In August the Fifth Army was drawn up in line along the Arno, with Lieutenant-General Willis D. Crittenberger’s 4th Corps from its mouth to west of Florence. His corps itself was to be shortly trans-formed into a small coalitionary army. His US units were reinforced by British artillery and engineers, the 6th South African Armoured Division detached from the 13th Corps, later by the Brazilian Expeditionary Force and, briefly in December by the 8th Indian Division. After Clark had redeployed, Keyes’ 2nd Corps was concentrated behind Florence, and Kirkman’s three remaining divisions extended his front to the boundary with the Eighth Army east of Highway No. 67; order from west to east the British 1st (Major-General Charles Loewen),* 8th Indian Infantry Divisions (still Major-General “Pasha” Russell), the British 6th Armoured Division (reorganised with two infantry brigades, the 1st Guards and 61st),1 and the 1st Canadian Armoured Brigade as corps troops in support of the infantry divisions.
Clark’s left and centre faced General der Panzertruppen Joachim Lemelsen’s Fourteenth Army, with von Senger’s depleted 14th Panzer Corps, the 16th Waffen SS Panzergrenadier Division and the 65th Infantry Division, opposite the 4th Corps; and in the vital centre covering the approach routes to Bologna, Generalieutenant Ernst Schlemm’s 1st Parachute Corps with the 362nd, 4th Parachute and 356th Infantry Divisions. The 13th Corps faced, from west to east, the 715th, the 334th and 305th Infantry Divisions, part of the right wing of the Tenth Army under the 51st Mountain Corps. All these were occupying the forward or outpost zone of the Gothic Line, whose main defences ran eastwards from a point on the coast south of La Spezia, along the forward slopes of the Apennines to cover the Futa and Il Giogo passes and so into the 51st Corps sector.
As Harding had perceived, the most promising axis of advance was in the centre where there were three possible routes: Highway No. 64 connecting Pistoia and Bologna, the direct Highway No. 65 from Florence running through the Futa and Radicosa passes, and a secondary route joining it via the Giogo Pass and the town of Firenzuola. Further east there were secondary routes leading to Imola, Faenza and Forli, all in the 13th Corps sector.
None of these routes was at all easy, and Clark, without any trained mountain troops to infiltrate the high ground, had a very tough nut to crack, but he did not flinch. He had absolute confidence in his US troops and the ability of his commanders to drive them on through every obstacle. According to conventional tactics, when crossing a river or a range pierced by a number of passes, the best plan is to attack on as many routes as possible, and exploit a breakthrough with the reserve, but Alexander’s division of the armies had left the Fifth Army too weak for this. Accordingly, Clark decided to hold with his left, ordering Crittenberger to maintain sufficient pressure to contain the 14th Panzer Corps with his 4th Corps, preventing any transfer of its divisions to the centre, and launch Keyes’ 2nd Corps in the centre against the Futa pass. Kirkman, he hoped, would exert enough pressure on his right to keep up with and broaden the front of his main attack.
There was one factor that compensated for Clark’s lack of an adequate reserve. If Operation OLIVE prospered it would draw off Kesselring’s army group reserves, especially the 26th Panzer and the 29th Panzer Grenadier Divisions and hold the 1st Parachute Division on the Eighth Army front. When these elite troops were detected on the Eighth Army front Alexander would “pull the lanyard”, and the Fifth Army would explode into action. Before this major attack could be developed the German outpost positions had to be driven in, a formidable enough task in itself, but while preparations were being made for this Kesselring, who by this date had seen the advantages of an orderly occupation of the main defences, ordered a phased withdrawal, closely followed up but not unduly hustled by the Fifth Army. The main attack was not to be launched until September 12/13.
As, in Clark’s opinion, Kirkman was to prove as great a disappointment as had McCreery and Freyberg earlier in the year, and their mutual incompatibility was to prove a stumbling block in the operations that followed, it is necessary to explain and, we emphasise, understand their opposing points of view. As said, Clark’s military philosophy was to go all out with every man he had as long as there was an infantryman on his feet until the objective was secured. We have already described the limitations in his tactical knowledge. Kirkman was no pussyfooter, far from it — he too could drive his divisional commanders — but no British officer could afford to purchase ground with a lavish effusion of blood. Even Clark, as we shall see, was to run out of that precious currency. Patience and skills were necessary ingredients of British tactics, because the 13th Corps, with the merest trickle of replacements available, could only afford one battle fought à outrance on Clark’s lines.
