The Liri Valley

by Mark Zuehlke

  Once No. 1 Troop had shot up the local area with machine-gun and shellfire for a few minutes, Wells ordered a move toward the San Apollinare–San Angelo lateral road. This was about a thousand yards west of the river and marked where the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders Regiment was supposed to be waiting to marry up with ‘A’ Squadron of the Calgary Tanks. Quinn was unable to raise anyone from the infantry regiment on his radio, nor could he see any friendly troops who were still alive. Most of the Germans, seemingly scattered in slit trenches all over the place, stopped firing and went to ground at the approach of the tanks. Quinn stuck with Wells’s troop because his own troop was reported stranded on the other side of the river when a German artillery shell damaged Plymouth Bridge right after Quinn’s tank crossed. The bridge was temporarily out of action until repairs could be effected.29

  Kingsmill, MacLean, and Seymour were on that task. Joining the driver and radio operator of the spare carrier tank, they roared back to the initial bridge construction site. Loading the necessary bridge replacement parts and some Indian sappers aboard, they returned to the bridge, made a somewhat perilous crossing with the carrier tank, and started unloading bridge parts. When the parts were about half unloaded, a German machine gun suddenly brought the men under fire and a sapper standing next to Seymour was shot in the stomach. The sapper “emitted a loud, hideous groan and folded to earth, like a discarded accordion.” Seymour was spattered with blood and bits of flesh, and several bits of shrapnel struck him in the face but barely penetrated.30 The same burst of fire raked the tank and steel bridge parts, chipping off a spray of hundreds of tiny pieces of metal shrapnel. Kingsmill’s back was riddled with bits of shrapnel, his shirt torn to shreds. The officer was loaded into a Jeep ambulance and evacuated.31

  His injuries proved to be only flesh wounds that were easily mended, but Kingsmill was so exhausted by the days spent constructing the bridge and the experience of its launch that he was held for three weeks at 14th General Canadian Hospital in Caserta for recuperation.32 He was awarded the Military Cross, while MacLean was awarded the Military Medal, and Seymour was Mentioned in Despatches. The Calgary Tank Regiment unofficially renamed the bridge Kingsmill Bridge in the engineer’s honour.33

  While the struggle to keep the bridge open raged, the four Calgary tanks that had crossed earlier took up position in the early afternoon in some brush on the outskirts of Panaccioni. After camouflaging their tanks with branches, the troopers set about observing enemy activity inside the village. They noticed that a large building about 300 yards to the left was the scene of much coming and going. Quinn believed it a headquarters and possibly also a field dressing station. To the northeast of their position, he saw concentrations of German infantry and tracked vehicles moving toward San Angelo. Establishing radio contact back to the regimental headquarters, Quinn called artillery fire down on the force advancing toward San Angelo and soon several of the vehicles were burning and some infantry lay scattered along the roadside, obviously dead.

  Since the Argylls were still missing and the tankers therefore had no infantry protection, they were carefully refraining from firing for fear of betraying their presence and bringing a swift German reaction. Now, however, a section of German infantry with weapons slung casually on their shoulders marched across their immediate front. Several of the soldiers spotted the tanks hunkered in the wood and waved and grinned at what they obviously presumed was a Panzer unit. Then a few of the men paused, did a visible double take, and Quinn knew the game was up. As one, the four tanks opened up with all their machine guns, cutting down most of the section before it could react. Quinn quickly allocated each tank an area of the enemy positions they could see in and around Panaccioni and they started shooting up everything in sight with their machine guns and main 75-millimetre cannon.

  The German response was instantaneous. Mortar and artillery fire fell on the wood and infantry was soon closing in, hitting the tanks with largely harmless small-weapons fire. Quinn had pounded the large building he thought was a headquarters with cannon fire, but now he saw someone standing just back of a top-floor window. The figure was looking through a pair of binoculars and Quinn assumed he was directing the increasingly threatening artillery fire. He ordered his gunner to put a round of high explosive through the window and that part of the building disintegrated.

