* “Kukri”: a woodsman’s slashing, lopping tool, leaf-shaped and about eighteen inches long, used for the same purpose as a machete or bolo. In Nepal it doubled as a weapon and was issued as a personal weapon to every Gurkha rifleman.
* All Indian troops were supposed to pass tests of proficiency in the English language, but in practice British officers made a point of using only the lingua franca, Urdu, in Indian regiments, or Gurkhali in the Gurkha Rifles. “Saheb” is the equivalent of “Sir”, used mutually.
* As officers of those days can bear witness, unless the division and brigade commanders were sufficiently strong-minded, or “bloody-minded”, battalions were subjected to a constant haemorrhage of junior officers, NCOs and men – always “the best” were demanded – for posts in training schools, clerks, storemen and quartermasters for establishments on the lines of communication and, worst of all – for no volunteer could be withheld on the grounds that he was essential in the regiment or battalion – for airborne troops, commandos, or the egregious “Chindits”. The Canadian commanders very understandably complained to Alexander himself that having come all the way to Italy to fight, their men resented being detailed to run transit camps or unload supply ships. The inflation of special forces and the bouches inutiles on the lines of communication was one of the worst features of British man-management during the Second World War, not so much in numbers, although these were considerable, but because of the quality of men removed from the combat units.
18
THE BATTLE IN THE LIRI VALLEY
Then we have to give up Cassino!
Kesselring to von Vietinghoff, 5.25p.m., May 16
Until May 14 General Leese had to be content with watching the progress of his battle and encouraging the reliable commander of the 13th Corps. He had one faculty essential if a commander has to be something better than un bon chef ordinaire: flair, or what the Germans call a “fingertip-feeling”. When he decided to insert the Canadian Corps into the battle his timing was perfect. The indicators were not promising. To be sure, Russell’s British–Indian infantry and Canadian tanks had reduced the fighting value of Bode’s blocking group almost to zero, but Ward’s division, its horns locked with the parachutists in and around Cassino town, was making only slow progress, as was the 78th Division, held up by the muddy banks of the insignificant Piopetto stream, impassable for tanks. There was fearful traffic congestion and Ward’s leading brigade had failed to clear sufficient elbow-room for Keightley to make a tidy approach to his jump-offline. Leese knew that he could ask Anders to make an effort and that the Polish soldiers would respond with heroic self-sacrifice, but that would be profitless. Far better to wait until Kirkman and Anders could mount a simultaneous, coordinated attack. It is the business of an army commander at such a stage in a battle to decide on the right moment to invest his capital. Too early and he may clog the battlefield with troops and waste his precious assets against unshaken defences: too late, and opportunity has slipped through his fingers. It might have been prudent to wait until Kirkman had made greater progress, but Leese grasped what previous commanders had not, that possession of the low ground would make the heights untenable.
In fact, during what seemed to Kirkman an intolerable hold-up (and, as said, made him twice recommend to Leese that he should postpone the attack by the Poles) the 78th Division began to gain the upper hand in a series of disconnected, vicious little company and battalion fights as they bumped into the bits and pieces of what constituted Ortner’s rearguards.
The 78th Infantry Division had in Tunisia established itself as one of the best in the British Army and had fought well on the Adriatic coast* Rested and re-trained for six months after the Sangro battle its units were fully up to their old, aggressive form. On the 15th the 6th Inniskilling Fusiliers accompanied by a squadron of one of the best of the British armoured regiments, the 16th/5th Lancers, ran into trouble soon after they began their advance, coming under a hot machine-gun fire from German infantry hidden in a field of tall corn. Tanks and infantry charged immediately, and “after much tommy-gun work and tossing of grenades out of the turrets of Shermans” drove them off. They met suffer resistance when they closed up to the lateral road to Pignataro. A model of a prompt battalion attack followed, supported by a hasty fire-plan by the artillery and the Lancers’ tanks lined up to “shoot the infantry in”. The Inniskillings captured sixty prisoners, five anti-tank guns, two assault guns and a Mark IV Panzer tank. On their right the 5th Northamptons, who had lost their supporting tanks in the early-morning Liri mist, bumped into a group of enemy, attacked off the line of march and captured 126 of them. These little victories were not cheaply won. The Inniskillings lost seventy officers and men, many of them to the intense fire the German artillery put down as a regular response to the loss of an objective.
