Ortona (38 page)

Triquet and Garceau expected to jump off at 0730 hours. No. 15 Platoon of ‘C' Company was on point, Triquet's company HQ immediately behind, followed by No. 14 and No. 13 platoons. Once the infantry hit the road, the two companies would form an arrowhead-shaped two-company wide line for its advance on Casa Berardi. The point of the arrowhead would be the centre of the road.

At 0710, the two companies reached the start line and came immediately under intense German machine-gun and mortar fire. In the predawn briefing, they had been told the enemy was gone, that the advance to the lateral road should be largely uncontested.

The fight was on. ‘C' Company crossed the culvert at a run. Machine-gun and mortar fire forced the leading platoon to hit the ground and crawl into the shallow shelter offered by some shell craters on the right of the muddy track. Triquet's HQ found cover in some shrubbery to the left. The other two platoons were sheltered from the German fire by a reverse slope. Seeing Triquet waving the two platoons forward, No. 14 Platoon's commander advanced to a position left and forward of Triquet. No. 13 Platoon's Lieutenant Marcel Richard missed Triquet's signal. On the other side of The Gully, a Panzer Mark IV poked out from behind a house about 500 yards south of the Ortona-Orsogna lateral highway and started blasting away. Smith's Shermans were wallowing through the mud well back of the platoons, trying to get forward. Richard realized that by the time the Shermans got up to engage the tank, the Van Doos might be slaughtered.

Antitank infantry doctrine called for a flanking movement. Richard
initiated an independent action. He led his platoon to the left, leapfrogging by sections to the shelter presented by some olive trees and a vineyard. Although hidden from the tank's attention, the platoon was visible to German soldiers in The Gully itself. Richard's men were raked by machine-gun and rifle fire. Casualties were heavy, but the soldiers were committed now. They either advanced or died in place. At the end of the tree line they hit the dirt and wormed into whatever cover they could find. The tank was still out of the range of their PIAT gun. Richard and his two-man PIAT squad closed on the tank by crawling on elbows and knees down an even thinner line of brush and scattered trees paralleling the Ortona-Orsogna road. The tank was prowling in front of ‘C' Company's main body, slashing it with machine-gun fire from a distance that kept it out of their PIAT range.

When Richard's PIAT squad tried loading the gun, it refused to cock. The weapon was useless. Richard knew that if the tank was not knocked out soon, it would form the base for a Panzer Grenadier counterattack right down ‘C' Company's throat. He could see that the Germans were shaking off the effects of the artillery bombardment and returning to their fighting holes. Grey uniforms were crawling all over the landscape surrounding the road. Kneeling, so ‘C' Company could see him, Richard waved the damaged PIAT over his head. When he had the attention of No. 14 Platoon's commander he hand-signalled his need for a new PIAT.

While he was communicating his plight to ‘C' Company, the Mark IV rumbled back behind the house, remaining oblivious to the presence of Richard's three-man tank-killer team. The German infantry who had fired on No. 13 Platoon were more observant. Small-arms fire crackled around the three men. Snipers positioned in the upper storey of the house and across the highway added to the flurry of bullets. A slug caught Richard in the right collarbone. As his two comrades dragged him back to better cover, a soldier from No. 14 Platoon crawled into No. 13 Platoon's position with a new PIAT gun.

No. 13 Platoon Sergeant J.P. Rousseau grabbed the weapon and started following the same path Richard and the team had taken. The intense small-arms fire quickly drove him to ground. The tank rolled back and forth on the far side of the house, as if seeking the infantry's target. Rousseau lay still for fifteen long, terrifying minutes,
waiting for a lull. Realizing Rousseau's plight, Triquet ordered No. 14 and No. 15 platoons to rush forward by sections. They set off in short, sharp bounds right into the teeth of the enemy fire. Triquet meant to create the illusion that the main force was intent on storming the house and tank in a frontal assault. Men from both platoons were killed and wounded in the deception, but it distracted attention from Rousseau. The sergeant jumped up and ran across open ground, the thirty-two-pound weapon cradled in his arms. When he was fifty yards away, the tankers suddenly saw him. They started turning the turret by its hand-driven cranking mechanism, trying to bring him under fire with the 75-millimetre main gun. Rousseau closed another fifteen yards on the tank, knelt on one knee to help steady the heavy PIAT, and fired a bomb. The bomb, read Rousseau's later citation for the Military Medal, struck “squarely between turret and traverse casing and the blast must have penetrated to the 75-mm ammunition stocked within the turret, for the Mark IV literally blew apart.” The tank was torn into thirty pieces and the crew vaporized.
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The time was 0750, and the battle was only forty minutes old. By now Smith's tanks were approaching the lateral highway. One was knocked out by a Panzer Mark III, which the Ontario tankers destroyed in turn. Triquet's platoons married up and the company pressed on toward the highway, fighting through a network of well-dug-in German positions. Around them a tank battle erupted. Smith's squadron engaged several more Mark IVs and a 75-millimetre PAK antitank gun. Rousseau tried to help with his PIAT but the weapon jammed. This was an all-too-common occurrence, leading most infantrymen to hate the PIAT.
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Smith's tanks, however, needed no help. They quickly knocked out two of the tanks and destroyed the antitank gun. The rest of the German armour retreated. Their own marksmanship had been deplorable. Had their fire been as accurate as that of Smith's squadron, the Ontario tankers would have been stopped in their tracks because the Germans were firing from protected positions, while the Canadian tanks were out in the open.
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The Germans, now identified by the Canadians as members of 1st Parachute Division, followed their tanks' lead and withdrew to the road. It appeared they were setting up for a last stand there.

