The Last Great Cavalryman

by Richard Mead

  Dick remained very busy in spite of the halt to operations. On 11 January sixty Members of Parliament arrived for a visit to Eighth Army, where they spent three days. On the day after they left Dick paid his first visit to XIII Corps, which now comprised 1 and 78 Divisions and 6 Armoured Division. The infantry divisions were new to him as was Keith Arbuthnott of 78 Division, but Charles Loewen had been his Chief Gunner in X Corps. The armoured division had been commanded since Templer’s accident by Horatius ‘Nap’ Murray, an infantryman who had served as a brigade commander in Normandy, whom Dick immediately identified as ‘a good chap’.7 The corps was still up in the Monte Grande massif in the Apennines, which required a great deal of driving in open jeeps over frozen mountain roads. Dick developed a serious chilblain condition, one foot swelling up and requiring him to stay at his HQ until it subsided. Clark presented him with a pair of winter boots, ‘rubber soles & feet & leather uppers, very ugly, but will take endless thick socks inside!’8 They did not prove quite up to the job, however, so Dick was delighted to be given ‘a splendid pair of huge RAF fleece lined boots’9 which resolved the problem.

  There were a few other distractions, including a ceremonial visit to the Republic of San Marino on 3 February, where he was entertained by the Captains Regent to a large lunch, followed by a reception at the palace. On the following day he presented the Medaglio d’Oro to Bulow,10 the celebrated partisan leader of the Garibaldi Brigade which had participated in the liberation of Ravenna: Dick noted that there were ‘six Amazons on parade’. However, with no major operations planned until the spring and the pressure thus significantly, albeit temporarily, diminished, he felt that he should be able to get away for ten days’ leave in England in late February and still return in time to carry out the detailed planning for what he hoped would be the final battle. He wrote to Lettice to say that he expected to arrive on 24 February.

  On 12 February Dick flew to Rome and Florence for a series of meetings, accompanied by Hugh Smith, whom he had welcomed back warmly as an additional ADC for his personal if not his military qualities. At midnight on 17 February, two days after his return, he was woken to be given a signal from Brooke to say that his mother, Minnie, was dangerously ill. He brought forward his departure, leaving the following morning for Florence and flying from there to Alexander’s HQ at Caserta. A Mitchell bomber had been arranged for him by John Slessor, the AOC-in-C, and he left the next day but had to land in Lyons due to very poor visibility. He finally arrived at Lyneham on the afternoon of Tuesday, 20 February, where another plane was waiting to fly him to Henstridge, the closest airfield to Stowell. Sadly, he was too late to see Minnie, who had died at midnight on the Sunday.

  Minnie had played an enormous role in Dick’s early life, especially after the separation from Walter, and had been a great support right up to the time of his marriage. He was to say later how much he regretted having seen so little of her after 1933, with two overseas tours to Egypt followed by the War. Minnie and Lettice had not really seen eye to eye for most of this time and Lettice had never really enjoyed her visits to Stowell. However, a more equable relationship developed between the two women during the War, possibly because they had not seen a great deal of each other. The lease at College House was due to come up in the spring of 1945 and Runwick had been sold. During the autumn of 1944 Dick had been working on Lettice to persuade her to move to Stowell, which she was initially reluctant to contemplate, but by the end of the year she had agreed to go there in March as a stopgap, pending a better understanding of Dick’s future. Circumstances had now determined that it was to be their home for the rest of their lives.

  Minnie’s funeral took place in Sherborne on 22 February, attended by many friends, including Mike Houston representing the 12th Lancers, to whom Minnie had devoted much time and among whose officers and men she had been deservedly popular. Dick and Lettice and the two younger children went back to College House on the following day and that weekend picked up the other boys from their schools, from which they had been allowed a week off. Dick’s leave was extended to two weeks, spent largely with the family, with only one day at the War Office, during which he met Brooke, other senior officers and the Secretary of State for War. Rollie Charrington was also there, now acting as Brooke’s ADC after the previous incumbent had died in an air crash.11 On 6 March Dick retraced his route back to Italy, seeing Alexander in Caserta and Clark in Florence before arriving back at his own HQ at Cesena.

