Tug of War

by Shelfold Bidwell

  Monsabert was now “carrying the ball” for the CEF, for spectacular as the success of the newly forming Corps de Montagne was to be, the exploitation of Juin’s success depended on forcing the Esperia bottleneck with the utmost rapidity. Monsabert was to have the hardest battle, while Sevez had to grapple with the most difficult manoeuvre. His 4e DMM had suffered almost as severely as the 2e DIM, and he decided that he had to regroup so as to make the best and maximum use of his goums. Accordingly he formed three battle-groups:

  Groupement Guillaume, under Général de Brigade Guillaume, overall Goum commander, with RTM (less a battalion), and 4e GTM (groups of tabors) and a battalion of the divisional artillery; two regular battalions, and six tabors or eighteen goums, plus engineers. Groupement Bondis, Colonel Bondis, with under command a battalion of the 1er and a battalion of the 2e RTM, and the 3e GTM, a battalion of the divisional artillery, engineers.

  Groupement Louchet, Colonel Louchet, the 2e RTM (less the battalion with Bondis) and a heavy regiment from the corps artillery: to serve as reserve.

  General Monsabert, in true cavalry style, wasted no time after the fall of Castelforte. He had been freed from the responsibility of mopping up the remnants of the 71st Division behind, this having been handed over to the reserve group of 4e DMM. By the 15th Ausonia was in his hands, and he decided to turn the southern end of the Dora position. A steep winding road led from just south of Ausonia up to the mountain village of Selvacava, and one of his armoured battle-groups pushed boldly up it, forced the Dora Line and captured it. From there it sent on a battalion of Algerian Tirailleurs to seize La Basta, a height 1,000 yards north overlooking Dora from the rear. At the same time, Groupement Bondis (which had successfully performed the famous “scissors movement” and crossed the 3e DIA’s column of route into the mountains) escaladed the southern slopes of M. Fammera and occupied its 3,800-foot summit. So far, so good. However, another armoured group pushing north along the road ran into a hot fire from assault and anti-tank guns a mile and a half out of Ausonia. This was a battalion of the 200th Panzer Grenadier Regiment, ordered to establish a strong front barring the way to Esperia. It was learnt later from prisoners that they had been told they had been ordered to hold their positions at all costs, for the outcome of the battle for the Hitler Line depended on it. That evening HQ CEF issued orders to Monsabert to accelerate his efforts to seize the Esperia defile and push on to M. Oro, and to Brosset to cover Monsabert’s right flank by vigorous offensive action to penetrate the Dora Line and capture M. Calvo. Similarly, the Bondis battle-group was to support Monsabert’s left by continuing its successful operation westwards from M. Fammera.

  Monsabert regrouped again that night. Colonel Chapuis with two battalions and a battalion of artillery was to keep closely in touch with Groupement Bondis and turn the Esperia position from the south. The rest of his division was to force its way through to Esperia along the road, with Colonel Linares with four battalions of infantry supported by two battalions of heavy mortars and two battalions of artillery working his way along the crests on the left of the road, while Lieutenant-Colonel Lambilly with an all-armoured force of tanks and anti-tank guns (the Spahis, the American medium-tank battalion and the Chasseurs d’Afrique) tried the approach along the road. Groupement Lambilly was stopped dead two miles outside Esperia by a number of cunningly sited anti-tank guns, while Groupement Linares’ infantry made assault after assault against a web of strongpoints in the hills. As this promised to take all day a battalion was left to continue the fight and mop up while the rest slipped by and moved on towards the objective but met further strong opposition. Monsabert decided that he had now to mount a formal attack, which duly took off. One more great heave, and Groupement Linares arrived in Esperia to find it deserted and a scene of devastation, bodies everywhere, victims of the artillery bombardment, masses of abandoned equipment, and some fifty shocked German soldiers who readily surrendered, the remnants of the 2nd/104th Ersatz Panzer Grenadier Regiment, which was thus annihilated. Groupement Lambilly pushed on west of Esperia to run once more into the stiffest opposition, this time from elements of Kesselring’s general reserve rushed in to bottle up the apparently irresistible flood of French troops into the Aurunci, but with no better success. The whole CEF was now on the move, in spite of fatigue and severe casualties, so much so that the lère DMI was now about five miles ahead of the Canadians, and much vexed by fire from the left bank of the Liri — see p. 319. Success generates its own momentum, and the sole result of committing these good German units piecemeal was that they were destroyed in detail. “Detail” is perhaps the key word in describing these little-known operations, whether in the sense of attention to detail, victory in detail, or that the many small but fierce combats that were a mosaic of the whole were in the greater context of DIADEM mere details. They provide perfect models of what are sometimes dismissed as “minor tactics”, minor perhaps by definition, but on which the eye-catching structures of “grand tactics” or the “operational art” and “strategy” rest.

