Ortona (19 page)

The crossing was uneventful. Richards brought the entire party up to the farmyard where Lieutenant Colonel Ware had established his forward HQ. Richards went in to report and found Ware sound asleep in a corner. Looking down on the sleeping man, the twenty-one-year-old thought Ware had turned grey overnight and perhaps, at thirty, was too old for this kind of job. Hating like hell to wake the man, he bent over and gave his shoulder a little shake. Ware roused instantly and received the report that Richards had ammunition for the companies, as well as men and mules to evacuate the wounded.

One element of ‘A' Company was on the far flank of the village with two burning buildings between itself and the rest of the battalion. Moving ammunition by mule to this position was going to be dangerous, so Richards went alone with one mule and its muleteer.
The only way over to ‘A' Company was to walk in front of the flames engulfing the buildings. This perfectly silhouetted the two men and the mule. They passed into the firelight and back into the darkness without the enemy firing a shot, which perplexed but relieved Richards. As he passed the building next to those on fire, however, his heart leapt at the sound of a Vickers machine-gun firing bolt being jacked back. Turning to look in the window he was passing, Richards stared down the muzzle of a machine gun manned by a wild-eyed Saskatoon Light Infantry gunner.

Entering ‘A' Company's area, Richards saw no sign of life. Searching around for someone to receive the ammunition, Richards passed under a building and heard a soft voice above his head say, “Bubble.” Again Richards's heart leapt, as he scrambled through his memory for the countersign reply of the day. “Squeak,” he squeaked. Looking up, he saw the guard pointing his rifle out the window directly into Richards's face. The man gave him directions to the front line where, he said, a sergeant would take the supplies.

Heading off, Richards was grateful the day's passwords had been relatively sensible. As all passwords came from Eighth Army Headquarters, many involved the names of famous British cricket players or cricket rules and were unintelligible to the Canadians. Richards wondered how many soldiers got shot by friendly guards because of this idiosyncratic practice. Recently one password had been Hobbes, the countersign Surrey. Apparently Hobbes was a famous cricketer who played for Surrey. Perhaps to British upperclassmen that sort of thing should be self-evident and easily remembered.

Richards continued moving through the ‘A' Company perimeter, noticing a number of dead Germans scattered on the ground wherever they had fallen in the battle. One motorcyclist sprawled in a ditch next to his BMW. A few minutes later, he found a platoon sergeant who had been in Richards's platoon before his transfer to the mortar company. A Greek from Montreal, the soldier was using a ditch for cover. Richards lay down beside him and the two men stared out at the darkness beyond the edge of the village. Meanwhile, several privates came out of slit trenches and unloaded the ammunition from the mule. The sergeant looked desperately tired and was unimpressed by the ammunition delivery. “What we need is more
men,” he told Richards. “Sorry,” Richards replied. “I wasn't authorized to bring more men up. I'd offer to stay myself but my orders are to take the wounded men back across the river, so I'll have to leave you.”
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Regretfully, still feeling inadequate about his role, Richards returned to battalion HQ to find the wounded on stretchers and the party ready to set off. Some of the more lightly injured were helped up onto mules, and those who were ambulatory either fended for themselves or gave each other a hand. About a dozen men had to be carried out on stretchers, requiring forty-eight men to carry them all. Trying not to drop or unduly jostle the casualties, Richards and his party slithered off down the muddy slope toward the river. It was terribly hard work, especially as the heaviest man in the entire battalion was among the stretcher cases. Richards took his turn on the stretcher, trying to ensure that each stretcher-bearer had at least a few minutes' break along the way. It was raining heavily and everyone was soaked through. The wounded tried hard not to moan or cry out, which was particularly difficult for those clinging to the mules. Everyone knew that a party this large, making as much noise as they were, could easily attract German attention.

Just as they crossed the river the Germans must have heard them, for the party was bombarded by mortars. They pushed on to the road, where a small convoy of trucks waited. The mortaring continued. Richards's men hastily loaded the casualties into the trucks. Finally they had one more man to get into a truck. Bombs were going off at the side of the road and behind them, but the men were unable to crouch down because of the need to hold the stretcher high enough to get it in. Without ceremony, Richards and another man shoved the wounded soldier in as best they could and yelled for the trucks to get going. One man had to remain behind because the trucks were all full. Richards and a medical corporal remained with him, the two men lying nervously in a ditch next to the stretcher as bombs continued to fall all around.

