The Liri Valley
Page 17
The aerial raids against the German high command headquarters had been made possible by Ultra intercepts that had identified the precise location of each headquarters several weeks before the launch of Operation Diadem, giving Allied intelligence staff plenty of time to set up the raids.3 When Kesselring visited both the Tenth and Fourteenth headquarters by plane shortly after the raids, he discovered that both “had almost ceased to function.” While the German high command struggled to return the various headquarters to operational status, Kesselring ruefully reflected that the Allies had outfoxed him and that his “fears of an airborne landing or a fresh invasion had no substance; the movement and use of strategic reserves had therefore become less hazardous.”4
Kesselring acted quickly on May 13 to start shifting some reserves toward the Liri Valley. That morning he received a message, duly recorded by Ultra, from General der Infanterie Gustav von Zangen, stationed in Lombardy, that the newly established 278th Division had reached a level of fitness and organization sufficient to allow it to undertake limited offensive action. Kesselring issued immediate orders for the division, which was maintaining a coastal defensive position to prevent an Allied amphibious invasion there, to move to the Liri Valley. Still fretful about the potential threat of amphibious operations behind his forward armies, Kesselring ordered an untrained reserve division to take over defence of the Lombardy coast. Kesselring and his staff persisted in expecting General Harold Alexander, Deputy Supreme Commander Mediterranean, to show some strategic subtlety by launching attacks in their rear. It was hard for them to imagine that after three previous failures to break through the Gustav Line with frontal assaults, the Allies were once again resorting to a battering-ram approach.5
The sheer Allied weight of firepower was, however, opening cracks. The incessant aerial operations undertaken by their air forces seriously hampered German efforts to shift reinforcements to the Gustav Line. On May 12, a record number of 2,991 sorties were flown. Yet, although these raids disrupted movement of reinforcements and supplies by day, they failed to isolate the battlefield. Enough road and rail bridges or hastily constructed emergency river crossings remained intact to allow reinforcements and supplies to come forward at night.6
In fact, I Canadian Corps intelligence reports at the end of May 12 revealed that the 1st Parachute Division was utilizing four separate crossings at the Melfa River that had replaced a destroyed Highway 6 bridge. Aerial reconnaissance detected the presence of many small supply dumps hidden in buildings and caves bordering the highway that stretched from Ceprano south to the battle front. Most of these positions were either too small or too fortified to be easily destroyed or damaged by bombing. The 15th Panzer Grenadier Division was feeding troops and supplies through San Giovanni and then following a roundabout route running south of the Liri River and back to the northern side of the river over a still-standing bridge at Pontecorvo. From here, the Panzer Grenadiers could either link into Highway 6 north of Aquino or use a series of narrow local farm tracks cutting through the fields between Pontecorvo and Pignataro, believed to be serving as a forward assembly area for feeding men into the Gustav Line.7
Despite having been caught by surprise, the forward troops and commands responded quickly to meet the offensive. On the day the offensive began, LI Mountain Corps commander General der Gebirgetruppen Valentin Feuerstein was in the process of taking over responsibility for the section of Gustav Line directly facing XIII Corps. As soon as Feuerstein realized the attack was in earnest, he ordered his alarm units, consisting of a company from each of the 5th Mountain Division and the 114th Jäger Division, to move from the northern mountain area into the Liri Valley. Next, he formed a mobile reserve near Aquino on Highway 6 to back up the front-line units and intercept any deep penetrations Eighth Army might achieve.