  While the four Calgary tanks were causing a lot of damage and enemy casualties, Quinn was also acutely aware that they were terribly vulnerable. It had to be increasingly obvious to the Germans that the tankers were alone and that the still missing Argylls were unlikely to reach them any time soon. He contacted the regimental headquarters to get instructions and at 1900 hours was ordered to withdraw back to the San Apollinare–San Angelo lateral road, where it was believed the Argyll Regiment was now dug in. However, when the tankers reached the position, they found no sign of the Argylls so they settled down to await developments.34

  On the opposite side of Panaccioni, Lieutenant Al Cawsey and Sergeant Bill McWithey had been reinforced by ‘C’ Squadron commander Major Don Taylor and a few other tanks of the squadron that had crossed on the repaired Plymouth Bridge. From its position, ‘C’ Squadron was able to subject targets in the little village to damage similar to that wrought by Quinn and his ‘A’ Squadron group.

  But as it grew dark, Taylor ordered the squadron to fall back to the lines of the 3rd Punjabi Regiment at the Gari River so it could be refuelled and supplied with ammunition. Quinn and the three tanks of No. 1 Troop, having given up trying to find the Argylls in the area of the lateral road, fell back and joined Taylor’s squadron’s position a few hours later. The badly depleted infantry threw a perimeter circle around the tanks, but things were still so tense that Cawsey and the other tankers could not afford to stand down from their machines. They slept in the tanks, each man taking a two-hour shift on guard while the others tried to sleep in their cramped quarters. Everyone expected the Germans to counterattack and the position was subject to persistent shelling and small-arms fire throughout the night. It was the first time Cawsey had ever spent a night in his Sherman — an experience he hoped not to repeat.

  Shortly before dawn on May 13, Major Gudari Singh of the Punjabi regiment came over to Cawsey’s tank and asked him to move it up the hill a short distance because he expected the Germans would launch a counterattack against the position from that direction at first light. Cawsey told his driver to fire up the tank and move to the new position. With dawn rapidly approaching, Cawsey sat up in the turret cupola looking through his binoculars for signs of German activity. Suddenly he felt as if “someone had tried to stick a red hot needle” through him. He fell to the floor of the tank and then realized he had been hit in the back under the left shoulder blade by a fragment from either an artillery shell or mortar bomb. Blood was running from his mouth. He radioed Taylor and reported his condition. Taylor told him to hand the tank command over to his gunner and have him drive it to the river so Cawsey could be evacuated. Meanwhile, Major Gudari Singh had climbed into the tank and jabbed Cawsey with a shot of morphine, so he was feeling quite mellow by the time the tank reached the riverbank. He was loaded into an ambulance, taken to the Regimental Aid Post for immediate treatment, and then evacuated to a rear hospital at Caserta.

  By dawn on May 13, despite the fact that the Ontario Tank Regiment, the 1st Frontier Force Regiment, and the 1st Royal Fusiliers had established a strong position extending from the bank of the Gari River into the outskirts of San Angelo, XIII Corps’s beachhead remained tenuous. It was also evident that the Tenth Army was doing everything it could to stiffen the resistance with reinforcements. The lack of any bridges in the British 4th Division sector of the line between San Angelo and Cassino meant the division had fought without armoured support for more than thirty-six hours. Casualties were high and its brigades were still checked on the riverbank.

  On XIII Corps’s right, II Polish Corps had been cut to pieces during its assault on Monte Cassino. On the left flan
k, the French corps had made only modest gains and was behind schedule. Eighth Army headquarters engineering officer General Sir William Jackson found it “impossible to stifle the desperate feeling that the whole affair had grossly miscarried or, in soldier’s language, was ‘an unholy balls-up.’”35

  The tragic losses inflicted on the Poles were of particular concern. The Poles had suffered 4,000 casualties during the night attack and by dawn on May 12 most of the corps’ divisions had been forced to withdraw to the initial start lines.36 Although the Polish attack had been courageously determined, it was cut apart by well-emplaced German machine-gun positions and also ran afoul of a wide swath of minefields that were unknown to Eighth Army intelligence staff.