There was, however more in their relationship than military differences. Neither was an outgoing personality. Clark could be formally cordial, but he lacked geniality. On August 12 Kirkman when he reported to HQ Fifth Army after coming officially under Clark’s command was greeted with a band and a guard of honour. What Clark could not do was to sit down with a bottle of whisky and two glasses and in the course of an intimate discussion on the forthcoming battle see what made this reserved English general tick, though whether that would have worked is doubtful. Kirkman had excellent manners but he was not convivial. In his diary is an amusing but slightly disapproving account of a luncheon given at HQ Fifth Army for the British Prime Minister, where there was (in his opinion) too much to eat and far too much to drink, and “everyone sweated a lot”. (Winston Churchill appeared greatly to enjoy himself.) In any case Clark, on his side, had a low opinion of British generals, if not of British soldiers, and deeply distrusted the British hegemony in the Mediterranean theatre and this had struck too deep a root to allow any relationship with a British officer to prosper. Clark, except for one occasion we shall describe shortly, disliked confrontations, as we have already seen. Unlike Eisenhower, who once squashed Montgomery with “Hey, you can’t talk to me like that! I’m your boss,” Clark preferred to dissemble, or to send the egregious Brann with difficult questions or unwelcome orders. On his side Kirkman was a high-minded, dignified officer, impossible to ruffle, but stiff in bearing and opinion. For him behaviour was either good or bad, military solutions either right or wrong. He was not the far too common bigoted Englishman who looked down on Americans, but he would not give an inch when he considered some proposed action tactical “nonsense”. He was amused rather than gratified when, on being asked by Brann to surrender his only good road to the 2nd Corps, he agreed at once and Brann, probably greatly relieved, described his attitude as “most public spirited”. Kirkman wrote in his diary, “A peculiar attitude, and typically American. The operation is not a competition between the 2nd and 13th Corps!” (But he was mistaken, it was.)
While Clark developed his plans for the offensive Kirkman wrestled with the problems of working with the Fifth Army. Many of these could have been obviated by consultation, good staff duties and a strong chief of staff, but there is no record of Gruenther ever visiting Kirkman (in the way Harding did, even after the transfer, to keep Kirkman au fait with Alexander’s future plans): it was always Brann. His first dis-appointment was with Clark’s plan. Unreasonably, Kirkman could not see how impossible it was for Clark to accept the subsidiary role implicit, as he thought, in the revised plan for two separate offensives. He was dismayed when Clark told him that far from limiting his aim to deceiving Kesselring about the location of the Allied Schwerpunkt, followed by a push when the Fourteenth Army had thinned out, he planned to mount a full-scale offensive in which Kirkman’s jaded and under-strength divisions were to play a leading part: “And so again I am involved in planning a thrust for Bologna, under Fifth Army who are not easy to work with, and with very doubtful resources. Clearly we must do all we can when the time comes, but if our attack is put in prematurely the very thing will happen which I wanted to avoid, heavy casualties and slow progress and in fact not a profitable operation.” Not surprisingly HQ Eighth Army were “unhelpful and unsympathetic” when
Kirkman complained; the harder Clark pushed, the more it would help OLIVE.
