by Mark Zuehlke
Inside Nissoria, ‘D’ Company had come under increasingly heavy fire and then discovered that the village’s eastern exit was “a natural defile . . . well covered” by German fire. “Rather than attempt to break out of the town at this point,” Lithgow “swung his troops to the left and ordered the advance to continue out the north side of the town. An order to ‘Push on’ given by Colonel Crowe over the wireless failed to reach ‘D’ Company and as a result, ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C’ companies moved to the right and bypassing the German positions sped through the hills toward Agira. It was at this time that the battle broke into two distinct phases. It was almost impossible to shout now for the rattle of machine guns and the constant ‘crump’ of mortar fire and the high pitched ‘crack’ of the 75[-millimetre] guns erased all other sounds.
“The move of ‘D’ Company was carried out, but not without confusion, for changes of plan in the middle of a battle are difficult of execution. By about 1630 . . . a small party of ‘D’ Company personnel were gathered in the valley just east of the town and about two hundred yards north of the axis. On the road were several burning Shermans ... all victims of an enemy gun apparently situated near the red building.”
Lithgow led his men up the hill and “in extended line they clambered up the terraces to the crest and then moved southward towards the road. A silence had dropped around the battle as they crept forward . . . Suddenly a shout. [Corporal F.R. Hawke] had spotted Germans behind a waist high rock wall about thirty feet from the party. They had lain ‘doggo’ until now, when a hail of ‘potato mashers’ [stick grenades] and Schmeisser fire...opened” up. “A battle erupted at once with grenades, rifles and Tommy guns being used freely. [Corporal] Hawke distinguished himself in this action and was awarded the Military Medal. All at once, off to the right near the road, with a labouring whine, a [Mark] III tank appeared, machine-gunning the grape vines in which our men were crouched. Armed only with rifles and Tommy guns, the party was forced to withdraw to the bottom of the hill and there the seven men gathered.”
Lithgow had no idea where the rest of his company had got to, but from all around there were sounds of Canadian and German weapons being fired. So he knew the company was still in the fight.30
THE FEARS OF Kitching, Graham, Galloway, and other infantry officers had been fully realized. Having pulled well ahead of the infantry, the barrage had rolled over the Germans dug in to the east of Nissoria, and once it passed they tumbled out of shelters and brought weapons to bear. It was a strong, well-positioned force, concentrated on the very objectives that the RCR was to have won—two hills either side of the road to the east of the village, one of which had a red house on top of it. The force consisted of two companies from 2nd Battalion of the 15th Panzer Grenadier Division’s 104th Panzer Grenadier Regiment and smaller units from the 1st and 3rd battalions. There were also a number of the division’s artillery subunits and several tanks.31 As always, the Panzer Grenadiers were amply equipped with the deadly MG 34 and newer-version MG 42 machine guns, Schmeisser submachine guns, and numerous light and heavy mortars. The artillery units had positioned a mix of 75-millimetre and 88-millimetre guns so that they were able to bring deadly fire onto the road from a variety of angles.
‘A’ Squadron had approached Nissoria with No. 1 Troop to the right and No. 5 Troop to the left of the road. Just before the village, heavy mortar fire had bracketed the tankers. Then No. 1 Troop literally “ran into a brick wall which blocked the way. This was due to poor reconnaissance beforehand,” Sergeant J.A. “Les” Allen wrote later. Both tank troops were forced to advance “down the main street of the town which was a bottleneck.” As the tanks waddled out of the village in single file, they drove into the middle of the German’s designated killing ground about a mile east of Nissoria and entered into a sharp exchange with the enemy guns. Allen’s tank, in the lead, was hit by a 75-millimetre shell. He spotted a gun firing “through a gap between two houses.” His gunner replied with a high-explosive shell that destroyed the German anti-tank gun. Coming to a corner in the road with stone walls on either side blocking any possibility of heading cross-country, Allen hesitated to make the turn without knowing what might be lurking beyond it.
