Stalingrad Of The Adriatic: The Gully (Part 3)

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3:02Al Murray: Press one for more options. You've reached us outside normal business hours. The next availability is in three months. But ZocDoc makes finding the right doctor easy. Download the app and search by specialty, insurance, and availability. Read real patient reviews, then book instantly. ZocDoc, ready to be seen? It's hard for guys my age to grasp that nobody lives forever. Dying is just a word until you find out differently. That's trite, but horribly true. The first few times you almost get nicked you take it for granted you're naturally immortal the next few times you begin to wonder after that you start looking over your shoulder to make sure old lady luck is still around then if you're still in one piece you wonder when she's gonna scram to parts unknown a young guy named swale came up to us three weeks ago fresh out of blighty before he really knew what in hell it was all about he ended up a part of perforated meat along with seven of his men why him why then then and when will it be you that's the sort of question you ask yourself that of course was lieutenant farley mowat of the hasty peas welcome everybody to we have ways of making you talk with me i'm our own james holland um for our third episode of stalingrad of the atlantic and this is the episode three the gully so um uh we've worked our way over the uh sangro over the morrow and now we're in the gully on our way to ortona the road to ortona i think in our last episode So we very much lent into the fact that this is a meat grinder.

4:37Al Murray: If you're in the situation the British find the allies find themselves in, if you can't use all your elements, if the weather doesn't play ball and you can't bring all your fantastic elements to bear that you have at your disposal, things are difficult. And they're even more difficult if you're an infantryman, because that's who has to do the fighting. They've got to fix bayonets. They've got to go in. They've got to do their bit. And we also saw that trying to improvise your way around that with perhaps a silent attack where you don't put a barrage in first, that doesn't work either. So the options are all bad, aren't they?

5:16None of it works, apart from just losing lots of men in the process of trying to get, you know, a quarter of a mile of land. Exactly. At the end of the day, it's a meat grinder, you know.

5:26Al Murray: We followed Farley Mowat as basically he went forward and his nerve really began to, he felt like he was being sucked into some sort of void as his nerve began to desert him. I'm not judging the guy for that one bit because my nerve would have long deserted me given everything he'd been through. And he's a young man, you know, full of beans and he's finding it very, very difficult. So this is the battle to try to get to Ortona, let alone the battle for Ortona itself, isn't it? They're still not there, Al. Okay? They're still not there. It's just, it's crazy. You know, it starts on the night of the 5th, 6th of December.

6:02You know, a huge amount is expected of these people. Yeah. You know, somehow the Hasty Peas have managed to hold on to this very fragile bridgehead that they've got. And people who've listened to the first two episodes will remember that they're on the eastern side, on the kind of adriatic coast side of this above the morrow. They've managed to get over to the other side of the morrow. So they're on the northern side now, but only just, you know, with their fingertips effectively. You know, they're on the kind of eastern edge of this totally now battered village of San Leonardo. And during 36 hours on the 9th and 10th of December, they hold off 11 counterattacks, all of which cost considerable blood to the Germans of the 200th Infantry Regiment, but also, of course, chipping away at the Canadians at the same time.

6:47And I think it's really important to remember that the Germans are predisposed to always counterattacks. So you do have opportunities to wear them down. It's not just sort of, you know, hurling over shells and mortars and hoping one will land in a foxhole. You know, they will get up at some point. And when they get up, that's when they're, of course, so incredibly vulnerable. Just as the same is true for the Canadians attacking. And then can you imagine it? You know, Saturday the 11th of December, new orders arrive and everyone's going, well, I wonder what they're going to be. I mean, it's very blackout it goes forth, this, isn't it?