  Meanwhile, the goumiers with Corps de Montagne demonstrated their peculiar skills. Two examples are enough. General Guillaume’s columns, marching and fighting, covered the nine-odd horizontal map miles to M. Revoie in forty-eight hours to find it unoccupied, so Guillaume, whose men were exhausted by sheer physical effort and lack of any refreshment except what was in their water-bottles and haversacks, halted, took up defensive positions and waited for his mule trains to catch up. (It will be obvious to anyone who has experience of climbing or hill-walking that distances measured off a map mean nothing in mountains when horizontal progress of two or three miles may require an ascent and descent of 1,000 feet.) On the 17th the look-outs detected an approaching enemy column, marching in column of route without so much as a point or a vanguard. It was the 400th Reconnaissance Battalion and a battalion of the 104th Panzer Grenadier Regiment, on their way to extend the emergency stop line to the south by putting M. Revoie in a state of defence. Guillaume himself arranged their reception. The main defensive positions were carefully camouflaged and there was enough cover in front of them for the goumiers to make themselves perfectly invisible in ambush positions on the flanks of their approach. Unsuspecting, and confident that the French could not reach a point so deep in the mountains for three or four days, the hapless Germans actually marched up to and inside the French main positions before they were cut down by close-range fire. Then, as they recoiled or tried to deploy, the goumiers in ambush opened up and massacred them. The commander of the force, a colonel, and a few of his men were captured and the rest annihilated. Guillaume’s columns, refreshed by a supply drop from the air, went on to seize their final objective, M. Pezze, overlooking S. Nicola and Highway No. 82. There they were subjected to a more formal counterattack by another battalion of the 104th and a detachment of German mountain troops, beaten off after some fighting at close quarters assisted by the fire of the French mountain batteries. The attackers left ninety dead on the battlefield and lost thirty-six men, prisoners of war.6

  This action was supported by a brilliant little patrol made by Second-Lieutenant de Kerautem and two sections of No. 4 Goum, sent to establish an artillery observation post inside the enemy lines. De Kerautem succeeded in crossing the main road without being spotted by the force preparing to assault M. Pezze. At dawn he arrived on his objective, M. Vele, 1,000 yards to the west of the road, having silently eliminated a defence post. His little patrol was now behind the German front line. All that day his artillery observer directed a telling fire on to the rear of the enemy attacking the French on M. Pezze, throwing it into disarray. During the day the enemy discovered the intruders, and parties of German soldiers scrambled up the hill to eliminate them but were successfully held off. By nightfall, however, the goumiers were beset from all sides, and as his artillery observer could no longer see to shoot de Kerautem decided to slip through the German cordon and rejoin his tabor. This he did, only to stumble on what turned out to be the command po
st of the battalion directing the operation against him. His goumiers took this out in their own inimitable manner, and de Kerautem reported to his tabor bringing with him the commanding officer, three of his staff and fourteen soldiers as prisoners of war.

  By the 23rd the CEF having crossed Highway No. 82 was able to brush away the largely unmanned section of the Hitler Line (or the Senger extension), and possession of the lateral prevented any further attempts to move troops against the 2nd Corps, unless they came head-on down the Via Appia. Those that did were rudely disposed of by the 85th Division; both it and the 88th had now found their form in spite of their initial repulse and severe casualties, and the whole of the Fifth Army was free to advance. None of the Allied corps had stinted their efforts, but the organiser of victory was Juin and the laurels belonged to the French Army. The next and urgent question was what use was to be made of it by Clark, and his chief, Alexander.

  22

  THE GLITTERING PRIZE

  Who shall polish this plated vessel,

  This treasured cup? The company is elsewhere …

  Terrible slaughter has carried into darkness

  Many hundreds of mankind.

  Beowulf

  (Michael Alexander’s verse translation)

  In the third week in May the hopes and fears of the high commanders on both sides focused on the southern front. The crisis of DIADEM had arrived. Von Mackensen was aware of the build-up in the Anzio beach-head and awaited the American offensive with increasing pessimism as he saw the Army Group “C” reserves being sucked into the battle on the Tenth Army front only to be destroyed piecemeal. Von Vietinghoff watched his 51st Corps still holding on east of the Melfa but being ground to powder in the process, while the 14th Corps, though reinforced, seemed unable to check the momentum of the French and the Americans. Kesselring was too clever a soldier not to perceive the terrible predicament in which he would find himself if he did not order a timely withdrawal but, torn between sense and the irrational orders from the Fuehrer and the remote OKW, he delayed, maintaining the expression of ineffable optimism which so infuriated his army commanders. Von Senger, who had returned from his unwanted and untimely leave in Germany on May 17 to find his whole corps in disarray, perceived at once the danger to it posed by an attack out of the beach-head. Alexander was poised to unleash the 6th Corps from the beach-head as soon as Burns was ready to launch CHESTERFIELD which, as we know, was on May 23. General Clark was also agonising over a question of timing. So far, whatever he may have hinted to Truscott, he had not outwardly defied Alexander’s clear wishes and instructions that Truscott’s offensive would be in. accordance with plan BUFFALO; objective Valmontone. Privately he had other ideas. He was prepared to allow BUFFALO to go ahead as an opening move, not so much with the intention of deceiving the enemy but the Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Armies in Italy.

  Finally there was the protagonist in the concluding act of the drama of DIADEM, Major-General Lucian K. Truscott, Jr. He was faced with two tasks, both essential to his mission. The first was the purely operational one. The Fourteenth Army position though not fortified like the Gustav and Hitler Lines was very naturally strong, especially on the western flank, and during the lull since the German counter-offensive had been thoroughly entrenched, minefields laid in depth, the front protected with wire and the ruins of the small town of Cisterna converted into a redoubt. Truscott’s attack had to go through in a single continuous rush, for if there were any delay or BUFFALO were to take the form of a battle of attrition, as had HONKER, it would ruin the whole plan. In addition he had to raise the morale of his corps, which although so far victorious was worn out and suffering from the acutely unpleasant conditions in the beach-head.

  Military historians since Xenophon have always been fascinated by the topic of a dynamic new commander reanimating a tired or dejected army. Here Truscott offers little literary scope. He seems to have been as unflamboyant a leader as has appeared in the history of the US Army since Ulysses S. Grant. He gave no pep-talks, he issued no stirring orders of the day, he was never seen to wear bizarre uniform or headgear or carry pearl-handled pistols, he generated no anecdotes and was guilty of no witticisms. The photographs of other generals tell us something about the man — the smirk of “Smiling Albert” Kesselring, the craggy features of “Iron Man” O’Daniel, the comical-cheerful expression of Leese and the determination radiating from Juin. Truscott’s gives away nothing. We might conjecture that if he played poker it would be rather well, and we know he could be mildly convivial off-duty and enjoyed relaxing with his staff. We can only be sure of one thing: he was a first-class professional soldier. He had commanded the US 3rd Division (in the opinion of a discerning British observer the best in the Allied armies in Italy) which had emerged unshaken from sixty-five continuous days of combat in the bridgehead.1 Truscott used the lull after FISCHFANG to set his corps hard at work preparing and rehearsing every detail of the forthcoming offensive. An energising current flowed from him down through the command hierarchy to the rank and file. To work soldiers hard for objectives that they clearly see are purposeful is as good a tonic for morale as any.

  The operational problem facing Truscott and his staff was straightforward but tough. The Fourteenth Army order of battle reflected von Mackensen’s own belief that the Allies would strike north-west, directly at Rome. Therefore his three best divisions, the 4th Parachute, the 63rd Infantry and the 3rd Panzer Grenadiers under HQ 1st Parachute Corps were ranged in that order from the sea. The line was continued to the Mussolini Canal by Traugott Herr’s 76th Panzer Corps with the 362nd and the 715th Infantry Divisions. (Divisions with three digits were recently raised and deemed second-rate, but only by German standards.) Von Mackensen had no reserve. All that Kesselring had left was the half-formed and half-trained 92nd Division, not counting the troops in northern Italy which included the useful Hermann Goering Panzer Grenadier Division. The Allied left in the beach-head was held by the under-strength British 5th and 1st Infantry Divisions, no longer under the 6th Corps but receiving their orders directly from the Fifth Army advanced command post near Anzio. Clark had a low opinion of them and recorded his contempt for their commanding generals. They had few tanks and no artillery other than their own 25-pounders and were allotted only a subsidiary role. (In any case Clark’s secret plans for Rome excluded any but US Army units.) The 6th Corps line-up left to right from the boundary with the British 1st Division was the 45th and 34th Divisions to the little Astura river, with the 1st Special Force, a combined US–Canadian ranger-type unit extending the right as far as the Mussolini Canal.

  Between there and the rear areas of the 14th Panzer Corps was a void, subject to desultory patrolling, since the 29th Panzer Grenadier Division was by then locked in combat with the US 2nd Corps. In reserve and preparing to act as the spearhead of BUFFALO were the US 1st Armored Division, Major-General Ernest Harmon, and the 3rd Infantry Division, Major-General John O’Daniel, last seen striding about the Salerno beach-head converting chaos into order. The 36th Infantry Division, still under General Walker, was brought into the beach-head shortly before D-day for BUFFALO. (It will be noted that the 34th, the 36th and the 3rd Divisions had all been engaged in strenuous and costly operations in the past six months, which shows the impact of Truscott, for they were shortly to prove the masters of the best soldiers in Europe.) For artillery Truscott could assemble some 180 guns augmented by three battalions of 90-mm anti-aircraft guns used against ground targets; few compared with British practice — Leese used over 600 in support of CHESTERFIELD — but type for type the US Artillery had the advantage in weight of metal and especially in heavy guns. (The US Artillery was also technically very skilled and in the 6th Corps its tactical employment was equally skilful. In British opinion its only faults were a habit of taking command decisions in the rear, treating the junior officers used as forward observers as mere rapporteurs and not fire-controllers, which occasionally led to tactical errors or omissions, and the accidental engage
ment of friendly troops, and to over-reliance on telephone cables, all too easily cut by tanks or enemy fire.)

  In outline the plan for BUFFALO was for the 3rd Division to attack on the right, with its thrust line passing through Cisterna and then Cori, and the 1st Armored on the left directed on Velletri, the corps objective being, as said, the Via Casilina in the area of Valmontone. As the avenue of advance was dominated on the left by observers in the Alban Hills behind the enemy line and would be later from the north-western spurs of the Lepini range, two subsidiary attacks were to be mounted: one by the 45th on the left with limited objectives, the other on the right by the Special Force, with its final objective a dominating summit of the Lepinis, M. Arrestino. The whole of the left flank of the corps was to be extensively screened by artillery smoke.

  The fire-plan compared with ordinary American practice was unusually elaborate. (The preferred method was the simple one of “artillery preparation”, i.e., giving the enemy positions a good bashing and following up with infantry. They considered the British mistaken in their addiction to “covering fire” in the shape of moving barrages and timed programmes. There is a lot to be said on either side. The US methods were designed to be simple and standardised, suitable for operators in hastily trained, mass-produced units.) The artillery support was to be in two phases, the first preparatory and counter-battery fires against all HQs, strongpoints and hostile batteries whose locations had been fixed by every intelligence means, followed by a barrage to cover the approach and initial assault. Elaborate arrangements were made to provide additional support from the tactical air forces. The logistic planning included the accumulation of combat supplies, chiefly artillery and tank ammunition for no fewer than forty days at “intense” rates. Truscott, like the British general Horrocks the following year in the break-in phase of the Reichswald, saw little room for manoeuvre until he had reached Valmontone, and that like Horrocks he would have “to blow his way through”. A number of Quartermaster Corps truck companies were brought into the beach-head and pre-loaded with ammunition, ready to make good expenditure without delay.