Ortona (53 page)

Tonight the Highlanders wore no kilts. They moved quietly, each
maintaining a space of only inches between himself and the back of the man in front of him. As they passed, one Hasty P muttered, “Good Christ! The Glamour Boys have gone crazy.”
¹

The soldier was right. If successful, the Highlanders' plan would be hailed as a daring gamble. Failure would result in tragedy, perhaps the destruction of the regiment. The Highlanders had been ordered to take an incredible risk.

Lieutenant Colonel Ian Johnston had not wanted his regiment to make this attack. The evening before, he had warned 1st Canadian Infantry Brigade commander Lieutenant Colonel Dan Spry that a night attack along the ridgeline could not be undertaken unless the battalion could conduct a visual reconnaissance from the attack's start line prior to the onset of darkness. Because the Hasty P's had been delayed in capturing their objectives, such reconnaissance had proved impossible. The Highlanders reached the start line only after darkness had concealed all land features and the enemy positions undoubtedly lurking beyond the perimeter held by the Hasty P's. Johnston had argued that the attack should be cancelled. Spry passed Johnston's request up the line to divisional headquarters. Major General Chris Vokes and his staff had come back with an order to proceed with the fantastic plan. Vokes wanted to keep the momentum of the three-phase attack moving. To wait for morning would be to allow the 1st Parachute Division time to reorganize and possibly to block 1 CIB's plan to close the roads north of Ortona.
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Johnston and his company commanders were forced to plan a surprise attack in little more than an hour. Aerial photos of the area showed a meandering footpath that seemed to bear generally toward their objective — the ridge's highest point, which overlooked the hamlets of San Nicola and San Tomasso. Surrounding the path was a sea of mud and vineyards. Trying to move in any normal attack formation through the mud and vines in darkness would be impossible. The footpath, however, would offer firmer ground over which men could move in a more organized fashion. If the path was unguarded or only lightly guarded, the Highlanders might get through. There was a slim chance they could surprise the enemy. It was a dreadful night, the worst to date. Would the Germans not be keeping their heads down, trying to stay warm and dry? That was the faint hope.

It was a mile to the objective. If they ran into more than token
opposition or were discovered while still too far from the objective, the attack would be a disaster. Entering a firefight from a single-file formation would inevitably end in mass confusion, with the companies all intermixed. A retreat would surely turn into a rout, with every man fending for himself. Casualties would be terrible, and the probability of the entire battalion ending up dead, wounded, or as prisoners was too awful to even contemplate.

Decision made and preparation complete, Johnston gave Major John Clarke a grin, shook the rain from his helmet, and said in a surprisingly cheery voice, “Lead on. Let's go!”
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Clarke, commanding ‘A' Company, was the first man in the line to leave the start position. Everything depended on him. The line of march was ‘A' Company leading, ‘C' Company immediately behind, then battalion HQ, ‘D' Company, and finally ‘B' Company.
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When the last man in ‘B' Company stepped off from the start line, the battalion was swallowed by the darkness.

The column advanced at a slow, shuffling pace punctuated by sudden halts and long pauses. It was so dark that each soldier clutched the bayonet scabbard of the man before him. This meant the entire line was physically linked one man to the other from head to tail. In the lead, Clarke felt his way up the trail. Seeing the path itself was impossible; only the footing warned if he was losing the track. On either side was deep mud, while on the trail the mud was slightly firmer. To use a flashlight would instantly betray their position to the Germans. Not a single star glimmered through the overhanging cloud. The rain was a mixed blessing. It soaked and chilled them to the bone, but it also splashed down noisily on the surrounding vines and other foliage, concealing the small muffled noises that 400 men could not avoid making. A splash here when a man stepped into a puddle, the clink of metal when a grenade bumped a rifle barrel, a soft curse when a soldier stumbled and almost fell. Despite the cold that caused the men to shiver, sweat streamed down many faces.

From the aerial photos it had been impossible to develop a list of recognizable landmarks to mark their progress. Clarke could only follow the trail. He could only hope that no unknown path crossed the one they followed. To take a wrong turn and become lost would
mean disaster. To lose the trail and end up blundering in the vineyards would also spell disaster. All around him catastrophe lurked in unknown, unseen ways. The pressure the officer was under was almost unbearable.

Every few minutes, the surrounding countryside was softly illuminated by the glimmering light of a distant artillery burst or the flash of a battery firing. Sometimes the light came from in front of them, the fire of a German battery. Other times they were backlit by a Canadian battery firing. Each time they froze, tried to become statues who blended with their dark surroundings. Clarke used the brief seconds of dim light to try to orient himself.

They were about 700 yards out when the rattle of gunfire broke out behind them. The Hasty P's were staving off the first paratrooper infiltration party. At least some of the Germans were active. The threat of the Highlanders bumping into a German patrol using the trail heightened.

