And No Birds Sang (9 page)

After supper the platoon commanders were called to Company Headquarters, there to find a battle-hungry Alex.

“Fifty-first Div’s bumped the Jerries at Vizzini,” he told us with delight. “Soon as they clear the town the Regiment’s to move through and take the lead. Praise be we’ll get
real
action now!”

Vizzini was nearly forty miles ahead and we moved up to it on borrowed transport as the German defenders were abandoning the town. At 0600 on July 15 the order came for us to push forward on the German rearguard’s heels.

This was a motorized thrust headed by Baker Company clinging to a squadron of Shermans. Able followed with two platoons jammed into trucks, led by my platoon rumbling along directly behind the tanks in three of the lightly armoured, open-topped tracked vehicles known as Bren carriers. The rest of the battalion, accompanied by more tanks and a squadron of Priests (25-pounder guns mounted on tank chassis) stretched out for more than a mile astern.

It was another glaring day. The arid hills loomed desolate on every side while to the north the white cone of Etna shimmered in distant splendour. The road looped and laboured over a wild landscape. Villages of prehistoric origin hung on their pinnacles of sun-blasted rock. Decaying fortresses—relics of wars that had raged through Sicily for three millennia—looked down upon yet one more invading army. Brown fields burned under the smoking dust stirred by our column, and here and there little groups of desiccated peasants straightened bent backs and stared as impassively at our military might as they probably had at the guns and armour of the retreating Germans short hours earlier.

There was a tingling expectancy upon us, for though none could know where or when the enemy would be encountered, the column was committed to roll ponderously on until it “bumped” the German defences.

The first encounter was anticlimactic. An approaching pall of dust resolved itself into a small truck of unfamiliar make hurtling out of the north at breakneck speed. It did not slacken pace until it seemed about to collide with the leading Sherman, which had stopped and was tracking the approaching vehicle with its 75-mm cannon. There was a shriek of brakes as the stranger skidded to a halt. Then followed a moment of absolute immobility while we stared at this apparition. Its occupants stared back, dumbfounded, into the muzzles of scores of weapons aimed directly at them. The moment ended when two German privates in the khaki uniforms of the Afrika Korps leapt down to the road, hands thrown high in panic-stricken surrender. Drivers of a ration truck, they had misread their map and lost their way... a thing that was easy enough to do in Sicily.

Having unexpectedly and bloodlessly taken our first German prisoners, we moved on. The lead tanks climbed a high saddle and paused on the crest, appearing to sniff suspiciously as their out-thrust cannon swung slowly back and forth. Below us lay a flat and formless plain stretching to the foot of a massive escarpment some three miles distant upon whose crest rose the crenelated silhouette of a town.

Cautiously the tanks lumbered down the slope to the valley floor. Dust plumes rose high and straight in the still air, proclaiming our approach. Slowly we rumbled across the parched plain and began the ascent of a switchback road that zigzagged up the escarpment. The lead tank, with most of a platoon of Baker aboard, had reached the outskirts of the hillcrest town when the crew of a hidden anti-tank gun sprang the trap the Germans had so carefully contrived for us.

The town of Grammichele was defended by two infantry battalions of the elite Hermann Göring Division supported by tanks and artillery. At the crash of the first shot all of these forces opened fire on the nakedly exposed column stretching across the valley below them.

Standing in the unroofed gunner’s compartment of the lead carrier, I had been bird-watching when the battle started, my binoculars focussed on a pair of red-tailed kites soaring on the updrafts from the escarpment. As I tried to hold the big birds in the shaky circle of my glasses, they went into a sudden dive, sliding swiftly out of sight. I heard a distant snarling bark, a whining scream, and then a stunning crash as a shell burst a few yards away from the carrier. Shrapnel and stone splinters sprayed against the vehicle’s thin armour. It gave a skittish little leap, like a frightened horse, and slid sideways into the ditch.

Half-deafened, shrouded in smoke and dust, I was so flabbergasted that I remained standing with binoculars in hand until, very distantly it seemed, I heard Corporal Hill yelling.

“Bail out! Bail out, for Jesus’ sake!”