  Because of the curious history of the Polish Corps, its losses would be hard to replace. In September 1939, when Germany and Russia had agreed to divide Poland between themselves, with Russia taking the eastern half of the nation and Germany the western portion, about 1.7 million Polish men, women, and children were forcibly deported to the Soviet Union. A small number of Poles, including many soldiers and airmen of the shattered Polish Army, managed to escape the German-Russian invading forces via Romania and France to Britain. In London, these refugees formed a government-in-exile with Wladyslaw Rackiewicz as president and Wladyslaw Sikorski as prime minister. With the German invasion of Russia in June 1941, the Free Poles were forced by Britain to reach an accommodation with Joseph Stalin’s dictatorship and it was agreed that a Polish Army would be recruited from the Poles detained in the Soviet Union. Major General Wladyslaw Anders, a detainee, was given command. In December 1941, after the Russians had failed to properly equip, train, or even feed the neophyte army, Stalin agreed to allow six divisions totalling 25,000 men to leave for the Middle East. In the summer of 1942, more Poles had been allowed to join their comrades.

  Arriving in Palestine, the Poles had been placed under British command and armed, trained, and organized as Commonwealth troops. Transferred to North Africa, the new Polish unit was designated II Polish Corps. It consisted initially of the 3rd Carpathian Rifle Division and the 5th Kresowa Infantry Division. Integrated into this strength was the Independent Carpathian Rifle Brigade, which had been formed from Free Poles in Britain. Because the Polish divisions were understrength and suffered chronic manpower shortages due to the lack of any assured source for new recruits, the divisions had only two brigades rather than the standard Commonwealth formula that called for three brigades to a division. In Italy, the corps reinforced itself with Poles who had been impressed into the German army and then surrendered to the Allies. After being vetted to ensure they were not actually pro-Nazi volunteers, the men hastily exchanged German field grey for Commonwealth khaki and returned to the front.

  The Poles fought not just to defeat Germany, but also to convince the Western Allies that they deserved political support to create an independent democratic monarchy after the war was over.37 Other soldiers in the Eighth Army generally considered them brave to a fault, often forsaking such defensive measures as digging slit trenches because that would slow down their effort to close on and destroy the Germans. Such heroics unnecessarily increased casualties.

  A minor contribution to the Polish attack’s failure had resulted from a mix-up between a Forward Observation Officer party of the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery and the Polish troops it was to support on a forward slope of Monte Cassino known as Point 593. The RCHA FOO party, commanded by Captain Peter Newell, joined a brigade of the 3rd Carpathian Division prior to the beginning of the counter-battery barrage at 2300 hours on May 11. Newell, his signaller Tim Helmsley, and Gunner J. Romanica, who was fluent in Polish and present as an interpreter, climbed the steep slope to a house at Point 593 that was being used by the Poles as a brigade headquarters. En route, Romanica was wounded and evacuated, so Newell and Helmsley had to try communicating as best they could through a Polish soldier who spoke very poor English.

  The brigade headquarters was about a thousand yards from the abbey, separated from it by only a narrow gully. Helmsley was aware that the building must be exposed to direct German observation from positions in and around the abbey. By the time they arrived, the Poles were already putting in an attack across the gully against the abbey and the two men worked quickly to set up their No. 18 radio set. They then tried to establish communications with a base camp further down the hill manned by the other half of the RCHA FOO party. The base camp element had a more powerful No. 19 set that would provide a link through to the regimental headquarters, which would in turn direct artillery concentrations against the targets called in by Helmsley.

  Just as Helmsley started talking to the base camp to check his radio signal strength, “a terrific barrage came down around the house.” When the fire died down, he tried again and immediately another concentration of enemy fire hammered down outside the house. When this firing eased, Helmsley again tried to establish contact with the base camp but two Polish soldiers jammed a gun into his ribs and ordered him outside, where they forced him to lie down beside the house. Helmsley then heard the Poles smashing the radio set to pieces. Whenever he tried to get up, the men forced him back down. Finally one told him in fractured English that they believed he was a spy, for every time he spoke into the radio German artillery shelled the position. Helmsley was made to lie outside the house until late afternoon when he heard a lot of orders being shouted and suddenly Polish troops ran up the hill to man positions around the house in preparation to meet a German counterattack coming down from the abbey.

