Ortona (30 page)

Another hazard was presented by the hundreds of unexploded shells fired by both sides. Duds were common; others failed to explode because they landed on their sides or at some other angle
that resulted in the failure of the detonating fuse in the nose cap to ignite when the shell struck. The German engineers were highly skilled at booby-trapping unexploded shells and mortar bombs. Even if left alone, the explosives presented a great danger to civilians and soldiers alike.

Farther back from the immediate front at Villa Deo, Antonio Di Cesare, his mother, two uncles, and their families sought to live as best they could in a war zone. The men and teenage boys worked the fields when the artillery fell elsewhere. If a bombardment came their way, everyone fled houses and fields for a nearby grotto containing several natural caves. Sometimes the shelling caught them in the open or in their houses. Everyone then sought shelter wherever they could. In the houses they crawled under beds, in the fields they tried clawing holes in the muddy soil. Some failed to find safety. The number of dead and wounded rose with each passing day.

So far, because Villa Deo was to the west of the various approaches to Ortona, little of the shelling had been deliberately directed their way. Food was in short supply and all the homes were heavily overcrowded by Ortona refugees, but the civilians were coping. Antonio's family was wedged in with a total of twenty people living under one small roof.

The Panzer Grenadiers passing frequently through Villa Deo largely left the civilians alone. They neither demanded nor offered food. There was little looting or harassment, even of the younger women. Antonio thought the Germans were decent and were also victims of war. The whole family had grown fond of the young twenty-two-year-old engineering student turned soldier who often came to their home to chat during the evenings. When he failed to show up after the fierce fighting along the Moro River, Antonio became worried. Seeing a group of soldiers walking wearily past the house that night, he went outside to see if his friend was among them. Recognizing another soldier who had sometimes accompanied the engineering student during his visits, Antonio asked after his friend. Trudging on, the soldier said, “He is dead.” His voice a monotone, the man did not look up as he spoke. He seemed exhausted or emotionally so numbed that he was beyond caring. Deeply upset,
Antonio told the rest of the family of the young man's fate. They prayed for him and for all the young men dying around them.
¹²

The 90th Panzer Grenadiers had taken a terrific beating during the fighting on the Moro River line. All regiments were seriously depleted. In the counterattacks against the Hastings and Prince Edward bridgehead on December 9 alone, German casualties totalled 170 dead and 30 captured.
¹³
The Panzer Grenadier strategy of determined and immediate counterattacks against every Canadian advance had cost them dearly. By the evening of December 9, Generalleutnant Karl Hans Lungershausen was forced to plug gaps in his defences with all available reserves because his four battalions of regular infantry and two squadrons of tanks were so reduced in strength. A company of infantry specialists equipped with halftracks was brought forward, as were three engineering companies, two squadrons of light reconnaissance tanks from 65th Division, and the division's own reconnaissance squadron. In a bid to shore up the thinly stretched German defences, Lungershausen was given unprecedented access to artillery, boosting his weaponry from forty-eight to approximately seventy artillery guns. This excluded the usual artillery inherently linked to the division, and its assigned antitank gun battalion.
¹⁴

Deeply concerned, German Tenth Army chief of staff General-major Fritz Wentzell reported by telephone to his superior, Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring. Wentzell told Kesselring that their losses were such that the division would have to be reinforced and probably soon withdrawn. The Canadians, he said, were attacking “on the whole front from the coast to San Leonardo. Everything is being taken up there. 2nd Battalion 3rd Paratroop Regiment goes to Ortona.”

“To Ortona?” Kesselring asked.

“Yes, so that he [the Canadians] will be prevented from getting there at all costs.”
¹⁵

The 3rd Paratroop Regiment was part of the elite 1st Parachute Division, considered one of the best divisions in the German army. Formed in Sicily in 1943 just prior to the Allied invasion, 1st Parachute Division was composed on paper of 16,000 men organized
in three regiments, each divided into three battalions. The division had its own artillery regiment, antitank battalion, engineer battalion, and heavy mortar battalion, but no inherent tank regiment. Most of the paratroopers were veterans of many campaigns, including the invasion of Crete, and had seen extensive service on the Russian front. Newer recruits were superbly trained and selected from the fittest, most intelligent, and youngest enlistees.
¹⁶

General Richard Heidrich commanded the division. Known as “Papa Heidrich” by the paratroopers, he bore a striking resemblance to Winston Churchill. Perhaps to enhance this similarity, Heidrich habitually smoked long, fat cigars. He had grey eyes that one captured British officer described as giving “an impression of ruthlessness that belied his corpulence.”
¹⁷
Ruthless or not, the overweight general was highly respected by his men and by the German higher command. The soldiers thought he treated them “as if they were his sons.” In return they were fiercely loyal.
¹⁸

First Parachute Division was stationed in a relatively quiet corner of the Adriatic line on the upper reaches of the Sangro River. On the night of December 9, 3rd Paratroop Regiment began boarding trucks for a move to Pescara and from there south to Ortona. The following morning other elements of the division were scheduled to move to the coast.