Quite casually I obeyed, and only when I stood on the roadside did I become fully aware of the cacophony of sound and fury which had exploded on all sides.

Doc Macdonald grabbed my arm and together we rolled into the ditch behind the carrier. My other two sections had already abandoned their vehicles and were sprinting away from the road. Doc and I scrambled to our feet and joined the rout—just seconds before two of the carriers brewed up.
CRASH
-Whooosh!—
CRASH
-Whooosh!
Their gasoline tanks flamed skyward and two immense black and golden globes blossomed over us.

Panting, dishevelled and with faces blackened by the explosions, Doc and I tumbled into a gravelly depression some fifty yards off the road where the rest of the platoon had already taken cover. The hollow gave us all-too-little protection from shell bursts, but it did provide a fine view of the action.

From the crest and forward slopes of the mile-long escarpment the Germans were firing down upon our column with everything they had—and they seemed to have just about everything. During my time as battalion intelligence officer, I had thoroughly boned up on German weapons, but until this hour I had never actually seen or heard the real thing. Now I was delighted to discover that I could identify most of them. It was a discovery which excited me almost as much as if I had stumbled on a batch of new bird species.

A covey of mortar shells fluted overhead and crashed into the road. “81-mm medium mortars!” I cried at Bates who had crawled up beside me. He only grunted, his attention riveted on the spectacle of the lead Sherman brewing up in a dense black plume of oily smoke at the entrance to the town. Behind us all the soft-skinned vehicles of the convoy now stood abandoned. A thunderous explosion made me turn in time to see a three-ton ammunition truck going up in a stupendous display of fireworks. Just then an incredibly rapid
whickety-whick-whick-whick
snapped through the air over our heads.

“Hey, Bates,” I shouted. “That must be an MG-42! A lot faster than our Brens!”

“Yeah, a real pisscutter,” Bates replied sardonically. “But you better keep your fucking head down or you’ll lose the bloody thing!” he added, as I raised myself to watch four streaks of brilliant orange sparks floating toward us from an enfilading position on the left of the escarpment. Rapidly swelling to balls of fire they speeded up mysteriously as they grew larger, then they flashed overhead to burst like a string of giant firecrackers on the back wall of our hollow.

For a moment I was puzzled, then I had it!

Four-barrelled Flakvierling light anti-aircraft mount, de-pressed for ground action...

“Mother of God, what’s that!” Doc yelled as an ear-splitting whiplash of sound ended in a savage crunch that showered us with grit and gravel.

I had already heard this one, for it had been the nemesis of our carriers. It was the infamous “Eighty-eight”—the high-velocity cannon which served the Germans in a multiple role as anti-tank, anti-aircraft or anti-personnel artillery. In days to come its very name would become freighted with acute apprehension, but on that bright morning as we lay before the citadel of Grammichele I was naively admiring of its spectacular performance. Not so Doc.

“Fuck this racket,” he muttered with conviction. “They going to throw
that
kind of stuff around, I’m going to dig myself a hole!”

This was a sound idea and we were all soon scrabbling at the hard ground with our entrenching tools, our efforts given greater impetus by a battery of 105-mm gun-howitzers which opened fire from behind the Grammichele ridge. The heavy shells fell in salvos of three or four, shaking the ground with a horrendous
CRUMP
...
CRUMP
...
CRUMP
!

By now our column had recovered somewhat from the first shock of ambush and was beginning to fight back. The British Priests deployed and soon the throaty roar of their 25-pounders firing over open sights was followed by a familiar snarl as their shells tunnelled over us to erupt in bursts of flame along the face of the escarpment. The reserve squadron of Shermans rattled forward, went into hull-down positions behind some little knolls, and the wicked bark of their 75s joined the swelling din. Even we of the infantry, now scattered in little groups all over the flat plain, began to reply with rifle and Bren fire aimed in the general direction of the unseen enemy.