  While Helmsley was being taken outside the house, a Polish major had approached Newell with a pistol in his hand and, holding it to the officer’s head, marched him to the front of the house. The major accused Newell in English of “being a German dressed in Canadian uniform.” He was told to sit quietly in a corner of the house or he would be shot.

  When the counterattack threat arose at about 1600 hours on May 12, Newell took advantage of the momentary confusion to slip out of the house, round up Helmsley, and escape to the RCHA base camp. The Polish troops were soon streaming past as the German paratroopers successfully launched the counterattack and drove them off Point 593. Newell was furious with the Poles and believed that the brigade in question was badly trained and that Point 593 could have been held if they had just allowed him and Helmsley to have called in the artillery that could have broken up the attack.38

  Lieutenant Colonel John Buchan, Lord Tweedsmuir, returned at midday on May 12 from the Polish headquarters where he had been serving as liaison to report to Leese on the casualties suffered by II Polish Corps. He found Leese outside his villa headquarters standing in the soft Italian spring sunlight amid a small field of wild blue cornflowers that shimmered in the gentle breeze. Seeing Buchan’s expression, Leese raised a hand and said quietly, “Stop.” The tall officer, who was often to be found tending the plants around the villa, then said, “Let’s pick some cornflowers.” Finally, when the two men had finished gathering large bouquets, Leese said, “Right. Now tell me about the casualties.”39

  After receiving Buchan’s report, Leese drove to the Polish headquarters to consult with General Wladyslaw Anders. He found Anders distraught. “Ah, mon Général,” Anders said. “Tout est perdu, tout est perdu.”

  “Ah, mon Général,” Leese snapped back. “Nothing is fucking perdu.”40

  Anders soon rallied and offered to immediately put in another attack, but Leese declined the offer. At best, the Poles had one more all-out attack in them and Leese decided to hold off further offensive action against the abbey until XIII Corps had reached its objectives in the Liri Valley and slightly turned the German defences on Monte Cassino. Then, with I Canadian Corps pushing through XIII Corps and the French making further inroads in the mountains to the south of the valley, the German position on Monte Cassino would be sufficiently perilous that it might fall.41 The success of the entire offensive now depended on XIII Corps cracking the Gustav Line open.

  * There is disagree
ment about whether the Three Rivers Regiment actually did provide fire support as planned or not. In a narrative written on May 24, 1944, 1 CAB commander Brigadier Bill Murphy reported that the Three Rivers Regiment fired 250 high-explosive shells. But the regiment’s war diary entry for May 12, 1944, says the night was so dark that the troops could undertake no effective shooting. Veteran reports indicate there was some firing, but none comment on whether they fired blind or at visible targets.

  8

  A MOST SATISFACTORY DAY

  Dawn on May 13 found Commander-in-Chief Southwest Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring grappling with a confused picture of the battle situation developing along the Gustav Line. His primary problem was lack of information coming back from the headquarters of either Tenth or Fourteenth armies. Both had been struck shortly after daylight on May 12 by pinpoint-accurate bombing raids that caused considerable damage. Devastating bombing raids that continued throughout much of the day had similarly paralyzed Kesselring’s Army Group headquarters. The first raid against Kesselring’s headquarters north of Rome and Tenth Army headquarters near Avezzano was carried out by heavy bombers of the U.S. Strategic Air Force that en route “paraded low along the battle front” as a morale booster for the soldiers engaged in the fighting. A total of 375 tons of bombs hit the two headquarters during this raid.1 Tenth Army Chief of Staff Generalmajor Fritz Wentzell saw the bombers coming in against the Avezzano headquarters at 0900 hours. The staff had sufficient warning that almost everyone reached the air-raid shelters before the bombs fell, so German casualties were slight. Civilian casualties, however, were reportedly heavy and damage to buildings throughout the village was extensive. Although the Germans quickly re-established radio and telephone communications, “conditions in the village no longer favoured quiet and intensive work on the part of the staff.” Therefore, the headquarters moved later that day to Castel Massimo near Frosinone where XIV Panzer Corps headquarters was located and “there was room enough, and we had the advantage of being in the immediate vicinity of Corps HQs.”2