“John Horsfall then came up. He had been our 2 i/c and had seen a lot of fighting in North Africa; he was a very experienced officer and he came up to take over command of the London Irish Rifles and he called an O Group and I remember vey clearly the orders he gave to us. He explained that we were going to do the next leg of the attack into the real heart of the Gustav Line. He was going to advance with three companies forward. H in the centre, E on the left and G on the right. G was commanded by Peter Grannell and E was commanded by Mervyn Davies.
One company would be in reserve – F Company commanded by Colin Gibbs – and my objective, as the centre of the line, was to be a hamlet called Sinagoga. Now, he said he would have the support of a very big artillery barrage consisting of the entire divisional artillery plus the mediums and anything else that they could get hold of. This barrage would lift at 200 yards intervals right up to our objective, in my case Sinagoga, and it would dwell for about ten minutes halfway through the advance. We were supported by the tanks of the 16th /5th Lancers.
We knew what lay ahead and he said that the attack was going to go in that night but Pat Scott decided that it would be better to postpone it until the following morning. During that evening, I always felt the worst time was waiting to go into the attack; once you got going it wasn’t so bad – you were so busy thinking about what was going on – and I had a bit of time on my hands and I went over and had a word with John Horsfall and I said to him, “I haven’t had much experience of moving behind a big barrage like this but gather you have from the North African days and I’d like to get your advice about this.” And he said to me, “Desmond, there are two things you can do, you can move close under the barrage when you may get casualties from ‘shorts’ or you can hang further back in which case the Germans will have more time to recover when you get onto to your objective.” So, I definitely decided that H Company would move up as close to the barrage as possible.
I then got my platoon commanders together and gave out my orders for the company attack. Now, it was to be an advance of slightly under a mile. Now, this might not seem very far but believe me when you’re fighting for every yard, it seems a very long way indeed. I decided that the Company would advance with two platoons up. Michael Clark on the right and Geoffrey Searles on the left, my Company HQ in the central position and the reserve platoon behind, commanded by the platoon sergeant. I also told the commander of the tanks who was at my O Group that without any further orders from me during this attack he was to concentrate on any Italian farmhouse that he could see. He was to strop them up with HE as I knew very well that most of them would be occupied and I think he was quite clear about this task at the outset. The platoon commanders knew their job, I’d given them their axes of advance, everything was set for the following morning at H Hour.
Now, H Hour the following morning was at first light and we were lined up on our start line waiting to go when down came this terrific barrage. l will never forget it; the noise was horrendous and it started to move forward. H Company got out of their trenches and we started to move forward as well.
We’d only been going for a short time when a message came in from one of the forward platoons that they were getting casualties from, they thought, ‘shorts’ from our artillery barrage but I soon realised this was not the case. The German defensive fire, at which they were such experts, was coming down on our side of the barrage and what was beginning to cause casualties. The shelling seemed to be intensifying all the time. After all, the Germans were still in command of the monastery at Cassino. They had complete observation of our advance and they were able to bring on their fire with deadly accuracy.
Not long afterwards, I got a message to say that my right hand platoon commander, Michael Clark, had been killed. This was an appalling blow but I knew perfectly well that the platoon sergeant was quite capable of carrying on the advance with his platoon. We kept going forward and I will never forget the noise. You would hear a shell – you had a faction of a second before it actually burst to dive into cover and one tried to move from one shell hole to the next and I remember diving into a shell-hole and a chap – one of the riflemen from my company HQ – landing on top of me and I said, “get up, we must go on.” There was no movement, he was dead. He had a bit shrapnel through his neck.
Sinagoga Farm.
Shortly after this, I got information that Geoffrey Searles, my left hand platoon commander had been seriously wounded but there again, I knew that Sergeant Graham, in command of his platoon, was perfectly capable of carrying on. By now, we were about halfway through the attack and the barrage dwelt for ten minutes and we were able to get down to ground. One wondered would anybody be able to live under this barrage as far as the Germans were concerned but, by God, they could.