Although it was a spirited reaction, it would hardly have saved the column from decimation if the enemy had only been able to keep us at arm’s length. But in his desire to lure as many as possible of the leading tanks right onto the muzzles of his hidden guns, he had waited too long before opening fire. Two tanks were knocked out immediately; but the rest, finding themselves in a trap from which there was no retreat, charged straight ahead with such impetuosity that they overran the German guns before the gunners could reload, then rumbled on unhindered to the shelter of a row of houses. Once there the Baker Company platoons leapt off and, covered by fire from the tanks, scuttled forward into the centre of the town where, by their mere presence, they threatened the enemy’s sole avenue of retreat down a switchback road running to the north. Finding themselves in danger of being trapped in their turn, the Germans began to abandon their positions.

“When the first Sherman bought it,” one of Baker’s platoon commanders told me later, “I figured we were all gone geese! We cleared off from the tanks like fleas leaving a drowning dog and lit out for the nearest shelter, which happened to be the town. My God, those stone houses sure looked good! There wasn’t any orders given. We just went charging into the place hell-a-whooping and I never even noticed if there was any Jerries trying to stop us. Next thing I knew we were holed up in a big
casa
overlooking a crossroads where the whole son-of-a-bitching German army seemed to be on the move—tanks, armoured cars, motorcycles, trucks—the works! Did we
shoot
at them? Not bloody likely! We were so goddamn glad to see them go we’d probably have cheered them on if we hadn’t been scared they’d clobber us!”

When, a little less than an hour after the first shot had been fired, the enemy fire began to wither and fall away, those of us pinned down in the valley were, in our ignorance and arrogance, not at all surprised. It had taken a little longer to give Jerry the boot than it would have taken to dislodge a bunch of Eyeties, but we had never been in doubt as to the eventual outcome. In truth, my crowd was somewhat disappointed it was all over so quickly and that we had had no real piece of the action. It did not occur to any of us that, through a miscalculation on the part of the enemy commander, we might have escaped destruction by the skin of our teeth. Such was the measure of our innocence!

The battle of Grammichele ended just before noon. A group of wounded tank troopers sat stoically smoking beside a stone wall, waiting for an ambulance to reach them, as I wandered into the town in company with Al Park and Paddy Ryan. With professional interest we examined the armoured vehicles and guns the enemy had abandoned in his precipitate retreat. We joined numbers of our men looking for souvenirs while some of our drivers tentatively started up uninjured German trucks with which to replace the vehicle casualties we had suffered.

Relieved by another battalion of the role of advance guard, we had a few hours free to savour our success, while the rest of 1st Division rolled slowly past. The commanding general stopped to congratulate us and to tell us we were the first Canadians to fight a land battle with the Germans since Dieppe. Our signal victory, he said proudly, was only a token of greater victories ahead.

This was heady stuff, and so was a wicker-covered demijohn of vino Al’s platoon had liberated. He and I collected a water bottle full as our share and went off to savour it in the scanty shade of an old fig tree.

“Nothing much to it, eh?” Al nonchalantly waved the bottle toward the town above us.

“Piece of cake!” I replied. “Here’s to the old Plough Jockeys!”

Al passed the bottle and looked at me for a long moment as though of two minds whether or not to speak. Then:

“How did you
really
feel, Squib, when all that crap started to plonk down? Bit of a shaker, wasn’t it?”

“Sort of,” I admitted with some reluctance. “Scared me for a minute or two ’til I saw it wasn’t doing much damage. Jerry’s got some red-hot toys all right, but you got to know how to use them and I don’t think he’s all that good... Yeah... it was a surprise, but I didn’t get the wind up, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

In truth, the encounter had been too sudden, too brief and, on the whole, too harmless to incubate the latent seeds of fear. Yet something must have been alerted in the depths of my subconscious, else why would I have written to a friend in Canada that very afternoon:

It was exciting as hell, and I didn’t lose a single man, though I guess that kind of luck can’t last forever. It makes you think, you know, when you see a twenty-ton tank with four guys in it go whoof in one big burst of flame...

We bivouacked in a relatively green valley near Grammichele until evening of the following day and during this respite had our first real contact with the
Sicilianos.
Most of what we saw we did not like. The homes of these desperately poor hill-dwellers were hovels, and the people themselves—small, dark, reserved, leather-faced and listless—seemed to merit nothing more than benevolent contempt. Nevertheless, I was surprised to hear one of my own men, whose parents had been Italian emigrants to Canada, condemn them with undisguised disgust: