Ortona (60 page)

Three Rivers tank commander Corporal Joe Turnbull directed his tank
Amazing
onto the rubble pile at Piazza Plebiscita. The going was tough, but finally he had the tank perched precariously on the summit. Its tracks clawed and chewed at the ruins, inching forward. Once the centre of balance shifted and the tank tipped over the edge, the Sherman would be able to descend into the hitherto impregnable square.
Amazing
never made it. A paratrooper threw a sticky bomb onto the rear-engine compartment. An improvised weapon, a sticky bomb was an explosive charge encased in thick grease or other sticky substance so that it would adhere to metal when dropped or pressed by hand into place. The explosion tore open the engine compartment and set the tank on fire. Turnbull and his crew bailed out.
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Two of the men, driver Trooper Joe Gallagher and co-driver Trooper J. Morrison, were wounded.
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Turnbull helped the two uninjured men climb over the rubble pile and then boosted the wounded men up to them. Just as the other four men got over the top of the pile, a German machine gun started spraying the area around Turnbull with heavy fire. Unable to make his way to the safety of the other side, Turnbull ran into the German-held area of the square and wriggled into the safety of a cellar. Before he reached the cellar, the enemy machine gun stopped firing at him.

Across the square, Corporal Gord Turnbull saw his older brother being shot at by a German machine gun. He cranked the turret of his Sherman around and fired the main gun at the enemy position. When he ceased fire, his brother was gone. He had no way of knowing whether Joe was alive or not.
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The Seaforths' ‘D' Company had only twenty-two men left when it received a small clutch of reinforcements sent up from battalion HQ. The men arrived at the company front with rifles, but hardly any
ammunition and no grenades. Company Sergeant Major Gibson got them into the latest building he was using as a supply dump and started handing out the ubiquitous Type 36 grenade that was standard for all Commonwealth forces. “What's this?” one of the men said. Gibson gaped at him. “What do you mean, what's this?” The man looked puzzled, embarrassed even. “Well, I've never had one of these before.” Gibson demanded to know what training the man had received. Not much, it appeared. The soldiers were equally unaware how to clean a Lee Enfield, and confessed to never having fired a Bren gun. “Lambs to the slaughter,” Gibson thought. “They're sending us bloody lambs, who will just get butchered here.” He turned to face the men and assumed his best parade-ground voice from the militia days. Holding the grenade aloft so they could all see it, he began, “This is a Type 36 grenade. It has a fuse length of . . .”
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Shortly after these men were sent to the forward platoons, Gibson entered an old shack on the edge of Ortona with several other men from ‘D' Company. What seemed like an entire salvo of German shells shrieked down and struck directly outside. Gibson threw himself under a table. Everything in the room seemed to blow apart as shrapnel flew everywhere. He and two other men were the only ones to crawl out of the ruin. Gibson was unhurt. He was amazed to still be alive. The sergeant major was shaking, and every noise made him incredibly jumpy. Gibson realized he was a nervous wreck. It seemed impossible any of them would ever get out of Ortona alive.
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Major General Chris Vokes came up to 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade's headquarters to meet with Brigadier Bert Hoffmeister. Vokes got directly to the point. “Would you like to quit, Bert? Would you like to pull out of Ortona?”

Hoffmeister's response was immediate. “Chris, when this job was given to us it was represented to be a highly important objective. We have had a lot of casualties, we've put a tremendous amount into it up to now; given it everything we had. To tell the Seaforths and Edmontons now that they could pull out and that it wasn't all that important would have the most shocking effect, in my opinion, on the morale of these battalions, having paid the price they have paid
up to that point. I think, furthermore, we're getting the upper hand slowly. In other words we're winning. I think we should end it.”

Vokes looked long and hard at his brigadier. “Okay, carry on,” he said.

