by Mark Zuehlke
It was not unusual for the Canadians in the Liri Valley to find dead civilians when they entered a home. Relatively common also was the sight of civilians harvesting vegetables and grain, even when an area was under shellfire or known to be laced with mines. It was a dangerous practice for people who had no idea how to detect a mine’s deadly presence, and many of these desperate harvesters were killed or maimed.5 Sometimes people materialized out of the morning fog and wandered past the Canadians like black-clothed ghosts, heading who knew where. When the sun was out and the soft, warm light touched the land, the Liri Valley presented an enthrallingly beautiful landscape with its sharp-featured surrounding hills, red poppies intermixed with yellow stands of grain, rusty-leafed oak trees, and lush green vineyards. But a closer look revealed that hardly a tree had not been splintered by shell blast or shrapnel and the leaves were turning reddish because of this damage. And almost always, the civilians encountered were living with personal tragedy. Three Rivers Regiment’s Charles Prieur thought Italy probably the most beautiful land in the world, but he was haunted by the memory of an Italian woman walking across a field toward him. She carried a young boy in her arms. The boy had lost a leg to a mine and the Medical Officers did what they could for him, as they did for any injured civilian who was brought to the aid stations. But there was nothing that could make him whole again.6
During the heat of battle, it was convenient to try to forget about the possible presence of civilians on the battlefield. Better not to worry about whether somebody other than Germans might occupy a house or cower in the dubious safety of a village’s church, both of which were likely targets for artillery or aerial bombardment. Looking up at Pontecorvo, so imposing on its hill, and yet seemingly deserted, the Canadians in 1 CIB gave little thought to whether there might be civilians in its buildings. They cheered the planes making bomb runs on the town and were heartened by the artillery shells exploding there.
The troops of the brigade’s three regiments spent a lot of time looking toward Pontecorvo and reminding themselves that a direct attack against its formidable position would not be necessary. All had heard the news that the other two brigades would breach the Hitler Line and had no idea that Vokes hoped to avoid launching Operation Chesterfield by having their brigade crack through the German defences here.7 The men in the three regiments of 1 CIB were happy to spend most of May 21 resting and cleaning their gear and weapons. Some patrols reached the wire’s edge. Others sought to clear hard points of resistance east of the Hitler Line, but it was largely an appreciated day of relative quiet.
Not that the battlefield was silent. The Germans kept everyone on edge with sporadic shelling and mortaring. To the southwest, the French advance continued. Around noon, 1 CIB headquarters received an urgent appeal for the Canadians to bring artillery to bear against fifty German tanks massing on the north side of the river. It appeared the German armour was preparing to cross and attack the French, who had no artillery within range.8 With the French providing map references, 2nd Field Regiment, Royal Canadian Artillery fired five missions designated “Mike” targets, which meant that all the regiment’s 25-pounders were brought to bear. Soon the medium and heavy gun regiments backed up the 25-pounders and hundreds of high-explosive rounds rained down on the German tankers.9 After forty-five minutes of concentrated shelling, the French reported that the tanks were dispersing and trying to hide in the small oak groves. Several tanks were reported to be burning.
