The plan for all four divisions was to attack simultaneously by night and after a brief but intense preliminary bombardment by 400 guns. Then, from right to left, lère DMI would sweep forward on an axis following the right bank of the Liri; 2e DIM would strike north-west, clearing M. Maio, and make for the bend in the road between S. Giorgio and Ausonia; 4e DMM was to make a short hook into the valley of the River Grande; and 3e DIA, having broken through at Castelforte, would divide into two columns and advance on Esperia as fast as possible.
The key role was alloted to 4e DMM with all three groups of tabors under command, forming a mountain corps 27,000 strong. On the left a powerful Group commanded by General Guillaume would advance directly into the heart of the Auruncan massif, his axis skirting the inter-corps boundary and running north of the main peaks, Petrella and Revoie, while another under Colonel Bondis performed a bizarre manoeuvre which no doubt caused the staff officers of Alexander’s and Clark’s respective headquarters when they read it to “suck their teeth”, as the soldiers say. Owing to the constraints of the mountain terrain Bondis could not start clear of the columns of 3e DIA, moving up the road from Castelforte to Coreno, so the two axes had to cross over, a “cisaillement”, the units passing through the intervals between each other; a movement usually left to horse artillery at displays of driving skill, and a solution unlikely to gain any marks in a staff college exercise. In the event it worked perfectly; a tribute to the intelligence and discipline of the troops concerned. These axes of advance were projected twenty miles, from the Gustav Line to the lateral Highway No. 82 and beyond.
The great merit of this plan, given the numerical weakness of the defence and the difficulties of moving reserves to a threatened sector, was that once the attackers had crossed the Ausente valley and cut the road through Ausonia, as each division advanced it uncovered the flanks of the enemy opposing its neighbour. In the south Juin intended that the progress of the mountain corps would assist the US 88th Division on its left, and that in its turn would allow supplies for General Guillame’s mountaineers to come up by road from his flank instead of from behind up the mountain tracks. More ambitiously, his whole advance would arrive in the rear of the 14th Panzer Corps so that he could roll it up from an inner flank and open the road to Rome. Juin had no doubt that the aim of DIADEM was the liberation of the Eternal City for the simple reason that this had become the prevailing obsession of General Clark. In consequence, the subtle but real difference between Alexander’s strategy and a direct drive on Rome had been filtered out of the original Fifth Army plan as described by Brann to Carpentier.
(General Juin would have been the first to have grasped its significance, but by his own account he seems to have believed firmly that it was the mission of the British Eighth Army to liberate Rome, although it was clear from the DIADEM plan that its main axis and its left boundary when projected lay north of Rome, which had always been in the Fifth Army’s zone of action.) Juin had every reason to be satisfied. He had provided the commander and staff of the Fifth Army with a muchbetter plan than their own. The French had a role worthy of them. General Keyes and his corps were now to be usefully employed in opening the Via Appia, the direct route to Rome. As for the goal, above all it was symbolic and would serve to focus the eyes of the French on a tangible object and intensify the ardeur with which they would throw themselves against the Gustav Line. This was to prove strong enough to survive the harrowing failures of the night of May 11, D-day for DIADEM.
* There were, all the same, some British senior officers who should never have been allowed near foreign troops. One such, commanding an artillery group sent to reinforce General Monsabert’s division in Tunisia, avoided the formal midday meal the French HQ staff sat down to whenever possible in operations – a very sensible custom – as he considered it effete. This was discourteous and impolitic, whatever his private feelings. When later, in Italy, two US artillery battalions were attached to his group and his staff drew up a useful English–US artillery glossary he tore it up. Foreigners, in his view, should conform to British ideas, and learn to speak English. Such is the grit in the gearbox of coalition war.
* “Tirailleurs”, literally “skirmishers”, in fact normal infantry. “Spahis”, similarly were originally light cavalry, converted to armoured reconnaissance units.
