A Time of Tyrants

by Trevor Royle

  It was at this stage of the battle, when the Allies were still confident that the end of the war was in sight and when conditions were at their worst, that the Germans decided to counter-attack in the Ardennes. The plan was the brainchild of Adolf Hitler, who reasoned as early as September that the winter weather – ‘night, fog and snow’ – would give the Germans the opportunity to hit back at the Allies through the dense Ardennes forest, with its narrow steep-sided valleys, and then turn rapidly north to recapture Brussels and Antwerp. The attack would split the Allies, leaving the US armies unable to come to the aid of Montgomery’s 21st Army Group which would be encircled and destroyed before it could attack the Ruhr.

  It did not turn out that way, but the Battle of the Bulge, as it came to be known, almost allowed the Germans to achieve their aims by creating a huge salient or ‘bulge’ in the Allied lines. During the battle 51st (Highland) Division in XXX Corps supported the US Ninth Army in the Ourthe Valley. Although the winter conditions were severe, one officer of the Gordons offered the opinion that it was preferable to fight over ‘snow-covered hills of great beauty’ which provided ‘a pleasant change from the mud of Holland’.14

  Ahead lay the equally ferocious fighting in the Reichswald which housed part of the Siegfried Line, the heavily fortified German defensive position. The 51st (Highland) Division’s objective on 8 February 1945 was the town and road and rail centre of Goch, which had to be taken to secure the southern sector of the Reichswald in preparation for the crossing of the Rhine. It was a hard-fought battle which involved close-quarter fighting and, according to those who were involved in both battles, it was preceded by the heaviest enemy bombardment since El Alamein. In his memoirs, Martin Lindsay provided an honest account of the feelings which course through a soldier’s mind on the eve of battle: ‘I am very strung up tonight, wondering what the morrow will bring forth. I have often wondered what exactly influences the state of one’s nerves. Sometimes before riding in a “chase” or making a parachute drop or a speech, I have been very much on edge, without actually feeling precisely frightened; at other times, for no apparent reason, I just haven’t cared a damn. Perhaps it is something to do with one’s liver!’15

  When the attack began, matters did not go smoothly for 1st Gordons, whose A Company was over-run due to lack of armoured support, and the battalion lost three officers and twenty-one soldiers killed, and seven officers and fifty-nine soldiers wounded. The battle to take Goch lasted two days, and it is rightly counted as a Gordons’ battlefield. One of several junior officers to win Military Crosses during the fighting in the Reichswald was 2nd Lieutenant Alexander Scott, 5/7th Gordons, who was a platoon commander in C Company. A wartime conscript from Aberdeen, he returned to academic life after the war and went on to become a leading poet and critic whose work in Scots was much praised. Later, he put his feelings about the battle into his poem ‘Coronach (for the dead of the 5/7th Battalion, The Gordon Highlanders)’:

  Waement the deid

  I never did,

  But nou I am safe awa

  I hear their wae

  Greetan greetan dark and daw,

  Their death the-streen my darg the-day.16

  The eventual capture of Goch, followed by the fall of another strongpoint at Hekkens, opened the way for the Rhine crossing, which was begun on 23 March 1945. According to Martin Lindsay, ‘Montgomery was supposed to have said that Scottish troops were the best for assaulting,’ and the task was given to 15th (Scottish) and 51st(Highland) Divisions using Buffalo amphibious vehicles. During the operation 5/7th Gordons landed to the east of Rees on the opposite bank, but 1st Gordons followed 5th Black Watch in an operation which was delayed by the inability of the returning Buffaloes to climb out of the river. A description of the crossing was later written up for The Gordon Highlanders’ regimental records.