The Germans were not finished, however. Once more, the tanks emerged from the woods to attempt a river crossing. A squadron of Kittyhawk bombers was called in while the Canadian gunners adjusted their guns to bring “Mike” fire against the road junctions the tanks had to cross. When the planes finished their bomb runs, the guns fired. Each time a squadron of bombers swooped in, the guns ceased shooting to avoid hitting the planes. The German attack broke up under this continual pressure. Aerial reconnaissance reported six burning tanks and intelligence estimated that at least ten had been destroyed.10
While the Canadian gunners were helping the French repel the German armoured counterattack, 1 CIB Brigadier Dan Spry and a party of Royal Canadian Regiment officers crossed the river in an inflatable rubber boat. They sought to determine whether Major General Chris Vokes’s idea of launching a one-regiment amphibious attack across the river into Pontecorvo was feasible. The party consisted of Spry, RCR commander Lieutenant Colonel Bill Mathers, the commanders of Mathers’s infantry companies, and the regiment’s artillery officer.11
Nothing Spry saw convinced him the attack was possible. Both riverbanks were steep and approximately twelve feet high. To carry out the attack, the RCR would first have to cross the river in inflatable rubber boats far enough to the east of the Hitler Line that they would avoid being seen. They would then have to carry the boats to a crossing point opposite Pontecorvo. In full view of the enemy, the regiment would have to scramble down the far bank, paddle across the thirty-foot-wide river, climb the opposite steep bank, and crawl up the 300-foot terraced hill to fight their way into the town. Of course, the Germans would be raking the troops with machine-gun and mortar fire every inch of the way. Spry thought the plan crazy, but he consented to Mathers’ conducting a more thorough reconnaissance.12
Accompanied by some French officers, Mathers reconnoitred the river’s edge opposite Pontecorvo. He then returned to French Brigade headquarters and briefed his waiting commanders: Captain Dick Dillon, Major Sandy Mitchell, Major Rick Forgrave, and Captain D.W. Rose. Mathers enthusiastically described how the attack could be executed. The company commanders listened in stunned silence. The men then returned to the regiment, while Mathers set off on an even more thorough reconnaissance mission.13
The moment the four officers reached regimental headquarters, Mitchell took them to see Second-in-Command Major Strome Galloway. Before the war, Mitchell had been a sergeant who had worked his way up through the ranks. A tough, no-nonsense soldier, he knew his business and hated wasting lives unnecessarily. Mitchell spelled out Mathers’s scheme. Dillon told Galloway, “It’ll be a suicide.” Galloway agreed. “We’ll go see the brigade commander,” he said. At brigade headquarters, Mitchell no sooner started describing Mathers’s plan than Spry gestured him to stop. “That’s all nonsense,” he said. There was a new plan, approved by Vokes, and the river operation was dead.14
Vokes was still determined that 1 CIB would break through at Pontecorvo. During the day, the Princess Louise Dragoon Guards reconnaissance regiment had been patrolling aggressively in the pocket between the river and the east-west road approaching the town. They had swept up twenty-two prisoners and killed about an equal number in exchange for two of their own killed and nine wounded. Vokes took a look at the prisoners and decided “they were a very scruffy lot . . . pleased to be out of the war and volunteered the information their fellows . . . were ready and eager to surrender the moment opportunity afforded.” This, Vokes later wrote, “convinced me even more there was a good possibility the 1st Brigade attacks might well succeed in breaching the defences.”
When Spry reported that the river-crossing plan was impossible, Vokes ordered a head-on, one-regiment-strong assault against Pontecorvo. Vokes thought that Spry was not driving his brigade hard enough. Given the poor quality of the defenders at Pontecorvo, he believed Spry should have broken through. The day before he had placed the Princess Louise Dragoon Guards under Spry’s control, but he now returned it to independent status. Vokes arranged for a troop of 142nd Royal Tank Regiment to support the PLDG in a drive right along the river’s edge to Pontecorvo. This, he thought, would take some pressure off 1 CIB’s attack and, given that “the unit was very aggressive in spirit and skillful in action, would certainly make a dint in the enemy defences.”15
Spry called an Orders Group of his regimental commanders for 2230 hours. Believing Vokes’s information to be inaccurate, he issued his orders reluctantly. Intelligence reports from I Canadian Corps headquarters indicated that there were about
1,200 men facing his brigade, while divisional intelligence said that it was only 700. Either way, a regiment-wide attack would field no more than 400 infantrymen. With two companies out front, there would be just 200 men on the attack’s leading edge. Spry didn’t think that outnumbered men attacking a massive fortification were likely to succeed, no matter what the quality of the defenders.
Attacking on a one-regiment front was a gamble at the best of times and one that Spry had seen repeatedly chopped to pieces by well-entrenched Panzer Grenadiers and parachutists during the Moro River–Ortona fighting. That the opposition this time was supposedly second-rate did little to minimize the fact that the 44th Field Replacement Battalion occupied superior ground and defences. Any attack against Pontecorvo faced significant obstacles. An attack cobbled together in such haste promised disaster.
