Tug of War

by Shelfold Bidwell

  Once again the German commander played into Dody’s hands. His meagre allotment of artillery had been reinforced and every German gun opened up a violent counter-preparation, followed by a determined counter-attack. This was repelled by defensive fire from the French artillery, and the opening attack delayed for over an hour. Later another was launched by a reinforcing battalion of panzer grenadiers but it too withered under the French fire, the battalion commander was captured and the remnants drifted off to the rear in disorder, pounded by mortar fire. There were now only a few scattered and discouraged parties to resist the Moroccans, whose attack gathered momentum. By mid-morning Faito and Feuci were in French hands. On the right the fighting went on until 2.0 p.m. when M. Girofano fell, and an hour later the four kilometres from Dody’s forward positions to M. Maio had been covered. If any of the embattled troops on the DIADEM front had eyes for anything but the enemy immediately in front of them they might have seen, at 3.0 p.m. on May 13, an enormous Tricolore being hoisted on the summit of M. Maio, visible from the Tyrrhenian Sea to the Monastery of Montecassino.

  The whole CEF was by then on the move. Brosset’s tanks were well on the way to S. Apollinare. Sevez’s regiments had broken a gap two and a half miles wide in the Gustav Line between M. Feuci and M. Siola and he was preparing his lunge into the Aurunci massif. Guillebaud, leaving some infantry behind to mop up in Castelforte, had broken through its defences and was well on his way up the road, the rest of Monsabert’s division filing over the Garigliano bridges and preparing to follow up. The French had now ruptured the Gustav Line in four places, its defenders were either recoiling in disorder — having lost between 30 and 40 per cent of their fighting strength and leaving 900 prisoners in French hands. It had not been a cheap victory. The French had lost 2,150 killed and wounded, the Moroccan divisions suffering particularly heavily and Guillebaud’s battle-group 335, balanced by 377 prisoners of war it had captured, of whom 11 were officers.

  The situation as seen from Kesselring’s headquarters was by now extremely alarming, even for a commander of such strong nerves and optimistic disposition. He had been disagreeably surprised by the whole unfolding of the Allied offensive. Like a boxer, he had been watching his opponents right and left, the Liri and Anzio fronts, only to be butted suddenly in the face. The centre of the Tenth Army front had collapsed, the one sector he believed was impregnable. Kesselring could see what Clark obsessed with his private goals could not, that it was the combination of the Allied thrusts — their “articulation”, to borrow the useful French term — that posed the threat. He had three panzer divisions in reserve, but was reluctant to commit them until he could judge the progress of the various Allied formations, including the as yet unleashed attack from the Anzio bridgehead. It should be possible to hold the British in the Liri valley where the defences were immensely strong and the front narrow, but the defence was like a cork in a bottle. If he allowed it to be loosened it might blow out, with fatal results for his whole defensive plan. If he had no reserves with which to buttress the Fourteenth Army his worst case might occur, the Tenth Army being encircled by a thrust from the Anzio bridgehead. He was reluctant at this early stage to commit even part of his precious general reserve and so play into his opponent’s hand, but the Gustav Line was breached and he had no other course open but to reinforce the 71st Division and man the forward defences of the Hitler Line. Accordingly on the 13th he ordered the 90th Panzer Grenadier Division to move from its position in observation near the mouth of the Tiber, and by the morning of the 14th its 200th Panzer Grenadier Regiment had covered seventy-five miles by night, to avoid the attention of the Allied air forces, and was taking up positions west of Esperia. At the same time von Vietinghoff began the parsimonious but effective method of creating a reserve at which the Germans excelled. He ordered his corps commanders to thin out where they could, withdrawing a company here or a platoon there. Artillery, engineers and reconnaissance troops were to be used as infantry, including those instruments of last resort, the ZBV* companies scraped up from any spare man-power in the rear areas, and formed into battle-groups. This sort of hotch-potch could only work in the German Army, where every man was indoctrinated to fight without hesitation in company with others and under the nearest officer or NCO, whether he knew them or not.

  Allied Intelligence was, of course, well aware of the existence of the Hitler “switch line”, which ran near Piedimonte, four miles west of Cassino on the north side of the Liri valley, to Pontecorvo, thence westwards to curve slightly south through Fondi until it reached the coast at Terracina. (The French referred to a fortified line, or line of fortified posts between Esperia and Highway No. 82 as the “Hitler Line”, but this is easily explained. These German “lines” were in great depth [in German not “lines” but Stellungen, or positions] and in this sense the fortifications already prepared on the Esperia front could be regarded as the outposts of the Hitler Line proper.) During the battle the intelligence staff of the CEF gathered from German prisoners captured in the M. Maio sector that their units had been ordered to hold the ground to the bitter end — undoubtedly the reason for their officers’ persistence in their suicidal counter-attacks, but those captured by Guillebaud further south spoke of an “Orange Tree Line” on which they hoped to fall back, running south-west from Coreno across the Ausente valley. French Intelligence also became aware of a “Dora Line” extending from the right bank of the Liri and barring the approaches to Esperia, after which it followed the heights west of the road as far as Ausonia. All the prisoners confirmed the opinion of the forward French troops that German resistance had collapsed and the remnants of the Gustav Line garrison were making their way back across the mountains in small parties. They had left behind, as well as their dead, 1,200 prisoners of whom some 20 were officers including 6 battalion commanders, and all their guns except two. At the same time French Intelligence obtained clues pointing to the arrival of the 200th Panzer Grenadiers. Now was the moment for the CEF, exhausted as it was, to push on with all possible speed before the Hitler Line could be manned.

