by Farley Mowat
The coastal plain north of the Sangro is a narrow shelf between the towering Maiella Mountains and the sea. At intervals of a mile or so, it is deeply gashed from mountains to tidewater by steep-sided ravines and river valleys. In summertime this constrained ribbon of lowland presents a singularly formidable obstacle to an attacking army. Once the winter floods have set in, it becomes almost impassable.
If our high command seemed blind to the nature of the ground and its defensive possibilities, the German staff was not. Even while the Bernhard Line was being breached, the Germans were preparing a new line along the Moro River, a scant nine miles north of the Sangro. And they had already manned it with fresh troops, including another of their more famous formations, the 90th Light Panzer-Grenadier Division which also had been part of Rommel’s army.
By the morning of December 5, 78th Division’s Royal Irish Fusiliers had reached the near bank of the Moro. That afternoon we were ordered to relieve them and become the “spearhead of the advance.”
It was pelting rain when I went forward with the Fusiliers’ intelligence officer to see what he could show me. Long files of soaked and muddy Fusiliers wound their way past us, moving to the rear. Their faces were as colourless as paper pulp and they were so exhausted they hardly seemed to notice the intense shelling the coastal road was getting as they straggled down it.
But I noticed, as I never had before. The rancid taint of cordite seemed to work on me like some powerful and alien drug. My heart was thumping to no regular rhythm. It was hard to draw breath, and I was shivering spasmodically though I was not cold. Worst of all, I had to wrestle with an almost irresistible compulsion to stop, to turn about, to join those deathly visaged men who were escaping from the battle that awaited me.
I paused, fumbled for a cigarette and offered one to the Irish lieutenant trudging at my side. He lit a match and held it in cupped hands for me... but I turned my face away, for in that instant I realized what was happening to me. I was sickening with the most virulent and deadly of all apprehensions... the fear of fear itself.
At length the Irishman and I reached the edge of the plateau forming the south wall of the valley. We lay on our bellies behind some dripping bushes and I raised my binoculars and hid my face behind them. There was nothing to see through the haze of rain and mist.
“’Fraid there’s not much I can show you.” The voice of the man beside me was strained, almost impatient. “Been thick as soup ever since we got here so we’ve not seen what the far bank looks like, and my chaps were too done in to go patrolling. Just the same, you can stake your soul old Jerry’s over there, and good and ready, I’ll be bound.”
“Well,” he added when I did not reply, “nothing more I can do here, eh? Best be catching up to my regiment. Cheer-oh... and best of luck.”
He scrambled to his feet and vanished into the rain scud with what seemed like indecent haste. I had an almost overwhelming urge to run after him, but fought it down. High-flying shells droned their dirge overhead while I lay on the wet earth, trying to pull myself together.
It was almost dusk when I reached BHQ, which was in a casa half a mile south of the river mouth. Kennedy was fuming with impatience.
“Where the hell have you been? Goddamn it, we’re to cross the Moro right away. No preparation. No support. What’ve you found out?”
“Sorry, sir, not much. The Irish couldn’t tell me anything and there’s nothing to be seen from our side of the valley.”
He grunted angrily.
“Can you get scouts out there and find a crossing place? And get them back inside an hour?”
“Don’t know, sir. I can try.”
“Try? Goddamn you, do it!”
Oh Christ, I thought, I’ll have to go myself... I’ll have to go... No!... I’ll send Langstaff... He’s far the best man for the job... I’ll send him out...
The scouts were brewing tea in a nearby cow byre. They watched me without expression as I briefed George Langstaff and two other men. They knew I had at least glimpsed the valley in daylight and so was the logical one to lead the patrol. What they did not know was that the mere prospect of descending into that ominously shrouded valley was paralyzing me. I was convinced that death or ghastly mutilation awaited me there. The certainty was absolute! The Worm that was growing in my gut had told me so.
Four months earlier I would have welcomed the chance to make a patrol like this. Two months past and I would have accepted it as a risky job that had to be done. But on this December day I would have given everything I was, or ever hoped to be, for a way out.
