Tug of War

by Shelfold Bidwell

  The assault echelons would pass through the positions of the 34th Division, whose commander was made responsible for thoroughly patrolling his front, locating all strongpoints and positions, gapping minefields where possible and removing his own, clearing the obstacles and generally arranging for the smooth passage of two divisions through his own, never the easiest of manoeuvres.

  General Harmon was alarmed by the unorthodox proposal to use a tank or armoured division for a breakthrough, instead of reserving it for the exploitation phase. He feared that he might lose 100 tanks in a matter of hours, but Truscott was adamant. The 1st Armored Division was exceptionally strong in tanks, 232 as compared with approximately 180 in other, slimmed-down divisions, and it included an armoured infantry regiment, four armoured artillery battalions and a tank-destroyer battalion. Truscott’s resources were not so large that he could keep this powerful force in reserve for exploitation. To assist it in its breakthrough operation he reinforced it with another infantry regiment, the 135th from the 34th Division, additional fire-power in the form of 4.2-inch mortar companies and engineers, including a specialist mine-lifting company.

  The result of this decision was that the staffs of Corps HQ and Harmon’s division had to get to work to solve the problem of breaking in without undue loss. Analysing previous operations they concluded that the greatest single cause of tank losses was mines. Accordingly the US Engineers designed a modern version of the “bangalore torpedo” called a “Snake”. This was rigid steel pipe filled with explosive with a shoe, or nose, on the far end, pushed by a tank into a minefield where it was fired, clearing by sympathetic detonation the mines along a path wide enough to accommodate a Sherman. It proved highly successful. An even more ingenious device was used to clear a path through anti-personnel mines which a squad of infantry could negotiate in single file. It consisted of a mortar-bomb towing a line which in turn pulled a string of small explosive charges.

  Anti-tank guns were an even greater menace than mines, for a mined tank was usually recoverable, but one hit fair and square by a 75-mm or 88-mm gun was often a total loss, together with its crew. If engaged, the normal method was for the whole squadron or company to pause while the tank commanders searched the landscape for some tell-tale sign of the offender, a cloud of dust or smoke, or slight movement. It took time, and if it proved negative the tanks advanced again to provoke the hidden gun into revealing action, which was expensive. Something better had to be devised, for this would not do if a rapid breakthrough was the aim. Harmon practised his division in advancing with the leading tanks in echelon or arrowhead formation. As soon as the lead tank came under fire or was hit the cover in which the offending weapon might be hiding was drenched with cannon and machine-gun fire by all the others, indeed some units adopted prophylactic fire tactics, shooting up any suspicious-looking cover that might conceal a weapon whether fired on or not, while the supporting field artillery followed suit, confident that expensive though such a policy was, the tanks and guns could soon replenish from the ammunition trains following close behind the assault echelons. A second line of tanks followed some 300–400 yards behind, each carrying three specially selected infantrymen perched on top who, if the threat came from infantry hand-held weapons lying in ambush, dismounted to flush them out. An alternative weapon for moving infantry in close cooperation with armour was the brain-child of General O’Daniel: a sledge towed by a tank on which two semi-cylindrical hulls were mounted side by side in which the infantry lay prone. This was an interesting piece of “lateral thinking”, but the infantry took a dislike to these springless steel coffins. They were glad when they proved unable to negotiate the numerous dry or wet irrigation ditches characteristic of the terrain and they were once more allowed to proceed in the manner more appropriate to foot soldiers.