Behind him, a Sherman burst into flames after being hit by an 88-millimetre round. Allen had his gunner shoot high-explosive rounds at the hill on the left in an attempt to neutralize the fire coming from there. When the tanks behind also directed their fire against that front, he swung the turret frontward again so its main gun was covering that direction. Realizing something had to be done to get the tanks moving, Allen called ‘A’ Squadron commander Major J.D. “Jack” Pearson on the wireless and secured permission to venture out on foot to see what lay beyond the corner. Dashing up a small hill on the right, he spotted two anti-tank guns and marked their position. Back in his Sherman, Allen provided Pearson with the map references pinpointing the enemy guns and asked for artillery to fire on them. Pearson made the request, but no artillery support was ever provided.
With no room to manoeuvre, ‘A’ Squadron was taking a beating. The Sherman just ahead of Pearson’s took a hit that killed both the driver and co-driver and wounded the rest of the crew. As the three injured survivors abandoned the tank, a sniper opened fire and the crew commander was wounded a second time. Then an exploding shell tore Trooper Frank Henry Granite’s leg off. Pearson had his Sherman crowd up alongside where Granite had fallen. The major jumped out of the tank to try to stop the blood gushing out of the stump and give Granite a morphine injection. A machine gun shrieked out a burst, and Pearson was thrown to the ground by the impact of two bullets. One pierced his thigh, the other his hip.
Inside Pearsons’s tank “Ajax,” his co-driver had opened the escape hatch in the floor while the driver backed up the Sherman and then drove forward so it straddled the wounded major. The co-driver then reached out and dragged him through the hatch. While this rescue was going on, the tank’s gunner had been firing smoke rounds and his machine gun simultaneously to provide cover for the two wounded men from the other tank who were capable of walking. When the rescue was complete, Ajax kept backing up, the wounded keeping its armoured bulk between them and the German snipers and machine gunners. As the tank was working its way past Captain Bilodeau’s Sherman, an 88-millimetre round struck the turret and shattered the gunner’s periscope. Unable to see to aim, his guns were rendered useless. Trying to crowd by Bilodeau’s tank, Ajax’s one track crumbled the soft road shoulder and the tank half-slid into a ditch. When the driver tried to regain the road, Ajax overbalanced and rolled onto its side. The gunner, co-driver, and driver managed to drag Pearson out of the Sherman while the loader-operator ran into Nissoria to look for medical help for the wounded major.
Unable to find any medical personnel, the loader-operator came back empty-handed and found the other men had taken cover near Bilodeau’s tank. When the fire eased slightly they carried Pearson into Nissoria and eventually found the tank regiment’s newly established Regimental Aid Post. Pearson would survive his wounds, but Trooper Granite perished.
With Pearson wounded, Bilodeau assumed command of the squadron. Soon after, his tank was targeted by an 88-millimetre gun. A first shell struck the left side of the turret, breaking loose the ready-ammunition rack and its fittings. The concussion also slightly injured the loader-operator, driver, and co-driver. The latter two were in the process of climbing out of their respective hatches when a second shell penetrated the top corner of the driver compartment. Both men escaped safely, but the shell set the tank on fire. Five more shells hit the tank in quick succession. Bilodeau was wounded and bailed out, thinking he was the last man to leave. Realizing the loader-operator, Trooper H.R. Betts, was still inside, the driver—Sergeant Cushing—went back inside to help the more seriously injured man escape. As Cushing re-emerged, a machine-gun burst ripped the Thompson submachine gun he was holding from his hands. Once everyone was clear of the tank, the men worked their way towards Nissoria under cover of the
continuing “dust and smoke from exploding [high-explosive] shells.”32
Command now devolved to Lieutenant Lou Maraskas, who yelled over the wireless net for everyone who could to “fall in and follow the band.” Maraskas then began jockeying his Sherman about in order to lead the rest of the squadron in a withdrawal to the western side of Nissoria.33
The battalion’s intelligence officer, Lieutenant O.L. Roberts, had gone forward in his tank with ‘A’ Squadron to provide a wireless link back to where Lieutenant Colonel Leslie Booth’s headquarters section had established itself on Nissoria’s western edge. In the ensuing shootout with the German anti-tank guns, his tank was hit and began to burn fiercely. After going back on foot to report what he knew of the situation, Roberts made three trips from the village into the battle zone to bring out wounded tankers. His bravery garnered a Military Cross.