There was none.
I took the patrol out... and nothing happened. The Worm had lied. The darkness was so opaque and the whip of wind and rain so masked our movements that we went and returned unseen and unmolested. We felt our way to the swollen river and waded along its overflowing banks until we found a ford. And we got back to our own lines just in time for Langstaff to become guide for Able Company as it moved into the attack.
After wading the river at the ford, Able, with my old platoon in the lead, had barely begun to climb the far bank when twenty or thirty German machine guns began stitching the darkness with vicious needles of tracer. Flares—some green, some red—burst overhead, and these SOS signals were instantly answered by the distant grumble of enemy guns. Within seconds roaring salvos of artillery and mortar shells were falling on Able Company, the explosions illuminating the bleak valley floor with fluctuating and hellish flames.
I was with Kennedy on the south escarpment when the Germans opened up, and we were appalled by the ferocity of the German reaction. After only a few minutes Kennedy yelled to the signaller manning the radio to call Able back.
As the survivors came straggling out of that inferno, we realized we had never before seen war in its full and dreadful magnitude. Seven Platoon in particular had suffered fearfully. The platoon commander who had succeeded me had been severely wounded, and Sergeant Bates and several other men I had known and led were dead or dying.
All through the rest of that long, wet night the forward troops manned their weapons while all of us tried to avoid thoughts of the morrow. At dawn we heard that 2nd Brigade had attacked at San Leonardo four miles upstream, and had also been bloodily repulsed.
Shortly thereafter we received orders to force a crossing on our front at whatever cost.
THE BATTLE THAT followed began at 1400 hours on December 6 and ended on December 15, barely a mile north of where it had begun. It was a ten-day blood bath that cost the Regiment over a hundred and fifty battle casualties.
The opening attack was made in broad daylight by Charley Company under cover of the strongest artillery support Division could muster. It was a devastating barrage... but the enemy replied with equal violence and within minutes Charley was being pounded into the saturated valley floor under a titanic upheaval of mud and steel. Dog, coming up behind, tried to avoid the worst of that holocaust and swung to the left into a smoke screen being laid by our own heavy mortars, and the entire company simply vanished from our ken. When, after nearly an hour, there was still no word from Dog, Kennedy became so distraught that he ordered me and a Battalion Headquarters runner to follow, then flung himself hell-bent down the slope.
My whole being screamed resistance. Three times we were pinned, grovelling in the mud, before we reached the river and struggled through its icy waters. On the far shore we fell into a slimy ditch with the survivors of one of Charley Company’s platoons. We tried to find out from them what was happening, but nobody knew. The German counter-barrage had by then become so heavy that platoons and even sections were isolated and out of communication with one another, cowering in the muck as almost continuous explosions leapt about them.
Kennedy led us on in search of Charley Company Headquarters, and we miraculously stumbled on it in a tiny cave at the foot of a steep cliff; but the company commander was missing and a terrified sergeant could tell us nothing. Kennedy realized the situation was hopeless and that we w
ould have to withdraw, but he had no way of issuing the necessary order until he could get to his radio. So he led us back across the valley.
My memory of that return must be akin to what a drowning man feels during the endless, agonizing moments when he is sinking slowly into the depths. My chest felt crushed and I was gasping for air by the time we reached the road which climbed the south slope. There must have been a lull in the shelling then or else Kennedy was just so anxious to reach the radio that he did not care what the enemy might do, for he led us straight up the road in full view of the Germans opposite. We had not gone fifty feet when they bracketed us with a salvo of Eighty-eights.
Something struck my right foot a numbing blow and a stunning concussion flung me face down into the mud. I heard screaming close at hand and, struggling to my knees, saw Kennedy on his knees in the centre of the smoking road, shaking his head slowly from side to side like an old and tired dog, but the screaming was not his. Ten feet behind him the runner, a young lad whose name I never knew, was humping jerkily away from his own leg which had been severed at the thigh. In the instant that I saw him, he gave one final bubbling shriek, collapsed, and mercifully was still.