20
BREAKING THE MOUNTAIN LINE
In one respect General Juin’s plan was somewhat overoptimistic. It depended on the successful rupture of the Gustav Line in his sector where it was strongest – opposite the towering bulk of M. Maio, dominating the zone south of the Liri valley as M. Cairo and the heights above Cassino did the north. To reach it General Dody’s 2e DIM would have to climb the sentry peaks to the south-east, Girofano, Feuci and Faito, their slopes honeycombed with fox-holes and weapon-pits. He hoped to do this between 11 p.m., his chosen H-hour, half an hour before moon-rise, and dawn. For such a task the British, by then very experienced in the bloody and difficult work of cracking open a well-organised German position, would have thought 800 guns barely adequate. Juin could only dispose of half that number, not counting the light howitzers in the infantry cannon companies, and this had to support the simultaneous attacks of all four of his divisions.
Nor was this the only difficulty facing his artillery commanders. There are certain technical problems to be solved when engaging targets many hundreds of feet above batteries deployed in the plain on steep reverse slopes and, as in parts of Dody’s line, where the opposing sides are almost within grenade-throwing range of each other, so that the forward enemy posts can be engaged without endangering one’s own troops. The solution of very careful registration by fire of all the difficult targets was not acceptable because it gave away the point and timing of the attack. (As it was discovered later, the German artillery, already alerted by some preliminary adjustment, had moved to fresh positions, and so was able to fire uninterruptedly on the night of the first French attack.) Juin’s artillery commanders hoped to overcome these difficulties, at least in part, by preceding the assault with a long bombardment to soften up the defences, but this ran into objections from the British. The Eighth Army H-hour was half an hour later, at moon-rise, as this was essential for the engineers who had to put down the bridges for the assault crossing of the Garigliano, and in any case it was British policy to avoid any preliminary bombardment if possible, and they feared that the artillery preparation by the CEF would only serve to alert the German front from end to end. A compromise was reached by which Juin attacked at 11 p.m., but his guns only opened fire at that moment.
Within these technical and tactical constraints the French made the best plan they could. Covering fire for the attack on the enemy positions, counter-battery fire and harassing fire on tracks and areas designed to prevent the movement of reserves were fired on a timed programme. To deal with the unexpected, or positions already struck and coming to life, lists of prearranged targets and reference points were issued to the forward observers and attacking units so that fire could be called down by transmitting a simple code-word or number. Artillery liaison officers were exchanged with neighbouring formations, the British to the north and the Americans to the south so that mutual support could be quickly arranged. In spite of all these admirable arrangements, however, the artillery plan was a failure. Many targets were not hit at all, and others not hard enough to neutralise them. The moment Dody’s assault troops left their trenches they came under an accurate and heavy fire from every German weapon, including flame-throwers, a horrid surprise.
Everything went badly across the whole front, and nowhere worse than in the centre. Two regiments of Moroccan infantry led the initial assault of the 2e DIM who, after the most sacrificial efforts, succeeded in penetrating the enemy defences, but were unable to reach their first objectives or even maintain their footholds. On the left only five men, the survivors of one whole battalion, succeeded in reaching their objective and stayed on it until they were ordered to withdraw. Another batt
alion lost 400 men, including many officers, until the regimental commander called off the attack. After four hours of bitter close-quarter fighting nothing had been gained and General Dody ordered the whole offensive to be abandoned and the troops back to their start line until he could reassess the situation by daylight.
Elsewhere there was little or no progress. The battalions of Marines from the lère DMI sent up into the mountains to cover Dody’s right flank were halted by heavy fire causing many casualties and an armoured battle-group sent to work along the road leading to the left bank of the Liri made some progress in the elbow of the Garigliano until checked by anti-tank guns and mines. On Dody’s left General Sevez’s mountain troops from 4e DMM were halted by intense artillery fire. On the extreme left an armoured battle-group leading the advance of 3e DIA spent the morning of the 12th negotiating an immense minefield east of Castelforte and doing no more than cautiously examining its defences at close range. All in all the first-light situation reports contained nothing encouraging.
