Ortona (9 page)

Although none of the men wanted to help the Germans by providing free local labour, this was not the primary reason they risked their lives to escape the searches. In an utterly random pattern, the German roundups sometimes had a more ominous result. Occasionally the drafted men found themselves facing the scrutiny of dreaded SS squads. A few of the men would be bundled into a truck and would disappear to the north, usually to work as slave labour in German factories. Others, possibly informed on by Fascist neighbours, were sent to the death camps because they were suspected of being Communists, Socialists, or Jews. An older friend of Americo Casanova, Pascuale Angelone, was arrested by the SS and shipped to Buchenwald. He remained there until his liberation in 1945 and never knew why the Germans had spirited him away to that slaughterhouse. He was not Jewish and was too young to have had the chance to know anything of Communism or Socialism in Fascist Italy.

Americo's mother Angela was afraid of the Germans for another reason. One day a squad burst into their apartment. Luckily Mario, old enough to work in the labour parties, was not home. Still, they
had searched the house and taken particular notice of the family's American possessions and the letters from her husband that bore his address in Hershey, New Jersey. She explained that her husband had been caught overseas by the war, made it sound as if he would have come home had it been possible. Although they went away without damaging anything, the soldiers had seemed angry. Usually the soldiers were courteous in their treatment of the civilian women, but after they discovered the American possessions they had spoken to her in a coarse, rough manner.
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By November, conditions had badly deteriorated. Food was scarce. The men could seldom work the fields, there were no fish, and no meat reached Ortona from the foothill pastures. Antonio D'Intino avoided the work parties by digging five small holes in various corners of the family farm. Often, when the Germans started rounding up workers, someone would ring the bells in one of the churches in a manner that the soldiers mistook for Italian custom but which actually served to warn everyone that a search was underway. In the fields, men whistled warnings to each other when they saw soldiers approaching. As soon as a warning was given, everybody scattered and hid. D'Intino hunkered in the nearest of his holes, staying there until the bells either rang the all-clear signal or the other farmers again whistled to indicate the German patrol had passed. D'Intino's father was weakening with each passing day and he feared the old man would die if the Allies did not soon come, bringing food and medicine. His hope of impending liberation was pinned to the sound of the artillery in the far distance and the reports that there was fighting on the Sangro River. As the soft booming of the guns drew closer and sharpened, D'Intino dared to hope that the Germans would soon flee and the war would pass Ortona by.
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Such hopes were dashed suddenly at the end of November when the Germans issued an order for the immediate evacuation of all civilians from Ortona. Americo Casanova was taken by his grandmother and an aunt to Tollo, west of Ortona. His mother and the two older children defied the order, Angela fearful of leaving the apartment building unwatched. Signora Casanova was not the only citizen of Ortona who clandestinely refused to leave. The Germans had insufficient men to enforce the evacuation order. While Angela stayed naively in the hope of protecting her property, others
remained simply because they had nowhere else to go and were afraid to become refugees.
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Many hid from the Germans in the rail tunnels under the town or in the vaults of the cemetery. During the times when the German presence in Ortona was minimal, they would return to their homes and continue life as usual.

Perhaps because the Germans believed the town had been largely evacuated, they failed one day to post guards on a convoy of horsedrawn wagons left next to the train station. The wagons were filled with food. When the civilians realized the supply train was unguarded, they descended upon it like locusts. Within a matter of minutes every wagon was emptied. Antonio D'Intino was among the looters and was able to carry off several days' worth of precious food. To everybody's surprise, when the Germans discovered the wagons emptied of their stores they failed to exact punishment upon the community. Indeed, they seemed entirely preoccupied. It appeared that units of Germans were jostling with each other to go in opposing directions, some retreating, others rushing through Ortona on their way to a new front line established at the Moro River. Ortona itself remained largely unoccupied.
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In the meantime, Antonio Di Cesare's mother stashed all the family's best china, lace, and other valuables in the ceiling of their little home. She hoped this would save them from German looters. Then she and Antonio accompanied two uncles and their wives and children in fleeing to Villa Deo, a tiny hamlet outside the small village of Villa Grande, southwest of Ortona.
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The forced evacuation of Ortona was not the only sign that made Antonio D'Intino believe the Germans were planning a major defensive line fixed on the Moro River. First, there were the improved positions that the men had been forced to help build on the Moro ridgeline, some with concrete walls and roofs. Then there were the gun pits to the north of Ortona that the men had dug. The adjacent underground bunkers appeared designed to store artillery munitions. He saw the German command cars driving the dirt lanes on Ortona's outskirts and thought he understood the way the officers in the cars gestured at their maps and pointed out positions. D'Intino suspected the Germans were preparing firing lines and registering coordinates for map-based firing plans. With that thought in his mind, D'Intino dug his small holes deeper. He worked with his hands now because
the Germans had taken the shovel when they also confiscated the few vegetables that had been growing in the small garden plot. His stomach rumbled with hunger. But he ignored his hunger and weakness and dug with tired fingers through the wet, heavy clay. He created shelter for himself and his father because he was now sure that there would be a battle and they would be caught in its heart.
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On December 3, as the Canadians started deploying on the southern bank of the Moro River, the German 65th Division withdrew from the front lines. Like the British 78th Division against which it had fought during the Sangro River battle, the German division was in tatters; exhausted and greatly reduced by casualties. As the 65th withdrew, its positions were filled by troops of the 90th Panzer Grenadier Division. During the African campaign, the Eighth Army had often encountered the 90th Light Division and considered it one of the finest units in the Afrika Korps. The 90th had been all but destroyed in May 1943 during the closing days of the battle for Tunisia that marked the end of Germany's presence in Africa. In July 1943, the 90th was rebuilt as one of the new Panzer Grenadier divisions that Hitler had instructed his inspector-general of armoured troops, General der Panzertruppen Heinz Guderian, to create after the twin defeats in the early part of the year in Africa and at Stalingrad. Panzer Grenadier units were intended to be highly mechanized, capable of operating either independently or alongside the armoured Panzer divisions. The Panzer Grenadiers were thus sufficiently motorized to keep abreast of the German tanks during a blitzkrieg advance.

