Ortona (40 page)

RCR Major Strome Galloway was glad to hear that Vokes was finally realizing The Gully would never be breached directly. His diary notation for December 15 read, “A frontal attack across these vine-clad gullies just won't work. A new plan is needed.”
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Before Vokes would give the new plan a try, though, there would be one last attack. On December 15, the Carleton and York Regiment jumped off at 0730 hours in the wake of an hour-long artillery bombardment. ‘B' and ‘C' companies were in the vanguard, supported on the right flank by the Bren carrier platoon. As always, the artillery
barrage had failed to neutralize the Germans, and the Carleton and Yorks had gone no more than 200 yards before the advance withered in the face of a hail of machine-gun fire. In little more than an hour, the attack was scrubbed. Twelve men were dead, including three officers. Another officer and twenty-seven other men were wounded.
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One of the officers killed, Captain Elliott Maxwell, had earlier voiced a presentiment that he would die in the attack.
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Since 3 CIB entered the line, its West Nova Scotia and Carleton and York regiments had gained virtually nothing, but had suffered many casualties. The brigade intelligence officer wrote afterward that both battalions were “pretty shaken. . . . In general, reinforcements which were brought up were thoroughly scared by the stories they were told before they began the fight. Little care was displayed for the comfort of the troops. No rum or dry clothes were available and the men were unable to wash or shave. The forward companies bore the full brunt, and altogether battle administration had broken down.”
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Reinforcements were also insufficient to build the battalions back to effective fighting strength. The war diarist for 3 CIB noted on December 15 that “all units . . . were tired, under strength and nervous from the days [of] very heavy fighting and shelling they had been through. Reinforcements disappeared as rate of casualties was twice as high as number of reinforcements.”
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The continued stand of the Royal 22e Regiment at Casa Berardi was an inspiration to the entire division. The deteriorating morale which the intelligence officer noted in his general assessment of 3 CIB's state on December 15 excluded the Van Doos. Although similarly shaken by casualties, the officer noted, they “had all the confidence in the world. They were now in a more favourable position for killing the enemy than ever before held.”
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While Royal 22e Regiment's morale remained high, they were far from possessing a favourable position for killing Germans. The regiment was under siege. In the morning of December 15, ‘D' Company, commanded by Captain Garceau, took point on an assault toward Cider Crossroads. His company was butchered by mortar and machine guns. Casualties in the company hit 50 percent. Captain Triquet's ‘C' Company, numbering only fourteen men, and Major
Smith's tanks tried next. They failed to get past the start line. The “strain and fatigue,” Triquet wrote later, “were overpowering.”
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Triquet spent the rest of the day running from one slit trench and shell hole to the next, trying to keep up the spirits of his boys. Round-faced, with a thin dark moustache and a genuine laughing twinkle in his eye, Triquet was an inspiration. What he didn't show his men was that spiritually he was being torn apart. Seeing all the dead men of his company and those of the other Van Doos companies scattered around Casa Berardi, Triquet was fighting to stave off despair. Burying the dead was impossible because of the raging battle. “I could only hang on by speaking to the few who did survive,” Triquet said. At one point, Triquet heard someone mewling softly as he passed a slit trench. Going over, he discovered one of his young soldiers had been blinded hours before by a wound. Mortified that the boy had gone untreated for so long, Triquet asked why he had not called for help earlier. The wounded man said everybody was “too busy.”
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Their thirst was agonizing. German snipers had the well completely covered, and all the Van Doos' canteens were empty. The wounded suffered the most. Ammunition was desperately short. Smith sent men back to loot the nearest knocked-out tank for shells, but there were still too few. If the Germans threw tanks against their position, there would only be a couple of minutes' worth of shells available to throw them back. After that, the four Shermans would be impotent chunks of steel. The Van Doos stripped the many wounded gathered in the stable and cellar of bullets and grenades. The harvest was pathetic. Even Triquet could hardly find words of inspiration around which the defenders could rally. “Ils ne passeront pas” was all he could offer. It was enough. The men grinned at him and stared over their gunsights. If the Germans came they would die.

At 1515 they did come. Two hundred infantry and several tanks drove directly up the road from Cider Crossroads toward the small island of defenders. Royal Canadian Horse Artillery Acting Captain Harald Martin was on high ground overlooking Casa Berardi. With Donald dead, Martin was the only remaining forward observation officer. His section came under heavy mortar and machine-gun fire. Snipers seemed to be hidden everywhere. In an action that would earn him the Military Cross, Martin ignored the enemy fire, ran up to
an exposed outcrop where he could see the enemy advance, and brought accurate artillery fire down upon it. The maelstrom he called down shattered the German counterattack. But Martin had exposed himself. The Germans swung an antitank gun his way and let loose.
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Martin was hit by shrapnel in both legs.
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He refused to be relieved, lying on the overlook and continuing to direct accurate fire on the counterattack.