Listening to the slight brigadier describe the attack plan, Lieutenant Colonel Ian Johnston hardly believed it. His 48th Highlanders of Canada were to punch through the Hitler Line alone and conduct a right hook to a point of high ground just to the north of Pontecorvo, designated Point 106. This position dominated the Pontecorvo-Aquino road. Once the Highlanders were on the objective, the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment and the Royal Canadian Regiment would join the attack. These regiments would widen the breach, with the Hasty P’s broadening the front to the north of Point 106 and the RCR driving into Pontecorvo from the northeast. As Spry continued, Johnston remained silent. He pointedly ignored the nervous glances cast his way by his subordinate officers. It was obvious they were waiting for him to bring this madness to an abrupt stop. The time for the attack was set at 0630 hours on May 22. As it was already past midnight, this left the regiment about four hours to prepare and then move to the start line.
Briefing over, the 48th Highlanders quietly left the room, save Johnston who remained stonily silent until he and Spry were alone. Johnston quietly, but firmly, told Spry that such an attack, prepared in haste, would fail and yield only heavy casualties. If he was ordered to proceed, Johnston wished to be relieved of command. He would not lead his regiment to its death.
Spry was sympathetic. He explained, however, that corps and even army command had endorsed the attack. There was little that could be done about the short timeframe. Johnston told Spry he understood all this, but that unless he had more time to prepare he would not order the regiment into battle. Somebody else would have to do that.
The brigadier did not want to lose one of his most capable regimental commanders because of a plan that he also thought poorly conceived. He called Vokes.16 When Vokes came to the phone, Spry asked for a delay to noon. A heated argument ensued, but Vokes finally compromised and agreed to the attack’s starting at 1000 hours.
Hanging up the phone, Vokes could barely contain his disappointment. Noon was the agreed point at which the 2nd and 3rd brigades would begin moving toward their assigned start points for Operation Chesterfield. If the Highlanders did not achieve a breakthrough in the first two hours of their attack, it would be too late to exploit any success gained there. Operation Chesterfield was almost inevitable.17
Johnston arrived back at the battered Italian farmhouse that served as the regiment’s tactical headquarters at 0130 hours on May 22. He found his officers, awaiting his return, all asleep on the floor. Hurriedly he woke them and told them the attack was a go.18 Before the attack started, sappers from a company of the Royal Canadian Engineers would cut three gaps in the wire and clear the mines in front of and behind them to create tank lanes for the supporting 25th Royal Tank Brigade.19
Artillery support was to consist of twelve concentrations called in as required. However, the artillery trace that marked targets on the maps was not ready until 0300 hours. Only one copy was provided, meaning that regimental staff must quickly draw others and these would not be ready until after the 0600 final coordination conference. There would be little time for the company commanders to familiarize themselves with the preplotted firing points that the artillery could easily bring their guns to bear on if necessary. The other bad news regarding the artillery support was that, due to the haste with which the operation was being put together, the Highlanders would have only one Forward Observation Officer from 2nd Field Regiment.
At 0400 hours, an engineering officer from the Royal Canadian Engineers’ 1st Field Company showed up with two sappers and a mine detector. Johnston sent an infantry patrol out with the team to cover their efforts to clear the gaps, but it was obviously too small a sapper party to do much good. Fortunately, sappers from 2 RCE Field Company had earlier that evening swept a road that ran up to the German wire, and a gap in the wire existed nearby. The sapper officer returned at 0500 hours from his mission. He told Johnston there were no mines in front of one of the points in the wire that was to have been cleared for a tank lane, and that the wire there was in such poor shape that it presented no obstacle to either infantry or tanks. But this gap was north of the road and he could not say if there were mines on the other side of the wire.
It was a haggard group of officers who reported to the 0600 meeting. They learned that the sappers from the tank regiment who were to have built crossings over the antitank ditch had never shown up. Johnston was concerned that if the regiment and the tanks attacked against the three points where gaps were originally to have been created, some or all of the companies might find their routes blocked by mines. He didn’t want tanks and infantry, undoubtedly under fire, having to move across some minefield to find another way through the wire. The only solution was for the tanks to use the road, which also crossed the antitank ditch. As the gap found by the engineering officer was near the road, one tank troop could break off with an infantry company, shortly before the tanks reached the wire, to pass through it.