  Chaper 22

  The Old Steeplechaser

  On two successive days in early April 1945 Dick addressed all the officers in Eighth Army down to the rank of lieutenant colonel. He brought them together in four groups, V and X Corps at Forli and 6 Armoured Division and his own Main and Rear HQs at Cesena on 4 April, the Polish Corps at Castrocaro and XIII Corps, now commanded by John Harding, in the mountains south of Imola on the following day. His purpose was to spell out very clearly his plan for the operation which he would be launching on 9 April, which he believed would lead, alongside Fifth US Army, to the final defeat of the German forces in Italy. Lieutenant Colonel ffrench-Blake, commanding the 17th/21st Lancers in 6 Armoured Division, described Dick’s opening words:

  In his quiet, almost apologetic voice, he said that the theatre had been stripped of troops for France; that the army was like an old steeplechaser, full of running, but rather careful; that it was his intention to destroy the Germans south of the Po, rather than allow them to withdraw to further defence lines in the north, on the Adige, and finally within the ‘fortress’ of the Austrian Alps. The plan was then outlined.

  The horse-racing analogy was highly appropriate. Eighth Army was by a long way the oldest of Great Britain’s armies, having taken to the field in October 1941 in the Western Desert, where its advances and retreats had been jokingly known as ‘the Benghazi Stakes’. From the beginning 2 New Zealand Division had been a component, in Operation Crusader, at El Alamein, across the desert to Mareth and then Enfidaville, and on to the Sangro, Cassino and the Gothic Line: Freyberg himself had been wounded twice. None of the other divisions and few of the smaller formations and units had come all the way from Egypt,1 but almost all had been fighting in Italy for over eighteen months in a campaign dogged by difficulty, and many had been in Tunisia in the winter of 1942/43. Three months earlier the army had been tired out and even now, after a relatively quiet period, it required very delicate handling. The country ahead, with its high banks and open ditches, resembled a steeplechase course and Dick was determined to ensure that each obstacle should be tackled in exactly the right way. He believed that his plan was a good one, but it would only work if the training of the last few months paid off.

  THE LAST BATTLEFIELD

  Four weeks earlier Dick had arrived back from leave to bad news: I Canadian Corps was off to north-west Europe to join its compatriots in First Canadian Army. Not only were the Canadians outstanding troops under good commanders, but they were among the most experienced at crossing rivers and Dick had rated them very highly in the short time that they had served under him. He had worked hard to establish a rapport, which had been reciprocated. John Tweedsmuir,2 who had served in Dick’s HQ as one of their liaison officers, wrote on his departure: ‘You meant a very great deal to them, once you got to know them, and they will miss you’, and Foulkes said he felt that there had been complete confidence in the chain of command from Dick all the way through the corps to the private in the front line. After the depredations made on Dick’s resources by the troubles in Greece this loss was a hammer blow, as no more formations of division size or above were to join Eighth Army. He had been expecting the return of 5 Division from its refit in the Middle East and indeed the division did land briefly in Italy, but it too was then diverted to north-west Europe.

  A few smaller reinforcements did join Eighth Army: 43 Gurkha Lorried Brigade had arrived from Persia and Iraq Command in the previous autumn and there was now another newcomer from that backwater, the 14th/20th Hussars, whom Dick h
ad last seen in Mosul in 1942 and who were desperate to see action before the end of the war. Other arrivals included the Jewish Brigade Group, formed from Jewish settlers in Palestine, and 2 Commando Brigade. There were also three Italian formations, created when the CIL outgrew itself. These were called Combat Groups (Grupo di Combattimento) and were, at about 9,000 men, rather larger than a brigade group but about half the size of a full-strength British infantry division. Two of these went to Fifth US Army and three, Cremona, Folgore and Friuli, to Eighth Army. Although Dick was initially dubious about their fighting ability, they proved useful for holding sectors of the front during the quiet period, to allow his more seasoned formations the time to rest and to train out of the line.

