Ortona (37 page)

By December 1943, the glory days of the German paratroopers were over. There would be no more combat jumps followed by intense fighting and then withdrawal to Germany to rebuild, retrain, and prepare for another airborne operation. First Parachute Division was in Italy to stay, serving in the front lines for the same extended stretches as the other divisions constituting the Tenth Army. Illi was now a twenty-three-year-old veteran of more than four years of military service on every German battlefront. One of the few remaining originals, he was a tough, battle-wise survivor. The paratroopers' heavy casualties during the years of airborne operations had thinned the ranks, and reinforcements had been steadily integrated. Illi had outlived most of the newer men.

The parachute divisions continued to accept only volunteer recruits. All were well trained. Airborne culture was hammered into the new recruits. “Cohesion was incredible,” Illi would remember. “We would do anything for each other. Many were killed trying to save fallen comrades under enemy fire.” Personal honour, regimental honour, national honour were everything. Surrender or cowardice in the face of the enemy was considered treasonous. If a man chose to dishonour the regiment by surrendering, he risked being shot by his
friends. Few of the parachutists were members of the Nazi party; to a man, however, they were devoutly patriotic Germans. Dying for Germany was the ultimate expression of this patriotism. This is what the parachutist believed. This is what they taught the new men who came into their division.

As the Italian campaign ground on, the Parachute Division began to take in men from other divisions. They still ensured that these men were volunteers. And the old-timers who were jump-qualified or wore the ribbons of the earlier airborne operations and had “parachute qualified” annotated to their identity cards, thought of the non-parachutists as being a little less elite than themselves. Mostly they sought to hide this sentiment from the new men. To reveal it would have violated the regimental code of mutual devotion. They pushed the new men to rise to their level of training, physical fitness, and combat effectiveness. There was not a man in 1st Parachute Division who did not think he stood alongside Germany's finest soldiers.
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Among the new men was nineteen-year-old Willi Fretz from Karlsruhe. Responding to the call of national duty, Fretz had volunteered in December 1942, and after training was posted to the regular army's 305th Division. This was an Ost (east) division, so-called because many of its enlisted ranks were ethnic East Europeans or Asians rather than Germans. Most were conscripts pressed into German military service as an alternative to being sent to forced-labour camps. Fretz found that most of his comrades were Yugoslavians. The officers and non-commissioned officers were Germans, but often they were poor soldiers. Fretz's sergeant took an immediate dislike to him, accusing him of having “too many brains.” The young man had hoped to attend medical school. From the age of fifteen until his military enlistment, Fretz had worked after school and on weekends as a volunteer
familus
, or helper, in the local hospital. While fighting on the Italian front through October and November of 1943, Fretz applied several times for permission to leave the army for medical school. The requests were denied: German losses were too heavy to spare a single fit man. Fretz realized his youthful dream was being lost to the war.

He saw his sergeant and commanding officer behave like cowards and then put their names forward for Iron Crosses. When the
sergeant was too frightened to man a forward observation post, Fretz did the job alone. The sergeant received an Iron Cross First Class when he lied about the incident and cast himself in heroic terms. Then the man tried to buy Fretz's silence by offering him an Iron Cross Second Class. Insulted, Fretz refused the honour. His commander offered to send him to officers training. Fretz refused. He did not want to become what he no longer respected. The commander's response was to give him ever harder details, ever tougher assignments. On December 3, 1943, a call was put out for volunteers to the parachute division. Fretz put his hand up and left the 305th Division without a backward glance.

Already trained as an observer, Fretz was assigned to 13th Company of 3rd Regiment. The company was the regiment's heavy weapons unit, which comprised heavy machine guns, medium and heavy mortars, and some light artillery pieces. Fretz was given the job of controlling the mortar and machine-gun fire. He led a three-man detachment composed of himself as observer, a runner who carried messages, and a radio operator.
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Beginning the night of December 12 and continuing throughout December 13, the 1st Parachute Division moved into the Ortona area. The Canadians did not know it at the time, but on December 13 the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry Regiment, and the main body of the West Nova Scotia Regiment had been stopped in their tracks by parachutists rather than the Panzer Grenadiers they had been fighting since December 5. Fritz Illi's 2nd Battalion, 3rd Regiment went into the line and fought through the whole day. By day's end, 1st Battalion, 3rd Regiment was moving down from the upper Sangro River to the coast.