On the German side the unwisdom of dispersing the 44th Hoch und Deutschmeister Division and replacing its organic units with inferior troops from high-number infantry divisions soon became painfully apparent. As early as the 4th General Ortner reported to Feuerstein that Bode’s group was no longer effective and that without timely reinforcement by “strong reserves in close formation” (sic, meaning able to re-establish a continuous line of resistance) he could no longer oppose the British advance where he stood: the situation demanded withdrawal to the Hitler Line on the 15th/16th “at the latest”. This statement, coinciding with what Feuerstein had felt from the first, required no elaboration by him, so he simply endorsed it with his bare signature and sent it on to HQ Tenth Army. This was not the only bad news reaching von Vietinghoff. Keyes’ US 2nd Corps having recovered from its costly repulse on the 11th/12th was now fighting hard and was well on its way to Terracina. General Juin’s Corps Expéditionnaire Français had surprised its friends as much as its enemies. Its North African colonial divisions had broken the Gustav Line in the mountains and the infantry and tanks of what had become famous as the Free French Division (now renamed the lère Division de Marche d’Infanterie) was driving along the right bank of the Liri. In spite of all this Kesselring clung obstinately to his convictions. He warned von Mackensen, Fourteenth Army, who was anxiously waiting for the Anzio front to explode in his face, to be ready to detach his only reserve, the 26th Panzer Division, to Gaeta to meet the imaginary threat of a landing between his left wing and the right of the Tenth Army, though on the 14th he gave way grudgingly to von Vietinghoff’s appeals for reinforcements. He released the 90th Panzer Grenadier Division (Generalleutnant Ernst Gunter Baade), so its 200th Panzer Grenadier Regiment was sent to shore up the 14th Corps against French pressure, while the remainder, amounting to no more than a battle-group of the 361st Grenadier Regiment and a strong force of anti-tank and assault guns, went to the 51st Corps. It was hoped to use it to man the Hitler defences but instead it was drawn into the running battle in the Liri valley where it was to lose more than half its strength. Such was the situation when Vokes had completed his relief of the 8th Indian Division. The next phase of his offensive, for which Kirkman had been waiting so impatiently, could then begin.
This was made in the Eighth Army style, on a narrow front, closely supported by the tanks of the 26th Armoured Brigade and 400 guns. The defence included some of the best troops in the 51st Corps, for Feuerstein had risked thinning out on the heights to form a reserve from Colonel Schultz’s 1st Parachute Regiment, composed of two battalions, a few field guns and eight 105-mm and twenty-three 75-mm assault guns. The fighting was bitter, but the 78th attacked with all their old combination of dash and infantry skill, and an offensive backed by such a weight of fire-power was too much even for the parachutists. The palm could have been claimed equally by the 2nd Lancashire Fusiliers and the 2nd London Irish Rifles, both of them exploiting the basic infantry rule that the best way of wearing down an opponent was to force him to counter-attack. Fusilier Jefferson won the Victoria Cross for his courage when tanks burst into his company position and he stood up in the open with his PIAT anti-tank grenade throw
er and destroyed the nearest of them. The London Irish reached their first objective where they were subjected to a more powerful and formally organised counter-attack. Between their own weapons, the attached 17-pounder anti-tank guns of the Royal Artillery and machine guns of the Kensington heavy-weapons battalion they killed 100, destroyed 9 tanks or assault guns and captured 120 prisoners. The casualties on both sides were heavy. When KG Schultz arrived in the Hitler Line it had lost over half its strength, while on the 16th alone the Lancashire Fusiliers lost forty out of ninety in one company, and the London Irish five officers and sixty men, together with sixteen, all killed, of the Royal Artillery and Kensingtons. But the division had broken clean through the Gustav Line. “Quite a good day,” Kirkman wrote in his diary.