It was a decision that Hoffmeister hated to make. A hell of a decision for any officer to have to assume responsibility for. But Hoffmeister believed in his heart and mind that it was the correct decision. The Edmontons and Seaforths had to see the fight through. They had to win it. If they failed to do so, they would never again be effective regiments. Their spirit would be irretrievably broken.
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Hoffmeister believed that Vokes would have accepted whatever decision he had made about the battle. If he had said, “Yes, we want to quit,” Hoffmeister thought Vokes would have gone back to his superiors and requested permission to break off the battle inside Ortona. He thought Vokes's motive was entirely humanitarian. Vokes well knew how tired 2 CIB was and how many casualties it had suffered. But there could be no quitting. The Seaforths and Edmontons would have to soldier on and continue paying in blood for the “important objective” of Ortona.
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As night closed in on Ortona, Private Melville McPhee stood guard duty in a doorway while his section ate and tried to sleep. The young man from Drumheller was exhausted, barely able to stay on his feet or to keep his eyes open. But he knew that were he to give in to sleep he and his comrades might well die. The Germans constantly infiltrated the Canadian lines at night. Earlier in the day, the Edmontons had discovered several tunnels running under the streets and realized the paratroopers had been using these tunnels to get in behind the Canadians. This explained how the Germans had seemed so easily able to come and go as they pleased from one section of the town to another. The Edmonton pioneers quickly blew the tunnel entrances closed with dynamite.
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McPhee was startled out of his reverie by the sound of movement in some rubble about fifteen feet away. As far as he knew, the rubble was on the German side of the line. He cocked his Thompson submachine gun and waited. A few seconds passed and then a German
officer was suddenly framed directly in the doorway. He was looking straight toward McPhee. The young private pointed the gun at the officer's stomach and squeezed the trigger. He was sickened to hear only a loud click. McPhee waited for the German to gun him down. Instead the man disappeared. McPhee ran back into the room and grabbed a rifle. Then he returned to his position. Glancing out into the street, he saw no sign of the German. McPhee let the enemy officer go about his business and returned to guarding the doorway. He was not going to get himself killed trying to track the German through the streets of Ortona.
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Obergefreiter Karl Bayerlein wrote in his diary that during the day the paratroopers had learned the Führer had issued an order that Ortona be “kept under all circumstances.” There was no way the order could be fulfilled. “The enemy,” he wrote, “has the major part of the city in his hands. With a tremendous barrage the enemy increased his fire. Everywhere there is destruction. The sounds of the engines of the tanks are very close. They advance with the infantry behind. They seized the hospital and the Via Cavour is in the enemy's hands despite our mines and booby traps. We could delay the enemy advance but we were not able to stop him. Our forces are too weak. The enemy power in personnel and matériel is in ratio of eight to one. The outcome is foreseeable.”
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Meanwhile, the fate of the 48th Highlanders of Canada remained very much in doubt. Well before dawn on December 26, Major John Clarke, commander of ‘A' Company, heard extensive movement of German forces in front of his position. The previous day such noise had presaged a counterattack by the 1st Parachute Division battalions surrounding the Highlanders on a ridge overlooking the hamlets of San Tomasso and San Nicola. That counterattack had been broken before it got underway when Clarke had launched a two-platoon raid on the Germans' probable forming-up point. In the growing light, Clarke saw that the paratroopers were forming up in greater numbers along his front than they had the day before. Any counterstrike he might attempt with his thinly manned platoons would be decimated.
All ‘A' Company and the rest of the Highlanders could do was wait for the Germans to attack and hope to beat them back.

Shortly after Clarke alerted Lieutenant Colonel Ian Johnston to the German force massing on his front, Lieutenant George Fraser, commanding ‘C' Company, reported that the paratroopers were forming up on his front as well. Both German concentrations were subjected to heavy bombardments by the Canadian artillery, but the fire seemed to little deter the preparations that were visible from the Highlander lines.

The morning was cold, but dry. This gave Johnston some cause for hope. He had received word first thing in the morning that the Ontario Tanks were able to move again. The muddy ground had hardened overnight. Already tanks were working their way toward the front positions of the Royal Canadian Regiment. If a guide was sent back, the tanks would try to break through to the Highlanders. Intelligence officer Lieutenant John Clarkson was given the dangerous mission. He would have to make his way across one thousand yards of enemy-held terrain in broad daylight. Clarkson went alone, setting off at 0930 hours.

Shortly after he left the Highlander lines, the German artillery and mortar fire that had been harassing the lines since daylight rushed toward a fiery crescendo. Shells hammered down throughout the small island of the Highlanders' position. ‘A' Company's headquarters took several direct hits. Clarke suffered back injuries when debris inside the house fell on him. He refused to relinquish command of the company, and was installed on a mattress under the stairs leading to the building's second storey.
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At 1000 hours, the German counterattack came in directly against ‘A' Company's front. The Highlanders let the paratroopers advance almost to the front line before ripping into them with their Brens, Thompsons, rifles, and grenades. The intense fire broke the German wave, but some of the paratroopers managed to breach the defending line in several places. A fierce melee of hand-to-hand fighting broke out. The Highlanders fought with the desperation of men who knew there was no retreating. The battalion was cut off and surrounded; it either won or died. Eight Germans were killed trying to break through the back door of the company headquarters.
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Most of these men were killed by Company Sergeant Major Gordon Keeler, who first showered
them with grenades from an upstairs window and then charged outside with his rifle and a fixed bayonet to stab the survivors to death.