The soldiers of the 90th were selected from the 30,000 Germans withdrawn in a brilliantly executed and entirely unopposed sea evacuation from the Italian islands of Sardinia and Corsica in September 1943. A good portion of the division's men were veterans who had fought for the Wehrmacht since the September 1939 invasion of Poland. Among them were men who had participated in one or more of the massive German campaigns of the early 1940s, including the blitzkrieg through France in 1940 that had stunned the world, the battle for Africa, and the endless invasion and subsequent defensive withdrawal in Russia. Others were raw recruits with little
or no battle experience and relatively little training prior to their assignment to garrisons in Sardinia or Corsica.

As a Panzer Grenadier division, the 90th was organized into two infantry regiments of three battalions each, supported by a Panzer tank battalion, an artillery regiment, an antitank battalion, and an engineer battalion. Each infantry battalion was generously equipped with fifty-nine light and twelve heavy machine guns, three 7.5-millimetre antitank guns, six 8-centimetre mortars, and four 12-centimetre mortars. The number of machine guns gave the 90th tremendous front-line firepower.

On paper, the 90th was to have 14,000 men in its two regiments but, as was true of all German divisions by 1943, the real number was significantly less. Germany was plagued with a serious manpower shortage due to the heavy casualties absorbed in nearly four years of war on two major fronts. Russia was proving a slaughterhouse unlike anything Hitler's generals had anticipated. This left the German army with essentially two groups of soldiers. The best were the veterans, mostly men who had seen combat on many different fronts. A U.S. War Department report described the typical German veteran as a “prematurely aged, war weary cynic, either discouraged and disillusioned or too stupefied to have any thought of his own. Yet he is a seasoned campaigner, most likely a non-commissioned officer, and performs his duty with the highest degree of efficiency.”
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In contrast, the same report described recruits by 1943 as being either too young or too old for active service and often suffering ill health. To a man they were poorly trained. The young recruits were viewed as the most dangerous, since most were so inculcated in Nazism that they were fanatics. The older recruits were fearful of what an Allied victory would wreak on Germany — and, more important, upon their families and communities — in revenge. This fear drove them to fight with a desperate courage.

In December 1943, the German army numbered 4.27 million men. Of these, more than 1.5 million were over thirty-four years old.
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The average Panzer Grenadier private preparing to square off against the Canadians at the Moro River was about six years older than his Canadian counterpart. While his officers and non-commissioned officers, right down to the rank of corporal, were generally seasoned veterans, he and his comrades were usually either younger or older
than normal for military service conscripts and had little or no combat experience. Although many of the younger privates had lived most of their lives under Hitler's government, the Panzer Grenadiers were not typically Nazi fanatics, as the majority of hardened party members served in SS units.

Young Antonio Di Cesare discovered the truth of this in his dealings with the Germans he encountered in Ortona and at Villa Deo. Most of the soldiers turned out to be friendly and generous to the boy. One Panzer Grenadier, who was about twenty-two years old, spent almost every free evening in the small Villa Deo home where the eight members of Antonio's family lived. Mostly the young man pined for his family in Germany. He talked longingly of his life back home and how much he wanted to return to his engineering studies. Sometimes the young man brought food, but not often. It was clear to Antonio that the Germans had little in the way of regular food supplies themselves. Antonio liked the young German and worried for his safety, as did the rest of the family.
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The Panzer Grenadiers were well aware that they faced a stiff, bitter fight in the forthcoming days — one they probably couldn't win. Since the beginning of the Italian campaign, there had been little doubt that the Germans would be forced back by the Eighth Army's ongoing offensive advance. The best they could hope for was to make the Canadians pay in blood for every bit of ground and to slow the Allies long enough for the worsening winter weather to bring the advancing army to a halt until spring. Delay meant everything for the Germans. If this could be achieved with relatively light casualties on their side, that was the closest the German division could come to victory. There was no hope of the Eighth Army being routed and the Germans marching back to the toe of Italy in a blitzkrieg advance. Those days were gone for the Wehrmacht in Europe. There were not enough men, not enough tanks, no air superiority. But each day they postponed the loss of Rome, each day they prevented the Allies breaking through the back door that Italy opened to the rest of Europe, gave Germany more time to perhaps reverse its ill fortune in Russia and somehow stave off the disaster of defeat.