Sergeant Allen, meanwhile, had lost touch with his own tank troop and ended up assembling an ad hoc one consisting of his tank and two from No. 5 Troop. Just as the three tank commanders finished netting their wireless sets in with each other, Allen spotted a German truck pulling out of a farmyard and heading past the corner he had been wary to turn. Aiming to knock out the truck, Allen rolled around the bend and into a vicious mêlée, with fire coming at him from all angles. The other two Canadian tanks came up on either side of his, and together the three Shermans blasted away at the virtual banquet of targets presented. Allen destroyed the truck and knocked out two light tanks with precision shooting. To the right, Sergeant Stewart destroyed a carrier and a half-track, while Corporal Ceasarine knocked out another half-track. That decided the matter, as suddenly the only fire coming their way was a few ineffectual bursts from light machine guns that pinged harmlessly off the armour.
Ordering the other two tanks to cover him, Allen led the way to the next bend in the road. “On rounding the corner, I saw an enemy tank and self-propelled gun which fired on me, but I managed to get one shot in before retiring. It was then decided to outflank that obstacle and we proceeded along a steep road to the right. My tank was fired on by an anti-tank gun from an unknown position and I replied with several shots in the general direction of his position. On finding that only nine rounds of H.E. remained in the tank, I ordered the crew to evacuate. Sgt. Stewart’s position seemed hopeless, although he was still firing, so I told him to evacuate. Cpl. Ceasarine’s tank had stalled and he also evacuated.”
The three non-commissioned officers told their crews to link up with the infantry and let them know they were staying near the tanks in hopes of recovering them once night fell. Soon after the twelve men headed off, however, they encountered some German Panzer Grenadiers and beat a hurried retreat to Nissoria. Allen, Stewart, and Ceasarine remained hidden near the tanks until darkness descended. They then crawled into their respective tanks, fired them up, and drove them to the battalion harbour area. Allen’s actions during this protracted fight earned a Military Medal.34
‘A’ Squadron’s fight cost it dearly. Ten Shermans had been knocked out, four men were dead, and another thirteen were wounded. Both its commander and second-in-command were among the casualties. It had also been a fight waged in isolation from the infantry, which had spent the afternoon and evening of July 24 locked in their own brutal struggle with the Panzer Grenadiers east of Nissoria.
[18]
Red Patch Devils
WHEN THE GERMANS had slashed into the Royal Canadian Regiment as it approached Nissoria, the battalion had effectively split into three groups. ‘D’ Company had passed through the village and out to the left towards the hill topped by the red house. The other three rifle companies had broken to the right, rounded Nissoria, and were south of the road leading to Agira. Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Crowe, meanwhile, had brought his battalion headquarters into Nissoria and paused among some buildings in the southeastern corner to establish wireless contact with the companies that were nowhere to be seen.
Having received confused reports that led him to believe ‘C’ Company had taken the hill to the right of the highway, which was its objective, Crowe ordered ‘A’ and ‘B’ companies to leapfrog past the hill positions and “push on.”1 The commanders of these two companies, Captain Slim Liddell and Captain Strome Galloway, had taken their men to ground when the heavy German mortar and artillery fire started falling. Liddell’s ‘A’ Company was to the south of Galloway’s men and the two officers had come together to figure out their next move when Crowe’s order came over the wireless. Seeing a heavily wooded gully running out in front of their position that seemed to trend south of the German strongpoints on the hills, they decided to follow it in hopes of outflanking the enemy.2
The two companies “streaked up” the gully and had soon reached the point where the battalion plan called for ‘C’ and ‘D’ companies to leapfrog them and lead the advance to Agira, which could be plainly seen a mile to the east.3 When Liddell and Galloway tried to report their success to Crowe, however, they were unable to establish wireless contact with battalion headquarters. Finally, they raised Captain Ian Hodson, who said he and ‘C’ Company had entered the same gully about an hour behind them and would be on their position soon.4
