The Brigadier and John O’Rourke came up near to us at the riverside while James and I were talking. The morning was just like a steam bath with thick haze effervescing up from the Liri beside us and water dripping off the trees. It was nice to be hidden by it for once.
Beyond us lay the Ceprano to Strangolagalli road but this was to be the last time we would see any road for quite a while. The Germans, of course, were sitting astride all of them.
After the usual greetings and exchanges of news, Pat sent us on our separate ways, charged with the task of opening routes forward for the rest of the division and flattening all opposition in our path. We were directed on Ripi, our course diverging from that of the Faughs who had Strangolagalli as their objective. The Faughs, at least, had a road as their axis to start with.
We lost touch with James anyway soon after we started owing to the vile nature of that jungle district. It was trackless and route-less, full of small ravines, scrub and hillocks – and Mike Everleigh said after studying it that it was worst tank going he had ever seen. ’I would have you know,’ said our gallant cavalry commander, ‘that we were trained for the desert.’ (Mike got an MC at Alamein).
Nonetheless, the efforts put in by the hussars to get their tanks over that abominable landscape were quite admirable. We, of course, on our feet raced ahead of them. But it was comforting to know they were there, crawling along behind us. They were somewhere up our sleeves and they would be needed as soon as we bumped in to real trouble.
No other vehicles of any kind were able to follow us – only the tanks, and I left all the A Echelon transport behind with Jerry. It would be his problem how he join up with us again, and I wondered vaguely when we would next see our adjutant – if ever.
Mervyn Davies went ahead of us with E Company in the dual role of forward screen and probing force but, for the next few hours, our problem was the appalling terrain rather than the enemy.
The physical effort of getting forward was very considerable and it entailed our soldiers scrambling over quite deep clefts every hundred yards or so and forcing their way through vast clumps of coppice growth and thickets in between them. They were also continually raising dust clouds sliding down the dry barren sides of the fissures. After a while, both men and weapons were covered in the white chalk dust which was so marked a feature of war in central Italy in dry weather.
Under such circumstances, it was not difficult for the enemy scouts to mark our progress.
Periodically, the silent waste was torn apart as unknown OPs engaged with mortar fire and occasionally they opened up with nebelwerfers. Then all the fiends of hell descended and the nearby scrub fragmented under the blast of their multiple explosions. The air was filled with flying particles and debris for some time afterwards but otherwise this random shooting was ineffective in such thick cover.
We never saw the enemy during that long afternoon and I doubt that they saw much of us either, other than the dust clouds and occasionally glimpsing the tanks as they heaved themselves over the hillocks.
Mervyn’s specific task was to reach and seize Hill 255 – a prominent lump of a feature which dominated the countryside for miles around and, lying as it did beside the road to Ripi, was a tactical feature of the highest importance. Whatever else they did, the enemy were sure to latch on to that one – unless we could get there first and this was the reason for our frantic race through the jungle.
In the late afternoon, E Company emerged from the wilderness after pushing through it for several hours under very hot and sticky conditions. Mervyn said afterwards that he owed the exactness of his landfall to the splendid map reading of his FOO, Alan Parsons, who was now in permanent demand by the forward companies.
They now found themselves with the company moving across a scrubby hillside and, as he came in sight of his objective, Mervyn sent Desmond Fay on with 7 Platoon to investigate.
This hill, Point 255, was covered in small trees and there were scattered houses nearby but, in fact, the whole of the district was rich in small features, which dominated their immediate surroundings – and allowed no obvious access to them. Hill 255 was substantially higher than the others and the enemy rearguard commander had not overlooked it. Mervyn soon found that it was thick with panzergrenadiers backed up with a mortar or two behind it. Fortunately, even the panzergrenadiers backed up with a mortar or two behind them. Fortunately, even the grenadiers had been unable to get tanks in to the place, though they had an SP behind them where the Strangolagalli to Ripi road swept across the rear of the position. That road was the reason for their presence.
Of course, the enemy had chosen the spot with their usual perception. It denied the only route forward in the district and they had already forced us to lose a day with our long haul across country. They now looked like costing us another one as well unless we could do something drastic to unhook them.
The enemy opened fire on E Company at quite long range – as soon as Fay’s scouts came in view of the hill. This was no doubt in accordance with Kesslering’s latest orders to his rearguards. Issued a few days previously, the generalfeldmarschall had instructed, ‘…I must stress particularly that the MGs, which have been set up in depth open fire at maximum range, that is up to 1000 metres with maximum expenditure of ammunition and force the enemy to disperse while he is preparing for, or is at the beginning of, his attack.
Mind you, I do not entirely agree with the field marshal, having learned the value of lying in wait for the enemy and trapping him, if possible. I also knew that that was the only sure way of ending pursuit altogether and it was best achieved at the closest ranges.
But Albert Kesselring, of course, was an airman and thought in more expansive terms.