  Throughout Eighth Army training was going on at full pace and the focus was on river crossings. Five significant rivers lay in its path before the Po itself could be reached, the Reno and four of its tributaries flowing south-west to north-east, the Senio, the Santerno, the Sillaro and the Idice. Apart from the Reno, none of them was particularly wide except in flood, indeed Dick said later that the Senio at certain points was so narrow that it could be jumped, but all of them had high flood banks or ‘bunds’, wide enough in places to have roads or tracks along the top. These were excellent natural defensive positions, of which the Germans had taken full advantage, turning stretches of them into formidable obstacles. New techniques were developed for tackling the bunds and the rivers themselves, helped by the arrival of specialized vehicles. Many of these had been developed by Percy Hobart, Dick’s fellow armoured division commander of 1941, and had been used to great effect in his 79 Armoured Division in Normandy and elsewhere under the generic name of ‘funnies’. They included flail tanks for mine clearance, Sherman ‘tank dozers’ for moving earth, ‘Crocodiles’, which were Churchill tanks adapted for use as flamethrowers, and AVREs (Assault Vehicles Royal Engineers), which were able to lay bridges over narrow rivers and streams or place fascines to cross ditches – 25 Armoured Engineer Brigade was formed specifically to deploy the last of these.

  Two other new vehicles were introduced. The first was the Kangaroo, a turretless Sherman tank, modified for use as an armoured personnel carrier and particularly valuable in bringing infantry up to the front quickly and in supporting armoured attacks. The second was officially named the LVT (Landing Vehicle, Tracked), but was more commonly called the Buffalo or the Fantail. It was a fully amphibious assault vehicle, but unlike a DUKW, which used wheels on land and propellers on water, it was propelled by its tracks on both. Tried and tested in the Pacific, it was able to carry 18 fully armed men, with a ramp at the back allowing easy disembarkation, and it opened up some exciting possibilities. Given the terrain on Dick’s front, Clark allocated to Eighth Army all 400 Buffaloes received in 15th Army Group.

  Other than the AVREs and some of the Buffaloes, most of the ‘funnies’ were operated by 9 Armoured Brigade, now commanded by ‘Cookie’ Cooke, who set up a training centre on Lake Trasimene. Dick flew down there on 15 March and was able to see them in use, many driven by RASC drivers supplied by his resourceful director of supply and transport, Brigadier Joe Divers. Also, 9 Armoured Brigade demonstrated its Sherman DD (Duplex Drive) tanks. By means of collapsible canvas screens inflated by compressed air, they became fully amphibious, powered through the water by two propellers connected to the tanks’ engines.

  In addition to 25 Armoured Engineer Brigade, which was to be employed in the initial assaults, and the divisional engineers of each division, there were also two Army Groups Royal Engineers, 22 AGRE in support of V Corps and 16 AGRE in support of the Polish Corps and later XIII Corps. These were primarily concerned with bridging, an enormous number of Bailey bridges being prepared to move into place as soon as a bridgehead had been gained on the river or canal in question. The Po, the only river that was exceptionally wide, was expected to pose problems. An enormous bridge nicknamed ‘the Po Special’ was designed by South African engineers, who carried out full-scale construction trials on the sand dunes near Ravenna.

  With the advent of better weather, Dick was able to fly more often to visit his own front, Clark’s HQ and the training areas. The C.47 Dakota used by Leese had gone with him and Joe Cannon, the American commander of the Allied air forces, was no longer willing to supply such a large plane for personal use. Instead, Pussy Foster arranged for Dick to be provided with a Beech Model 18 Expeditor, a twin-engined plane with a two-man crew and seats for six passengers. This aircraft had something of a reputation for crash landings, but Dick flew thousands of miles in his without any serious incidents. Almost more valuable to him was his other form of air transport, the ‘whizzer’. This was an Auster, used most frequently by the artillery as an Air Observation Post, but also by both the Army and the RAF for short range communication. Graham Lampson,3 who served on his staff before going as a liaison officer to Clark, marvelled that Dick was able to fold his long frame into the tiny cockpit, but to Dick it was an invaluable piece of equipment. He relied heavily on good aerial reconnaissance, studying the RAF photographs daily,4 but now for the first time he was able to see ‘over the hill’ himself, recalling the moment in 1921 when the CO of the 12th Lancers, Bill Truman, had put the idea in his mind. He went up frequently to look at the German defences and, more importantly, to get a clear view of the country which lay immediately behind them.