When weighing the evidence of private diaries it should be borne in mind that they serve the useful purpose of allowing the diarist to let off harmlessly the steam of resentment, frustration or temporary annoyance, and this is as true of Kirkman’s as it is of Clark’s. The rigid loyalty Kirkman gave to whoever was ordained to be his commander, and demanded himself, was being severely tried by disappointment, fatigue and irritation with the Fifth Army’s (to him) untidy methods and unsound tactics. He was “grousing”, to use his own phrase. Keyes was being obstructive about the use of roads and the inter-corps boundary. (Keyes was not an easy man. Kirkman made a point of calling on his neighbour before the transfer, but Keyes’ response was that he was not empowered to discuss any operational questions with him, an unnecessary snub, and a foolish one.) The next thing that annoyed him was an order that Keyes with two divisions would attack the German positions north of the Arno through his own right-hand sector, right across his communications, which Kirkman considered “nonsense”. Then the reconnaissance parties of nine US artillery battalions arrived without warning inside the 13th Corps boundary to prepare their positions. These differences were resolved on the 29th by the German withdrawal, but they could have been prevented by a little foresight, the essence of staff work. Kirkman did not allow his own subordinates the luxury of grousing. He spoke sharply to Major-General Charles Loewen when he did, telling him that if the Fifth Army wanted things done in a certain way its orders had to be obeyed.2
By September 6 the Fifth Army had advanced without much opposition to a depth of five to six miles all along its front. During this period Clark received, via the British, information from the Ultra source that led him to review his plans. Hitler had intervened to instruct Kesselring to hold the Futa pass as strongly as possible, as that is where he believed the enemy was likely to make his main effort. It was also revealed that the inter-army boundary between the Tenth and the Fourteenth lay a short distance east of the Il Giogo pass. Though the natural defences of the Giogo were far stronger than the Futa, Clark correctly decided that to shift his main attack to the right would surprise the enemy, and it was conventionally good tactics to strike at the seam joining two armies. This required a readjustment of the boundary between the 2nd Corps and the 13th. The road over the Giogo was the secondary Road No. 6524, which branched off Highway No. 65 south of S. Pietro, looped its way up the steep slopes to the Giogo and ended at Firenzuola where it joined Road No. 6528, leading back to Highway No. 65 on the left, and on the right swung north over the mountain range to Imola. It was obvious that this important road net should be under one command and used by troops with the same logistic requirements, and so was willingly ceded by Kirkman to Keyes when (as said) he was approached by Brann.
The new plan was a typical American broad-front approach. On the right of the 4th Corps the South African Armoured Division was to put in a limited attack, and Major-General Charles W. Ryder’s veteran 34th Division was directed on the Futa pass, with the mission of convincing the enemy that this was still the American objective. The initial assault on the Giogo was to be made by the 91st Division (Major-General William G. Livesay) which had joined the Fifth Army in July, with the 85th (Major-General John B. Coulter) in reserve, each reinforced by an artillery group. On the right again Kirkman was ordered to extend the front of the attack with his two infantry divisions from Borgo S. Lorenzo up Road No. 6521 across his front to Highway No. 67. This was a perfectly good plan, but at first it was botched in execution. The Giogo pass was guarded to left and right by two great summits, Montecelli and M. Altuzzo, it was strongly fortified with the usual concrete casemates, earth and log firing positions and caves in which the infantry could shelter, all well concealed. The slopes were steep, broken by low, rocky cliffs and outcrops, and corrugated by spurs, the whole covered with dense brushwood. It was not country that demanded the skill of a mountaineer, but it required very fit and active men, and was impossible for the manoeuvre of formed bodies.
For some reason the attack was spread too wide and the 85th Division’s delayed, possibly because of erroneous intelligence that the pass was only lightly held. In fact its defenders were the 12th Regiment of the 4th Parachute Division, under strength and full of replacements, but with ample fire-power. (Its other two regiments were in the area of the Futa pass.) Two of Livesay’s regiments were directed against the heights west of Montecelli as far as Highway No. 65, and only one regiment on Montecelli itself whose commander believed that he could also capture M. Altuzzo. The unwisdom of such dispersal of effort and of underestimating such an enemy as the German parachute infantry was soon to be painfully demonstrated.
Alexander duly gave the order to “pull the lanyard” and the Fifth Army offensive began on September 12. The 34th Division, whose role was simply diversion, pressed so hard and unremittingly towards the Futa pass that, combined with the feebleness of the attack by the 363rd Infantry on Montecelli, made with two battalions, Lemelsen was completely deceived, and unable even when he saw the danger to move any reserves to the Giogo. The 363rd, toiling up the slopes, lost in the brushwood and afflicted by the radio blackouts, went to ground under intense fire from artillery, mortars and machine guns.* Their forward positions being unknown they could not be given artillery support and so the attack in the key sector failed.