No doubt, this edict was the reason for his conscientious machine gunners letting go whole belts at a time. It is also worth noting that they only succeeded in hitting two or three of our men in the whole course of the action, though we hit a good many of theirs through the premature disclosure of their positions. Among them, a few days later, was one of their commanders – devotedly carrying his instructions from the all highest in his pocket.
At the conclusion of a string of similar injunctions the C in C Sudwest had added, ‘…and demolitions of every kind must be more than ever executed with sadistic imaginativeness.’
Mervyn’s riflemen dived for cover as the bullets of half a dozen spandaus shredded the bushes and zinged through the trees above them with twigs and branches dropping on them as they crawled forward. For a short space, there was quite a battle as some of our bren teams found lying positions – usually through the crooks of trees as there was no forward vision at ground level. Inevitably, a few of them were hit in this phase of the action.
Mervyn probed through and round for a short while but with an open dip all around the enemy positions, he soon knew that he could get no further in daylight. Also, he then found that they were out of radio range from the guns, which were on the move anyway so they sent back to me instructions and went to ground in the nearby houses.
When I got up to E Company, I found Mervyn in a little farm house tucked in on the end of a narrow spur. Fortunately, his position overlooked the intervening ground in front of him, with the point itself rising up a few hundred yards further on.
The necessity of a staged attack was plain to both of us but, with the rest of the battalion still some distance behind us, it was 830pm before we were satisfactorily concentrated. And it was 10pm before I was in position to give orders. By then, there was bright moonlight and a silvery magical landscape to mirror it all. It was breathtakingly beautiful.
In the meantime, my BC had re-established contact with his gun positions and was busy registering his battery on to the feature. Ian, in fact, only fired a few ranging shells and none of them seemed particularly close. However, after a while he expressed himself satisfied. The rest of the evening then passed off in comparative silence, broken only by the random rifle shots of the snipers of both sides.
Mervyn, naturally, had to do the dirty work. I pointed out to him that apart from the mark of confidence and affection, he was the only one who had had a close up of the ground.
Accordingly, we assaulted the place with E Company only at midnight, after a few minutes concentrated fire from Ian’s regiment. The fewer men launched in that kind of attack the better but, in my opinion, the performance of 17th Field was mainly responsible for what happened. It was one of the most accurate that I have ever seen from our splendid gunners and, in view of the scant initial registration, to this day I do not know how they achieved it. They had only got themselves in to their new gun positions in the late afternoon as the whole regiment had been moving forward, battery by battery.
The other three companies held the ring while E went in – G sending a standing patrol forward to the road on the north side of 255 and H following E’s attack and stopping off in some houses on the nearside of our objective.
The surprise was total and perhaps improved by the company going off its bearing slightly. In consequence, Mervyn soon found himself through the flank of the enemy positions and behind the Germans before they were aware of his presence. He then turned his men half left, somehow, and made for the top of the hill, colliding with the enemy as he did so.
For a quarter of an hour, there was pandemonium and chaos, with bren guns and schmeissers blazing off in to the night intermixed with grenade explosions and the usual showers of sparks as tracer impacted.
The cessation, when it came, was as sudden as the onset had been. Mervyn then knew that his company had carried the place – and they never lost a man in the process.
The enemy fled. There was no point in a rearguard doing otherwise once an attack had gone home like that. But they abandoned most of their rifles and other impedimenta in their weapons pits and we found a number of their dead lying about when we studied the position at the conclusion. They must have been in a hurry that day as the rifle pits were only half dug and, in consequence, they had little chance under that hail from our guns.
A quarter of an hour later, silence descended on the grim little scene, broken only by our noisy riflemen calling to each other out of the darkness and E Company’s NCOs doing likewise as they got their men under control again. A few parachute flares rose lazily into the sky over the distant hills; then everything flickered out as the Irish Rifles subsided onto the damp ground for a space.
A night attack usually ends in a jolly good old mix up but this was less of one than usual. Its brevity helped. Mervyn cheerfully skated over the loss of direction and no tactless questions were asked. He said afterwards that the only order he gave his platoon commanders was, ‘Charge for the place where the shells are landing.’ He also mentioned that I hadn’t given him time for more elaborate instructions.
The companies lay up behind their weapons just where they happened to be without further movement and most of our men had an hour or two’s sleep. I did so myself from 3am to 4am. Then Mike arrived on foot with his tanks still some way behind him.
Ivan Yates appeared too, with a number of jeeps – and breakfast. He came in having used the Via Casilina west of Ceprano and, according to my map reading, his route took him well behind the enemy forward positions before he reached us.
The support company joined us also not long afterwards. S had travelled by more orthodox routes, having followed on into Strangalogalli after the Faughs had stormed into the place. Ivan may have considered himself expendable, but our mortar platoon and the machine gunners had different views. So had I – about all of them.