  The buffaloes slowly crawled over the fields, then dipped into the water, became water-borne, and then one had the feeling of floating down out of control, yet each buffalo churned without difficulty out of Germany’s greatest barrier and at the right place by the flickering green light. Once aground the buffaloes with vehicles took one 200 yards inland, those with troops deposited their load on the green fields, now baked hard by the recent fine weather, at the water’s edge; two bunds [dykes] each about ten feet high stood against the skyline, otherwise the flatness was unbroken.17

  All the Scottish battalions got safely across the river, but during the operation the 51st (Highland) Division suffered a heavy loss when General Rennie was killed during a heavy German mortar attack near the town of Rees. It was a shattering blow, as Rennie had been a popular and inspiring commander. He was succeeded by Major-General Gordon MacMillan, an experienced and well-liked Argyll and Sutherland Highlander.

  To the south, 2nd Gordons crossed the Rhine opposite the village of Wolffskath and took part in the advance towards Celle, with the ultimate objective being the crossing of the River Elbe and the capture of Lübeck. Once across the river the Scottish battalions found that the German defenders were in no mood to surrender, and some units seemed to fight with a greater fanaticism as they fell back on the ‘Fatherland’. Hitler Youth battalions proved to be particularly troublesome. When 2nd Gordons came across an uncompromising young woman who claimed that the Nazis would never surrender until every man was killed she received the dusty response ‘that we were killing off Nazi soldiers with that purpose in view’.18

  Nevertheless the Rhine crossing was the beginning of the end, and for the next month the 51st (Highland) Division was constantly on the move as it fought its way north towards Bremen and Bremerhaven, which was reached on 8 May. At the same time 15th (Scottish) Division reached Gros Hansdorf to the north-east of Hamburg. By 29 April, 9th Cameronians was across the River Elbe and heading for the town of Basedow where 240 German prisoners of war were taken into custody. Two days later the battalion cleared the Sachsenwald Forest where news of the impending Armistice was received. By then both 6th and 7th Cameronians had been part of the force that had broken into Bremen at the end of April. Although it had been a satisfying moment, the edge was taken off the celebrations when 6th Cameronians entered a camp at Sanbostel, halfway between Bremen and Bremerhaven. As the war history recorded, nothing could have prepared the men for their first experience of liberating a concentration camp.

  All around was a flat and desolate plain, and, in the centre, a vast cage, wherein seemed to be confined all the bestialities that even the most fertile imagination could conjure up. Everywhere there was filth and stench and disease and hordes of dehumanised creatures with shrunken faces, cloaking their emaciated bodies in the dirty rags of their striped prison uniform. No one who did not see and smell and feel the horror of this nightmare could ever believe it. And no one who did see it and smell it and feel it could ever forget it.19

  For all the soldiers in both divisions, and for the rest of the Allied armies, the war in Europe was over, and ahead lay the task of restoring order to the shattered country. In Lübeck the men of 2nd Gordons found that the biggest problem was the huge number of displaced persons who needed food and shelter. For 5/7th Gordons which had fought from El Alamein to the north German plain, it was the end of the road. Ahead lay demobilisation and a return to Scotland before going into suspended animation and an uncertain future. The battalion’s last flourish was a splendid parade in Munich which was arranged by the US Army in the first week of June to return a drum which had been retrieved by the US 10th Armored Division during the drive into Germany. It was the only survivor of the 5th Gordons’ drums which had been stored at Metz before the retreat to St Valéry in May 1940.

  Because the Normandy campaign had been the precursor to the defeat of Germany it tended to overshadow the invasion of Italy in September 1943. This proved to be a lengthy and arduous task, not least because from the outset the plans were hampered by disagreements amongst the Allies, and as a result the operations were frequently bedevilled by a lack of cohesion and a shortage of re
sources. As we have seen, the Americans wanted to concentrate on a cross-Channel invasion followed by a rapid thrust into the enemy heartlands, while Churchill remained obsessed with attacking the ‘soft underbelly of Europe’, both as a means of engaging the Germans and knocking Italy out of the war. As described by his biographer Martin Gilbert, Churchill’s aim was ‘to persuade the Americans to follow up the imminent conquest of Sicily by the invasion of Italy at least as far as Rome, and then to assist the Yugoslav, Greek and Albanian partisans in the liberation of the Balkans, by air support, arms and coastal landings by small Commando units.’20

