by Mark Zuehlke
The Tenth Army war diarist wrote that “north of Pontecorvo the enemy obtains a rather deep penetration. Based on the situation as a whole, a fighting withdrawal to the ‘C’ position is under consideration.”44 The ‘C’ line was the last defensive bastion that the Germans had created south of Rome. It was officially called the Caesar Line, but was a last-ditch effort that lacked the heavy fortifications of the Hitler Line and enjoyed none of the terrain advantages of the Gustav Line. Running from the coast west of Velletri on the Alban Hills’ southern slopes, the Caesar Line’s main defences were strung across the Valmontone Gap between the Alban Hills and the Prenestini Mountains. Through this gap, Highway 6 ran west into Rome.45 The Caesar Line lay about fifty miles west of the Hitler Line. Even as Commander-in-Chief Southwest Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring considered withdrawal to it, he was determined that the ground between would not be surrendered easily to the Allies. Every advantageous point would be defended to the last moment.
The Canadians knew this would be the German strategy. That is why Burns’s plan called for an immediate, powerful drive by 5th Canadian Armoured Division out of the breach created by 1 CID. The application of overwhelming force at devastating speed was essential to prevent the Germans’ organizing a series of defensive lines that could slow or even block the Allied advance. At nightfall, as the reports came into 1 CID’s headquarters that the Hitler Line was broken, Major General Chris Vokes turned to his counterpart, Bert Hoffmeister. Vokes looked hard at his friend and said, “Bert, this is the best that we can do. I hope there’s a hole. Good luck to you.”46
19
A GRUESOME TASK
With the torch of battle handed to 5th Canadian Armoured Division, the officers and men of 1st Canadian Infantry Division began the grim task of reorganizing, sweeping the Hitler Line for remaining pockets of resistance, and burying their dead. Everyone was exhausted, physically and emotionally. May 23 was the worst day that any of the division’s old campaigners had experienced. Even the fighting at the Moro River and Ortona paled by comparison.
Left Out of Battle on May 23, Loyal Edmonton Regiment Captain John Dougan led a fighting patrol through the wire the next morning. Everywhere Dougan looked, dead Canadians hung in the wire; torn bodies and body parts lay scattered on the ground. Had he not been LOB it seemed likely that he, too, would have perished. The practice of holding a few experienced officers and men back from each battle to serve as a nucleus around which a destroyed regiment could rebuild was now being put into effect by the devastated 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade. A part of Dougan was ashamed to think that, while the regiment had been torn to shreds, he and other LOB officers had calmly enjoyed a card game of Red Dog, with Dougan losing about $100 in bets.
The deeper Dougan’s patrol went into the Hitler Line defences, the more nightmarish the scene. Here were troops from the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry. Whole sections, even platoons, lay in twisted piles in front of concrete pillboxes. Some, obviously trying to force a way in to kill the defending Germans, had been killed at the rear entrances to the pillboxes. Dougan looked back across the wire at the wrecked North Irish Horse tanks. Eleven tanks stood in single file astride a lane that had been cleared through the minefield. It looked as if the Panzerturm that had destroyed these tanks had first knocked out the front and rear tanks, pinning the others helplessly between. Then the gunners had knocked out the rest. The Panzerturm had finally been destroyed by one of the British tanks. Its turret had been blasted so that it now lay atop the emplacement, the long, .75-millimetre gun barrel thrusting toward the sky. Finding that the only Germans present were those who were as dead as the Canadians among whom they lay, Dougan led his patrol back to regimental headquarters.1
In the late afternoon of May 23, Major General Chris Vokes pondered the costs of the battle and how these might have been lessened. He was deeply depressed by the casualty rate suffered by 2 CIB, for he had personally led that brigade from the invasion of Sicily to the capture of Campobasso in southern Italy. He later wrote: “Obviously whatever blame for it must rest on my shoulders as the brigade was launched into the battle according to the plan devised by me.” He felt that the fault lay with his not having ensured that the brigade’s right flank was screened from the German defenders dug in around Aquino. Some responsibility for that, Vokes thought, rested with I Canadian Corps commander Lieutenant General Tommy Burns. The order given to the 78th Division facing