Johnston assigned ‘D’ Company to advance on the right and ‘B’ on the left, each supported by a tank troop. ‘A’ and ‘C’ companies would follow closely. The regiment’s tactical headquarters section would remain on a height of land overlooking the battlefield. From here, Major Don Mackenzie — Johnston’s second-in-command — would direct artillery fire as needed. This would to some extent reduce the operational handicap posed by having only one FOO. Johnston would travel immediately ahead of ‘C’ Company with a small “rover” party consisting of a radioman and a couple of riflemen. Briefing finished, the officers returned to their companies, where they had yet to give the platoon officers their final briefing. These officers in turn would brief the section leaders, who then had to explain the general nature of the attack to the troops.20
At 0940 hours, the tank liaison officer, Major A.H.S. Moser, told Johnston that the tank regiment had just received orders “to hold up until further orders.” He said that Vokes had told the commander of the 25th Royal Tank Brigade that a reconnaissance by three tanks in line should be made up the road before the rest of the tanks were committed to the action. The tanks in ‘C’ Squadron had also not reached their forming-up point and it was obvious the attack would not be ready to proceed as scheduled at 1000 hours. Johnston radioed Spry and explained the situation. Spry knew nothing of orders for any reconnaissance preparatory to the attack and soon verified with Vokes’s headquarters that no such suggestion had emanated from there. He told Johnston to get the attack under way at 1030 hours. When Johnston explained this to Moser, he agreed to proceed with the original plan and drop the reconnaissance idea.
As the second hands of the commanders’ watches swept past 1030, Johnston blew his whistle and the platoon commanders followed suit. The soldiers had been standing quietly for thirty minutes as the attack finally came together. Now they trotted across wide-open terrain toward the German wire about a thousand yards away. Major Jim Counsell’s ‘D’ Company and Captain Jack Wilson’s ‘B’ Company led, with the tanks close behind and ‘C’ and ‘A’ companies bringing up the rear. The temperature was already cracking eighty degrees Fahrenheit and sweat poured off the running men. Their bodies were tense with expectation, waiting for the German
machine guns and mortars to open up. Then, remarkably, the lead companies were at the wire and not a shot had been fired. The tanks were still coming up, but everything seemed to be going like clockwork.21
They entered the wire. In places, men could step over one wire apron or jump across it, but more often than not they had to snake over, under, or through the rusty strands. Barbs caught in uniforms, snagged on gear, tore flesh. They had been seen by now and the Germans were starting to rake the barbed-wire position with machine-gun fire. Yet it was a mistake for a man to hurry and try to fight his way through. That only ensured that more barbs grabbed him and, as he struggled, cut more deeply.22
Suddenly, from a position behind the wire the powerful thump of a .75-millimetre gun fired. A Sherman exploded. Two more shots pounded out from the hidden position and two more Shermans were knocked out. A troop of Churchills positioned behind the Highlanders was able to identify the source of the fire — a Panzerturm. The Churchills shelled the gun turret, as did a 17-pounder antitank gun stationed on a height of land in the section of line held by the Hasty P’s. One of the gunners scored a lucky hit that silenced the gun.23
‘D’ and ‘B’ companies got through the wire and started crossing the antitank ditch. Machine-gun fire was coming their way from several directions. No. 17 Platoon commander Lieutenant Doug Snively jumped down into the ditch. In front of him, a redheaded private was just going over the top when a bullet hit him, throwing him back on top of Snively. The officer rolled the dead man aside, climbed out of the ditch, and pressed on. The Highlanders threw themselves into a network of German machine-gun positions and started working their way through. Initially, they threw grenades into the gun slits of the concrete and steel pillboxes, but soon realized the positions were empty. Most of the Germans who had been manning the guns moments before had fled.24 Ten surrendered.