  * Zur Besonderen Verwendung, troops for special employment or emergencies.

  21

  JUIN TRIUMPHANT

  The CEF began its exploitation on May 14/15 and by the 21st its leading units stood on the heights commanding the Pico–Itri lateral. On the 23rd the Hitler Line was overrun. Juin’s operation was one of the most remarkable feats of a war more remarkable for bloody attrition than skill, and deserves to be better known; instead of being a briefly noted incident of the secondary Italian campaign, or ignored altogether. It was orchestrated with extraordinary skill. The thrust lines of divisions split into two or three as the ground or the situation demanded, to reconverge and divide again, and battle-groups were formed, dissolved and reconstituted in a bewildering manner, but if they are patiently unravelled a pattern becomes visible as Juin and his skilled divisional commanders maintain the rhythm of their advance. This great success was not cheaply won. There were ten days of hard fighting, marked by many a fierce little battle and from time to time a dramatic coup. The German soldier might give way, but he never gave in without a bitter struggle. A whole volume could be devoted to the subject of the French in the mountains, but all that can be done here is to convey some notion of the flavour and style of their operations. Inseparable from these was the contribution of Major-General Geoffrey Keyes’ US 2nd Corps, for just as the operation of the Allied armies was “articulated” — parts of a well-designed machine — so were the two corps of Mark Clark’s army.

  General Keyes, as we have seen, so far had not had a particularly happy time in Italy, and once more he was faced with a difficult task. Operationally it was extremely unpromising. He had to bash his way up a narrow corridor with the sea on one side and the mountains on the other, rising sharply from the coastal strip along which ran the Via Appia, over terrain ideally suited for a long spoiling German defence. The only option was to move up to the shoulders of the hills and unblock th
e road by a series of turning movements. The staff at corps and in the divisions worked hard at the problem. Models of the ground were constructed so that the attacking regiments could study their plans in detail, all the available intelligence was collated, and patrols were sent out to fix the enemy posts and familiarise the troops with the front.

  Unfortunately General Keyes’ two divisions, the 85th and the 88th, had neither the experience nor the training to carry out a sophisticated scheme of manoeuvre. American mass production systems of training, the use of standardised tactical procedures and rigid direction from above, though essential for the creation of a huge citizen army, did nothing to inculcate the initiative and cunning required when fighting in mountainous terrain; a lonely business, demanding independent action by companies and platoons — even squads. The art of moving by night, patrolling, stalking enemy posts and infiltration can only be acquired by constant practice. Physical fitness is equally essential. To carry all the gear and supplies required by an infantryman in action — radios, ammunition, water, machine guns, mortars — comes as an unpleasant shock to soldiers trained on flat ground and accustomed to moving all their heavy equipment in Jeeps or trucks. The US official historian records that patrols sent out by 2nd Corps units to pinpoint the enemy forward localities duly did so, but produced little information which the intelligence staff could use to identify enemy formations.1 This is a symptom of inadequate mental preparation as distinct from skill at arms, resulting in a reluctance natural enough in conscript soldiers of urban origin to engage the enemy closely and secure a prisoner, or at least a body. (The British made a fetish of patrolling, a legacy of the trench warfare of the First World War, when the policy was to “dominate” no-man’s-land, vigorously pursued by, e.g., General Hawkesworth of the British 46th Division. An officer from that formation, now a distinguished military historian, when on patrol one dark night near Cassino was puzzled to see what appeared to be a fiery glow-worm approaching him. When it was closer it proved to be a large US infantry patrol off-course, in file at close intervals, every man smoking a cigarette.)2 Such shortcomings were not confined to the US Army, but can occur in all hastily trained armies of citizen soldiers regardless of nationality.

  Bearing all this in mind it is remarkable how well Keyes’ men did once they had found their feet, but during the opening days of DIADEM it illustrated this stark process. Units lost their way in the dark, ran into opposition they should have discovered existed long before D-day, men threw away their combat packs3 (just as the idle 46th Division and the green US 36th Division had discarded vital extra loads such as reserve ammunition and radios at Salerno), or they went to ground or fell back on meeting strong opposition. One company including its commander fell into a state of collective panic and refused all orders to advance, and only recovered when the battalion S3 (Operations Officer) came forward and led a few men forward by his personal example. He was an example of those natural leaders who emerge when the chips are down and, often unexpectedly, assert themselves. One such was Sergeant Shea of the 350th Infantry who went forward alone and killed or captured the crews of three machine guns who were holding up the advance (to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honour, the highest US decoration for courage in the field) and was promoted lieutenant. Lieutenant-Colonel R. E. Kendall, commanding a battalion of the 351st Infantry, got his shaken men on the move by walking about bolt upright under a heavy fire prodding them with his cane and genially inviting them to advance: “Come on, you bastards, you’ll never get to Rome this way!” Later when held up by a strongpoint he fell mortally wounded after leading an attack on it, “firing every weapon he could lay his hands on” and personally grenading a machine-gun pit and killing its occupants. A candid history of any regiment in any army would reveal similar stories of young troops entering combat for the first time.4

