Ortona (27 page)

The German armour–led counterattack continued, a dozen tanks supported by infantry rolling in from several directions. Inside San Leonardo, Gibson poked his head around the corner of a shattered building and saw what looked to him to be a new Tiger tank coming down the lane with infantry riding on top. Gibson realized that the tank would have to come around the corner he was hiding behind and that the lane was so narrow the monstrous machine would be unable to make the turn. Looking over his shoulder, he was delighted to see a Sherman creeping down the street toward him. Gibson ran to the Calgary tank. Pointing the corner out to its commander he yelled up, “There's a big Tiger coming around that corner. He can't get around that corner. It's too narrow.”

The Calgary tank commander ordered armour-piercing shells
readied and loaded, then waited until the German tank rolled around the corner and, as Gibson predicted, proved unable to complete the turn or rotate its turret. Seeing the Canadian tank, the infantry piled off and fled back down the lane. The Calgary gunner started punching rounds through the turret and the tank, in reality a common medium Panzer Mark IV, soon burst into flames.
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Like most infantry, Gibson tended to think that all tanks were the behemoth Tigers, which were virtually invulnerable to Allied tanks and that all antitank guns were the equally feared 88-millimetres. Gibson joined his platoon and helped it in the vicious house-to-house fighting that followed.

By 1030 hours, Amy's tanks had broken the German counterattack and the enemy force started withdrawing toward the northeast. Strewn around San Leonardo and inside the town were the wrecks of eight German tanks.
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Fifteen minutes later, Seaforth commander Lieutenant Colonel Doug Forin moved with the rest of the battalion over the Moro to consolidate the hold on the village won by ‘D' Company and ‘A' squadron of the Calgary Tanks. Soon two troops of the Calgary Tanks' ‘B' squadron were rolling across the river to reinforce Amy. The first stage of the battle for San Leonardo was mostly over. Still, the fighting on the edge of the village continued with the Canadian reinforcements trying to expand the size of the battalion's holdings.

Seaforth scout Private A.K. Harris accompanied the leading elements of infantry reinforcing San Leonardo. He later wrote in his diary: “Most of the houses on the South side are blackened hulls and still burning. They smell as usual of H.E. [high explosive] fire and the dead. . . . We are to spend the night here, so our section takes over a house. It is not a bad house. It is dry and has an upstairs full of rubble to absorb the shells from above, with a room or two on the north side for protection. These are the principal qualifications of a first class residence. An unexploded twenty-five pounder shell is embedded in a wall. We make ourselves comfortable.”
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As some of the Seaforths settled in, a Calgary tank was knocked out on San Leonardo's outskirts by a hidden antitank gun. The crew managed to escape from the burning tank but had to abandon its commander, who was badly wounded and suffering from severe burns. An attempt to reach the injured man with an ambulance jeep was driven off by enemy fire. Seeing the situation, twenty-one-year-old
Acting Sergeant John McDougall and medical orderly twenty-three-year-old Acting Corporal Gordon James Barss of the Royal Canadian Medical Corps crossed 200 yards of open ground under intense enemy fire, administered first aid to the wounded officer, and then carried him back to safety. Their action undoubtedly saved the officer's life.
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The Calgary Tanks' successful crossing of the Moro River proved a mixed blessing for the 48th Highlanders of Canada, dug in on the western flank of San Leonardo. Because the Royal Canadian Regiment attack had failed to take San Leonardo during the night, the Highlanders had found themselves in the morning cut off from the rest of 1st Canadian Infantry Division. Until morning, it seemed the Germans had remained unaware of the presence of Lieutenant Colonel Ian Johnston's battalion. With the first glimmer of dawn, however, that happy situation abruptly ended.

During the night, Johnston had established the battalion HQ in a large cave overlooking San Leonardo with the idea that it would provide a good view of the village and the RCR's dispositions there. Now the Canadians in the cave found themselves looking down the barrel of a Spandau machine-gun position that enjoyed a perfect field of fire into the cave's large entrance. Both Germans and Canadians stared at each other in dazed surprise for a moment before the Highlanders dived for cover and the Panzer Grenadiers lunged to their weapon. Burst after burst flailed the cave entrance and minutes later six-round volleys of two-foot bombs fired by Nebelwerfers started exploding all through the Highlanders' positions. Soon 88-millimetre guns joined the chorus. Johnston was certain it would not be long before the Panzer Grenadiers launched a combined armour and infantry attack on his front.

The Highlanders were elated when they saw the Calgary Tanks roaring across the bridge and making their way up to San Leonardo. But as the tanks approached the village they started firing shells into the Highlanders' perimeter. One Canadian shell struck a metal barrel providing a roof over Major F.G. McLaren's slit trench, transforming it into a hail of fine splinters that caused multiple wounds to the officer's face. The concussion of the explosion also burst his eardrums.
Another soldier was killed by the tank fire before two soldiers could alert the tankers to the Highlanders' presence.

With the arrival of the Seaforths and tanks in San Leonardo, the Germans shifted their attention away from the Highlanders to a fierce attempt to regain the village. The Highlanders endured only continuing shelling throughout the day. As the morning wore on, Johnston received orders to move two companies to San Leonardo to reinforce the growing concentration of Canadian forces building there. The divisional plan was for the Loyal Edmonton Regiment to move up at day's end and occupy San Leonardo, while the Seaforths and Calgary Tanks took up positions beyond the town in preparation for a morning offensive toward the Ortona-Orsogna lateral highway.
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It was becoming increasingly apparent that the Seaforth assault on San Leonardo had not only caught the Germans by surprise, but also in the middle of executing a dual offensive against the bridgehead to the east held by the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment and the isolated pocket held by the Royal Canadian Regiment. These attacks had left the Panzer Grenadiers with limited reserves to throw into the fighting at San Leonardo. With the RCR having narrowly escaped catastrophe and the Hasty P's ably holding their position, it seemed likely German attention would now shift entirely to the Canadian forces holding the village. Therefore Vokes wanted every man he could get close to San Leonardo to ensure that this key position — now the focal point of the Canadian effort to shatter the Moro River defensive line — was held.