Aquino had been to the effect that the British were to apply frontal pressure throughout the day. Vokes felt that the order’s wording, as drafted by Burns, had been vague and should have been more clearly defined. Lack of clarity, he surmised, resulted from Burns’s inexperience. He also thought that the part of the valley bordered by the mountains to the north and the Liri River to the south was simply too narrow for two corps to operate effectively side by side. Had only one corps conducted operations across its width, it would have been easier to ensure that Aquino was properly screened. That it was not owed to shabby work at the Canadian Corps’s headquarters staff level. This, he maintained, would never have happened if 1 CID still served under a British corps commander.2
Burns thought that Vokes had done a commendable job on May 23. When the 3rd Canadian Infantry Brigade opened the breach in the line, Vokes had phoned Burns and said, “This is the proudest day of my life!” That seemed entirely appropriate to Burns. He thought the general had every reason to be “proud of the brilliant and gallant fighting of the men he commanded, and of the will and resource he himself had shown on that historic day.”3 However, he did not believe the heavy casualties suffered by 2 CIB resulted from the flanking fire. Rather, he thought the fault lay with the brigade’s inability to properly reconnoitre its front because it had been held back on May 22 in case 1st Canadian Infantry Brigade broke the Hitler Line near Pontecorvo.4
His general staff commander, Brigadier G.A. (Nick) McCarter, disagreed. He thought the flanking fire had definitely been a contributing factor. But the order passed to the 78th Division’s parent corps, XIII Corps, had only instructed the division “to deceive the enemy into thinking the main attack would be along Highway 6.” He later wrote: “In my opinion that is a very unsatisfactory type of order, if any really effective assistance was required or expected for 1 Canadian Division. In view of the strenuous fighting XIII Corps had experienced in the early stage of the battle, I suggest it should not be too surprising if they took advantage of a poor order, or a nebulous one, and were not particularly energetic on 23 May.”
“It should be noted,” he added, “that had XIII Corps been ordered to ‘attack in force,’ the artillery of XIII Corps, and some Army artillery, would not have been available for support of 1 Canadian Division. You can’t have it both ways.” McCarter thought the biggest culprit had ultimately been the weather. The onset of rain in the afternoon had curtailed air operations and limited the ability of artillery observation officers to locate German strongpoints and direct fire against them. He also believed that Burns persistently failed to keep his general staff properly informed of decisions he reached during consultations with his divisional commanders. This led to the issuing of fuzzy orders, such as the one Burns drafted for XIII Corps regarding operations in front of Aquino. Many problems the corps had faced in moving its troops and supplies efficiently from one part of the front to another, McCarter wrote, “came about because corps commanders made the original decisions and did not let staffs know details — certainly in our case.”5
Eighth Army commander Lieutenant General Sir Oliver Leese was elated by developments. He wrote a lengthy personal note to Vokes. “I would like to write this letter to thank and congratulate you and all ranks of your great Division on your breach of the Adolf Hitler Line,” he wrote. “This line was vaunted to the world as an impregnable position. One has only to visit the defences for a short time to realise the immense amount of work and ingenuity that have been put into their layout and construction.
“Your attack was extreme
ly well laid on, very well supported and brilliantly executed. Your infantry attacked with that same dash and determination that I have grown always to expect in them since your first operations with me in Sicily. Your action played a decisive part of our initial victory. The Adolf Hitler Line will always be a worthy battle honour in the annals of the 1st Canadian Division.”6
Few of the men who had actually fought the battle gave much thought to its place in history. Most were simply too exhausted. Probably none more so than the division’s chief gunnery officer, Brigadier Bill Ziegler. By nightfall of May 23, Ziegler was so tired that he could barely stand. Yet he was too jumpy and tense to consider sleep. He kept working, personally overseeing details normally left to staff. Receiving a summons from Vokes, Ziegler went reluctantly. Since assuming his duties with the division early in the new year, Ziegler and the gruff divisional commander had often clashed. Was he in for one of Vokes’s legendary tongue-lashings?