Nevertheless, grim as things looked on his front, at 7.30 a.m. Dody gave orders for the attack by 2e DIM to be renewed, but he was forestalled, very fortunately, although he possibly did not view it in that light at that awful moment. It is a cliché of infantry fighting that one way of winning a fight offensively is to turn it into a defensive action by seizing a piece of ground and forcing the defender to counter-attack it and so wear him down. It was also, as we saw at Salerno, German doctrine to defend by counter-attack, not merely to recover ground, but to hit the attacker when he has been badly shaken by defensive fire, or as he relaxes for a brief moment on the objective he has seized with so much anguish. As the commanders of the Moroccan regiments strove to reorganise and issue fresh orders a sharp artillery fire descended on them, and a counter-attack force scraped together from three separate units advanced on their assembly areas. The Moroccans, still licking their wounds, threw it back with severe loss, but when they in their turn moved up the slopes again, in mid-afternoon, the intensity of the artillery fire caused Dody to halt it. Clearly a new initiative was required. Juin came up to see the situation for himself, and after a thorough examination decided to suspend operations until the 13th. His new orders went out that night.
In the meantime General Monsabert was considering an initiative of his own. So far only part of his division was engaged, and that only in a position of readiness in front of Castelforte. His artillery was deployed ready for action, but the rest of his 3e DIA was still east of the Garigliano. He was faced with the defences of Castelforte, and these were so perfect an example of the German field fortifications that the Allies encountered everywhere in Italy that it is worth describing them in detail.
The road chosen as Monsabert’s axis of advance leading from the Garigliano to Coreno, Ausonia and to the Esperia pass rose in three steps. On the first, 500 feet above the plain, stood Castelforte itself, well-named. On the next was the large village of S. Cosmo e Damiano, almost a suburb of the town, and 600 feet above that the equally aptly named Ventosa, perched on its own crag. All three were built in the style of the medieval hill-towns of Italy, the houses closely packed together and, except for where the main road ran through them, with the narrowest of streets. During the heavy fighting of the winter incessant bombardment by the British 10th Corps had reduced the buildings to ruins – treatment that only serves to make the task of the defenders easier – and the population had fled, bar a few who still crouched in their wrecked homes. Behind Castelforte a huge cirque of mountains provided a dramatic backdrop and buttress for the defence, M. Cianella on the left and M. Siola on the right. This natural rampart had been improved by the skill of the German engineers and the strong arms of German soldiers, who had learnt by bitter experience in Russia and now in Europe that if they wished to survive the hellish bombardments of the enemy artillery they had to burrow like moles. (The British and US soldiers, soft, lazy and urban as many of them were, never troubled to go to such lengths, or depths, though more use of their picks and shovels could have saved many lives.)
The German garrison amounted to about two battalions of infantry with a battalion of artillery in direct support, spread thin on the ground, some in the buildings and some on the key heights round about. The weapon-emplacements of those inside the town were carefully concealed in the rubble, supported by tanks and SP guns in the streets, ready to run out on to their firing platforms. Others occupied machine-gun posts hewn or blasted into the rocky outcrops on the commanding hills. The ravines behind the town brisded with mortar batteries, their crews when not in action sheltering in caves, and the field-guns, further back on the reverse slopes, were in deep gun-pits roofed over with layers of logs and stones so as to be proof against anything less than a 100-pound shell unless it entered through the narrow embrasure. The plain below Castelforte and the immediate approaches to the town – the “keep” – were sown with anti-tank mines, and belts of booby-traps and anti-personnel mines were interwoven with the defences in depth. (The German engineers were fiendishly inventive. It was unsafe to open a door or pick up a souvenir in any freshly captured building, and there were traps in innocent-looking slit trenches where an attacker might in his turn seek cover from enemy fire. “Schu-mines” the size of a cigar box could blow off a man’s foot, and the equally horrible jumping-mine, if kicked or touched leapt into the air to explode and throw out a fan of steel shot waist-high with sufficient force to disembowel or castrate the victim.)