7:16Yes. And the orders are to break out of the bridgehead and attack north. you know so plans is to launch that at four o 'clock the same day the 11th of december so they haven't got much time to to get get organized um it's just about light at that point it's a fairly suicidal order but but but actually this is even only a diversion from the main event which is an attack by the third brigade and you may remember that they had been at castel de sangro attacking the fausten maker on the top of that castle on the top of that very high high 1.009 and they've now come over um and that fur brigade are going to be attacking from the ruins of san leonardo and farley just writes once again we were to be the goat in the tiger hunt you know so as you can imagine you know morale is absolutely tip top moat is at the battalion headquarters on the ridge which is a collapsed shed and peering out over the sea of mud and blasted farm buildings and burnt out tanks and the flotsam of battle and shattered vines you know it's a scene of total desolation and of course made worse by the gray of a winter afternoon sky and suddenly something moving catches his eye so he gets that whips out his binos his field glasses and he spots two huge pigs eating the bloated corpse of a mule and he knows they'd be just as happy to be gorging on dead soldiers i mean what a horrible horrible vision don't you think Yeah, absolutely.

8:45Yeah.

8:45Al Murray: Yeah. This whole phase is, I mean, you say it's very Blackadder. I mean, the main difference is they are moving. They are making progress. It isn't a deadlock. It just feels like one if you're one of the infantry. the fact that you're four miles on nothing's improving the germans aren't giving up it's not like you put in a colossal crack and the germans withdraw 20 miles is it it's that they're giving it they're giving up ridge by ridge phase by phase so it's got that feeling of static battle and you can you can completely see why they might they might there must be a whole load of um uh officers who did the first time around thinking well nothing much has changed you know if a whole load of people first world war that uh experienced people thinking well you know plus a change i i suppose i was thinking more of the kind of the orders you know yet again we're going to try a sort of pointless charge over the top yes it's going to get lots of people slaughtered and achieve very little i mean i think that's more the i don't know but anyway there's no difference is there if you're an infantryman there is no difference you've got to get up out of your well also there's no there's no alternative apart from just going do you know what let's just wait till spring which would have which is an alternative which they choose not to use yeah i mean the infantry aren't on their own here and obviously the big the big the big change with the for the big difference with the first world war is armor is integrated in part of how you do things now so squadron of sherman tanks arrive at three o 'clock so an hour before um they're due to kick off and to moat's horror kennedy orders him to accompany them on foot so obviously finally moat's thinking i'm the intelligence officer i should be in battalion headquarters that's my job but he's ordered forward but after all after all kennedy is kennedy is acting battalion commander so everyone's everyone's role is everyone's role is fluid right but what he wants uh moat to do is be liaison between these um these tanks and the infantry so you know not not a daft request but not until um uh not until five that the um that the attack goes in and just as the hdps expect there are no signs for the germans to think you know the germans aren't fooled this isn't a diversion i mean this is the thing we talked about well it's just another attack isn't it just another attack and this is the thing we've talked about before isn't it um in normandy we've talked about the normandy battles but you know we see them as martlet and jupiter and epsom if you're the germans oh god we're being shelled again here they come you don't know which bit which where's the main thrust it's just here's a thrust the germans just think right okay and so um artillery and mortars comes crashing down is a fantastic din and farley murk can barely hear the engine of the sherman these crouching behind um because of the racket um and meanwhile can you imagine that yeah i mean it's extraordinary isn't it um baker and charlie companies up ahead they disappear into the smoke into the smoke and the fog of war and the and the and the gun gun smoke but actually this all goes off okay or rather better than expected because the germans have already pulled back in this sector and and because of the mud the shelling and mortifier is less lethal than normal which is a you know one of those unexpected benefit variables isn't it that the shells go bury themselves in the mud before they go off rather than exploding on impact with hard harder topside or whatever um so you know there's less bits flying about to snag you even so um farley when there's a salvo of shells come whooshing in in crashing nearby he falls on his face in the mud and at that moment something in him breaks something snaps and he gets up he turns and he he sets off back past the ruined building where he's running away he's running away he's running away you can't sugarcoat this yeah he's taking two that's what he's doing and and you know i i'm i'm i'm running alongside farley moe in this in this instance um and he goes past the ruined building where burke kennedy is finally promoted to lieutenant colonel so you know every cloud um and he's hiding in this ruined building and then he keeps running along the coast road the smashed up coast road heading south and he's not got very far when another officer, Frankie Hammond, who's the commander of the anti-tank platoon, is coming forward with a jeep and a six-pounder, stops and grabs him by the arm and says, drink this!