That evening Kesselring and von Vietinghoff discussed the situation on the telephone:
Kesselring: I consider a withdrawal to the Senger position necessary [i.e., the Hitler Line].
Von Vietinghoff: Then it will be necessary to begin withdrawal north of the Liri. Tanks have broken through there.
Kesselring: How far?
Von Vietinghoff: To Piumarola. [He was mistaken. The 78th Division did not enter until the next day.]
Kesselring: And how is the situation further north?
Von Vietinghoff: There are about 100 tanks in Schultz’s area.
Kesselring: Then we shall have to give up Cassino.
Von Vietinghoff: Yes.1
That superbly laconic exchange with its final, plangent “Ja!” was the epitaph for the dead of seven armies in four battles.
The agony was nearly over. Leese saw the moment had come to order Anders to launch his long-prepared second attack to clear Montecassino. We have so far said little about the fortunes of the Polish Corps except to record that it had failed on the 12th with shocking loss, and it is time to give an account of those remarkable soldiers. Since the 12th Anders and his staff had been busy creating some infantry battalions ad hoc from his anti-tank artillery and service units, and in a careful analysis of the causes of their initial failure. The Poles have been romanticised for their reckless courage and by highly-coloured stories of Polish cavalry throwing themselves in kamikaze charges against the German panzers in 1939, but although their courage was unsurpassed the Polish officers were highly intelligent and thoughtful soldiers, as their adaptation to fighting in Italy was to show. Anders’ conclusions were fourfold. In the earlier attack the assault had not been closely coordinated with the artillery bombardment. (This was Brigadier Siggers’ opinion also. He would have preferred both corps to attack simultaneously on the night of the 11th, so dividing the German defensive fire.) The ban on close patrolling had denied the assault units essential detailed knowledge of the enemy posts. The communications at that level were not proof against enemy artillery fire, and control was lost when it was most needed. These three had been compounded by a circumstance discovered later that was not likely to recur. H-hour had coincided with the relief of the troops in the line, and the parachutists being the good troops they were, instead of being thrown back into disarray ordered a general stand fast and fought at double strength.
Bearing these factors in mind the Poles set out to give Heidrich’s troops a thoroughly rough time. They patrolled incessantly, keeping them constantly on the alert, and familiarising themselves with the details of the ground and defences. They tricked them into revealing the lay-out of their defensive barrages by real bombardment combined with mock attacks. They harassed the German positions continually with artillery fire stepped up by aerial bombardment. Even such troops as Heidrich’s were not proof against such treatment. The noise alone causes lack of sleep, which in turn leads to irritability and slow reaction in an emergency. There is also a steady drain of casualties, for men become careless as they grow tired, they have to relieve nature, supplies have to be brought up, signallers have to go out to mend telephone cables and runners to carry messages, and at least one sentry in each post must keep a look-out. The loss in junior officers and in NCOs is more pronounced if they do their duty and move about seeing that weapons are kept clean and ready, and the men alert, while uttering words of encouragement.
Anders decided to renew his attack on the 17th, to coincide with Keightley’s next drive in the valley below, but it had been anticipated by a brilliant patrol coup during the night, of a kind that is only possible to the most highly trained and opportunist infantry. During the night of the 16th a battalion commander in the 5th Kresowa Division sent out a patrol to have a final look at his objective. Its leader, perhaps exceeding his precise orders, “took out” a number of scattered posts on the so-called Phantom Ridge barring access to a key point in the German defences, the Colle (col) S. Angelo. From it a track led down to the Villa S. Lucia above the Via Casilina, and the reverse slope of Point 593, so long held by the Germans. Moreover, its possession was vital to the Germans if their troops in the Snakeshead area were to be withdrawn intact. On learning of the patrol’s success the Polish battalion commander infiltrated his whole unit to reinforce it under cover of darkness. Next morning his brigade commander passed another battalion through it on to the col. The German reaction was immediate and ferocious. Counter-attack and attack alternated until nightfall, by when Anders had committed his last reserve and neither of his divisions had reached their final objectives. (Kirkman believed that he had failed completely and ordered Keightley to redouble his efforts and broaden his front to his left.) Nevertheless, Anders was not discouraged. As he wrote later, he felt that “The critical moment had indeed arrived, when both sides faced each other in complete exhaustion apparently incapable of making any further effort, and when the one with the stronger will, who is able to deliver the final blow, wins.” He ordered an attack along the front to be resumed the next morning. That in fact the orders to withdraw had gone out from Kesselring’s HQ on the night of the 16th does not detract from the achievement of the 2nd Polish Corps. It soon found that it was engaged only by the rear parties covering the retreat. At 10.20 a.m. on May 18 the 12th Podolski Lancers reached the ruins of the Monastery and hoisted the red and white flag of Poland on its walls.
