment’s ‘A’ Squadron, No. 1 Troop commander Lieutenant Al Wells. As his tank rumbled up the angled bridge and crossed the pivot point where it still rested on the carrier tank, the Bailey bridge tipped forward, allowing Wells’s tank to move off without difficulty. When the tank exited the bridge, the release of the tank’s weight tottered it back to rest on the south shore. Next across was the troop corporal’s tank and then troop Sergeant Rolly Marchant started over. Inside Marchant’s tank was Trooper Stan Kanik, the Sherman’s gunner.
Raised on a Saskatchewan homestead, Kanik had enlisted in June 1941 at the age of seventeen. He had volunteered for the armoured corps and in early 1942 arrived in England and was detailed to the Calgary regiment as a gunner. This was exactly the position Kanik had wanted. He always said a gunner is “in the best place to be in a tank because you are in charge of the gun.” By comparison, being a tank driver, the co-driver, or even the radio operator–loader “was boring” and these positions all required you “to depend on somebody else for your life and safety.” That somebody else was the gunner. From Kanik’s perspective, the commander sitting in the upper cupola of the turret was mainly along for the ride. If Kanik waited for the commander to find enemy targets for him, their gunnery would be too slow and they would all wind up dead or at least have the tank shot out from under them.
Now, as Kanik’s tank reached the balance point on the bridge, he was surprised not to feel it starting to drop down toward the northern shore as the others had. Instead the bridge stayed angled upward and suddenly the tank rolled off the end and dropped three feet to crash onto the ground. Everyone was jostled around inside but nobody was hurt. However, when Kanik checked the electrical system that automatically traversed the turret, he discovered it had shorted out. This was not a big problem, since the turret could still be traversed with a hand-cranked wheel, which he normally used anyway for fine-tuning his aim on a target. He still wondered why the br
idge had failed to seesaw.
Behind Kanik, the driver of Lieutenant Jim Quinn’s tank had moved onto the edge of the bridge before Marchant’s tank had cleared. The thirty-ton weight of the tank pinned the bridge to the southern bank. Once Marchant’s tank dropped off the other end, Quinn’s tank rolled across it and the bridge functioned just as it had for the first two tanks.
As the tanks rolled forward, Kanik could see through his viewing telescope that the driver was running the tracks over the bodies of dead Indian soldiers scattered thickly on the ground around them. Heavy machine-gun fire was coming from an embankment about 150 yards away. The Indian troops were holding only the narrowest of beachheads.28
Small-arms fire was slapping against the tank. Through the telescope, Kanik could see ahead for about 500 yards into the gloomy darkness and across an arc of about three degrees, so he kept swivelling the turret back and forth to increase his ability to locate enemy targets. Following the line of some German tracer fire back to what he figured was a trench system, Kanik raked the position with his machine gun. Then, after making a quick calculation on the range to the target and figuring how long it would take a shell to get there, he told the loader to put a round of delay-fuse high explosive in the main gun with the fuse set for 1.2 seconds. He cracked off the shot so it was travelling about ten yards above the ground. When the round was almost directly over the German trench, the fuse burned out and the shell ignited, spraying the trench with deadly splinters of shrapnel.
Delay-fuse rounds were the tank’s best infantry-killer because an airburst over infantry in the open was devastating when it was on target. The same rounds were also highly effective against an enemy inside a building. When a delay-fuse round struck a building, the shell could penetrate the wall and then travel as far as fifteen more feet into the interior rooms before exploding. A normal contact-fuse round would explode against the outside of the wall and usually cause little or no harm to anyone inside. But as the Shermans were not fitted with the ranging gear that most German tanks carried, the Canadian gunners had to do the sighting and range calculations entirely in their heads. Most had difficulty attaining any accuracy with the delay-fuse shells, so seldom used them. Kanik was an exception. Possessing a quick mind for mathematical and spatial problems, he was quite deadly with the shells. Unfortunately, the shells were expensive and consequently only five were issued to each tank per day. Kanik, however, found it easy to get the other gunners to trade delay-fuse rounds for normal high-explosive or armour-piercing rounds.