When Ziegler entered Vokes’s office, however, the major general slapped a bottle of rye in front of the gunnery officer. Placing a water tumbler on the desk next to the bottle, Vokes told Ziegler to pour himself a drink. Ziegler dribbled a small amount into the glass. Vokes scowled. “Goddammit, I said, ‘Pour yourself a drink!’” Ziegler added a bit more. “Goddammit, Ziegler, don’t you understand English? Pour yourself a drink!” Filling the tumbler to the brim satisfied Vokes. The major general grinned, came around to sit on his desk next to Ziegler, and said gently, “Now drink it.” Ziegler did and immediately passed out.
When he regained consciousness, Ziegler felt alert and refreshed. He realized that Vokes had known he was unable to stop and would have gone on trying to run the artillery operations until he dropped. So he had arranged for Ziegler’s deputy to take over and then implemented a surefire method of putting the gunnery officer to sleep. From that moment on, the two men were fast friends.7
Ziegler was disinclined to enter into the after-battle analysis. He thought the answer was simple enough. Take about 20,000 soldiers, toss them into a complex frontal assault, and, no matter how good they are, you are going to have mistakes that result in casualties. The division, he believed, was “bloody good.” In the end, the final acid test was simply who won and who lost. The division had won the ground.8
On the morning of May 24, a small part of the Hitler Line was yet to be won. That ground was Pontecorvo, sitting on its hilltop. The job fell to the Royal Canadian Regiment. Since the town was heavily fortified, everyone feared another bloody Ortona-like battle. At first light, ‘D’ Company and ‘A’ Company reached the western approach into Pontecorvo, sweeping through the former German barracks at the base of the road that ran up in a series of sharp turns into the town. In the process, the two companies rounded up about seventy German prisoners, who seemed happy to surrender.9
A ‘C’ Company platoon under command of Lieutenant J.L. Davis and the regiment’s scout platoon, commanded by Lieutenant Bill Rich, probed toward the town, the two officers sharing credit for being the first Canadian soldiers to enter Pontecorvo proper. While the ‘C’ Company platoon explored the outskirts, however, Rich and his platoon daringly pushed straight into the heart of the town. At 0630 hours, Rich, having met no resistance, climbed into the church bell tower. That this tower had been used as an observation post throughout the battle was known, so it had come to symbolize the German occupation of the Hitler Line. Rich grabbed the ropes and started ringing the bells. Their joyous tolling served as an audible signal that the Hitler Line was breached from one end of the Canadian line to the other.10
The Canadian breakthrough at the Hitler Line was not the only evidence on May 23 that the stalemate between the Germans and Allies on the western Italian coast was beginning to favour the Allied forces. May 23 also marked the beginning of a major breakout from the Anzio beachhead by General Lucien Truscott’s VI U.S. Corps. That action kicked off with a powerful assault northward toward Valmontone, precisely half an hour after the Canadians began Operation Chesterfield. Caught completely by surprise, Fourteenth Army’s commander Generaloberst Eberhard von Mackensen could do little to contain the Americans. By the end of the day, their advance threatened the entire German right flank.
Commander-in-Chief Southwest Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring telephoned Tenth Army commander Generaloberst Heinrich von Vietinghoff that evening. “Contrary to all expectations,” he said, “things do not look good on Mackensen’s front.”11 Kesselring was disillusioned with von Mackensen’s performance. It seemed to him that the general had completely misread where Truscott would direct his breakout and consequently had very little strength in the northern sector.
