Ortona (18 page)

‘C' Company reached the far bank and started across the open ground leading to the ridgeline. From straight ahead and from the left flank, sudden thick concentrations of machine-gun and rifle fire struck the advancing line. Several men fell screaming. The rest quickly went to ground. What had started out like a Great War infantry assault, where men advanced in orderly lines, deteriorated in seconds to the norm of war in the 1940s. Soldiers crawled forward in small groups, while others covered them with rifle and Bren fire. Some men froze, clawed a hole in the earth, and refused to move. Others dashed about, exposing themselves recklessly to fire. The enemy resistance was fierce. ‘C' Company's advance slowed, then stalled almost entirely.

Across the river, Kennedy, seeing the attack losing steam, directed ‘D' Company into action. Its orders were to destroy the enemy positions on ‘C' Company's left. To shield the company's advance, the mortars ceased firing high explosives and dropped a screening blanket of smoke bombs between the Canadians and the German positions. A troop of British tanks was dispatched to cross the river near the demolished coast highway bridge.
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‘D' Company got very close to the enemy gun pits before running into what seemed a wall of fire. Kennedy saw the men scatter, many clawing into whatever cover they could find. A number appeared to fall, either wounded or killed. Radio communication with the company was lost.
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Disaster loomed as Kennedy received word that the tanks going to the infantry's support were hopelessly mired in the river mud. He knew the Germans had tanks nearby. It could not be long before they were deployed into the battle.
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Reluctantly, at 1540 hours, Kennedy ordered a withdrawal. The Bren carrier platoon was to provide cover fire with its machine guns and the three-inch mortar platoon was to lay down smoke to blanket the infantry's movement back over the Moro. While ‘C' Company withdrew easily, ‘D' Company, either
failing to receive the radioed order or being unable to break off contact with the enemy, remained in its position.
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If not soon withdrawn, Kennedy feared the company would be overrun. Unexpectedly the fog engulfing ‘D' Company cleared, and Kennedy saw that its soldiers had actually penetrated into the German defensive positions, which appeared to have been largely abandoned. What had looked moments before to be a minor defeat now offered the slightest glimmer of hope for a victory.

For five minutes Kennedy hesitated. To switch from withdrawal to hasty attack meant to risk most or all of the battalion, but the fate of many a battle has been decided in favour of the bold gamble. Kennedy ordered the nearest troops, the carrier platoon, to dismount and cross the river as foot infantry to support ‘D' Company. He sent ‘A' and ‘B' companies forward to seize the objectives originally assigned to ‘C' Company.
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Kennedy led the two companies across himself, with Lieutenant Farley Mowat accompanying ‘A' Company.

The fire that had slackened after ‘C' Company's withdrawal immediately sprang back to life. Both advancing companies were caught in the open by the fire of heavy artillery, armoured fighting vehicles, mortars, and intense machine-gun fire. Casualties were surprisingly few given the concentrated fire, but still the regiment was taking many dead and wounded.
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Retreating in the face of the German fire was impossible; the two companies could only continue forward.

On the left flank, the combined force of ‘D' Company and the carrier platoon troops pressed upward and managed to cut through the German positions on the slope to reach the ridgeline itself. There the unit was pulled up abruptly by a well-organized counterattack that forced it back over the lip of the ridge. Here ‘D' Company was joined by the rest of the battalion, now including ‘C' Company.

Kennedy, realizing infantry could not possibly advance into the open ground beyond the ridge to face down German tanks without armoured support, ordered his men to dig into the slope of the ridgeline.
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This position was known as a reverse slope, and enemy tanks could not depress their gun barrels sufficiently to bring the soldiers hiding below the ridgeline under fire. Nor could German mortar or artillery fire be easily directed against the position, as it was invisible to the gunnery officers and required too steep a trajectory for delivery of accurate fire.

As darkness closed over the battlefield, the battalion's tenuous toehold on the northern bank of the Moro remained hotly contested. Total casualties for the day's assault stood at twenty-three wounded and, surprisingly, only five killed.
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In their shallow slit trenches, the soldiers knew they faced a desperate night. As Kennedy had committed the rifle companies of the entire battalion, there was little or no chance of a withdrawal under fire without the battalion being cut to pieces. Their only option was to dig in and hold, no matter what the enemy threw their way.