  Truscott perceived that he could not conceal from his opponent that an offensive was to take place but attempted with some success to surprise him on its direction and timing. The British were ordered to make a feint attack on their sector, which in fact did help to confirm von Mackensen’s belief that Rome was the objective. As regards timing, the 6th Corps artillery and armour mounted a number of what the British Army used to call “Chinese” attacks. The planned H-hour was in the early morning, as soon as the tank crews could see to shoot, and at that time a violent bombardment would begin on odd or irregular days giving the impression that it presaged the long-awaited attack. At the same time masses of tanks were seen advancing, when the firing would suddenly cease, and the tanks withdraw. This, it was hoped, would lead the defenders to treat the real attack as yet another such apparently pointless waste of ammunition, and to delay responding with their defensive fires until the attackers were through the defensive zones and at close quarters. This policy paid off in other respects. The defending batteries were forced to open fire and so provide indications for the instruments of the counter-battery organisation and to reveal the location of standing defensive barrages. More subtle was the ploy adopted by the tanks. Not all withdrew. After each sortie some went into hides near their jump-off positions close to the front, so by the real D-day they could pounce on the forward enemy defences without giving the enemy warning. The noise of tracks and engines was audible for miles, and if the weather was dry clouds of dust would have revealed their approach from normal positions far in the rear. Nothing, in fact, that thought, professional skill, imagination and attention to detail might contribute to success was overlooked. (A British author might be forgiven for observing that it was just such attention to detail and careful planning when used by the British which led to American accusations of over-caution, even timidity.)

  By these means Truscott obtained a well-deserved success. D-day was fixed for May 23, and in two days of bitter and costly fighting Harmon and O’Daniel broke the enemy line and captured Cisterna. By the evening of the 25 th, the 715th Division was defeated and virtually ceased to exist as a fighting force. Valmontone was within arms’ length of the triumphant Americans. Allied Intelligence had discovered that the Hermann Goering Division was on its way south, under heavy attack by air, which made it all the more urgent for Truscott to maintain the momentum of his attack and reach his objective before it arrived. He was therefore somewhat surprised when Brigadier-General Brann arrived at his command post with new orders from the army commander, BUFFALO was to continue with a token force, and the full weight of the 6th Corps was to be thrown forthwith into TURTLE, that is to say, it was to face left and advance directly on Rome over the Alban Hills. Truscott asked to see Clark, but Brann replied that this was a positive order to be carried out immediately, and in any case Clark had left the beach-head and was out of radio and telephone touch. (He had gone to Borgo Grappa, in the Pontine Marshes, where an engineer patrol from the 6th Corps had met a detachment of a reconnaissance battalion from the 2nd, and Clark had arranged to be photographed at a re-enactment of this event, symbolising the end of the long siege of Anzio.) Alexander was not consulted about the change in his plan and departure from his orders. The staff HQ AAI learnt of it only when the routine distribution copy of the “field order”, confirming the verbal order passed by Brann, reached his HQ. at Caserta. Alexander immediately visited Clark’s main HQ but there found only Gruenther, whom he asked anxiously whether the advance on Valmontone was still in train. Gruenther, loyal to his commander, dissembled, but in fact BUFFALO was stone dead.

  There is no point in waxing indignant or defensive over that extraordinary transaction. After all, an American might riposte to criticism of Clark by an Englishman by reminding him that England’s hero, Nelson, won his laurels by twice disobeying the orders of his superior officer. He could argue, as Clark did, that possession of Valmontone was no guarantee that the withdrawal route of the Tenth Army could be cut, and that von Senger did in fact manage to extricate his corps, and that it was the slowness of the Eighth Army that allowed him to escape, not Clark’s change of plan. All that is special pleading, based in any case on a misconception o
f how the exploitation phase of DIADEM should go.

  Clark himself was perfectly candid about his motives. He revealed them to all three of the distinguished historians employed in the Office of the Chief of Military History to cover aspects of the war in Italy. S. T. Matthews wrote in Command Decisions: “He considered Rome a gem belonging rightly in the crown of the Fifth Army.”2 Ernest F. Fisher, Cassino to Salerno, dispassionately recorded Clark’s suspicion that the British were secretly planning to steal a march on him and enter Rome first, and his determination to win the prize before public attention was distracted from his feat by the momentous news of the landings in Normandy.3 Were this not evidence enough he opened his diary and his mind to Martin Blumenson, author of Salerno to Cassino, his official biographer.4 In short, the logic of his assessment of the situation did not rest on military factors but his overriding requirement to keep the British away from Rome. The switch from BUFFALO to TURTLE was not therefore a rapidly conceived strategic coup but entirely consistent with his conduct of the earlier battle on the Garigliano front and the First and Second Battles of Cassino. He had already decided to give no direct assistance to the Eighth Army on May 20, but before dealing with that incident it is necessary to describe how the situation appeared to von Senger, the thoughtful and able tactician who had defeated Clark’s every move on the Cassino-Garigliano front in earlier battles.