Later in the day, Feuerstein realized the bridgehead 8th Indian Division had established rendered the situation more critical. He issued a demand that Tenth Army release one regiment of the 90th Panzer Grenadier Division as a strategic reserve that could, if necessary, be immediately deployed. Tenth Army commander Generaloberst Heinrich von Vietinghoff demurred. He had positioned the 90th around Frosinone, fearing that its airfield might be attacked by an airborne force of Allied paratroopers. By day’s end, von Vietinghoff grudgingly placed the 90th’s 200th Panzer Grenadier Regiment under Feuerstein’s authority, but only Kesselring could authorize its forward deployment. All three commanders remained optimistic, believing still on May 13 that the Eighth Army offensive could be thrown back.8
The two small clusters of Canadian tankers of the Ontario and Calgary regiments on the western side of the Gari River had spent a tense night waiting for counterattacks that never materialized. Nobody had slept and, with an impenetrable fog blanketing the ground at dawn, they remained at their stations inside the Shermans. Lieutenant Jim Quinn noted that the crews in the Calgary tanks were exhausted. There had been little opportunity for sleep from the night of May 10–11 when the regiment had moved to its forward assembly areas, to this grey, dreary morning.9 In ‘A’ Squadron’s No. 1 Troop tank, Trooper Stan Kanik wolfed a tin of cold rations and then, like everyone else in the tanks, urinated out of the emergency escape hole built into the bottom of the tank rather than risk going outside. Periodically, German small-arms fire rattled against the tank’s armoured hide and occasional mortar and artillery rounds exploding nearby rocked the Sherman from side to side. Close explosions were followed by the sound of shrapnel clattering against the tank. Peering through his viewing telescope, Kanik could see no enemy targets moving in the fog. There was nothing to do but sit there until it lifted sufficiently to allow the attack to resume.10
At least Quinn and No. 1 Troop commander Lieutenant Al Wells had now learned by radio the fate of the missing Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders infantry battalion they were supposed to have been supporting the previous day. During the initial attack on the night of May 11–12, the Argylls had been thrown back from the western bank of the river. A devastating rain of artillery shells, mortar bombs, and machine-gun fire had slaughtered those who had managed to paddle their assault boats across. The few who survived had been left huddling in the water along the muddy bank. Repeated attempts to reinforce these men were repulsed and by day’s end most of the battalion’s boats had been sunk or lost in the current. Many Argylls had drowned. While the men clinging to the riverbank had seen the four Calgary tanks successfully cross Plymouth Bridge and move across the ground in front of their position, they lacked a functioning radio set and had been unable to signal their location to the tankers. So they had watched forlornly as the tanks headed west toward the battalion objective of Panaccioni. During the night of May 12–13, however, the Argylls had launched another assault across the river and this time had managed to establish a viable beachhead. Soon after dawn, they linked up with the Calgary Tanks’ ‘A’ Squadron.11
Having just crossed the Gari River, Calgary Tanks’ ‘B’ Squadron commander Major Frederick Ritchie stared at a passing landscape reminiscent of World War I battlefields. Shellfire had shattered or splintered the trees and German slit trenches were everywhere. Enemy artillery and mortar fire kept hammering down, so his crew had all the hatches closed up tight, limiting their vision.12 Ritchie’s orders were to support the 6th (Royal) Battalion, Frontier Force Rifles (RFFR), in an attack on a ridge 1,000 yards north of Panaccioni. If this attack succeeded, ‘B’ Squadron and the RFFR would then advance toward the village in an effort to effect its capture.13 Ritchie directed the tanks to a predesignated position near the spot where the RFFR commander, Colonel Green, was supposed to have established a headquarters in a small dugout. Ritchie had worked with Green during the pre-offensive training operations.
Once the tanks were all well sheltered behind a bank bordering the San Apollinare–San Angelo lateral road, Ritchie set off on foot to find the infantry colonel. As he walked through some bush and started down an embankment toward the dugout, a German soldier suddenly materialized ou
t of the fog. The two men, both frightened witless, stared at each other for several long moments before the German dashed off. Ritchie cursed himself for not having had the presence of mind to draw his pistol and shoot the Jerry, but his infantry training had entirely vaporized the instant the man appeared. A sudden volley of incoming artillery, however, wiped thoughts of the encounter from his mind and he rushed on to the safety of Green’s headquarters. He was beginning to worry that the heavy German fire and the fact that the only infantry he had so far seen had been the German soldier indicated that the RFFR had failed to get over the river.