True to form, the French plan rejected the option of a frontal attack. Instead it was proposed to pick out the Castelforte defences by two converging attacks made from above and behind them. The boundary with the US 88th Division of the 2nd Corps was adjusted so that it could come in from the left, clear M. Cianella and take Ventosa in reverse, while on the right the 4e RTM from Sevez’s mountain division (4e DMM) reinforced by one of Monsabert’s Tunisia battalions (I/4e RTT) would break through the Gustav Line in front of Furlito, work down the Rivo Grande and secure M. Siola. When this manoeuvre had been completed, and only then, an armoured battle-group based on the 4e RTT and commanded by its CO, Colonel Guillebaud, would tackle the Castelforte defences frontally. (The French, like the Germans, were adept at forming task forces or battle-groups very smoothly and rapidly from units required for a specific mission. They were termed “groupments”, and known by the name of their commanders.) Groupement Guillebaud consisted of the 4e RTT, less the battalion attached to the Moroccans, the 4th Moroccan Spahis (4e RSM), the 7th Chasseurs d’Afrique (7e RCA, equipped with US SPM10 3-inch anti-tank guns), an attached battalion of US medium tanks with Shermans and a company of the divisional engineer regiment, with the whole of 3e DIA’s artillery in support. Guillebaud’s mission was to send one of his infantry battalions to open a small pass on his left, to assist the thrust by the Moroccans, mop up in Castelforte and when the pincer attack had disrupted the defenders go through to act as spearhead for the division during the advance to Esperia.
Things went at first no better around Castelforte than anywhere else. The Moroccans on the right were stuck in the Grande valley, the I/4e RTT was held up in front of M. Siola and the company sent to occupy the Colle di Cemorone also failed. By the afternoon of the 12th the pre-conditions for launching Groupement Guillebaud had therefore not been reached, when the good news of the fall of Ventosa to the Americans arrived. General Monsabert felt that he could not allow his division, fresh and virtually intact, to stand idle at such a moment. He acted, in accordance with his commanding general’s demand, with both “understanding” and “flexibility”. He ordered Guillebaud to attack as soon as he could, and the rest of his division to be ready to move across the river at first light on the 13th.
Guillebaud’s battle-group had been already formed into two task forces, an “East Column” and a “West Column” whose commanders had been examining the approaches to Castelforte all day, and they jumped off without delay at 4 p.m. The West Column lost three tanks and two SPs on mines outside S. C
osmo e Damiano, but the rest of the armour formed a fire-base and under its point-blank fire two companies of infantry disappeared into the ruins and began to ferret out the defenders. A tank of the East Column, whose commander was perhaps showing an extreme example of French ardeur, jammed itself in one of the entrances of Castelforte, and there too the infantry managed to infiltrate and begin half a dozen little duels with the defence. Tunisians were lowest in the North African pecking order. They, the saying went, “were women, the Algerians men and the Moroccans heroes” — coined, no doubt, by a Moroccan. At Castelforte the Tunisians showed what skilled and daring infantry could do. By 7 p.m. Guillebaud’s line ran from Ventosa, which he had taken over from the Americans, through the southern parts of S. Cosmo e Damiano and Castelforte and out on to the high ground on his right, S. Sebastiano and M. della Torre, and he had taken eighty-two prisoners.
During the evening Juin had cleared his mind and decided on his next moves. He approved Monsabert’s initiative and ordered him to wait for no one and open up the road through the Castelforte defences and press on to Coreno. To assist him Sevez was to make a fresh attempt to clear his right by converging attacks from the north and east to eliminate the Gustav positions in the Grande valley. At the same time General Brosset was to get his armour moving again, for the British were over the river in strength south of Cassino town and it was important that he masked the enemy on the south bank of the Liri. At the same time his left wing, the brigade of Marines, was to keep in touch and in step with Dody’s right. All now rested with Dody regrouping for if he could not quickly clear the peaks in front of him and reach Vallemaio Juin’s whole plan would founder. There was no time to reorganise or try a fresh line. Therefore, although to resume the attack on the front of 2e DIM was to batter against strength, just what Juin disliked most and where one attack had already failed, he ordered Dody to try again, but with an important difference. This time there would be a thorough preliminary bombardment and where necessary the infantry would withdraw so as not to hamper the artillery when engaging the forward enemy positions. For this Dody was allotted no fewer than eighteen groupes, or battalions, of artillery; 176 pieces of 105-mm and 102 of 155-mm. Dody decided to take two bites at the cherry this time. He would begin with a limited attack made at 4.0 a.m. after a bombardment lasting three-quarters of an hour, mop up, reorganise and mount a fresh attack to complete his breakthrough at 8.0 p.m.
Tug of War Page 37