A
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December 6 drew to a close, Major General Chris Vokes faced a crisis of decision. The original plan to breach the Germans' Moro River defensive line by forcing a crossing fronting San Leonardo lay in tatters. The bridgehead position won by the Seaforths' ‘C' Company and a platoon of ‘A' company was untenable. ‘B' Company had enjoyed remarkable success in its assault on the German left flank, piercing the boundary line between 200th and 361st Panzer Grenadier regiments, but it was impossible for the Seaforths to capitalize on Captain Buchanan's gains. Slowly reports trickled back from ‘B' Company that it had taken about sixty prisoners, overrun sixteen enemy positions, and killed or wounded many other Panzer Grenadiers, while taking casualties of only two killed and six missing.
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Unfortunately, ‘B' Company's exploits amounted to little more than an aggressive raid due to the inability to reinforce its success with infantry and armoured support. By about 2200 hours, Vokes was informed by the Royal Canadian Engineer commander, Lieutenant Colonel Geoff Walsh, that building a Bailey bridge over the Moro at the site of the demolished bridge below San Leonardo
was impossible because the road turned sharply at right angles on reaching the river.
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Faced with this news, Vokes decided on the spur of the moment to abandon the thrust at San Leonardo and shift 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade's entire effort west to exploit through Villa Rogatti. “A cardinal rule of tactics is to exploit success and ignore failure,” he noted. If successful, switching the division's main thrust to the left flank would win a clear run from the lip of the ridge “without any intervening natural obstacles to the Ortona-Orsogna lateral road. Having cut this road the direction of attack could then be swung towards Villa Grande or Ortona.” But the attack routes across the valley that had been used by the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry and its supporting tanks were too poor to facilitate a major offensive. Vokes realized that “feasibility would hinge on whether the demolished road bridge could be restored with a Bailey Bridge as the road exit up the far escarpment was necessary for movement.”
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Decision made, Vokes directed Lieutenant Colonel Jim Jefferson to ready the Loyal Edmonton Regiment to move through the PPCLI's lines in the morning. The Seaforths would withdraw all units from the northern side of the Moro and shift westward into reserve behind the other battalions of 2 CIB.
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Meanwhile, 1st Canadian Infantry Brigade would continue expanding the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment's bridgehead near the river's mouth. That action would, however, remain a diversionary effort, unless the 2 CIB breakthrough at Villa Rogatti faltered.

The movement orders reached the Seaforths none too soon. Forin received final orders to initiate the anticipated withdrawal shortly before a runner sent by Buchanan, whose #18 radio had broken down a couple of hours earlier, reported that the captain requested permission to withdraw. The runner told Forin that ‘B' Company faced a strong counterattack out of La Torre of between 200 and 300 German infantry. Buchanan was giving ground slowly, each platoon supporting the other in a measured withdrawal that was costing the Germans casualties; but the company could not possibly hold against such a superior force. Forin told the runner to tell Buchanan to bring his men home.
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Meanwhile ‘C' Company and the platoon from ‘A' Company withdrew easily. ‘C' Company had come through the entire battle without suffering a single casualty, which impressed Forin not at all. He roundly chastised Captain Blackburn for failing to lead the company effectively or aggressively. It seemed to Forin that, from the moment the company had come under fire the previous night, it had done nothing except stay under cover. Forin further thought the “performance of neither ‘A' or ‘C' company was in any way outstanding, nor was it up to the standard of previous performances of companies in the attack.”
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At 1000 hours on December 7, ‘B' Company slipped across the river and rejoined the rest of the battalion. It was, however, missing one section of about half a dozen men and 2nd Field Regiment forward observation officer Captain T. Lem Carter. The artillery officer and this section had become separated from the rest of the company when Carter was severely wounded in the legs, rendering him unable to walk. Carter and several Seaforth infantry troops had covered the company's withdrawal, Carter laying down intense fire with his Thompson submachine gun. He then urged the handful of soldiers to leave him behind. “If I'm no good to fight the enemy, I might as well give him the trouble of looking after me,” the officer said.
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While the soldiers hesitated over whether to follow Carter's order to leave him behind, Lance Corporal John H. Teece observed the small clutch of men from a spot 200 yards away. Realizing the section was in imminent danger of being cut off, surrounded, and either captured or killed, Teece turned back. Crawling skillfully through the thick brush past the closing German line, he linked up with the soldiers. He then took charge, ordering the men to rig a stretcher for Carter and cutting short the man's demands to be heroically abandoned. In an ordeal that would continue until well past first light on December 7, Teece and the other men wormed their way through the thickest vegetation they could find, dragging Carter on his stretcher. At times German soldiers were moving or standing guard within mere feet of their passage, yet Teece's careful guidance enabled the men to avoid detection. Teece and his small force were the last Seaforths to abandon the San Leonardo bridgehead.
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While the Seaforths spent the night of December 6–7 withdrawing, the PPCLI set about consolidating its position at Villa Rogatti. Accordingly, Lieutenant Jerry Richards was summoned to the rear battalion HQ and ordered to raise a party of volunteers from his mortar platoon to cross the Moro and bring out wounded. Of fiftytwo men who required evacuation, about half were ambulatory. Richards left HQ feeling slightly bemused that his men were to be asked to volunteer, while he was ordered to lead the evacuation party. As far as Richards was concerned, every man in the PPCLI was a volunteer, so why ask for volunteers now? He told his platoon sergeant major to call for volunteers as instructed, but that everyone had better bloody well be a volunteer.

For Richards, the previous day had been fraught with frustration and a sense of helplessness. Not once had the mortar platoon been called upon to fire across the valley, nor had he received an anticipated order to move the firing tubes across to Villa Rogatti. Consequently, he was pleased to be leading the resupply and evacuation party. It gave him a sense of purpose.

Around midnight, Richards set off with his platoon in tow. Accompanying the men was a herd of ammunition-laden mules and their Moroccan muleteers. As the party descended toward the Moro, Richards saw a column of Germans coming his way and started to raise his Thompson before realizing that these were some of the prisoners taken during the earlier fighting. The two columns passed each other in uneasy silence.