Illi was not in the lines at The Gully. His company was still in Ortona. Fretz's heavy-weapons company snapped its mortars onto base plates in a position next to Villa Grande, to the west of Ortona.
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Obergefreiter Carl Bayerlein was working as a Fallschirmpionier, constructing positions above Francavilla about six miles north of Ortona.
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Tenth Army command was planning to shift the entire division to Ortona, but it would take several days to effect the move because of transportation difficulties. There were not enough trucks to move all the regiments at once. Allied air superiority over all of Italy further exacerbated the transportation problem. Trucks or trains
moving by day were likely to be destroyed by aerial bombardment or strafing. Rainy days were best. Although roads were transformed into quagmires, the Germans could at least move without fear of Allied planes.

Tenth Army urgently needed to replace the 90th Panzer Grenadiers. On December 13, a postscript added to the War Diary of 76th Korps, of which the 90th was a part, read: “A great fighting value can no longer be ascribed to 90th Panzer Grenadier Division. The units have become badly mixed and the troops are exhausted. The fighting value of at least two battalions has been used up. The present positions can only be held by bringing in new battalions.”
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German Tenth Army high command was concerned that 1st Parachute Division was too weak to perform the task. It was still rebuilding after fierce fighting in Sicily and earlier in the Italian campaign. General der Panzertruppen and commander of the Tenth Army Joachim Lemelsen defended the decision to commit the division in a December 13 phone conversation with fellow Panzer General Traugott Herr. “The fighting strength of the paratroops is not as bad as it is always made out to be,” he said. “It has been increased by the arrival of young reinforcements and can be considered as normal.”
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While it was true that the division's strength was relatively normal by the standards of the slowly crumbling German army, it was far from its designated strength. In the spring of 1943, 1st Parachute Division had been allocated a strength of 16,000 men.
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By December, casualties had reduced the division to a total strength of 11,864, with almost 20 percent on a perpetually rotating furlough. This left the division with a real strength of only about 9,500, many of whom were not front-line infantry.
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Despite this weakness, the commitment of its 2nd battalion into the line on December 13 enabled the 90th Panzer Grenadiers to hold at The Gully. It also ensured that the planned Canadian attack on December 14 toward Casa Berardi would face fierce resistance.

S
OLDIERING
ran in Captain Paul Triquet's blood. The thirty-three-year-old native of Cabano, Quebec, came from a French family with a long military lineage. His father, Georges, had served as a company sergeant major in the French army, was badly wounded in one of the battles of Champagne in 1915, and given an honorary discharge along with three medals for bravery. Paul's grandfather, Louis-Desire Triquet, had fought in the Franco-Prussian and South African wars, and a great-grandfather had seen service in Crimea. Georges had emigrated to Canada in 1905, met and married Helene Pelletier in a whirlwind Montreal romance, then settled in the small Quebec sawmill town of Cabano near the New Brunswick border. He earned a living as an accountant and insurance salesman. But when World War I broke out, he had immediately returned to France.

In the early 1920s, Cabano had a population of only 5,400, and there was little in the way of services for young boys. Georges Triquet decided the solution was to form a cadet corps that would promote martial discipline and spirit in a setting of organized sport and physical training. Paul, the oldest of seven children though not
yet a teenager, was his first recruit. The two Triquets formed up on the school grounds. As father led son through the marching drill to the cadences of the French army, other boys looked on. Soon they joined in. Georges Triquet's cadets averaged a strength of fifty. Broomsticks were eventually exchanged for antiquated Ross rifles, which Georges Triquet secured through his connections as a militia reserve officer. Paul was promoted to cadet corporal. A superb athlete, he soon replaced his father as the physical training instructor.