The American system then was effectively applied. Clark applied the spur to Keyes, who passed it on with redoubled emphasis to Livesay, who in turn gingered up the regimental commander, ordering him to recommence his attack. Once more it faltered, but the last reserve, the third battalion, was thrown in and a slow advance was sustained towards the long crest of Montecelli. The US Army official historian has well described the tremendous and successful fight of the 363rd: “… those who bore the brunt of the fighting at critical points sometimes constituted no more than a platoon or less, seldom more than a company. Little clusters of men struggled doggedly up rocky ravines and draws separated by narrow fingers of forested ridges, climbing laboriously squad by squad, fighting their way forward yard by yard, often not knowing the location of the closest friendly unit…” — a description any soldier who has had the doubtful pleasure of fighting in mountainous terrain will recognise as vivid and accurate.3 There is another frustrating aspect of such fighting. It is impossible for inexperienced staff officers and commanders, looking at their maps far below, to understand why the situation reports, such as they are, are so vague and concerned companies and platoons and not the generous chinagraph “goose-eggs” representing battalions and regiments, and also why there is so little progress. The reason is that if movement is largely vertical, half a mile forward may mean a climb of 400–500 feet.
On the 15th it was an officer and ten men of Company B who opened the way for it to set foot on the crest of Montecelli, and paved the way for the fall of the position, with severe loss. Attacks were followed by counter and re-attack, and many deeds of heroism and self-sacrifice went unnoticed, but one which was recognised and rewarded by the Congressional Medal of Honour was the defence of his company perimeter by Private (First Class) Oscar G. Johnson. He, the last man in his squad left on his feet, collected his comrades’ weapons and ammunition and during part of the 16th and all the following night kept up so steady and well-directed a fire that every attack on his front failed. Later forty of the dead around the company position were in front of his post. On the 18th Montecelli fell to the 363rd Infantry, and Altuzzo to the 338th of Coulter’s division after an equally hard fight. The US infantry, assisted by excellent gunnery by the artillery, had broken through the Gothic Line, at the cost of 2,713 casualties in six days’ fighting. It was a magnificent feat of arms, and a victory that must rank high even in the annals of the US Army. Lemelsen conceded defeat. Denied reinforcement, as every unit that could be spared had gone to the aid of the Tenth Army, now under continuous heavy pressure, he ordered a general withdrawal. The mountains behind the Gothi
c Line, he thought rightly, offered suitable fall-back positions where he could delay the Fifth Army almost indefinitely as winter set in.
While the battle of the passes was being fought the 13th Corps successfully breached the Gothic Line in its sector. Kirkman’s plan was also to attack with all his divisions at once. The 1st Division supported by a squadron of the Ontario Regiment’s tanks was to advance up the road Borgo S. Lorenzo–Faenza, the 8th Indian with a squadron of the Calgaries over the roadless watershed that lay between the Faenza road and Highway No. 67, and the 6th Armoured Division up Highway No. 67 to Forli, as Harding had told Kirkman it would be needed later as a supply route for the Eighth Army. On September 11 Clark warned Kirkman to be ready to attack on the 13th, but both the infantry division commanders immediately protested in a manner that would never have been tolerated in the US Army. (Nor indeed in the Eighth under Montgomery.) Loewen argued that it was wrong to attack in his sector at all, and “Pasha” Russell complained of being rushed and demanded more time for preparation. Kirkman promptly sat on both of them, pointing out that only the 715th Division opposed them, and ordered them in for a coordinating conference, where no further difficulties were voiced. The real difficulty was poor communications made impassable in many places by demolitions.
Nevertheless, the difficulties were overcome. On the 13th and 14th the corps battled away with very little progress, but on the 15 th both the infantry divisions reported that they were through the main Gothic defences, collecting prisoners and deserters from the luckless 715th Division. (The one already shattered once by Truscott in May and since rebuilt.) On that day Kirkman was summoned to meet the Army Commander, General Keyes and General Coulter at HQ 1st Division for the purpose of arranging the move of one of Coulter’s RCTs through Loewen’s sector so as to loosen up the enemy on the extreme right of the 2nd Corps. The American officers were understandably downcast by their lack of progress after three days of intense fighting: “They are bitterly disappointed and do not know what to do,” he recorded, adding some scathing criticisms of American tactics. Clark was, however, cheered by the 13th Corps’ success. He generously complimented Kirkman, and General Gruenther telephoned him from HQ Fifth Army to add his congratulations. Sadly, this marked the end of the honeymoon, such as it was, between the Americans and the British, though eventually the operation ended with the 13th Corps on its objectives. The 1st Division secured the Cascaglia pass on the 20th, and reached Marradi and Palzuola on the 24th, the Mahrattas captured M. Veruca, on the 17th the Gurkhas stood triumphant on the peak of the strangely named Femmina Morte and the 6th Armoured captured S. Benedetto in Alpe on Highway No. 67.
Tug of War Page 44