While ‘C' Company and Smith's tanks pressed on, ‘D' Company became lost in the confusing terrain. They wandered for a while, getting caught in small firefights, until finally the company blundered into the West Nova Scotia Regiment's lines on the south side of The Gully looking across to Casa Berardi. By the time the company realized its position, Triquet's company was far forward, engaged, as he later wrote, in “one long Calvary.” Every foot forward was won in blood.
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As the Canadians closed on the road, a young woman gripping a small child in each hand popped out of the ground in the kill zone between them and the Germans. She ran toward the Canadian line, dragging the children with her. Every soldier suddenly held his fire until the trio passed through the Van Doos and scampered into cover behind their position. As if by pre-arranged signal, Germans and Canadians simultaneously went back to trying to kill each other.
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Triquet's men at last threw the Germans back and gained the Ortona-Orsogna lateral road. Fifteen men had fallen, including two platoon commanders. Lieutenant Marcel Richard, who had been shot in the collarbone, walked back to the Van Doos main lines on his own. He entered Allard's command post. Richard was as white as a ghost, and blood dribbled through the dressing over the bullet wound. Drawing himself stiffly to attention, Richard saluted with his left hand. Because of the wound, he was unable to lift his right. The young man asked in a steady voice for permission to be evacuated. Allard hurried to get the officer's dressing changed and had him taken to the aid post by jeep.

Allard soon went forward to personally assess the battle. On the track running across The Gully, he saw a thin line of khaki-clothed bodies stretching to the Ortona-Orsogna lateral. Triquet's dead served as route markers for tracking the line of attack.
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At 0830, ‘C' Company and Smith's tanks began a long, bloody advance toward the tall manor house of Casa Berardi. It stood 2,000 yards away. The small force fought its way through country devastated by more than a week of air and artillery bombardment. It was “a wasteland of trees with split limbs, burnt out vehicles, dead animals, and cracked shells of houses. Every tree and house was defended by
machine-guns and tanks with the support of self-propelled guns; the stronger positions were attacked by Shermans while the infantry cleaned out what remained; two more Mark IV Specials were knocked out.”
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The dwindling French-Canadian force was protected on either flank by a wall of explosives and shrapnel called down by the FOO, Captain Bob Donald. Smith's tanks were consequently freed to concentrate fire to the front. This was critical to breaking German resistance. Triquet's casualties continued to mount. His last platoon commander was wounded. He had to evacuate him with one soldier, who was also escorting two German prisoners. Before noon, Triquet reorganized his remaining thirty men into two platoons led by sergeants. They were still well short of Casa Berardi and now surrounded on all sides by a determined enemy. “The safest place for us is the objective,” he told the men.
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Buttoned up inside his tank, Smith could not always see critical targets through the viewing slit. To get his attention, Triquet would jump up on the Sherman and drop gravel through the open turret hatch onto Smith's head. When the man poked his head out of the hatch, Triquet pointed out the target he wanted destroyed. Smith obliged with pleasure. When his men hesitated in the face of particularly stiff resistance, Triquet yelled, “They can't shoot. Never mind them! Come on!”
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His men followed.

Triquet's headquarters group was cut to pieces. Only his orderly remained. The radio was smashed. He had to rely on Smith's tank radio to pass reports back to the battalion. Meanwhile the FOO, Donald, and his signaller, who was bent double under the weight of the heavy #18 radio strapped to his back, scrambled through the sparse roadside vegetation. Moving constantly, Donald continued to keep the shrinking force ringed by artillery fire. The “artillery,” wrote Van Doos Lance Corporal E. Bluteau after the battle, “hammers without stop the German positions and I can say that the enemy doesn't like it, and that, if we get out of this impasse, the artillery will have a large share of the credit.”
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Two hundred yards short of Casa Berardi, ‘C' Company “was caught in a severe barrage” of fire from around the manor house. Only twenty-one Van Doos and five tanks were left. Ammunition was short, with no possibility of resupply. The enemy were engaging
with tanks, numerous machine guns, and snipers. A Mark IV charged down the road. Smith blinded it with a smoke shell, while another Sherman fired down the roadway, using the road verge as a guiding line for its fire toward the target. When the tank's third shell struck the German tank, it burst into flames. At a range of 600 yards, a Mark IV Special was destroyed in an olive grove.
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On the Canadian side, Lieutenant S.C. Campbell was fatally wounded when a mortar shell struck his tank turret, Lieutenant D. MacGregor received a scalp wound from a sniper's bullet that pierced his steel helmet. Another tank was immobilized when a track was shot out. The crew were out of ammunition and unable to escape. They would hide in the tank for the next three days because there were so many Germans around it was impossible to escape. Only two tank officers were still in action, Major Smith and Lieutenant Harrod. Four tanks remained.
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