Ortona (16 page)

As the British tanks rolled up, almost everyone in ‘A' Company from its commander to a number of lowly privates tumbled out of firing positions, rushed up to the tanks, and started pointing out targets for immediate attention. The British tank commanders leaned out to receive directions. Everybody ignored the incoming German fire, which Ware later described as “flying so thick it didn't matter whether one was laying down, standing up, or running.” Within moments of the tanks opening fire, a green flare went up from the enemy lines and the German armour and infantrymen retreated from the village.
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Ware estimated that this first counterattack had been launched by two Panzer Grenadier companies and a squadron of tanks. As the Germans withdrew, ‘A' Company threw out a hasty fighting patrol to capture the abandoned antitank gun and drag it into the perimeter. It was 1130 hours. Ware ordered his companies to
start digging in and to expect another counterattack at any moment. The British tanks slipped into hull-down hiding positions behind various houses, but the squadron's commander warned Ware that their ammunition was in short supply.
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At noon a mule train arrived, carrying medical supplies and precious munitions for the infantry. Nearly forty men, most from ‘A' Company, were being given the best treatment possible by medical officer Captain W.L.C. McGill in the cover of a couple of buildings near the battalion HQ. It was impossible to safely evacuate them from Villa Rogatti to the other side of the Moro because of the continuous shelling. Shortly after the mule train arrived, a British tank rumbled in filled to the brim with more shells for the tankers.
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In the early afternoon the good weather turned poor. A light rain began falling and fog crept in. Haley, worried that the rain might leak inside the radio casing and short out the unit, sent his assistant to find a more sheltered position. The man located a small stone hut near battalion HQ with a narrow window that the aerial could be extended through. A few minutes after they lugged the radio gear to the new location, a mortar barrage dumped down on the farmyard and a direct hit turned his slit trench into a crater.

Haley began to wonder why the hell he had been in such a hurry to go off to war. There he had been at sixteen years old, standing in a line in the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada barracks with a lot of young, pimply boys obviously not far past puberty. The recruiting officer had come down the line asking ages and with each pronouncement of “Nineteen, sir,” sent the boy back for his birth certificate. Haley had fled his home in Medicine Hat several weeks before, riding the boxcars to Vancouver, heading for the adventure and excitement of war. When the officer confronted him, Haley snapped, “Nineteen, sir!” and cracked his heels sharply together while assuming a stance of perfect attention. The officer grinned without humour. “I don't bloody believe you, boy, but you're in.” Next the officers learned that the former Boy Scout knew Morse code. He was off to the Royal Canadian Signal Corps, then upon graduation from the signallers' school was eventually assigned to the PPCLI as Ware's personal radio signaller. Which had brought him to Villa Rogatti, where the excitement and adventure he had sought was just a little too immediate for his liking.
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At 1530 hours, ‘B' Company's Captain Robertson signalled Ware that a German attack was coming his way. He estimated the Germans were sending in about seventy infantrymen in support of nine Mark IV tanks. The artillery fire that had continued to make any movement inside the perimeter a deadly undertaking suddenly increased, and the German machine-gunners hiding in the olive groves and vineyards cranked up their volume of fire. Ware again rushed from the battalion HQ across about 500 yards of largely open ground saturated by enemy machine-gun and mortar fire to reach the British tanks. Riding on the outside hull of one of the tanks, he guided them to a position that provided a perfect field of fire against the approaching armour. In conference with the tank commander, it was agreed the tanks should stay hidden until the enemy were very close. Ware then moved off across more hotly contested fire zones to reach ‘B' Company and assist Robertson in mounting his perimeter defence.
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The enemy tank company approaching Villa Rogatti was 7 Company, 26th Panzer Regiment, commanded by Oberleutnant Ruckdeschel. One and a quarter miles southwest of the village, Ruckdeschel linked up with an officer from the 200th Panzer Grenadier Regiment, but was unable to get a solid report on Canadian dispositions inside the town. The attacking force then advanced on line in a northeasterly direction to the left of the road entering the village. Infantry, formed on either side and to the rear of each tank, provided covering protection. The tanks ground along in low gear, pushing through the olive trees and vineyards, churning the ground beneath the tracks into deep, muddy ruts. Visibility for the tank commanders was zero due to the trees and high vines. The dense fog further restricted Ruckdeschel's vision to about 100 yards.

Two hundred yards outside Villa Rogatti, Ruckdeschel recorded in an after-action report, the tanks “were suddenly struck by a terrific bombardment. Tank 724 was hit, presumably in the fuel tank and immediately caught fire. The company thereupon responded with counter-fire from all vehicles.”
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Visibility was still so obscured that the German tankers could only fire at muzzle flashes from the British armour. Ruckdeschel thought his tanks faced superior massed tank fire, and seconds later an “intense and well-directed” artillery
bombardment started falling. Tank 725 had its right track shot off, 733 was knocked out by a shot through its gears. The remaining six tanks pressed forward in “a series of rushes, at the same time firing rapidly in the direction of the muzzle flashes. . . . In the village a house was on fire.”
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Tank 712 broke to the right and started ripping up a ‘C' Company platoon with its machine gun. Cutting back to the road, the commander of this tank spotted a British tank on the edge of the village and knocked it out with three rapid shots.