Then, we started moving forward again and I decided to bring up the reserve platoon to try to keep the impetus of the attack going. By then, we had some German prisoners and they were moving along at my company HQ and, at times, when the shelling was so bad we were lying flat on the ground as close as we could get to it and there was me beside these German prisoners – we were all made of human flesh, all dignity had gone, it was now a matter of could one stay alive until one got onto one’s objective. Things certainly were not getting any better. I was completely deafened by the noise. I was completely dazed as well and I am sure the remainder of the company were.
Now, the tanks had been doing their best to support us but, on the left hand’s platoon’s front, there was one of these 88mm guns that I’ve spoken about, concealed behind a haystack and it was causing considerable damage to our tanks. Corporal Barnes, who I have previously mentioned, saw what happened – his platoon commander was very seriously wounded but that did not deter Corporal Barnes. He realised that he’d have to try to do something about this 88mm, which was stopping our tanks getting forward. He advanced with his section and, one by one, the men were cut down by machine gun fire on their left flank until Corporal Barnes remained alone. He went on by himself and then he fell dead, cut by a machine gun but, by then, the crew of the 88mm had baled out and the tanks were able to get forward once again.
Then, suddenly, we were on our objective. It was all tremendous confusion; the place was covered in black smoke the smell of cordite was everywhere. Germans were running around in dazed confusion from one farm building to the next and I understand from one of my signallers that a German, unbeknown to me, had come out from behind and aimed a Schmeisser at my back and the signaller had tried to warn me by shouting but fortunately for me he never fired and he ran into the next farm building. I was wandering about on our objective in a dazed condition when suddenly a tank came up and there was John Horsfall, our commanding officer. He appeared out of the turret, I remember, in a fore and aft cap with his sheepskin jacket and he said, “Desmond, well done! You’ve reached your objective.” I said, “Yes, sir, but at what a cost. I’ve lost two of my platoon officers and about two thirds of my company, I think.” He said, “Desmond, you’re still here. Now prepare yourself to consolidate because I think there’s going to be a German counter attack.”
Now this effect of seeing John had bought me back to some form of normality. I was still very dazed and I gathered together the remnants of my company and tried to prepare for a counter attack that we knew would come in. Well, it did come in about half an hour later but, by then, the tanks had moved up and they were able to, with their machine guns after about half an hour, they were able to fight that counter attack. Then, we had a bit of a respite and the Irish Fusiliers were passed through to carry out the next attack on their bit of the Gustav Line. But, I’ll never forget this. One had time to think about it all. I was actually awarded a bar to my Military Cross in this action but I had done no more than any of the other men. We had all had to try and inch forward and keep going as best we could and I think I can say all of the men certainly did that.
Corporal James Barnes.
Now, I had recommended Corporal Barnes for a Victoria Cross, a posthumous Victoria Cross.
This was one of the bravest actions I’d ever seen. Here was this young corporal left on his own, his platoon commander had been knocked out and it would been so easy for him to have gone to ground but not a bit of it. He intended to continue to the end. I am very sorry to say that he was never awarded his Victoria Cross.
He was the real hero of that day and I’ll never forget him as long as I live. I suppose the only credit I would claim really was the fact that I had put in a most tremendous amount of work preparing H Company for this attack. I don’t believe that H Company, when I took over at Termoli, would actually have made the grade. I feared at that time they might have gone to ground and I would never have got them going again. Wasn’t I lucky to have had leaders like this under me who, without any further orders from me or anything on my part, kept going forward of their own accord. It is a tremendous thing to have commanded a company like that but, unfortunately, H Company was never to be the same again and neither was I.
But war goes on and the company had to go on. We did get reinforcements and I remember getting a number of gunners in, ack-ack gunners some of them. They had no experience of infantry tactics at all and one had to try and once again patch up the company.
Now, on the wider strata, what was going on was that the Gustav Line had been broken. The Germans were starting to retreat, the landing at Anzio was going forward well – they were breaking out of the bridgehead – and General Alexander had told Mark Clark with the Americans to take an area of ground that by so doing would have opened, helped to stop the Germans escaping from the Gustav Line area.
Unfortunately, Mark Clark did not obey Alex’s orders. The prize of Rome was too much for him and he switched his axis of advance and he went for Rome so that he could announce to the world that the Americans were the first people to get into Rome but, unfortunately, that meant a lot of the Germans were able to escape that should have been put in the bag.“