I heard Kennedy’s voice as from some distant mountain peak.
“Get up, Mowat! Goddamn you! Up!”
He was standing over me, swaying, but apparently unhurt.
“Can’t,” I said quite calmly. “Hit in the leg, I think.”
In a moment he had me by the shoulders and hoisted me to my feet. We stumbled over the crest and fell into the cover of a gully as another salvo of Eighty-eights ploughed into the road behind us.
There was no pain in my foot and glorious euphoria was overwhelming me. I had a Blighty! Soon I would be on my way back down the line to a field hospital and then perhaps still farther back for a sea voyage to England or even Canada! The sound and fury... and the fear... would be behind me. But somewhere within my skull a spiteful voice poured vitriol on my joy. “Coward!” it said. “You gutless wonder!”
A couple of men from Baker Company spotted us and now they helped me to the regimental aid post which the medical officer, Captain Charlie Krakauer, had pushed forward to the doubtful shelter of a ruined hovel on the very lip of the valley. Kennedy was in a desperate hurry to get on to BHQ but he spared a moment for me.
“Good lad, Squib. You’ve done okay.”
I gave him a lying grin but I was thinking, Thank Christ I’m getting out of here!
Someone helped me onto a stretcher in the dim-lit room and Krakauer was soon bending over my feet. I heard him grunt and felt a tug, then his face was above me, split by a lopsided grin.
“You lucky little prick! Shell cut your boot open from end to end and hardly creased the skin. Wait till we get a Band-Aid on it and you can go right back to work!”
I did not believe him! Outraged, I rolled over and sat up... and shrieked as a flame of agony seared deep into my backside. Krakauer’s smile faded as with one big hand he pushed me back on the stretcher and rolled me over. Again I heard him grunt as he swiftly scissored off the seat of my trousers... then a bellow of raucous laughter burst from him.
It must have been the last laughter heard at the regimental aid post that day and for days thereafter. It was justified. Sticking out of the right cheek of my ass, unnoticed until I sat upon it, was a wedge of steel shell casing which had penetrated to a depth of perhaps half an inch. Charlie yanked it out with his fingers and presented it to me with a flourish.
“Keep this in memory of me,” he said.
I departed limping slightly, for feeling had not yet returned to my foot, and with the seat of my pants held together with a large safety pin contributed by a stretcher-bearer. I was not on my way to Blighty. My destination was rear BHQ, there to seek out a new pair of boots and a whole pair of trousers. I also had some hopes of being able to hide for awhile in the relatively shellproof gully where rear headquarters was located, but even this was not to be.
I was met by a white-faced and fluttering Jimmy Bird who told me Kennedy had been unable to contact Dog Company on the radio and had therefore decided the attack would have to be renewed in order to rescue Dog. Charley Company, whose survivors had mostly dribbled back by now, was in no shape for another round; so I was to fetch what was left of Able and lead it up to take part in a new attack in company with Baker.
There was no time to change either boots or trousers. Physically sickened by the mere thought of going back into the valley, I stumbled down the road to Able’s area where I found Alex’s replacement, a newly arrived captain whom I did not know, and gave him my message. He hardly seemed to hear.
Al Park was standing nearby, a strange, obdurate look on his face, and his eyes hooded. He beckoned me off to one side.
“Paddy’s bought it,” he said in a voice thin with grief or rage—I could not tell which. “Phosphorous grenade exploded in his face and burned him to a crisp... died in the ambulance on the way out. We just now heard... the company’s down to about forty bods still able to pull a trigger. God almighty, Squib, they can’t send us back in now!”
Yes, I thought dully, they can. They will. But I said nothing, and Al’s gaze dropped from my face to the mud at our feet. Memory flickered and I saw Paddy kneeling beside the dead Italian officer on that dusty road in Sicily. The Irish Rover... gone now for good.