By breaking out where it had, Truscott’s corps was taking a decided risk. Instead of driving eastward to link up with the advancing elements of the U.S. Fifth Army, Truscott’s 3rd U.S. Infantry Division and the other units involved in the breakout (including the combined Canadian-American First Special Service Force) pushed northward away from the main Allied force. This meant they plunged into a pocket with their flanks exposed on either side, a weakness Kesselring was anxious to exploit. But Truscott also forced a gap between Fourteenth Army’s divisions. That gap did not immediately concern Kesselring. He felt a single German battalion could easily close it, containing Truscott’s breakout. As the gap continued to widen on May 24, Kesselring became increasingly alarmed. His conversations with von Mackensen did little to defuse his concern. The general seemed to have no idea how to contain the Americans. Indeed, Kesselring thought the man paralyzed, with the result that his divisions remained fixed in place rather than moving to meet the Americans.12
Ultimately, the German defence, both around the Anzio beachhead and in front of the main Allied forces advancing from the east, collapsed because of a sheer deficiency of numbers. There were not enough German divisions to hold the line and those that were available were too reduced by casualties to contain the two Allied armies. On the Canadian left flank, the Corps Expéditionnaire Français smashed a wide wedge through the German lines. This put the French ahead of every other corps in the Allied advance. Generalmajor Fritz Wentzell, Tenth Army’s Chief of Staff, credited the French advance as the decisive factor in the collapse of both the Gustav and Hitler lines. This, he later wrote, was not a reflection on the quality of the French troops, but rather arising simply from the fact that the French had struck the German line in the Aurunci Mountains, where they were weakest. Because of the threat posed, Wentzell added, all available reserves had to be assigned to that sector. Had even one division been available to reinforce the Hitler Line on May 23, Wentzell believed the Canadian offensive might have been defeated. “However, the German defence was soon worn down by the weight of armour and artillery employed by the enemy, and on the 24th of May the Corps had to begin to withdraw, in the first instance behind the sector of the River Melfa.”13
German attempts to explain their defeat at the Hitler Line would not have impressed the Canadians who had fought and bled on May 23. They had met fierce resistance and had overcome it at a terrible cost. Lance Corporal Jack Haley, a signaller currently attached to the Loyal Edmonton Regiment, thought, “My god, I’ve never seen anything like this.” The battlefield carnage he looked on was “something awful. There were all these dead people with Canadian flashes. There must have been about three hundred bodies, including the North Irish Horse.” Haley had never seen so many corpses in one place. “There was nothing but destroyed tanks all burned out and shell holes and debris all around. Bodies were hanging in the wire.” Until recently, Haley had served with the PPCLI and had been a Seaforth prior to becoming a radio signaller. Wherever he went in the line, Haley recognized bodies.14
Another radio signaller, Lieutenant Wilf Gildersleeve, walked up into the wire and found Pop Warner hanging there. The forty-year-old signaller still had his headphones on and was standing upright so that his antenna ticked in the breeze. Gildersleeve heard the radio chirping with messages passing back and forth. He unwound the man
from the wire and laid him on the ground. Then he carried on, looking for the other dead signallers. Out of six to eight signallers per company, most were dead or missing. Their antenna marked them for the German snipers and machine-gunners, who knew that killing a signaller and knocking out his radio rendered the Canadians incapable of calling in accurate artillery fire or bringing up reinforcements.
Accompanying Gildersleeve was the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada commander, Lieutenant Colonel Syd Thomson, and some of his staff. As they walked through the shattered fortifications and the corpses of Germans and Canadians that were strewn everywhere across the ground, a flock of chickens ran under their feet. The chickens were nesting among the pillboxes and had obviously been providing the Germans with an endless bounty of eggs. Some of the men poked amid the ruins and came away with a decent harvest. The chickens, too, were made short work of. Everyone was hungry, making the evening stew all the tastier.15
Gathering in the dead was a dreadful task; even grimmer was the burying of men who only hours before had lived and been friends. Seaforth Chaplain Major Roy Durnford worked to exhaustion bringing in bodies. “The battlefield is a carnage,” he wrote in his diary. “We have to bury our own dead in a central cemetery. The job is unfair and awful. I will kick like a mule over this. Boys re-group a tattered remnant.”16
Among those detailed to burying the dead was Seaforth Sergeant Bill Worton. A section leader in the Seaforth mortar platoon, Worton had spent May 23 hurrying up and then waiting. The whole day had been nothing but confusion for the mortarmen while they waited for an order to either go forward or retreat. Shells and mortar rounds had burst all around. Private Lou Street was hit in the chest by shrapnel and died in Sergeant Al Girling’s arms. German artillery and mortar fire hammered into the trees where the mortar platoon was and nobody had a clue what was going on up front. Worton and Lance Corporal Gordie Winning had crowded into the cover of a tree and prayed for the best. As they hunkered there, Private L.P. Gamba walked by. “Got a Canada,” he said. “Got hit in the knee.”