Читать книгу Italy’s Sorrow: A Year of War 1944–45 - James Holland, James Holland - Страница 27

Near a village not far from Route 6, the Via Casilina, and about fifteen miles behind the front line stood rows of pup tents, trucks, jeeps, and canvas stores belonging to the Canadians of the Perth Regiment. They were infantrymen, part of the 11th Infantry Brigade, but attached to the Canadian 5th Armoured Division. All knew they would soon be joining the battle they had heard raging to the north-west.

Since listening to the opening barrage and seeing the night ripped apart by the flash of the guns, large numbers of the Perth men had regularly hovered around the Intelligence Officer’s tent, scanning the bulletin board for updates on the progress of the battle. Among them was twenty-year-old Stan Scislowski, a private with ‘Dog Company’. A bright young man from Windsor, Ontario, Stan had been working for the car manufacturers, Chrysler of Canada, before being drafted into the army. After basic and then advanced infantry training, he had been posted overseas to Britain with the No 3 Canadian Infantry Reinforcement Unit, and then assigned to the Perth Regiment.

The Perths had shipped out to Italy at the end of October 1943, and at the beginning of January had been sent to the Adriatic Front. At the River Riccio they had gone into battle for the first time, a sobering experience in which they had been criticised by the divisional commander, Major-General Vokes, for not showing enough determination. ‘It had been a rough baptism of fire no one had expected,’ noted Stan, ‘an ass-kicking that we’d have to face up to and live down over the months ahead.’61

Although they had manned a section of the Cassino Front in April 1944, the Perths had not been in battle since. Not that Stan personally felt a sense of trepidation just yet. He’d been terrified that first time he’d gone into combat, but although they could now hear the battle raging fifteen and more miles away, he was too far back to feel fear. And anyway, roaring overhead almost incessantly were reams of fighter-bombers, flying back and forth between the front and their bases nearby. ‘At times,’ noted Stan, ‘the roar of engines was so loud as the low-flying planes flew northward with their bomb-loads that conversation was out of the question.’ But Stan found it comforting to know that their air forces had such complete mastery of the skies.

The Allied air forces had not let up their effort once the battle had begun. This was why 90th Panzer Division was having such a difficult time getting to the front: daylight travel was out of the question. Increasingly, there were fewer vehicles available as more and more trucks and cars were left burning and riddled on the side of the road. Petrol was in ever-shortening supply. So too was ammunition. And there were other important side effects too. The men were badly undernourished: Jupp Klein and his men felt hungry all the time. It also made it harder for post to reach the front – which was why Major Georg Zellner had still not received any letters from home.

One of those contributing to the massed swarms of aircraft over the battlefield that day was Lieutenant Charles Dills of the US 27th Fighter-Bomber Group. He had begun the battle seconded to Fifth Army headquarters for a few days to fly General Clark and other senior commanders around and in and out of the Anzio bridgehead. On his first flight with the army commander, Charles had found himself flying with Clark sitting next to him in the co-pilot’s seat. Knowing Clark flew, he offered the general the chance to take the controls for a while. ‘He agreed,’ says Charles. ‘He was a pretty nice guy. I had a lot of respect for him.’

His stint as a courier pilot with Fifth Army headquarters had finished a few days before, however, and he had immediately returned to the 27th Fighter-Bomber Group at their airfield near Caserta. On 18 May his flight was taking part in an armed reconnaissance over the Ceprano area, a town on the Via Casilina, some fifteen miles north-west of Cassino. Their task was to look out for any significant troop movements and to shoot up and bomb anything they saw while they were about it. The day before they’d been sent up with a more specific target: a mortar position north of Aquino. The drill was always the same: fly towards the target at around 14,000–15,000 feet, high enough to avoid the countless enemy flak batteries, then nearing the target, the leader would waggle his wings and the rest of the pilots would fall in line behind him, turn on their backs and, one by one, follow him down in a dive. ‘From a distance,’ says Charles, ‘this procedure might resemble a number of balls on a slightly tilted table following one another, coming to the edge of the table and then dropping straight down.’ Once over the target they would level out of the dive then drop their bombs – usually one 500lb bomb and six 20lb fragmentation bombs – and then flatten out, usually at around 5,000 feet, but often higher depending on the intensity of flak. ‘You drop the bombs as best you can,’ explains Charles, ‘and then get the hell out of there!’