There was still some murderous mopping-up to be done. Heidrich, a law unto himself by virtue of his reputation as a fighting soldier and who stood high in the Nazi Party, refused to accept the withdrawal order from anyone but Kesselring, and some of his fanatical troops not even from him. Both on the heights and in Cassino town when the 10th Infantry Brigade entered it on the same day snipers and diehards who had reserved their last round or grenade for an enemy had to be rooted out and killed. Such sporadic fighting was not over until midday on the 19th. By that time the task force of South African Engineers was busy restoring the Via Casilina through Cassino town over a wilderness of rubble and flooded bomb craters.
Leese went to Anders’ HQ within the hour of hearing of the occupation of the Monastery to congratulate him and toast his success in champagne. His relationship with Anders throws further light on a complex character. Leese seems to have regarded anyone who spoke English as a sort of honorary Englishman, and made no concessions to him. A natural clash of personalities apart, he never reached any understanding or rapport with his colleague in the Fifth Army. When dealing with a sensitive foreigner he watched his step carefully, realising perhaps, that at heart they both belonged (as his hero Montgomery emphatically did not) to an old-fashioned if not obsolete school of good manners and chivalry. Leese was sensitive enough to visit Anders as soon as possible after the repulse of the 12th not to commiserate, but to assure him that the sacrifices made by his men had distracted his opponent from interfering with the 13th Corps river crossing. It was not that he spoiled his foreign corps commander. On the contrary, he was most forthright when the newly arrived Anders engaged in political controversy over the British Government’s attitude to the future sovereignty of Poland “… in my capacity as Army Commander I have to point out to you how superfluous it is for any corps commander to express in public any opi
nion concerning the political situation …” he wrote, and it rankled until each man had taken the measure of the other and a warm mutual respect was substituted. Informally they conversed in Leese’s fractured French. The healing process was accelerated by Leese’s next order, which was without delay to clear M. Cairo, cover Kirkman’s right flank and capture the hinge of the Hitler Line, Piedimonte. It was a mark of his confidence.
The Poles had suffered terribly. Said Anders:
The battlefield presented a dreary sight. There were enormous dumps of unused ammunition and here and there heaps of land mines. Corpses of Polish and German soldiers, sometimes entangled in a deathly embrace, lay everywhere and the air was full of the stench of rotting bodies. There were overturned tanks with broken caterpillars and others standing as if ready for an attack, with their guns still pointing towards the Monastery. The slopes of the hills, particularly where the fire had been less intense, were covered with poppies in incredible number, their red flowers weirdly appropriate to the scene. All that was left of the oak grove of the so-called Valley of Death were splintered tree-stumps. Crater after crater pitted the sides of the hills, and scattered over them were fragments of uniforms and tin helmets, tommy guns, Spandaus, Schmeissers and hand-grenades.
Of the Monastery itself there remained only an enormous heap of ruins and rubble, with here and there some broken columns. Only the western wall, over which the two flags flew, was still standing. (Two, since Anders, characteristically, had ordered the Union Jack to be hoisted as well.) A cracked church bell lay on the ground next to an unexploded shell of the heaviest calibre, and on shattered walls and ceilings fragments of paintings and frescos could be seen. Priceless works of art, sculpture, pictures and books lay in the dust and broken plaster.
Tug of War Page 34