The rest of Ruckdeschel's company had continued advancing in rushes until it was within fifty yards of the village. The tanks were bringing the Canadian infantry in facing houses under fire with machine guns and their main cannon. Armour-piercing shells were opening holes in the walls, turning the heavy stone into splinters of skin-flaying shrapnel. Tank 721 took several shots from British tanks in its turret. Ruckdeschel noticed another British tank through the smoke and fog, standing silently with its turret directed toward his tank. He assumed one of his tanks had knocked the British machine out of action. Thirty yards from Villa Rogatti, 734's engine took a direct hit, followed by several other quickly delivered strikes. Ruckdeschel thought this fire came from an antitank gun, but he couldn't see where the weapon was located. The PPCLI's six-pounder antitank guns were shooting with amazing accuracy from positions several hundred yards away on the southern ridge of the Moro valley.
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Although the Panzer Grenadiers managed to get inside the village, they faced intense fire and started withdrawing almost immediately. Ruckdeschel decided that continuing the tank attack could only result in the loss of the entire squadron. He ordered a retreat and started gathering in the wounded and “detanked and drifting crews.” Two of the wounded, a radio operator from 721 and its commander Leutnant Meyer, who had been hit by shell splinters after abandoning the tank, were squeezed inside the safety of Ruckdeschel's tank. The rest of 721's crew, all slightly wounded by artillery fire, and another tank commander whose tank had been knocked out of action, clung to the outside of the tank's hull as Ruckdeschel made a hasty withdrawal. Attempts by one of the other surviving tanks to tow back damaged tanks 725 and 733 failed. Ruckdeschel ordered both blown up after being stripped of usable parts.

The tank squadron commander mounted a guard with his remaining force on the road north of Villa Rogatti, in case the British tanks and Canadian infantry attempted to advance. Ruckdeschel's force had lost five tanks. Three tankers were known to be dead, six were wounded, and five were missing.
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The infantry had taken a worse mauling. All the Germans had to show for the attack was that the 90th Panzer Grenadier command believed the Canadians were now contained in Villa Rogatti and would be unable to break through the encircling, heavily entrenched German defensive line.
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Not that the PPCLI had any immediate plans to undertake a breakout. ‘A' and ‘B' companies had borne the brunt of the day's fight and accounted for most of the battalion's eight dead, fifty-two wounded, and eight missing. This was the heaviest daily casualty rate the battalion had suffered in the war to date. About half the wounded were capable of walking and plans were underway for evacuating the wounded after nightfall. The PPCLI also had about forty prisoners under guard at battalion HQ.
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Ware estimated enemy dead at about 120.
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Enemy weapons captured included the antitank gun, six 81-millimetre mortars, many machine guns, and three motorcycles, as well as masses of food and clothing.
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At 2130 hours, two officers from the Loyal Edmonton Regiment came forward to discuss with Ware a plan that would see the Eddies moving through Rogatti in the morning and advancing on Villa Jubatti. Two hours later, however, this plan was cancelled and Ware was advised by Brigadier Bert Hoffmeister that if a withdrawal proved necessary, the PPCLI was to fall back across the Moro River.

Ever since joining the PPCLI as a young lieutenant commanding a machine-gun platoon, Ware had dreamed of one day commanding this battalion. He had just led it to the battalion's hardest-fought victory of the war. He was optimistic the PPCLI could easily hold and expand the bridgehead won on the northern side of the Moro if adequately supported. He was baffled. It was the first thought Ware had given to retreating.
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W
HILE
the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry was successful in throwing back German counterattacks and consolidating its hold on Villa Rogatti during the daylight hours of December 6, the situation for the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada remained stalemated. Finally, Lieutenant Colonel Doug Forin had received word from Captain W.H. Buchanan at 0715 hours that ‘B' Company was on its objective to the left flank of San Leonardo and taking fire from German heavy machine guns. Had there been radio communication during the night, Forin could have put ‘D' Company across the river, enabling the two companies to fight their way side by side into San Leonardo. That opportunity was lost. The movement of a company in daylight across the hotly contested valley would yield nothing but casualties.

Meanwhile, small-arms fire kept ‘C' Company pinned down alongside the road leading up from the Moro to the village. The company, which was well dug in and had suffered no casualties so far, had ceased attempting to advance against the German resistance. Forin knew he was unlikely to break this impasse unless tanks were put
over the river to support the infantry. With armoured support, the Seaforths could renew the advance up the road and win entry into San Leonardo. The Seaforth commander's emotions seesawed between frustration over lost opportunity and anxiety over the uncertain fate of the companies on the opposite shore of the Moro River.
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Everything hinged on tanks. But the British Armoured Brigade's Shermans, supporting the Canadians until the 1st Canadian Armoured Brigade units reached the forward lines, failed to locate a workable river crossing. Four times that morning the tanks attempted to cross, only to bog down in the soft muck of the riverbed, forcing the abandonment of some of the tanks. In the absence of a proper diversion constructed by the Royal Canadian Engineers, it was obvious that the tanks were incapable of reinforcing the Seaforths. As for the engineers, any daylight attempt to construct a diversion with their bulldozers was deemed suicidal. Instead, the balance of the tank squadron supporting the Seaforths took up position on the southern ridgeline and proceeded to hammer revealed enemy machine-gun posts in and around San Leonardo with cannon fire. In the afternoon, when clear skies gave way to rain and low-hanging fog, the effectiveness of their fire was greatly reduced.
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Meanwhile Forin was amazed to receive a radio request from Buchanan seeking permission to set off and capture La Torre, which the company commander figured was largely ungarrisoned. Given that the hamlet was well to the west of San Leonardo — the objective target — and of no tactical value to the current situation, Forin refused. He ordered Buchanan to shift ‘B' Company to the western edge of San Leonardo, where it somewhat threatened the Germans pinning down ‘C' Company. A presumably disappointed Buchanan radioed back that he had prisoners and was sending these back to battalion HQ.
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