  Von Senger had been able to do this, he argued, because a corps was the right formation to control the vital Cassino–Garigliano sector. It was tactically indivisible, and a corps had sufficient resources to provide immediate reserves and the authority to handle the whole divisions in the deliberate counter-attack. Now, he was fully aware of the potential danger to his rear of a break-out from Anzio, and had identified the importance of Valmontone, for the same reasons as Harding. He had a provisional plan ready in case the forthcoming offensive breached the Gustav Line. It was to pivot on Cassino and withdraw into the Hitler Line without committing his Gustav Line garrisons to an intermediate series of battles, but retiring in good order so as to present the enemy with a well-organised defence when they arrived. He would then withdraw to the “C” Line* north of Valmontone, in the same way, breaking clear to one phase line after another. When von Senger returned on the 17th to find his depleted corps reeling back from Juin’s onslaught he urged Kesselring to allow him to put his withdrawal plan into action at once, but Kesselring refused him as he had refused Feuerstein earlier.

  On May 18, seeing that Juin’s advance had broken through the Hitler Line south of the Liri, out-paced the Eighth Army and outflanked the 51st Corps, Alexander sent Clark a warning order to be prepared to swing the whole weight of the 2nd Corps and the CEF round to the north. It was an obvious move. Clark had other ideas. On the 20th a reconnaissance squadron of the 2nd Corps found that Fondi was only weakly held, and he decided that it would be far better not to change direction and so lose momentum, but to order Keyes to press as hard as he could and join hands with Truscott in the bridgehead. This was a perfectly good decision, for Keyes and Truscott united doubled the potential of BUFFALO. Furthermore, if the Tenth Army could be pinned in the Liri valley until the combination of the 2nd and 6th Corps and the CEF had seized the Valmontone area its fate would be sealed. However, Clark seems to have thought that Juin’s advance along his current north-westerly axis parallel to the south of the Sacco river and the Via Casilina would have the indirect effect of loosening the German defence opposing the Eighth Army. Ostensibly, therefore, he had good reasons for not ordering Juin to change direction as Alexander desired.5 In fact, he had no intention of taking any action that might accelerate the dogged but slow advance of the Canadians and the 13th Corps, whose lack of progress he continually decried. So Clark simply ignored Alexander’s “suggestions” and Alexander tamely accepted his disobedience. On the 19th the Eighth Army’s attempts to bounce the Hitler Line were repulsed and Burns was committed to a deliberate attack.

  One opportunity, to trap the right wing of the 51st Mountain Corps, created by Juin, had been lost. There still remained the original option. As Wentzell exclaimed on May 26 when the Hitler Line in the Liri valley had given way, “We have to get out of here as fast as we can or we shall lose the whole 14th Panzer Corps!” Indeed, by then it was being squeezed between the 6th Corps and the rest of the Eighth Army and was in danger of being cut off from the 51st Corps. The Allied situation on the 25th which had so alarmed him was as follows. In the Eighth Army sector the heads of its columns had emerged from the narrow gut of the Liri valley but were held up by the systematic German demolitions, mines, traffic congestion and the misfortune of a long Bailey bridge which was to carry the Canadian armour across the Liri river collapsing in the course of erection.6 The only progress had been on foot, by the Canadians who had entered Ceprano, and the Indians in the hills flanking the 13th Corps axis on the right. The Eighth Army’s operations should be measured as much by its successful attrition as by its limited territorial gains. The 51st Corps had suffered terribly. For instance, on the 25th Baade reported that he had lost seven battalions completely destroyed, five regular infantry, one engineer and one replacement battalion. He complained bitterly of being subjected to massed air and artillery bombardment, and that the enemy guns, unopposed by counter-battery fire, were able to deploy “in the open fields and mow down his infantry”.

  On the Eighth Army’s left the CEF was fighting for every mile but still advancing with undiminished elan. The lère DMI had been squeezed out for lack of space and was in reserve and the 3e DIA having turned due north and cleared S. Giovanni, on the south bank of the Liri and the high ground immediately to its west, had halted. The two Moroccan divisions and the Goums pressed on into the mountains until Juin’s front stuck out in a great bulge south of the river six miles deep to a point short of Castello de Volsci. By the 25th the French Intelligence staff had identified no fewer than nineteen battalions of infantry from various regiments, two or three non-infantry units fighting in the line and two newly arrived infantry regiments belonging to the 334th Infantry Division on the Adriatic sector. Many of these may have been only at 20 or even 10 per cent of establishment strength, but the total is evidence of Juin’s success, and of the number of fish in the trawl — and not waiting to be caught, either. On the 26th only two fresh units were identified but there was ample evidence of a general movement from south to north, which was correct.7 Von Senger had at last been given orders to break away. According to his plan he held on with his left, counter-attacking as necessary, and wheeled back his right.

  Such terminology is, of course, archaic and only a figure of speech. In reality little groups of men, guns, tanks and horse-drawn artillery found their way along roads and track leading north through the night of the 25th/26th, the stragglers coming in by daylight, all hoping to meet a staff officer somewhere to show them their positions. Only the best troops and the best staff officers could execute the most difficult manoeuvre in war with such a hodge-podge of fragmented units, ZBVs and Kampfgruppen. On the 26th von Senger was firm on the line of the Sacco facing south. On the 27th he was able to disengage again to his next phase line, Guiliana di Romano-Cecano-Anaro, which he held all day on the 28th before moving back again and then the 14th Panzer Corps was in the clear.8

  To return to the Allied side, on the 24th on Juin’s left, Keyes’ 2nd Corps had finally smashed the 29th Panzer Grenadier Division and on the 25th patrols from the 6th and 2nd Corps met at the village of Borgo Grappo. There was now a void between the left of the Fourteenth Army, unprotected by the shattered 715th Division and von Senger’s units which began to trudge north at nightfall on the 26th. But only the French were pressing von Senger, so on the 27th a small Kampfgruppe of one battalion and five tanks re-crossed the Sacco and struck the right of the 2e DIM moving parallel to the south bank and was only beaten back after it had inflicted severe casualties. On the 28th, well to the south of the river in the French centre, a similar group acting even at that late date as reargu
ard supported by intense artillery fire threw back Groupement Louchet of the 4e DMM (“ils sont bousculés …”).

  Returning to the 25th, there had been the promising development on the left of the 2nd Corps where a great horn was thrust out by the 6th Corps towards Valmontone threatening to cut the “C” Line and Army Group “C” in two. But on the 26th that threat was removed. The 6th Corps with admirable speed and flexibility turned through a right angle and began a fresh attack, leaving only a token force to continue the advance on Valmontone to preserve the appearance of complying with Alexander’s plan, but really to protect Truscott’s right flank from the threat of counter-attack by the Hermann Goering Division, whose move to that area had been detected by Allied Intelligence.

  The question is, what were the correct moves that should have been made? In attempting to answer it we are conscious of the pitfalls of the “staff college syndicate room syndrome”, wisdom after the event and freedom from the battlefield imperatives of luck, fatigue, the reaction of the enemy and Clausewitz’s “friction” of warfare. It has also to be borne in mind it is not always profitable or easy to check a force in hot pursuit and order it to change direction without a loss of momentum and a pause that gives an alert and skilled enemy a chance to recover his balance. In fact, TURTLE succeeded more by luck than good judgment after it suffered a check that proved nearly fatal to Clark’s ambitions.