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the early morning of December 9, the Royal Canadian Regiment's line resembled the circled wagons of a western movie. Although they were isolated on the northern edge of the Moro River valley between the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment beachhead and San Leonardo, the men's morale remained high. At first light Lieutenant Dave Bindman, who had courageously bagged a group of prisoners during the night's fighting, encountered three enemy soldiers abandoning an undetected machine-gun post on the immediate flank of ‘C' Company. Standing, Tommy gun to his shoulder, the officer exchanged shots with the Panzer Grenadiers before they broke and ran. Bindman ran after them, firing from the hip. Two privates surrendered, but the officer managed to escape. An elated Bindman marched his second set of prisoners back to the perimeter. Just as he entered the RCR lines, however, a mortar bomb struck directly in front of him. The officer fell, mortally wounded. Bindman had been in action for less than twenty-four hours.
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The mortar round that killed Bindman signalled the beginning of an intense German effort to destroy the RCR with the heaviest bombardment
the regiment had so far endured. Shells blanketed their position, causing them to quickly dub the area “Slaughterhouse Hill” because of the heavy casualties suffered. Broken and torn bodies lay scattered throughout the perimeter, and the screams and moans of the wounded carried on the air. Two Sikh muleteers were killed, along with several of their animals.

Despite the intense shelling, the RCR was heartened to see Canadian tanks crossing the Moro River and moving up into San Leonardo. Soon Brigadier Howard Graham signalled Lieutenant Colonel Dan Spry that “one sub-unit Wyman's boys are across. They should be very close. . . .” At 0950 hours Graham added, “Brothers Number 2 [2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade] in town. . . . move over and contact.”
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Spry issued orders to continue the lateral movement across the Panzer Grenadiers' front into San Leonardo. The attack on San Leonardo deflected the German artillery's attention from the RCR. As the shelling around Major Strome Galloway's position lessened, he was startled to see an Italian family emerge from a hidden cave. As they stepped into the open, a shell landed close by and one young man in the group appeared to faint. Closer examination revealed that he had died, presumably suffering a heart attack from fright. The women in the small group dropped to their knees. Apparently seeking God's mercy, they started calling lamentations toward heaven.
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If God was present on the Moro River battlefield, the merciful side of his spirit was expressed through the efforts of the medical teams treating the many wounded. A complex operational network functioned under the most difficult of conditions to evacuate the wounded from the immediate battlefield along a chain of field dressing stations, surgeries, and hospitals located ever more distant from the embattled areas.

First Canadian Infantry Division's hurried entry into the battlefield at the beginning of the month had left the medical units scrambling to find suitable facilities for hospital operations close to the Moro River line. Many buildings in San Vito Chietino — the most logical base — were badly damaged, and the village was subject to near continual shelling. Matters had been further complicated when
the Sangro River bridge washed out, effectively cutting the division off from an adequate transportation link until the British engineers replaced the bridge on December 9. Even then, it would be several more days before the wounded could be trucked across the bridge. A logjam of traffic flowed north as 3rd Canadian Infantry Brigade's battalions and other vitally needed forces moved to join the battle. Lacking priority status, the ambulances were unloaded and the wounded transferred across the river in the DUKW amphibious trucks, a slow process.

In response to these problems, the surgical teams moved closer than normal to the battlefield and conducted a large number of operations under enemy bombardment. Along with 1st Canadian Field Unit's surgery, No. 5 Field Ambulance Unit established a casualty collection post in San Vito Chietino. Other facilities were established at Rocca San Giovanni, a bit farther back than San Vito. When the Sangro bridge was restored, No. 1 Field Dressing Station, No. 4 Field Ambulance Unit, and No. 2 Field Surgical Unit also moved into San Vito. On December 9, the fierce fighting on the Moro River resulted in 230 casualties being evacuated through the Rocca treatment facilities to hospitals south of the Sangro River. Most of these were soldiers operated on earlier by the forward field surgery teams.

The most forward surgery was at San Vito in a school pitted with shell holes and lacking any glass in its windows. At any given time, this hospital housed one hundred or more patients either waiting for evacuation or in too unstable a condition to be moved.
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Among those lying for days in this hospital was Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry Lieutenant Jerry Richards, who had suffered shrapnel wounds to his stomach on the night of December 6–7. By the time Richards reached the surgery he was already developing peritonitis, a painful and dangerous inflammation of the transparent membrane lining the abdominal walls. The two surgeons, Dr. Frank Mills and Dr. Bruce Toby, had immediately cut away his bloody clothes and conducted emergency operations to contain the damage to Richards's abdominal organs and to sew up his external wounds. Richards awoke hours after the operation to find various intravenous tubes running into the veins of both legs. He was “surprised and pleased to be lying there alive in this bed,” despite being naked except for the identity disks around his neck. Soon Richards learned that his clothes had
been either cut to pieces or so blood-stained that the medical orderlies had thrown them away. As he learned about the severity of his wounds, Richards realized that his war against Germany was over. He was facing a more personal war to recover from the wounds, and would require several years of continued treatments.
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