Back in Nissoria, Crowe was desperate to know what had happened to his missing rifle companies, which were out of wireless contact. Still convinced that ‘C’ Company had seized its objective hill, Crowe decided to go there and establish personal contact with Hodson. Assembling a party consisting of the battalion’s five signallers, the pioneer platoon commander, and two pioneers, he set out. The small group, heavily burdened by the wireless sets, climbed the hill only to find no sign of ‘C’ Company. No longer able to establish wireless contact with anyone, Crowe decided to push on to the position where ‘C’ and ‘D’ companies were to have passed through the other two. Undoubtedly that was where his lost companies would be found. As the party moved forward, it encountered the bodies of several dead Canadians, and Crowe took their presence on the hill as confirmation that the advance had proceeded according to plan. Nearing the top of a rise about three hundred yards south of the road, the party came under heavy rifle fire. Shouting “R-C-R!” to identify who they were, Crowe kept going until a machine gun suddenly opened up. Crowe was hit and wounded. Grabbing a rifle out of the hands of one of his signallers, Crowe charged the gun alone and was immediately shot dead. The signaller, Private Frederick Arthur Turner, was killed crawling forward to retrieve Crowe’s body. Private Douglas Melvin Cummings was also shot down and killed. The remainder of the group reeled back to Nissoria.5
On the other side of the road, ‘D’ Company’s situation had rapidly deteriorated as Captain Charles Lithgow lost contact with most of his platoons when they moved in extended line up the hill and directly into an intense firefight. Forced to withdraw, Lithgow had ended up at the base of the hill with only seven men. Deciding to link up with ‘C’ Company, which according to the plan should have captured the hill on the opposite side of the road, Lithgow headed in that direction. Along the way he gathered in a few more men, bringing his strength to fifteen. “In the gathering dusk, and by flickering light cast by the burning tanks the men crossed the road and commenced to climb the other hill.” They quickly came under machine-gun fire from the same positions that had engaged Crowe’s party, but carried the German position with “a spirited charge” and took seventeen prisoners. Expecting to soon be contacted by men from ‘C’ Company, Lithgow had his men set up a defensive perimeter to await their arrival. As the night drew on, however, and no Canadians appeared, Lithgow decided their position was too vulnerable and led his men to the village. Here, they were met by officers of battalion headquarters. “Voices normally quiet seemed more subdued than usual and the reason for this was readily discovered.” Lithgow considered Crowe’s death “a bitter blow for [he] had lived for the Regiment and his place would not easily be filled.”6
UNDER A NIGHT sky sparkling with stars, three company commanders, all vying for promotion to major, stood next to
an olive grove and weighed their options. Captain Ian Hodson was the senior officer, though only by a midge, and Galloway had more combat experience, having led a British company in North Africa. Liddell, too, was in the running. But Crowe had made it a competition. How they performed in combat would dictate who got the major’s crowns. In this operation, he had emphasized that, due to the risk of moving into the fire zone of the artillery barrage, they were not to advance beyond the current line until authorized by battalion headquarters. Ahead of them was a sunken road that seemed to lead right to Agira, and they knew that for the moment the Germans were unaware of their presence. A hard drive by what amounted to about three hundred men and they might well have the damned place. But they had their orders, sent down from division to brigade to battalion: only proceed if the plan played out according to the script, which had gone into the shredder within minutes of their crossing the start line. Although the complex and rigid artillery and aerial bombardment seemed to have largely fizzled out, the three captains could not be sure that another phase might not kick in at any moment. Nobody had seen any sign of the medium bombers that should have turned Agira into a cauldron of fire, so they could only assume the planes were still to come.
Time and again their wireless signallers tried to raise someone, anyone, but without success. They needed guidance, Hodson decided, and sent ‘C’ Company’s Sergeant Major D.M. “Danny” Stillwell to find out why battalion headquarters would not respond to any of their wireless transmissions.7 Meanwhile, the three company commanders agreed to send forth cautious patrols to test the defences before Agira. Hodson instinctively believed that not going for Agira with the force at hand was wrong, but they were all just captains and throwing their three companies into the face of the Germans likely defending the hilltop town might doom them to destruction. And should they survive, such a screw-up would put paid to any dreams of promotion. So the captains waited for CSM Stillwell to return with orders, the sensible decision under the circumstances.8