  During March a major problem emerged. II Polish Corps would play a vital part in Dick’s plan and, unlike most of the other formations in the army, it was getting larger, due to Anders’s success in recruiting ethnic Poles who had been conscripted into the Wehrmacht, but had subsequently deserted or been captured. In addition to those enrolled in Italy, some 11,000 were sent from Normandy and both 3 Carpathian and 5 Kresowa Divisions were able to add a third brigade to their existing two. There now arose, however, serious doubts about the Poles’ commitment to the battle. The conclusions of the Yalta conference, at which it was agreed by the Allies that their country would fall into the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence, had profoundly dismayed them. Most damagingly, a large part of pre-War Eastern Poland would actually be incorporated into the Soviet Union. A sizeable proportion of the corps originated from this area, particularly from cities such as Wilno and Lwow, and the compensating award by the Allies of German land in Silesia, Brandenburg and Pomerania was of no interest to them. A number of Poles actually committed suicide in protest and Anders himself was shattered by the news. He threatened to withdraw his entire corps and, when Dick met him just prior to his leave, he was not prepared to listen to him, and even suggested that his men might be made prisoners. Alexander and Clark made personal appeals with little effect, so Dick went to see him again shortly after his return.

  Dick wrote later: ‘When I visited him he said “how can I ask my soldiers to go on fighting, I must withdraw them from the line.” I replied that there were no troops to replace them, and that a 10 mile gap would be opened up! Anders remained silent for a moment and then said “you can count on 2nd Polish Corps for this coming battle, we must defeat Hitler first.”’5 Anders himself was later to say that he had expected Dick to argue with him and to talk him round by making excuses about the decisions at Yalta, but in the event he was shaken by his simple down-to-earth response: ‘All my pent up emotions and anxieties, all the complexities, all the many pressures and arguments and counter-arguments had been reduced by one single sentence to one single physical consideration, the crux of a ten mile gap… In the end I knew in my heart what I had to do. If we who were fighting for a free Poland did not fight in this battle not only would we ruin the Allied victory in Italy, but we would forfeit the chance of our continuing to fight for our independence… I told McCreery that we would fight on.’6 This was a fine example of Dick’s deep understanding of his fellow man. As a sign of his confidence in the Poles, he placed 43 Gurkha Brigade and 7 Armoured Brigade in their corps, much to Anders’s satisfaction.7

  Shortly before Dick went on leave to the UK, he had flown with
Keightley and Foulkes to Clark’s HQ in Florence to meet Marshall, who was on his way back from Yalta. Dick found the US Army Chief of Staff very interesting on the world situation. He was left in no doubt that Italy was a secondary theatre in the eyes of the Americans, who were now calling the strategic shots. However, Marshall emphasized that it remained vitally important to keep as many German divisions there as possible, to prevent them from being sent to reinforce the fronts facing the Anglo-Americans and the Russians now closing in on the heart of the Reich. Kesselring was ordered back to Germany in March 1945 to become Commander-in-Chief, West, but his successor at Army Group C, Colonel General Heinrich von Vietinghoff-Scheel, who had commanded Tenth German Army with great distinction since the very beginning of the Italian campaign, still deployed 23 German divisions, almost all at full strength, and four Italian Divisions of the rump Fascist state. The latter were of very dubious quality, but this could not be said of the Germans: in particular the one Panzer, two Panzer Grenadier and two Parachute divisions were amongst the best still available. The Allies could only deploy 17 full-strength divisions, but with a large number of additional brigades, commandos and the Italian combat groups, the two sides were roughly at parity in infantry and armour, although the British and Americans had many more guns. Moreover, the Allies derived a huge advantage from their overwhelming air superiority, whilst the Germans suffered from a chronic shortage of fuel.