Also flying that day was Leutnant Willi Holtfreter. After bailing out of his Messerschmitt on 1 May, he had luckily landed well behind German lines. Although he had not been seriously injured he had, nonetheless, been packed off to hospital in Montefiascone, near Lake Bolsena, ‘for observation’, and had been kept off flying duties ever since. On the 18th, however, he was finally back on operations with the 9th Staffel – or squadron. That morning he was up before dawn, as the fighter pilots always were, stumbling out of their quarters and then taking a short ride to the airfield. Breakfast would be eaten at the dispersal tents and then they would sit out on deck chairs, dozing or playing the card game Doppelkopf, waiting to be scrambled. ‘Our hearts would always beat faster whenever the telephone rang,’ admits Willi. If it was a scramble, they would hurry to their planes where their groundcrew would be waiting for them, their Messerschmitt 109Ks ready.

On that day, Willi was scrambled and took off at 11.35 a.m. Orders were to cover the Via Casilina: troops were on the move and they were to do their best to protect them from Allied bombers and strafing fighter-bombers – the dreaded jabos* as the Germans called them – although how one flight of 109s was supposed to make much difference was anyone’s guess. ‘We knew how outnumbered we were,’ says Willi. ‘It was obvious. Whenever we spotted any bombers there were always so many fighters accompanying them that we couldn’t get at them at all.’ It was fortunate for Willi that he was such a naturally calm, clear-headed person. ‘We had a job to do,’ he says, ‘and we had to do it, whatever the odds.’ Just over an hour later, he landed back at their base at Tuscania, south of Lake Bolsena, his Messerschmitt free of bullet holes. For once, they had avoided the massed swarms of Allied aircraft.

* * *

At least by now the senior German commanders were back at the front. Generaloberst von Vietinghoff had returned to take command of AOK 10 once more, while so too had General Frido von Senger, who had finally resumed command of 14th Panzer Corps on 17 May. He had been shocked by what he had found. AOK 10 was still sharing his HQ at Castel Massimo near Frosinone, so after getting himself up to speed with the situation he had hurried down to the southernmost part of the line to see for himself the parlous state of his Corps.

The Americans had reached Formia, while further inland, the French were now overlooking a critical German line of communication, namely the road that ran south from the Via Casilina at Ceprano to the coast. In his absence and with his deputy, General Hartmann, failing to show proper ‘grip’, Kesselring had fed penny packets into gaps in the front between the two retreating German divisions. With bullets pinging around him, von Senger discovered a detachment of the 44th Infantry Division (to which Georg Zellner, still in the mountains north of Cassino with his battalion, belonged), already being forced back. As he was all too aware, these replacement units were far too small to be able to make much difference; he simply couldn’t understand how this had been allowed to happen. It had been almost a week since the start of the offensive – ample time in which to send a reserve division in its entirety to plug the gap between the 71st and 94th Divisions. It was incomprehensible folly, especially as, when he had left Italy, 15th Panzer Grenadier Division had been positioned perfectly as a reserve behind the right wing of the corps. Now he had returned to discover the division had been committed by battalions across the front. ‘This,’ noted von Senger, ‘is a classic example of the way conduct of operations degenerated under Hitler’s influence.’62