  Many of the command and control problems that had bedevilled the Sicilian campaign were carried over to the Allied invasion of Italy. Alexander remained in command of Fifteenth Army Group, and Montgomery commanded the British Eighth Army, which included 51st (Highland) Division and the other Scottish regiments which had fought in Sicily, while Lieutenant-General Mark Clark commanded US Fifth Army, which included British X Corps. The plan was for the British to land at Reggio Calabria on the Italian side of the Strait of Messina (Operation Slapstick), while Clark’s army landed south of Naples at Salerno (Operation Avalanche). Both invasions enjoyed mixed fortunes: the British landed unopposed and made good progress, but Clark’s army encountered stubborn resistance from German land and air forces, and only the intervention of the firepower of the Royal Navy allowed the landings to proceed by the middle of the month. Although both armies then made progress in their advance northwards, lack of firm operational planning meant the campaign quickly degenerated into a remorseless slogging match. Bad weather also played havoc, with the advance to the Garigliano and Sangro rivers leaving Montgomery to complain to Brooke that there could be no hope of ‘any spectacular results’ in the near future.21 Largely due to an absence of realisable aims, and the use of inchoate tactics, the Italian campaign foundered.

  As a result it was also largely overlooked, especially in the wake of the D-Day landings in France. There was a tendency for the attacking divisions to be stripped of assets as the armies moved north, and this increased the feeling that the soldiers on the Italian front were being forgotten. (It was a feeling that was also familiar to the Fourteenth Army in Burma.) The mood was eventually given expression by an incident involving Lady Nancy Astor, Conservative MP for Plymouth, who had been pro-appeasement and anti-Communist before the war. In an unguarded moment she referred to soldiers of the Eighth Army in Italy as ‘D-Day Dodgers’. Although there might have been an innocent reason – one of her constituents serving in Italy had signed a letter to her using that nomenclature, and she failed to recognise his sarcasm – the story gained considerable notoriety. It also gave rise to one of the most popular soldier’s ballads of the war, the ‘D-Day Dodgers’ which was sung to the tune of the equally popular Afrika Korps song ‘Lili Marlene’, sung by Lale Andersen. It exists in several versions, and although the credit for the composition is often given to Lance-Sergeant Harry Pynn of the Tank Rescue Section, 19 Army Fire Brigade, the best-known version belongs to Hamish Henderson of the 51st (Highland) Division, which took part in the initial invasion of Italy.

  We’re the D-Day Dodgers out in Italy –

  Always on the vino, always on the spree.

  Eighth Army scroungers and their tanks

  We live in Rome – among the Yanks.

  We are the D-Day Dodgers, way out in Italy.22

  Throughout the campaign the song was very much a rallying call for all Allied soldiers, and it enjoyed a huge popularity, which added to Henderson’s post-war reputation as one of the great poets of the Second World War.

  Some idea of the hardships facing the ‘D-Day Dodgers’ can be found in the experiences of 2nd Royal Scots Fusiliers, who had crossed over as part of the main invasion force with XIII Corps (5th Division, 1st Canadian Division), landing to the north of Reggio at Gallico Marina. Meeting little resistance, they pushed up through Calabria towards Potenza to link up with the US Fifth Army and British X Corps which had landed at Salerno, and had immediately encountered determined German resistance. At the end of the first week the 5th Division had moved 100 miles, and by 16 September had reached the Gulf of Policastro, where XIII Corps was tasked with guarding the US Fifth Army’s right flank. During the next phase of the operation, 2nd Royal Scots Fusiliers moved north from Foggia across the Trigno River into the highlands around Vinchiaturo where, as Eric Linklater makes clear in his history of the Italian campaign, things became much tougher for the advancing Allies.