Bursting into the rough bunker that was supposed to be the battalion’s headquarters, Ritchie was relieved to find Green and his batman calmly sitting on the dirt floor sharing some tea and cake. Green looked up and smiled. “Good boy, Fred,” he said. “Come and have some cake.” Then, while Ritchie sat down and took the proffered piece of cake and mug of tea, Green described the situation. Sitting there, Ritchie felt that the officer’s calm and his ability to offer up refreshments while shells were exploding directly outside the entrance made “the whole crazy situation even more like a dream.” This was certainly not the normal battlefield experience.
Snack finished, the two men set off to find Green’s brigadier in order to finalize arrangements for the attack. They found the brigadier sitting in a huge shell crater with several other British officers. “Shrapnel was whistling everywhere and the noise made it hard to concentrate.” But the officers were calmly chatting away as if they were attending a cricket match. Ritchie found “it doubly hard because a poor little sepoy was half buried under the ground I was sitting on.” He was even more jangled when the sepoy and another man who was completely buried came to life, wriggled out from under the dirt covering them, then staggered off into the fog. Unmindful of the distraction, the brigadier finished his briefing and Ritchie accompanied Green back to the RFFR positions.14
At 1000 hours, the fog finally lifted and the Calgary and Ontario tanks went into the attack in support of their respective infantry battalions. The Calgary tankers struck toward Panaccioni and the Ontario Regiment picked up its drive toward San Angelo. The Ontarios’ ‘C’ Squadron pressed forward with ten tanks aiding the 1st Frontier Force Regiment attack on a cemetery about 1,000 yards southwest of the village.15 Italian cemeteries were favourite German defensive strongpoints because they were “surrounded by high and substantial walls. These were normally lined on the inside by small, but very strongly built, family mausoleums. The whole structure provided excellent protection from shellfire. Added to this the little mausoleums made comfortable sleeping quarters and cooking fires could be lighted in them at night without being observed by [Allied] ground troops. In the Sicilian campaign and the early part of the Italian campaign it had been an Eighth Army order that churches and cemeteries should not be shelled. However, this order had to be cancelled.”16
In fact, church steeples were now considered fair game the moment a tank moved within range of one. The Canadians had found that almost invariably the Germans used the steeples as observation posts or machine-gun positions, manning them for as long as possible and often inflicting heavy casualties on infantry that had no means of bringing effective fire against the stoutly walled structures. Calgary Trooper Stan Kanik, the only Roman Catholic gunner in his squadron, had made gunning for steeples a specialty. Some of the other men felt uneasy about shooting up the churches, so Kanik had told them back in Sicily, “Let me do the churches. It’s no sin to me. I do the churches.” Without a second thought, he had been knocking down steeples and sometimes entire churches ever since.17
The San Angelo attack was heavily supported by a five-minute-long artillery concentration by seven field regiments that pounded the village and cemetery.18 When the concentration lifted, ‘C’ Squadron and the Frontier Force Regiment Gurkhas fought their way through a series of machine-gun and sniper posts. Then the infantry broke into the cemetery and cleared it in fierce fighting. With this objective captured, the way was now open for an attack on San Angelo itself.