Al uncorked his water bottle and offered it to me. We both took choking gulps of the straight issue rum. It did not restore my failing courage but at least it helped a little to deaden the throbbing fear.
Kennedy was waiting for us near the aid post, which was now clustered about with jeep ambulances taking out the wounded from Charley Company. Moments later we were descending into the void again.
The German fire, which had slackened somewhat after Charley’s withdrawal, started up anew and, so it seemed, with redoubled weight and fury. Most of the artillery of the German Corps holding the coast section, augmented by self-propelled guns and an avalanche of mortar bombs and rocket projectiles, was now concentrated in the valley. However, the very massiveness of the bombardment served to partially defeat its purpose. It would not permit us to retreat. We had no choice but to stampede forward up the enemy-held slopes, for there alone could we hope to find shelter from the annihilating blast.
I have no recollection of that second crossing until I found myself in the same little cave that had been Charley Company’s Headquarters during their ill-fated attack, and being roundly cursed by the battalion signals sergeant who did not recognize me in my mud-caked state and thought I was one of his signallers. Then Kennedy appeared, wild-eyed and glaring like a maniac.
“Jerry’s on the run!” he cried. “But the goddamn radio’s gone out! Mowat! Go back and get what’s left of Charley!”
Of that crossing of the Moro I have no memories at all. Darkness had fallen by the time I returned to Kennedy again. By that time a few men from Able and Baker had thrust forward to the edge of the northern plateau, where German tanks and a savage infantry counterattack forced them to dig in.
What followed was the kind of night men dream about in afteryears, waking in a cold sweat to a surge of gratitude that it is but a dream. It was a delirium of sustained violence. Small pockets of Germans that had been cut off throughout our bridgehead fired their automatic weapons in hysterical dismay at every shadow. The grind of enemy tanks and self-propelled guns working their way along the crest was multiplied by echoes until it sounded like an entire Panzer army. Illuminating flares flamed in darkness with a sick radiance. The snap and scream of high-velocity tank shells pierced the brutal guttural of an endless cannonade from both German and Canadian artillery. Moaning Minnie projectiles whumped down like thunderbolts, searching for our hurriedly dug foxholes. Soldiers of both sides, blundering through the vineyards, fired with panicky impartiality in all directions. And it began to rain again, a bitter, penetrating winter rain.
December 7 dawned overcast and brought black news. The engorged Sangro
River had risen twenty feet in as many hours and washed away the precious pontoon bridges, leaving 1st and 2nd brigades isolated from the rest of the army. Worse still, the Germans had smashed a bridgehead which had been established across the Moro at grim cost by 2nd Brigade near San Leonardo, leaving us holding the sole remaining foothold on the northern bank.
As icy rain squalls swept the smoking valley, things grew worse. A troop of British tanks attempting to cross in our support became hopelessly bogged and were picked off, one by one, by German self-propelled guns. Then came word that despite our success at the mouth of the river, the divisional commander intended to persist with the bloody attempts to make a main crossing at San Leonardo. Therefore, we were not to be reinforced, and much of the artillery support which had been vitally instrumental to our survival was to be switched to the San Leonardo sector. Left on our own, our orders were to “engage the enemy closely” in order to draw his attention away from 2nd Brigade’s assault.
This order was superfluous, for the Germans now proceeded to engage us as closely as they could.
During the next thirty-six hours eleven separate counterattacks were flung against us. Yet somehow we clung to our precarious salient across the Moro, and by drawing upon ourselves the German fire and reinforcements, including a fresh regiment from the 1st Paratroop Division, enabled our sister brigade to make a new crossing of the river at San Leonardo and consolidate a bridgehead there.
The cost had been appalling. When the firing died down on our sector, stretcher and burial parties scouring the slimy slopes and the tangles of shell-torn debris found one hundred and seventy German corpses. Our own dead and wounded amounted to a third of the four hundred or so Hasty Pees who had gone into the valley of the shadow.