Ortona (28 page)

The surgical teams and medical orderlies in the San Vito operations depended on both the ambulance units, and the medical officers and orderlies posted to the various battalions to clear the wounded from the fighting lines. Geneva Convention rules required that these men wear a red cross on a white armband for identification, be unarmed, and not be fired upon while treating and collecting the wounded. In reality, their job was as dangerous as any front-line duty. Amid the confused, smoke-filled, and hazardous conditions prevailing during a battle, soldiers rarely held fire when presented with a target wearing an enemy uniform. Many stretcher-bearers, orderlies, and medical officers died on the Moro River front trying to rescue wounded soldiers. Some were shot by enemy soldiers. The majority were killed by artillery and mortar fire, which exempted nobody from its deadly rain.

As soon as a battalion established a new position, it set up a Regimental Aid Post (RAP) in the safest and most comfortable location available. Usually this was a building with solid walls and a sturdy roof that rendered it somewhat shellproof. If conditions were too bad, as was the case on December 8–9 for the RCR dug in on the reverse slope of the Moro River ridge, the RAP might merely be a series of slit trenches close to the centre of the infantry's perimeter. Once a wounded soldier reached the RAP he received basic, often crude, first aid. Priority was placed on stopping external bleeding and preventing the onset of shock, a major cause of battlefield death. Wound cleaning to stave off gangrene was also a key task. Stabilization of the patient was the focus, rather than extensive treatment of the wound.

The medical orderlies forayed out from the RAP whenever a wounded soldier was reported. Often the flow of battle required the infantry to carry on the fight and abandon the wounded where they fell. To do otherwise jeopardized everyone's safety, because a company or platoon concentrating on tending wounded seldom could fulfill assigned combat tasks. Leaving suffering friends was more easily
done if the soldiers knew that stretcher-bearers followed in their wake, determined to gather up the wounded and spirit them to safety.

The forward medical teams were assisted by the padres and chaplains assigned to each battalion. Men such as Roy Durnford, the Seaforth padre, Three Rivers Tank Regiment's chaplain Waldo E. Smith, and RCR chaplain Rusty Wilkes spent many hours under fire. Much of the time they helped man the jeeps fitted with stretcher racks to carry the wounded back from the RAP to rear-area hospital facilities. The clerics also oversaw the grim duty of burying the dead. This included the task of ensuring that grave sites were marked and coordinates recorded on maps so the bodies could later be recovered and moved to military cemeteries for permanent interment.

For many RCR soldiers killed on December 9, days passed before their bodies were recovered or buried. At 1430 hours, when the battalion moved off toward the safety of San Leonardo, it had no choice but to abandon its dead. Almost every man in ‘C' Company was required just to assist the stretcher-bearers in carrying out the wounded who were incapable of walking on their own.

Providing a protective screen for the men assisting the wounded, Galloway's ‘B' Company took the point position. The soldiers moved through a landscape transformed by war into a charred, mud-choked hellhole. Olive trees were shattered and stripped of leaves, vineyards were devastated tangles of wire and torn vegetation, most buildings had been reduced to rubble or had their roofs stove in by direct artillery hits, small fires burned across the plain clear to Ortona. Everywhere the men looked were shell craters. The mud underfoot was slippery and filthy. Forty-eight hours before, Matthew Halton had likened the Moro ridgeline to a painting by Paul Cézanne. Now it appeared colourless, a bleak world made even grimmer by the close slate-grey sky.

‘B' and ‘C' companies slipped clear of the RCR position without meeting any resistance. ‘A' Company and the battalion HQ section were not so lucky. Just as they prepared to move off, the Panzer Grenadiers attacked, slicing between the two groups and isolating ‘A' Company and Spry's HQ. Responsible for the wounded and under orders to get into San Leonardo, Galloway had no option but to leave
the cutoff element to its fate. Upon reaching San Leonardo, ‘C' Company immediately set off with the wounded down the road leading to the southern bank of the Moro River. ‘B' Company took up position on the junction where the lateral ridgeline road intersected the main road entering San Leonardo.

Galloway was surprised by the reception Seaforth Highlanders of Canada commander Lieutenant Colonel Doug Forin gave him. “Thank God you have come,” Forin said excitedly. He then proceeded to order Galloway to push his ravaged company forward of San Leonardo toward the enemy lines. Galloway's orders from Spry were to consolidate at the road junction inside the village, so he refused. Forin demanded to know what else Galloway would do to help him. Galloway told him his orders were to sit tight. If Forin failed to consider such action a help, that was too bad. He thought the lieutenant colonel left in a “huff.”
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Soon after, Galloway received a radio signal from Spry to withdraw from San Leonardo. He was to rejoin the RCR on the southern bank of the Moro, where the battalion was planning a reorganization for future operations. Because San Leonardo was taking heavy artillery fire, Galloway replied that he would link up with the rest of the battalion in the morning when it was safer to move.