When the mortaring eased somewhat, Richards thought he heard voices on the other side of the road. “Does that sound like German to you?” he asked the corporal. The man listened. “Can't tell, could be.” Richards decided he had to find out and slipped the safety catch off his Thompson. “I'll go with you,” the corporal whispered. The
two men crawled on their stomachs across the road. On the other side, the corporal tapped Richards on the shoulder, pulled out his pistol, and handed it to Richards. “Will you carry this for me, sir? If they catch me with it, they'll kill me.” According to the Geneva Convention, medical personnel were to be unarmed. Like almost every officer, Richards never used a pistol or wore one in a holster, to avoid being easily marked by German snipers as an officer. Mindful even in the darkness of this, he shoved the gun into his jacket so it was well out of sight. Crawling through a hedge, the two men discovered that the voices belonged to a section of Seaforth Highlanders digging in near the road adjacent to the riverbank — sent there to provide protection for the engineers scheduled to build a Bailey bridge in the morning.

Richards chatted with the men for a few minutes until the Germans started mortaring the area again. Richards and a Seaforth both dived into one of the slit trenches, Richards landing on top of the other man. The officer apologized. “It's all right, sir,” the soldier countered. “I feel even safer with somebody above me.” Finally the truck returned, the wounded man was loaded, and a relieved Richards left the blast-torn river bottom to the small party of Seaforths.
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He had had enough war for one night.

“After nearly sixty hours of fighting and ‘Standing To' the troops are beginning to look tired, the strain and excitement has keyed them to a pitch higher than has ever been reached in any previous battle in the Italian campaign,” wrote the Patricia's war diarist on the grey, warm morning of December 7.
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Lieutenant Colonel Ware was thankful that the Germans had let the battle for Villa Rogatti slacken. There was no repetition of the previous day's counterattacks. Resistance was limited to light, but continuous, shelling and mortaring of the Canadian position. The PPCLI waited for the engineers to construct the bridge across the Moro below the village. It was expected that later in the day the Loyal Edmonton Regiment and a British tank squadron would cross the newly erected Bailey bridge, advance through Villa Rogatti, and jump off toward Villa Jubatti and Villa Caldari.

So Ware was astonished and dismayed to receive instructions at
noon to expect relief by the British Royal West Kent Regiment in nine hours. First Canadian Infantry Division, he was told, was shortening its line west of San Leonardo by handing off Villa Rogatti to the 8th Indian Division. Ware protested to 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade commander Brigadier Bert Hoffmeister. Once again, he argued that from the stronghold of Villa Rogatti the brigade could break through to the Ortona-Orsogna lateral highway and roll the German flank up to force Ortona's surrender. Hoffmeister agreed that Ware's plan was sound and the one both he and divisional commander Major General Chris Vokes favoured.
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But it was a moot point because Royal Canadian Engineers commander Lieutenant Colonel Geoff Walsh claimed it was impossible to launch a Bailey bridge over the Moro below Villa Rogatti. No bridge, no offensive.

The engineers' failure was all the more frustrating because, in anticipation of the offensive, the entire brigade had realigned itself westward during the night. At least a day would be lost moving the battalions back toward San Leonardo and developing a new attack plan. The failed assault by the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada had proven that San Leonardo was heavily fortified. Instead of being able to outflank this fortress and advance “along the grain of the country,” the Canadians would now have to attack the village head on. Such attacks always meant greater numbers of killed and wounded as the “advantages of topography lay with the defenders.”
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Reluctantly, Ware conceded defeat and told his men to prepare to withdraw from Villa Rogatti. His mood was sour as he saw the spirits of his soldiers crumble around him. Against the odds they had fought a battle and won. Where the other attacks had failed, the PPCLI had succeeded. But now it seemed to have been for nothing.

On the ridgeline across the river from Villa Rogatti, Lieutenant Jerry Richards was still unaware of the PPCLI's orders to withdraw. Richards dodged from one three-inch mortar position to the other, checking on his men and searching the opposite ridgeline for possible enemy targets. Without fail, each time he went into the open, an enemy antitank gun hidden somewhere across the Moro snapped a shot in his direction. The shell would come in on a thrumming flat trajectory and strike with a crack that threw mud and vegetation
flying. Other guns were shelling the area steadily, but it seemed this gun was deliberately sniping at the young officer.

Richards was running toward his slit trench when he heard the distinctive thump of the antitank gun firing. He dived into the trench just as the shell exploded on the hole's edge. Tremendous pain wracked him. Lying face down in the trench, unable to move, Richards was sure he was dying. Blood poured over his face. Because he couldn't move, Richards remembered the driver whose legs had been torn off in the jeep, when Richards had received his first wound.

The same medical orderly who had spent the night before with him in the river bottom turned Richards over. “Are my legs all right?” the lieutenant asked anxiously. The orderly told him they were okay. Richards asked after his men and learned some were wounded. “Go look after them,” he said. “No, no, they're not too bad,” the orderly responded, as he cut open Richards's shirt and started bandaging the six ragged holes in the officer's stomach. “Your left arm is fractured too, sir,” the orderly reported, before injecting him with morphine. As he drifted off to sleep, Richards was aware of being carried on a stretcher toward an ambulance that had driven up. Then he fell into a deep darkness and escaped the pain.
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