  The topographical pattern of Italy, fascinating the tourist with romantic heights and stern declivities, to the soldier invading from the south is a monotonous repetition of traps and barriers, of mountain-rampart and river-ditch. From the Apennines great ribs go down to either coast, and between the ribs run meandering streams that the autumn solstice and the winter snow may enlarge with disastrous speed to roaring torrents. Every rib had to be climbed and crossed, and every river bridged under fire from the slopes beyond. The liberation of Italy was going to be a bitter process.23

  In those difficult conditions the battalion had its first encounter with the enemy when a fighting patrol engaged German positions on the heights north of Macchiagodena on 29 October. During advances the rifle companies of Scots Fusiliers were forced to march in single file, with the seconds-in-command leading, often in foul weather, and frequently at night. There were other local difficulties: a typical entry in the War Diary shows that problems with the mule train meant that rations failed to arrive until well into the evening. With weather worsening, the battalion took part in the assault on the German line of defences known as the Gustav Line which ran from the River Sangro on the Adriatic to the estuary of the River Garigliano on the Tyrrhenian Sea. For the Scots Fusiliers this meant acting as 17 Brigade’s spearhead during the attack on German positions at Castel di Sangro and Alfadena at the end of November. Some of the peaks were higher than Ben Nevis, and the initial stages of the attack were made in pitch dark and heavy rain.

  The next stage of the advance took 2nd Royal Scots Fusiliers across the River Moro to reach Lanciano, where it spent Christmas and the New Year, before pushing north again over the Garigliano. On this occasion the battalion made the crossing at the estuary, putting out to sea in amphibious boat-shaped vehicles known as DUKWs (the acronym refers to the manufacturing factories’ serial letters) but as the battalion’s War Diary records, the operation did not go according to plan. ‘The plan for landing the Battalion on the assault beaches completely miscarried and the unit was badly disorganised at the very outset. Several things contributed to this. The principal reason was the total absence of expert navigators in the crews of the amphibious craft. Many of the drivers went too far from the coast and were consequently unable to make use of the guiding lights set out at intervals along the shore or even to see the river mouth, which should have been the surest guide.’24 To make matters worse, the men landed close to minefields, and the rising moon provided illumination for the German machine-gunners, a position which led one officer to remark: ‘we didn’t much care for it . . . there seemed to be no more promising course of action than to crouch in our holes and pray for the arrival of the Sappers [military engineers].’25 Fortunately, the next target, the town of Argento, had been evacuated by the Germans before the battalion was ordered to take it ‘at all costs’, but during the next action on Mount Natale, the commanding officer Lieutenant-Colonel I. D. MacInnes was killed.

  By early 1944 the Allied advance had been held up in the Liri Valley south of Rome where the enemy resistance centred on the monastery at Monte Cassino, the mother-house of the Benedictine Order. It stood on high ground outside the town of the same name which had been razed to the ground, and, being partially occupied by German forces, became the scene of fierce fighting in built-up areas. At the beginning of March 1944, 6th Black Watch was committed to the campaign in Italy when it landed at Naples, having previously fought in the campaign in Tunisia. For the men under the command of Lieute
nant-Colonel Brian Madden it was a baptism of fire. Although the battalion had been in continuous action in Tunis and was battle-hardened, the fighting at Monte Cassino was quite different, being dominated by constant enemy shell-fire and hard skirmishing. In the hills above the River Garigliano the men of 6th Black Watch led what was described as a ‘hole and corner life’ with a good deal of aggressive patrolling.26

  There was some respite when they were taken out of the line towards the end of the month, but within a few weeks they were soon back in action again, holding another bridgehead to the north-east of Cassino. Getting there involved a lengthy route-march which was compared to passing the Lairig Ghru in the Cairngorms in the depths of winter. This was followed by a move into the sector of the town of Cassino where 6th Black Watch relieved a battalion of Coldstream Guards. Due to the closeness of the enemy there was no movement during the day, and survival for the battalion meant placing a high premium on taking cover in the sangars, fortified positions which had been built in the ruins of the houses. Supplies had to be carried in, and there was the constant danger of falling victim to enemy fire during these operations. One indication of the problems faced by the battalion comes from the statistic that British gunners fired up to 5,000 rounds of smoke shells to cover the carrying parties as they made their final approach to the British positions, and inevitably there were casualties.