  In spite of these gallant efforts, however, Keyes shared the mortification of every other commander, bar one (Russell of 8th Indian Infantry Division), in that his initial attack was almost everywhere a complete failure. Only on Cianella had the right of the 88th Division, as related, completed its mission of clearing Cianella and capturing Ventosa against light opposition and with very few casualties. When Keyes renewed his attack on the 12th his troops again failed to make any real progress. The fact that his opponent, Generalmajor Bernhard Steinmetz, commanding the 94th Infantry Division, was a worried man, having lost men he could ill spare in the combats of the past two days and more to the constant, intense fire of the US Artillery, was not at that moment known to him, and would not have been of any great encouragement if it had. American generals had to work in a bleaker command environment than their British or French counterparts. They were given the mission and the means to accomplish it, and they were expected to succeed. Keyes knew that Clark was breathing down his neck, so he had to breathe down the neck of his two divisional commanders. He sent for them on the 13th, convinced, accurately, that his opponent was rapidly reaching the end of his resources, and ordered them both to continue the attack that afternoon, a move endorsed and amplified by Clark, who told Keyes that the attack was to be sustained all through the night into the next day, with the village of Spigno as objective, a suitable jump-off point for the parallel attack he intended the 2nd Corps to launch through the mountains in step with Juin’s “Corps de Montagne”, shortly to get under way as soon as the French had mopped up in the Ausente valley.

  The result was more brutal losses, and little progress. The S3 of one of the battalions of the 351st Infantry reported to its regimental commander: “Two years of training have gone up in smoke … my men … about half of them — almost all my leaders.”5 This did not perturb the American commanders, at least not at that stage in the war. Keyes, unusually, had attached to his corps a large force of replacements, what the British termed “first reinforcements”, trained and assigned to regiments, instead of having them fed up the lines of communication on a demand basis. Casualties did not move or deter him, any more than they did any other American general. To put it crudely, their philosophy was that to make omelettes it was necessary to break eggs, and in any case to attack à outrance all the time in the long run was cheaper and more humane than pussyfooting around looking for a soft option. As far as they could applaud any limey general they felt that Picton’s cry of “Go on you dogs, do you expect to live for ever?” revealed that he had grasped the root of the matter. Of course soldiers did not want to be killed, and naturally officers like the S3 of the 3rd/351st Infantry mourned when the rookies they had so carefully turned into trained soldiers were cut down, but soldiers were expendable and had to be driven. It is important to emphasise this, for it is the reason why the Americans despised the paternalism permeating the British “regimental system”, and why Mark Clark dismissed Richard McCreery contemptuously as a “feather duster”, for not pushing his subordinates hard enough.

  Clark certainly felt by the 14th that his determination had paid a dividend when the 2nd Corps reported after resuming its attacks that the German defenders of their first objectives had slipped away. What in fact had happened was that the French had overrun the right of the 71st Division, uncovering the left of the 94th, so Steinmetz was only too relieved when he received orders to withdraw. His units disengaged with their customary skill and fell back to their next position. Urged on by Keyes, the Americans now began to roll, or to “go”, as the British infantry used to say.

  The French were “going” already, and with a brief pause to regroup, which never seemed to take them any time, and to mop up in the newly opened Ausente valley, Juin’s next phase began to unfold. Somewhat simplified, it was for the DMI to secure S. Giorgio a Liri and the higher ground of its neighbourhood south of the river; an area doubly important because its possession offered a protective flank to the operations against Esperia and the Dora Line beyond, which also provided observation over the Eighth Army’s axis in the Liri valley. (Dora was the name given by the Germans to the stretch of the Hitler-Senger Lin
e extending southwards from S. Oliva.) Beyond S. Giorgio the right bank of the Liri became low and marshy, so General Brosset dissolved his armoured battle-groups and reverted to his normal brigade organisation so as to give his infantry free play, and forced his way through the mountains past the Dora Line, much vexed by fire from north of the Liri, as the Canadians were now lagging nearly four miles behind him having been held up by the Formio d’Aquino stream. Dody went up through the mountains, positioned his division on the high ground commanding the junction of the roads leading to S. Giorgio, Ausonia and Esperia and deployed his artillery so as to support Monsabert coming up on his left. Then, pinched out by Brosset on one side and Monsabert on the other, the 2e DIM went into reserve and a well-deserved rest. In five days it had lost 1,120 killed, wounded and missing, but captured 20 officers, 500 under-officers and NCOs and 2,300 rank and file, a mass of equipment and 12 guns. Its supporting artillery had fired 68,000 rounds.