During the day, the RCHA fired 5,938 rounds in support of the Van Doos and the rest of 3 CIB. In a fifteen-minute period during the counterattack, the RCHA threw 1,500 rounds on the Germans in response to Martin's firing directions. Because of the difficulty moving the shells from the roads to the gun pits, most of these shells were carried on the run from the roadside for up to several hundred yards before being almost immediately shoved into the gun breeches and fired off. The gunners were staggering with exhaustion when the firing mission was over.

Looking out from his tank, Smith thought the shelling brought down on the Germans looked like “a large porridge pot bubbling.”
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With the help of the artillery, the Van Doos and the Ontario Tanks managed to stave off the counterattack. Casualties were heavy on both sides. When the attack broke, only seventy-nine infantry from all ranks manned the perimeter at Casa Berardi. Eighty-eight men were casualties. The aid posts in the cellar of the manor house and the stables overflowed with screaming and moaning men.
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As darkness cloaked the battlefield, Smith could hear the Germans moving across the field and picking up their wounded. It sounded as if there were many of them.
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Major Jean Allard organized the rear headquarters into a rifle company. Cooks, typists, quartermasters, mechanics, and other rear-area personnel grabbed rifles, awkwardly fit themselves into combat webbing, and prepared to move out. A supply train of ammunition-laden mules and tanks carrying munitions for the tank squadrons at Casa Berardi formed up. Food, medical supplies, and replacement radios were jammed into the remaining spaces inside the tanks or lashed onto the outside hulls. Nobody knew whether the supply column could get through. Allard's small relief force set out well into the night and passed through to Casa Berardi without incident. The Germans slipped away from it, like so many ghosts. Allard organized
the evacuation of the most badly wounded on the mules. He also delivered relief orders to Lieutenant Colonel Paul Bernatchez.
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At first Bernatchez protested, but finally Allard convinced him that he should obey the ordered three weeks' leave in Cairo.
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The Van Doos' commander was exhausted, probably suffering battle fatigue.
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Allard took over. RCHA liaison to the Van Doos, Major “Duff” Mitchell, came up and established an observation post in the upper storey of the manor house.

Allard arrived at Casa Berardi with more than supplies and a means to evacuate the most badly wounded and the Van Doos commander. He brought orders directing the survivors to hold Casa Berardi at all costs for forty-eight hours.
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It would take this long for 1 CIB to organize the flanking assault now understood to be the only means to crack The Gully. Hearing this news, Triquet stretched out on an old bed in the part of the manor house that served as battalion HQ. He slept in a comalike state for twenty hours.
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The defensive strength of Casa Berardi now rested on the supporting tanks, rather than the Van Doos. Although all four companies were present, their combined strength did not equal one full-strength company. Only seventy-nine men remained in the line. They took up defensive positions behind the tanks, instead of the normal procedure which would have seen them out front protecting the armour. Yet despite their exhaustion and reduced numbers, the soldiers in Royal 22e Regiment never doubted their ability to hold Casa Berardi against anything the Germans might throw their way.
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The forty-eight-hour pause was necessary. Unprecedented use of artillery had drained ammunition reserves. Every shell had to be brought thirty-five miles from the Sangro to the twenty-five-pounder gun positions. The daily requirement for the Canadian artillery regiments was 16,000 shells.
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From the roads, the ammunition had to be carried through a deepening sea of mud. During the past few days, the recoil of the guns had embedded them so deeply in the muck that they had to be winched back to the surface. The gunners were exhausted and the delay gave them a necessary respite.

Not that the guns ceased firing. The thump of German and Canadian artillery continued to be heard across the entirety of the battlefield. Both sides were conducting aggressive patrolling; both sides continued to try and destroy known front-line strong points.
The rate of fire lessened, but the battlefield was never silent or free from danger.

For fifteen-year-old Antonio Di Cesare, artillery was more of a danger than ever. Villa Deo, near Villa Grande, was being fired on more often by the Canadian guns. Some distance behind Villa Grande, the Germans had set up light artillery and heavy mortars. Their fire attracted counterfire. Enough of this fell short to make the fields surrounding Villa Deo dangerous, so the civilians no longer tried to work them. They stayed indoors most of the time. They waited for the Allies to come and liberate the village. They waited for the war to pass.
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To the immediate east of a ravine bordering Ortona, former navy gunner Antonio D'Intino refused to be driven from the fields. It was now more necessary than ever for him to tend the olives and vineyards. Explosions and shrapnel from artillery inflicted terrible damage on his plants. Pruning and staking were required to save them. The lines that held up the grape vines had to be constantly replaced. The family farm was pocked with shell holes. Then there were the dud rounds in the mud. Some disappeared entirely, forming deadly mines that he had to be careful not to unearth or trigger when tilling the soil. Others lay with detonators exposed. Having handled munitions for years in the navy, D'Intino was not scared by these shells. The twenty-eight-year-old would defuse them himself and render them harmless. If for some reason that appeared too dangerous, he would use some of the explosive from shells he had dismantled to blow the new one up.