While ‘A' Company and battalion HQ were left surrounded on three flanks with their backs to the Moro River valley, most of ‘D' Company remained in the Hastings and Prince Edward battalion's perimeter, helping to fend off repeated counterattacks. The brunt of the German counterattacks fell on the front held by Hasty P's Acting Major Frank Joseph Hammond's Company ‘B.' The twenty-nine-year-old had worked his way up from the rank of Lance Corporal and was known as a brave, stolid soldier. Seeing the advancing lines of Panzer Grenadiers, Hammond ordered his men to hold their fire. He let the Germans close to within 150 yards before unleashing a maelstrom of machine-gun and rifle fire, supported by the company's two-inch mortars and the battalion's three-inch mortars. The effect was devastating, throwing back the initial attack with heavy casualties.
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During this attack, Sergeant Gordon Pemberton was stunned by {a mortar bomb that landed near his slit trench. Head ringing from
concussion, the twenty-seven-year-old from Port Hope, Ontario, still had the presence of mind to appreciate that one flank of his platoon section was hanging in the air, completely exposed to attack from a narrow ravine stretching back into the German lines. The Germans were raking the Canadian front with machine-gun and mortar fire, obviously trying to soften the position for a renewed assault. Pemberton realized the ravine approach had to be secured immediately. Unable to spare any men from his section's line, Pemberton decided to tackle the job himself. Snatching up a Bren light machine gun and a bag of magazines, he crawled across 350 yards of ground subjected to heavy enemy fire to occupy a position overlooking the ravine from the ridge opposite his section's trenches. As he set the Bren gun up on its bipod, assumed a prone position, and tucked the machine gun's butt into his shoulder, a knot of Germans turned a bend inside the ravine and started creeping toward his hiding spot. Pemberton let them come in close before opening fire. He burned off several magazines, sending the completely surprised Panzer Grenadiers fleeing. They left fifteen dead.
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As this attack was being repelled, more Germans dug in a machine-gun post right in front of Hammond's lines. From this position, the Panzer Grenadiers were able to lay down a screen of fire that forced ‘B' Company to keep their heads down. Unless the post was destroyed, Hammond knew the next counterattack might well break through. Enlisting the help of thirty-two-year-old Company Sergeant Major Cecil Napoleon Yearwood, Hammond prepared a two-man attack against the German emplacement.

Both men armed themselves with Thompson submachine guns. While the rest of the company laid down supporting fire to force the Panzer Grenadiers to seek cover, Hammond and Yearwood charged the gun position, spraying the enemy with repeated bursts of fire. When they ceased firing, fourteen soldiers were dead or wounded, and the remaining eighteen in the position were standing with their hands up in surrender. This action broke the German offensive.
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For the rest of the day, the battalion was subjected to little more than desultory shelling, mortaring, the occasional infantry probe, and a surprise aerial attack by a squadron of Messerschmitt 109s that screamed in off the Adriatic to bomb and strafe its positions.

Similar counterattacks were also directed toward the isolated RCR element still trapped between the bridgehead held by the Hasty P's and San Leonardo. This small, battered group of soldiers was seriously threatened with being overrun. The Panzer Grenadiers sought to infiltrate behind ‘A' Company and cut it off from the valley below. Were they to succeed, everyone in the encircled position would either be killed or forced to surrender. After about twenty minutes of fierce fighting, Spry decided a retreat into the valley and across the river by the nearest possible ford was the only way to avert destruction. He ordered Captain Slim Liddell's ‘A' Company to hold until his battalion HQ group had successfully slipped away. Liddell's men would then follow by platoons.
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Breaking off a heavy action is a dangerous and difficult undertaking, usually requiring soldiers to relinquish good defensive positions and to cross open ground subject to fire from an alerted enemy. Heavy casualties are common. It is also common for some sections to get forgotten or cut off from the main body. The first two platoons of ‘A' Company managed to extricate themselves and retreat to the river bottom. Casualties were light. At the river, Spry learned that ‘A' Company's No. 8 Platoon was missing and Lieutenant Mitch Sterlin's No. 16 Platoon of ‘D' Company, concentrated in the two-storey farmhouse dubbed Sterlin Castle, had similarly failed to join the retreat.

Unable to do anything for the lost units, Spry led his men across the Moro and ordered them to dig in on the river's bank. His concern was to set up a defensive line to prevent any attempt by the Germans to launch a major assault across the river to outflank and surround the Canadian units positioned on the north side of the valley. Soon Spry was reinforced by ‘C' Company, which had completed its transfer of the wounded to safety.
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The soldiers on the riverbank listened anxiously to the sounds of intense gunfire coming from the northern ridgeline, knowing the remnants of two RCR platoons were engaged in a bitter struggle to survive.