Out of the gloom, Clarke saw a house standing next to the path before him. To get to their objective, the entire battalion would have to walk past the structure. Clarke halted the column and advanced on the house with the leading platoon. A German sentry hunkered against the rain in front of a door. One of the Canadians crept up, jumped the man, and knifed him to death. The other soldiers moved quickly to cover every ground-floor door and window. Then a section pushed the front door open and lunged into the house. In the big central room, a group of fifteen paratroopers sat around a large table. Their shirts were open, weapons leaning against walls or hanging from pegs, Christmas parcels and bottles of wine crowding the table top. The Germans stared blankly at the dripping, filthy Canadians. Then two of the paratroopers awoke from their surprise and sprang for their weapons. Clarke's men killed the two with bayonet thrusts. The surviving paratroopers quickly put their hands up and surrendered.

The prisoners were bundled out of the house and sent back under guard down the side of the long line. They had been warned that if any of them tried to escape they would all immediately be killed. They would meet the same fate if any noise or alarm was raised. Clarke led the way again toward the objective. Soon another house was encountered. This time it was unguarded. The Canadians burst
in and bagged six prisoners without a fight, rousting the dazed, sleeping Germans from their beds. They were passed back down the line and escorted from its tail through the night to the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment's position.

The column pressed on, moving jerkily from one prolonged halt to another. There came a halt that was longer than any before. Then word came down the line from Clarke to Johnston. The major thought he was lost. Johnston and his intelligence officer hurried up the line to confer with Clarke. They found him in a small farmhouse. Two paratroopers sat in a corner of the main room. Both men were bleeding from minor bayonet wounds suffered in a short scuffle over possession of the house.

The three officers risked a flashlight inside the concealment of the house. They played the light back and forth from aerial photo to map. After a few minutes, Johnston and Clarke realized the Highlanders were not lost at all. Instead, they were standing precisely on the objective.
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The time was 1940. It had taken the Highlanders three hours and forty minutes to cover a distance of one mile to their objective on the ridgeline summit overlooking San Tomasso and San Nicola.
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Phase two of 1 CIB's offensive task had been achieved without a single shot fired. Remarkably, the 1st Parachute Division remained unaware of the presence of the Highlanders. Johnston set his men to work establishing a circular perimeter around the little farmhouse. The Highlanders' job was now to hold their position and wait for the Royal Canadian Regiment to carry out phase three. Midnight came and went. The Highlanders hunkered in their water-logged, hastily dug slit trenches. It was Christmas Eve.

At 0300, Johnston ordered ‘D' Company to send a thirty-man patrol back to the battalion's rear-area headquarters with the order for a party to bring the mortars, antitank guns, medium machine guns, and rations up to the forward position. The plan was for the patrol to follow a more direct, wider dirt track back to the Hasty P's and then to the rear-area HQ. The patrol set off, but returned only an hour and a half later with the report that the paratroopers had this route heavily covered. There was no way to get supporting arms up to the battalion, as the narrow trail used earlier was too poor to handle such heavy traffic. Luckily, the patrol had only briefly engaged in a firefight with the Germans, and had withdrawn without betraying the
battalion's position or strength to the paratroopers. The battalion remained hidden, but Johnston knew this would change at daybreak.
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At first light on Christmas Eve Day, the Royal Canadian Regiment moved into the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment's perimeter. RCR commander Major Strome Galloway's orders were to advance through the Hasty P's to a position just south of where the 48th Highlanders were located. The RCR would then continue moving through the 48th Highlander ranks to cut the main coast highway north of Ortona. There would be no pre-artillery barrage, because the 48th Highlanders were positioned in front of the attacking force. However, the battalion would have four forward observation officers, one with Galloway and one accompanying each of the three leading company commanders. Their presence was intended to guarantee the ability of the artillery to bring immediate and well-targeted fire on any German strongpoints that might oppose the attack. The Ontario Tanks located near the Hasty P's were to try and lumber through the mud in support.
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From the outset, phase three of the 1st Canadian Infantry Brigade's offensive plan, aimed at encircling the paratroopers stationed in Ortona, was a cobbled-together and ill-planned effort. Even with reinforcements, the RCR was still seriously understrength from the mauling it had taken during the earlier fights at Royal Canadian Avenue and in front of The Gully. Galloway's men would be attempting to cross heavily contested ground. Throughout the night, the Hasty P's had fought off numerous attempted infiltrations by the paratroopers. Just before dawn, its right and front flanks had been struck by determined counterattacks. Both had been repelled, but the attacks showed that the Germans were lurking in the very terrain through which the RCR was expected to attack.
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The mud would slow the attackers, while the vineyards sheltered the German defenders. Without the protection of a creeping barrage, the infantry would be exposed to enemy fire for the entire forward advance.

Galloway and Hasty P's commander Lieutenant Colonel Bert Kennedy climbed into a loft in the top of a tall house within the Canadian perimeter. From this perch, they were able to observe the ground over which the RCR would attack. The plan called for the
battalion to push along the better-developed track that the Highlanders had found heavily covered by Germans during the previous night. Neither man liked the look of the terrain or the track. Galloway summoned the RCR company commanders into the loft and pointed out the route they were to follow in the attack. ‘A' Company, commanded by Captain Dick Dillon, was to lead. Dillon, Galloway wrote in his diary, “was incredulous at the ground he had to cross.”
¹⁰
Dillon's men were to move up a small gully for a short distance, then cross over its crest and follow the muddy, vineyard-bordered track to link up with the 48th Highlanders.