A tiny village of only about 200 souls, San Angelo stood hard on the edge of the ridge dominating the Gari River. Its buildings were all badly damaged by the months of shellfire directed against it, and the Germans had transformed the rubble into defensive strongpoints. Two troops of Ontario’s ‘B’ Squadron were tasked with carrying out the attack, scheduled for 1200 hours. The squadron’s line of approach along the San Apollinare–San Angelo lateral, however, had been blocked when the Germans blew a bridge crossing a creek that drained into the Gari River. An attempt by one tank to cross the creek on a bed of rubble that had been pushed into it left the tank badly stuck. Requests for a Bailey bridge and an engineering party to install it went unanswered. Finally, one troop swung to the right, crawling along the edge of the ridge. From this party, a tank commanded by Corporal Lawrence Toye from Englewood, Ontario, managed to cross the creek and advance on the village.19
The delay in getting armour forward had forced the two attacking Gurkha companies to go to ground in shell holes fronting the village. As Toye’s tank came up with machine guns blazing, the infantry came out of their hides and charged behind it into San Angelo. Above ground, the village had been reduced to a continuous pile of rubble that led to its being nicknamed the Second Cassino. Shell craters overlapped each other so closely that it was almost impossible to tell where one ended and another began. But the Germans were inside the village in force and had dug fighting pits into the cellars and even under the cellar foundations.20 Toye’s tank lumbered forward, clawing its way over rubble heaps until he spotted a German Mark IV tank hidden in a rubble-clogged basement. Swinging the Sherman’s 75-millimetre gun onto the target, Toye’s crew knocked it out with a well-placed armour-piercing shell. By 1300 hours, the village was slowly being cleared, and a few minutes later another ‘B’ Squadron tank, commanded by Sergeant John Stobbart, crossed the creek and entered the town.21
Toye was out of main-gun ammunition, so he let Stobbart lead, the two tanks advancing toward a still-standing house being used as an enemy strongpoint. The tank sergeant blasted the house with a volley of high explosive until the building collapsed. Stobbart thought it unlikely that the gunfire had killed any Germans, for they were all down in the cellar. Now, however, they were sealed inside as Stobbart hammered every cellar entry point he could see and closed them up. At 1800 hours, a bridge was finally in place across the creek and the rest of ‘B’ Squadron rushed toward San Angelo. Minutes before they entered the village, Toye reported by radio that San Angelo was now clear of German troops.22 Four days later, Toye told CBC Radio correspondent Peter Stursberg that the entombed Germans would probably still be alive.23
By nightfall, the Ontario tanks had pushed forward elements of ‘B’ Squadron in support of Gurkha companies about a thousand yards west of San Angelo. This was the deepest penetration so far achieved against the Gustav Line during the initial two days of the offensive.24 It was becoming obvious to the regimental command that the Germans were totally unprepared to offer a defence in the San Angelo sector against a combined tank and infantry attack. The tank squadrons had encountered surprisingly few antitank defences and there were very few antitank mines in the minefields. Although Toye had engaged and destroyed a tank in the village itself, from the way it was dug in, the Mark IV was positioned with a mind to fighting infantry rather than opposing tanks. Bill Murphy, 1st Canadian Armoured Brigade’s commanding brigadier, realized the absence of enemy antitank units allowed the Canadian armour to play “havoc with enemy infantry strong points and inflict severe casualties on the defenders.”25
While the Ontario Tank Regiment and the Gurkha battalions were capturing San Angelo and widening the bridgehead there, the Calgary Regiment fought a stiff battle for control of Panaccioni. ‘B’ Squadron kicked off first in support of the RFFR drive to the north of the village. When the infantry neared the crest of the ridge, heavy machine-gun fire from some buildings along the ridgeline
forced the Indian troops to take cover. Just as trained, the infantry pinpointed the German positions by firing a stream of tracers from their Bren guns against the walls of the houses containing enemy machine guns. Ritchie and the other tankers blasted the buildings and other targets marked out by the infantry with high-explosive shells. As the tanks began to close on the ridgeline, however, a hidden antitank gun struck one of the Shermans with an armour-piercing shot and killed Lieutenant Harry Emerson and two crewmen. The driver and co-driver managed to escape and crawled back to the safety of the river.26 The gun swung and snapped a round that narrowly missed Ritchie’s turret but struck a small stone building his tank was partially sheltering behind. Ritchie’s driver hammered the Sherman into reverse and backed into cover without waiting for instructions from his commander. Well concealed from the antitank gun’s position, the rest of the squadron saturated the ridgeline with high-explosive fire and a few minutes later the infantry rushed it, only to find that the Germans had fled.27