Ortona by Mark Zuehlke Page B

walked directly into a strong Panzer Grenadier counterattack coming down the road from San Leonardo. At its head was an armoured car, followed immediately by a Panzer Mark IV tank.
    A confused battle broke out between ‘C’ Company and the advancing Germans. In the face of the armoured car and tank support, the outgunned Canadians were soon beating a hasty, confused retreat to Halifax. Casualties were heavy. Although some of the wounded had to be abandoned, most were dragged or carried back by their comrades. When the survivors of ‘C’ Company stumbled into ‘A’ Company’s line, they quickly reorganized and helped strengthen Halifax’s front. Weapons pointed toward the darkness, the soldiers waited for the Germans to reach them. Against the armour they had little but the unreliable PIAT guns and the mortar platoon’s three-inch tubes, which had been brought up by mules.
    As ‘C’ Company pulled back to Halifax, ‘D’ Company closed on ‘B’ Company’s objective, Toronto. In the lead was No. 16 Platoon, commanded by twenty-two-year-old Lieutenant Mitch Sterlin. The company’s other two platoons were farther back, still negotiating a deep, narrow gully. Whether because Sterlin’s platoon was observed emerging from the gully or by pure misfortune, a German artillery salvo crashed into the gully, transforming it into a cauldron of blood. Lieutenant Bill Darling was mortally hit, more than a dozen other men were seriously wounded. Unhurt, Captain Lithgow ordered the two platoons to retreat from the killing zone to the gully entrance.
    His wireless set was ruined, the operator dead. One of the stretcher-bearers was also dead and the stretcher broken. Lithgow had no communication and little means to evacuate the many wounded. Realizing it would take the rest of the two platoons to carry the wounded back to the safety of the bridgehead, Lithgow sentthem back and set off alone to report his actions to Spry. The two platoons managed to drag themselves back along the line of advance to safety. Meanwhile, Sterlin led the remaining platoon of ‘D’ Company up to Toronto and received instructions to occupy a house near ‘A’ Company’s position. The two-storey farmhouse obviously belonged to a more prosperous family than most working the land around Ortona. It had a cream-coloured stucco exterior, with rooms generously lit by wide windows. A narrow front entrance door was set directly in the centre with a window on either side. The excellent firing ports provided by all the windows and its occupation of a slight rise in the ground put the house in an excellent defensive position.
    From a gully to its right, Galloway’s ‘B’ Company heard the distinctive whine and clanking of tanks forming north of the RCR defences. When a patrol crept a short distance up the road, it saw by the moonlight a large number of tanks lined up in a row on the muddy track, apparently waiting for the order to attack. 31
    Half surrounded by German tanks, Spry realized he had little option but to dig in and fight off the enemy counterattacks. His only hope of holding the Panzer Grenadiers at bay rested on the ability to call on artillery support. Luckily, Spry had excellent radio communication with his supporting artillery regiment. At midnight, with the sound of the German tanks closing, he laid down, around the entire RCR perimeter, a semi-circular wall of high-explosive and shrapnel shells.
    Hunkering in a slit trench near the farmhouse occupied by Sterlin, twenty-year-old Lieutenant Jimmy Quayle could not believe the volume of fire descending in front of him. “Shell after shell after shell like an artillery conveyor belt. . . . Black plants bloomed everywhere in the field, spawned seeds of shrapnel and died.” 32 Quayle tried to squirm deeper into the slit trench, but it had been dug to size by his batman Private Pierre Gauthier. The private was