Italy’s Sorrow: A Year of War 1944–45. James Holland

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СКАЧАТЬ Dink, one of his gunners. During a moment of comparative peace, Hans had spotted a rabbit hopping about not far from their position. Taking a rifle, he drew a bead and shot it dead, then proudly showed his men their next meal. Dink, however, was appalled. ‘He explained to me that I had killed one of his rabbits that he had been fattening up with a lot of effort,’ noted Hans, ‘and that it had been completely tame.’ Needless to say, Hans was the subject of much ridicule, although as he admitted, ‘We polished off the object despite all the laughter that went on.’

      The mirth did not last long. That evening, 15 May, their position was once again under fire. What Hans termed ‘bunker breakers’ were whistling over. He and his men could only cower in the corners, staring at the roof. After every explosion the entire bunker shook. Soon there was a loud crash followed by a scream. ‘One of our young lads had been hit,’ wrote Hans, ‘an open wound between the shoulders.’55

      Also cowering in their bunker a few miles to the north, in a narrow valley between the mountains, were Major Georg Zellner and his battalion staff of the 3rd Battalion of the H und D Regiment. Opposite them were the New Zealanders of X Corps, and although this stretch of the line was not part of the main thrust of the attack, the Kiwis were still keeping up the pressure. ‘Planes and crashing of bombs,’ noted Georg. ‘We can’t get out of our bunker.’

      Every time a shell whistled through the air towards them, Georg wondered whether it was their turn to get a direct hit. His nerves were stretched and he was feeling as miserable as he had done four days before on his birthday. The early sounds of summer – the nightingales singing, insects buzzing – had gone. ‘Death is creeping over everything,’ he scrawled in his diary. ‘Tonight they carried the dead down to the valley. It looked ghostly and we stood in front of our bunker watching the sad procession with heavy hearts.’56 Nearby a badly wounded soldier was screaming horribly. Georg could barely stand it. And to make matters worse, he had still not received any post from home.

      Meanwhile on the Allied side of the line, it was Lieutenant Ted Wyke-Smith and his team of sappers’ turn to construct their first Bailey bridge – in anticipation of 78th Division’s attack the following morning. Ted had been expecting to move soon after the battle had started, so having felt somewhat pent-up in anticipation, was relieved finally to get going. The place they needed to bridge was the River Piopetta, a tributary of the Garigliano, near the hamlet of Piumarola, just north of Pignataro. Getting there was no easy matter, however. Leading in his jeep, Ted had behind him several lorries full of bridging gear, but rather than heading over ‘Amazon’ – the nearest of the newly built bridges – they were sent on a fairly lengthy route and ended up crossing over ‘Oxford’ right down by the Liri Appendix. Eventually, however, despite the detour and despite the fact that it was night-time and dark, they reached the right spot. As they began unloading, shells screamed overhead, and small arms fire chattered nearby. On the far side of the river – which was only twenty yards or so wide – infantry had been clearing the far banks of enemy troops and laying down smoke screens to protect Ted and his men.

      Bailey bridges were a new and ingenious invention, designed by Donald Bailey, an engineer at the British War Office, and had only been used since the previous autumn. Prefabricated, they were transported in steel panels that could be carried by six men and easily fixed together. The panels, each 10-foot long, made up the walls – or sides – of the bridge. Stood on rollers, the two small panels were then linked together with 19-foot transoms – or girders – strung between them. ‘When you’ve got three or four panels built,’ explains Ted, ‘you’ve got to bring it to a point of balance. It’s then a case of hands on, and everyone pushes it forwards until the front begins to tip over the edge of the river bank. Then you put two more panels on the back and more transoms between them and everyone pushes again.’ This process was repeated until the bridge spanned the river. Wooden planking was then placed across the structure and the bridge was ready: a 12-foot-wide roadbed strong enough to carry tanks, trucks and anything else in the Allied armoury.

      It was a simple construction but there were all sorts of factors to consider. ‘A bridge could weigh anything from 20 to 40 tons,’ says Ted, ‘and then you might have a 30-ton tank going over it. That’s a lot of pressure on the bank.’ It was up to men like him to decide exactly where the banks were strongest and thus where the bridge should be sited. It was a decision they could not afford to get wrong, even when, as at the River Piopetta, they were often coming under repeated enemy fire. Even so, by morning, the bridge was open to traffic. ‘It was,’ admits Ted, ‘very exciting, frankly.’

      With this and other crossings now made, 78th Division finally launched their attack, supported by an armoured brigade of 6th Armoured Division. The idea was to push through the bridgeheads made by 4th Division, then wheel round northwards and cut the Via Casilina – or Route 6 as the Allies called it. This, they hoped, would isolate Cassino and would give the Poles the opportunity to renew their assault on Monte Cassino itself. Meanwhile, the 1st Canadian Division, which had, like 78th Division, been held back for the second wave of the assault, also joined the battle, passing through the 8th Indian Division further to the south. Slowly but surely, the Allies were now pushing the Germans back in the Liri Valley as well.

      Facing this new onslaught was Fahnenjunker Jupp Klein and his company of Fallschirmjäger Pioneers. They were one of a number of random units from the 51st Mountain Corps flung almost willy-nilly into the line to plug the gaps in the Liri Valley – gaps that were supposed to have been filled by 90th Panzer Grenadier Division. Much of the 90th, however, had still not reached the front, having been harried all the way from Rome by relentless Allied air attack.

      Although they were engineers, it was in the infantry role that Jupp’s company of Fallschirmjäger were now to be used. In fact, they had been given a very specific task: to accompany a section of self-propelled guns and protect them once they dug in. Mid-morning on the 16th, Jupp led his men, along with the section of self-propelled guns, across the Via Casilina and south towards Pignataro. The renewed Allied assault had already begun, with their artillery pounding the German positions. Finding a suitable position, Jupp led his men forward and found an isolated farm on a slight, shallow hill that was still held by a few infantry and which had been reinforced and converted into a kind of redoubt. The windows had been filled in to become nothing more than loopholes, the lower walls had been strengthened and the cellars converted into a passable bunker. Zig-zagging away from either side of the house were trenches. ‘The whole thing,’ says Jupp, ‘impressed us as a kind of fortress.’

      Even so, how much they would be able to achieve against a concerted enemy attack was uncertain. Jupp’s company consisted of thirty-eight men, less than a quarter of its full strength, and all that was left after three months at Cassino. ‘It was just a platoon really,’ says Jupp. ‘We hadn’t had any reinforcements for a long time.’ Nor had they been expecting to defend their outpost against an enemy tank attack, but as Jupp discovered to his horror that same afternoon, the gunners had been warned to prepare themselves against such an assault. Sure enough, as Jupp crept forward to recce the British positions, he could see on the hill opposite, just over half a mile away, a whole tank brigade boldly pointing towards them. Without further ado, he hurried back to the gunners and asked them to send an urgent message to the headquarters of the 1st Fallschirmjäger Division warning them that his company had no anti-tank weapons whatsoever and would be defenceless if and when the British tanks attacked.

Fortunately for him and his men, the British tanks did not attack either that afternoon or evening. It was just the respite they needed, for before nightfall an anti-tank crew with three Ofenrohre* – bazookas – arrived and reported to Jupp. During the night, a further infantry battalion of reinforcements also joined them. These were men who had been posted from Yugoslavia, where they had been fighting partisans, and who had little battlefield experience. The battalion major immediately proved this by insisting on placing a troop СКАЧАТЬ