Eighteen-year-old Obergefreiter Karl Bayerlein was second-in-command of a
gruppe
(twelve-man section) in the Fallschirmpionier (Parachute Engineer) Battalion. For the past two months, Bayerlein and the other engineers had been creating obstacles to enemy movement in the mountains by destroying roads and blowing up bridges.

Bayerlein had volunteered the year before for service. Approaching the recruiter's desk, Bayerlein noticed that his file lying before the recruiter bore a heavy stamp in black ink capital letters: “FIT TO SERVE IN THE SS.” Only weeks earlier, Bayerlein had received a letter from his father, an infantry soldier serving on the Russian front. “Avoid the SS,” his father warned. “You will be sent to the Russian front and if captured by the Russians you will be shot right away.” Heeding his father's advice, Bayerlein told the recruiter that he did not want to join the SS, but rather wanted to be a parachutist. The recruiter, impressed by this martial ambition, approved his request.

At the Gardelegen and Wittstock airborne training centres, Bayerlein became an expert in the use of all standard German infantry weapons, as well as related Allied weapons. He was also trained to drive Allied military and civilian vehicles, including trams, in case he should be parachuted deep behind enemy lines. Although, since the heavy losses sustained during the airborne invasion of Crete, German military doctrine discouraged the aerial deployment of paratroopers, Bayerlein and all other paratroopers made six parachute jumps as part of their basic training.

When he joined the 1st Parachute Division, Bayerlein had been immediately impressed by the elite nature of the men with whom he served. The line officers were young, tough, and keenly intelligent. “They were always in the front and never claimed privileges for themselves.” They ate the same food as the soldiers, slept when and where they slept, and led the way in battle.

Of small stature, Bayerlein was assigned to 3rd Gruppe, 3rd Platoon, 3rd Company. In parachute units, the third platoons were manned by the shortest men in the company and third companies received all the shortest men in the battalion. The tallest men went to the first companies, first platoons, and first gruppes. Bayerlein was given to understand the designation of men to units on the basis of height was a parachutist tradition. But it did have practical applications as well. Third Company was largely engaged in the task of building defensive bunkers and underground shelters, a task well suited to small men.
¹⁹

On the morning of December 10, Bayerlein wrote in his diary: “A message arrives alerting us. . . . We must leave our quarters immediately and drive on SS 17 to Pescara.”
²⁰
The decision to send the 1st Paratroop Division to Ortona reflected a shift in intentions on the part of Tenth Army command. No longer was the intent to merely delay the Eighth Army advance. Now the purpose was to stop a formerly insignificant oceanside town from falling into Allied hands. The battle before Ortona was rapidly transforming into one of pride, where a German defeat would become a propaganda victory for the Allies, and vice versa, if Ortona were not to fall before the onset of winter prohibited further major offensive action on the Adriatic front.

M
AJOR
General Chris Vokes's objective was to force the Germans back beyond Ortona. As usual, Vokes's plan was simple and direct. He planned to head straight up the closest road from San Leonardo. It would be an Alberta show, with the Loyal Edmonton Regiment, in concert with ‘C' Squadron of the 14th Canadian Armoured Brigade (Calgary Tanks), attacking along old Highway 16 to an initial objective designated Punch. This was a low ridge, nicknamed Vino Ridge by the Canadians, that stood midway between San Leonardo and the junction with the Ortona-Orsogna lateral road. The regiment would then advance to the junction, code-named Cider.

When the Edmontons reached Cider Crossroads, the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry would advance along the Edmontons' right flank by seizing Vino Ridge, cross the narrow gully behind it, and push 3,000 yards down the road to enter Ortona. As the PPCLI made its move, the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada would come up to support the Edmontons' left flank, meaning the entire 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade would be positioned on the OrtonaOrsogna lateral road. It was expected that once Cider Crossroads was
firmly under Canadian control, the Germans would cede Ortona. A short, sharp fight and Ortona should fall. Vokes's intelligence staff was certain “the next defensive stand would be made on the Arielli or the Foro Rivers several miles beyond.”
¹

They were wrong. The Canadian intelligence analysts had missed the unique defensive opportunity presented by what they would all soon respectfully address as The Gully. Running parallel to, and south of, the Ortona-Orsogna road at a distance varying from 200 to 300 yards was a deep, narrow gully. Three miles in length, the gully was about 200 yards wide where it opened to the Adriatic shoreline and narrowed to about 80 yards' width where it levelled out just before meeting a secondary road linking San Leonardo to the OrtonaOrsogna highway. The Gully averaged a depth of about 200 feet, and along its U-shaped bottom the local farmers had developed rough, often intersecting, tracks backing their vineyards. Occasionally the narrow ditch in The Gully's precise centre ran with a shallow trickle of muddy water, but usually it was dry.