Meanwhile, up on Monte Cassino, the Poles had launched their second attack, and this time there was no German changeover taking place. Moreover, they had not attacked blind as before. Wladek Rubnikowicz and the 12th Polish Lancers had remained dug in along the meadow below Snake’s Head Ridge between the two attacks, but although they had been unable to move by day, they had patrolled aggressively by night, as had the rest of the Polish troops on Monte Cassino. What had made their life marginally easier had been the amount of mines around the monastery that had been detonated by Polish shell and mortar fire. Shells and mortars rained over the narrow battlefield day and night. On one occasion, Wladek had been standing behind three men. ‘A shell came over and exploded right on top of them,’ he recalls. ‘Two of the men disappeared into thin air. There was nothing left. But on a bush nearby I saw the ammunition belt and the stomach of the third. That was all that was left.’ Soon after Wladek saw a soldier sitting down nearby, simply staring into space. The man was covered in dust and had a glazed expression on his face. Wladek bent over and touched his back and saw that it was covered in blood. The man, he realised, was dead.

Although the Fallschirmjäger defending the monastery and mountain had been further depleted in number during the intervening days, they continued to hold out with almost messianic determination. The fighting was brutal. ‘It was often a case of kill or be killed,’ says Wladek. ‘Bullets were flying everywhere. One simply had to pray the angels made those bullets go around you.’ Despite this, however, the Poles were not going to be denied a second time. A key position had been captured during a preliminary assault on the night of the 16th/17th, and by dusk the following evening, Point 593, a pinnacle overlooking the monastery that had seen so much bloodshed, was finally in Polish hands.

In the Liri Valley, meanwhile, the British and Canadians had been making steady progress too. On the same day, realising the Gustav Line could no longer be held, von Vietinghoff finally gave the order for AOK 10 to fall back to the next line of defence, namely the Senger Line, or the Hitler Line as the Allies named it. The withdrawal was to take place that night under the cover of darkness.

At their small farmhouse redoubt, Leutnant Jupp Klein and his small band of men had been up before dawn that day. Having made some coffee they then chewed what they believed must surely be the last meal of the condemned. Jupp was worried about the NCO in charge of the bazookas. He had looked nervous on his arrival the previous evening, but now appeared even more terrified. ‘My corporals and I,’ noted Jupp, ‘felt forebodings of the worst kind.’

The son of a coal mine manager from the Saar region of west Germany, Jupp had left school and become an apprentice carpenter. During his time with the Hitler Youth, however, he had trained as a pilot and had even got his licence. Aged eighteen when war broke out, he immediately tried to become a paratrooper with the Fallschirmjäger, but because of his flying experience, he was sent off to become a pilot instead. Had he been made a fighter pilot, he might well have remained one, but much to his annoyance, on finishing his training, he was sent to the Channel coast as an air-sea rescue pilot. Once again, he applied to join the Fallschirmjäger, and this time, to his relief, he was accepted.

With his carpentry skills, he was placed with the Pioneers and having completed his training, joined the 1st Division. After proving himself repeatedly in Russia, Sicily and southern Italy, he was made a Fahnenjunker and then later promoted to lieutenant and given a company of his own. Both he and his men were by this time highly experienced soldiers, who had all had their fair share of close calls. Even so, this current situation seemed particularly perilous. Jupp could not see how they could possibly avoid annihilation, or, at the very least, capture.

But the morning passed quietly, his men keeping under cover while the inexperienced reinforcements that had arrived the night before busied themselves in front of and around the farmhouse. Jupp could hear the sounds of fighting around them but directly opposite he watched shirtless British tank men sunning themselves on top of their machines. It frustrated him, watching them. His sharpshooters itched to use their long-range telescopic-sighted Mauser rifles.

Midday came and went, then the afternoon. Not until around seven in the evening did the whistle and explosion of British artillery start to fall around them, followed soon after by the tell-tale grinding and creaking of approaching tanks. Suddenly they emerged, around twenty-five Shermans cresting a slight ridge in front of them. Behind were considerable numbers of infantry. Immediately the heavy machine gun in the shed in front of the farmhouse opened fire. With horrible inevitability, moments later the inexperienced machine gunners were hit by enemy tank fire.