Shortly before his sixteenth birthday, Triquet went to work in the local mill. He yearned, however, to join the army. He read every book available on the life and military career of Napoleon Bonaparte and other French generals and leaders. When he turned sixteen, Triquet immediately went to Quebec City and tried to enlist, claiming he was seventeen. The enlistment officer told him to go home and come back when he was nineteen. Triquet tried again a year later. This time he said he was nineteen and the enlistment officer believed him. When he returned to Cabano and told his parents that he had been accepted into the army, Helene expressed concern, but Georges hushed her. Paul's father was immensely proud.

Triquet entered the Royal 22e Regiment as a private. Other than two years out of the service for a brief experiment with a career in the Quebec provincial police, he remained in the army throughout the 1930s. He was a sergeant major when the war broke out. After the Van Doos deployed to Britain, he received an officer's commission.
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On December 14, Triquet commanded ‘C' Company. Captain Ovila Garceau had ‘D' Company. These two companies formed the vanguard of the Van Doos attack. Immediately behind were three Ontario Tanks, with four more a little farther back. ‘A' and ‘B' companies, plus Lieutenant Colonel Paul Bernatchez's battalion headquarters, provided a base of support. Also with the unit were two Royal Canadian Horse Artillery forward observation officers, Captain Bob Donald, just returned to the unit after a bout of jaundice, and Captain Harald Martin.

Although the advance was to progress on a two-company front, Triquet's company on the left was expected to face the toughest resistance. For this reason, one FOO would accompany Triquet, who also received priority call on Major Herschell Smith and his seven-tank-strong squadron. Shortly before dawn, RCHA Major George “Duff”
Mitchell met briefly with his two FOOs to decide who would accompany Triquet and who would stay with Bernatchez. The three men knew the FOO with Triquet would face the most danger. Mitchell fished out a coin. Martin said, “Heads I go with Triquet.” It came up tails. “I'm glad it worked out that way because you have had more experience than Harald, Bob,” Mitchell said.
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Bob Donald was Mitchell's best friend. They had attended Royal Military College together and served their entire RCHA war careers in close proximity. Martin, at thirty-five one of the oldest men in the regiment, had been an insurance broker in Montreal before the war.

Artillery was considered vital to the attack's success. As with the failed attacks against The Gully's front, the Van Doos would advance behind a creeping barrage. Donald and Martin would also call in close supporting fire at specific targets.

As dawn crept closer, Bernatchez took his second-in-command Major Jean V. Allard aside. Of the attack, Bernatchez said, “It's a big risk, and if my command post is destroyed, you'll have to take over.”
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A sobered Allard returned to the rear echelon position and readied his jeep with radios. He also got a small truck organized with a wireless set aboard to provide a mobile link to 3rd Canadian Infantry Brigade's headquarters near San Leonardo. Accompanied by his driver, his batman, a radio operator, clerk, and a load of shovels, ammunition, a Bren gun, and boxes of rations, he drove up to a point near Triquet's company and established an alternative command post.

‘C' and ‘D' companies headed for the start line, at the culvert crossing that Captain June Thomas had discovered. Allard called out to Garceau, wishing him luck. Triquet walked up. “We're really going to get Jerry,” he said.
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Triquet's company numbered eighty-one men and Garceau's about the same. Morale was high. Royal 22e Regiment was a permanent force unit and many of the soldiers had extensive military service behind them. The regiment's long history and its place as the only exclusively French-Canadian regiment in the Canadian army meant the men had a unique tradition to uphold. Some of the soldiers came from Triquet's hometown. Since the war started, more than 250 men from Cabano had enlisted, most becoming Van Doos.
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At 0630 hours, the sixty-minute bombardment started. When the artillery lifted, the assault force was to strike down the route taken
the previous day by the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada's ‘A' Company and Smith's tanks. Once the Ortona-Orsogna road was gained, the Van Doos would advance east along it to Casa Berardi and Cider Crossroads. The plan was to repeat ‘A' Company's exploits, but on a much larger scale that could not be repelled by the Germans. Major General Chris Vokes was certain that the 90th Panzer Grenadiers were finished as a combat unit. Intercepted German radio traffic had indicated the division was on its last legs. Vokes was unaware that during the night regiments of the 1st Parachute Division had stiffened the Panzer Grenadier line.
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