Jupp looked around for the bazooka men, but could no longer see them. By now the forward tanks were rolling right next to their farmhouse. A shot rang out, followed swiftly by one more – two of the Shermans had been hit; Jupp need never have doubted the bazooka team. At the same time, the Pioneers opened fire with their own machine guns. The bazooka men continued to fire – and with good accuracy. So long as the bazooka – or Ofenrohre – was used at short ranges, it could be a deadly weapon, and so it was proving now. More tanks had been knocked out while the remainder began hastily retreating. Jupp watched as the crews of the burning tanks piled out of the wrecks, running wildly, a number of them ablaze. And as the tanks departed so, too, did the British infantry, who disappeared back behind the ridge ahead.

Once again, a tiny force of carefully concealed men had beaten off a concerted Allied assault by men from 78th Division’s 38th Infantry Brigade. Meanwhile, Jupp and his men ran from their positions and gratefully flung their arms around the bazooka men. ‘At this point it struck me,’ noted Jupp, ‘that the commando leader, the senior NCO, at the present moment was the picture of tranquillity itself.’ The fear in his eyes of the previous evening had gone. As they counted the burning Shermans, they realised they had knocked out no less than thirteen, more than half the force. Then they saw the mangled remains of the machine-gun crew. ‘A senseless death,’ wrote Jupp, ‘for these young soldiers.’

Orders for the retreat had not reached the Pioneers’ now isolated redoubt, but the 4th Fallschirmjäger Regiment, who had remained in Cassino town throughout the battle, had received theirs. Getting away safely, however, was no easy task. The town was tucked into the side of the Monte Cassino massif, but the area directly to the south was already in British hands. The only escape route was to climb back up the mountain and then down the other side. Hans-Jürgen Kumberg had been preparing himself for the move all day, with his comrades gathering together every bit of equipment they could – even empty ammunition cases. Then at around 10 p. m., they began climbing up Monastery Hill along a narrow path. Hans found it an extremely tense experience. It was pitch dark, they were heavily laden, but they had to try and walk as quietly as possible. Even so, as they neared the top of the mountain, they began to hear Poles call out in German, ‘Come this way, come here!’ Like all other units in the 1st Fallschirmjäger Division, their numbers had diminished massively, but they now lost a further third of their number as men, confused on that dark mountain, fell for the ruse. Hans, however, stuck closely to the man in front and to the path that eventually began to lead them back down the mountain again. ‘Amazingly, not a single shot was fired,’ he says. ‘Perhaps both sides were worried about hitting their own men.’ Those that remained struggled all night, weighed down by their loads. ‘We were under orders to take everything with us,’ adds Hans, ‘but gradually you could hear men dropping things to the ground. You just couldn’t handle it any more.’

Hans finally reached the town of Pontecorvo, some seven miles behind Cassino, the following morning. He was utterly exhausted after his night trek up and over the mountain but relieved to have made it safely. Meanwhile, dramatic events were about to take place on Monte Cassino itself. At around ten that morning a battered white flag was hoisted above the monastery. A dozen men from Wladek Rubnikowicz’s regiment, the 12th Lancers, cautiously picked their way through the minefield and approached the ruins. They found only a handful of German paratroopers left, who all surrendered without firing a shot. The Poles, unable to find a Polish flag, attached a 12th Lancers pennant to a branch and stuck that into the rubble instead. It was 10.20 a.m. and the Battle of Monte Cassino was finally over.

It was a triumph for the Poles but came at a bitter cost. ‘Of course we were thrilled to have taken Monte Cassino,’ says Wladek. ‘When we captured it we all felt as though we had shown everyone what we were capable of. But a lot of people died.’

So they did. Polish casualties were 3,779 – and most of those were men who had, like Wladek, already endured the loss of their homes and their country, had been imprisoned, beaten and starved, and who had then travelled thousands of miles in order to continue the fight for their freedom.

* ‘Jabo’ was an abbreviation of Jagdbomber – literally, ‘fighter-bomber’.