13:13Al Murray: And it's basically rum, isn't it? Rum-laced... Rum. It's rum. Or rum-laced tea, at least, or whatever. And Mowat drinks and he says, get in the jeep now, show me the way to battalion headquarters. and somehow this snaps Farley Mo out of it doesn't it and he gets a grip yep yep and he doesn't desert after all thank goodness but um yeah but I think brilliant of Frankie Hammond isn't it don't you think yeah he can see what's up yeah no point making a fuss give him some rum and pretend it hasn't happened and turn him around again you know and I think he handles that very well get him to make himself useful show me the way to battalion headquarters you know suddenly Mo has got something he's got to do he doesn't say tell me how you feel are you okay you alright you alright he doesn't bother with that you alright oh come on tell me all about it oh god I mean it's alright to have a little cry oh dear yep don't even say anything anyway meanwhile

14:29Al Murray: tell me about your childhood

14:37Al Murray: there's not a psychiatrist in the back of this jeep no does it get me to bed to bhq asap anyway meanwhile general chris folks who is the who is the butcher of the Canadian 1st Division. He's still aiming to reach the crossroads. He'd code named Cider. Yes. The one where there is now a Sherman tank on a roundabout. Yeah. And while the HDPs are doing their diversion, General Vokes is sending both 2nd Brigade and the newly arrived 3rd Brigade into the fray. So this is, you know, we were saying that the HDPs were a diversion and this is their, this is the main event. But Cider can only be reached by crossing another of these really strange, narrow and wooded gullies that mark this landscape.

15:25And this one, this particular one, stretches far to the southwest of Otona and is named simply The Gully. And I can tell you it's an absolute shocker. It's basically you've got Otona just to the north of it on the coast, and then you've got the gully, and it's this huge gash that just sits across the landscape, you know i was saying the last episode there's this sort of slightly curved kind of um um plateau on the top between these gullies the scoring is that the the slopes particularly on the southern side are really really steep so of course what that means is if you're german and you're defending it you can put your mortars right up against it you can put your men right up against it nothing is going to get them yeah because because the angle of the plunge of the of the missile can't get there it's it's like it is steep on the other side but it's not quite as steep on the on the northern side but on the southern side it is really really very very pronounced and the point is as they're trying to attack directly across it the germans are completely hidden until this point so they're just you're looking ahead you can't you can sort of sense it in front of you but if you're moving through the shattered vines and and olive groves and all the rest of it and feels and farm sheds and what have you.

16:47What you can see is Ortona just over there. Yeah. But then there's this kind of gash where, you know, anyone's completely hidden. And of course, they suddenly appear with their machine guns and just cut them all down. Yeah. And there's four counterattacks the next day. Come on, keep going, keep going, keep going. And then comes down the rain again. And, you know, the Germans counterattack, then on the 13th, the Germans counterattack again. but they get nowhere. And now they're up against the 3rd Falsham Jäger Regiment, who, like the Canadian 3rd Infantry Brigade, have also moved up from Castel de Sangro.

17:24And this is, you know, King Ludwig Heilman's regiment that he's commanded since Sicily and is one of the most sort of gung-ho, dynamic regimental commanders that there are. And the Seaforth Highlanders, who are part of the 2nd Brigade, are just as bad as the Hasty Peets. and on the 13th of december our devonian born padre durnford goes up to the front and finds charlie company and he offers cigarettes around and notice that most of the men are struggling with shaking hands and there's more heavy shelling and he moves on and finds battalion headquarters

18:00Al Murray: in a small barn al mercer looked strained sid thompson grim murdoch ill no burials possible and then word arrives on the radio that the house the house where they've been talking to the sea company boys five minutes earlier has just suffered a direct hit with many wounded so he hurries off to help and the remains of san leonardo are being shelled again and a little while later one of their ammunition trucks is hit and erupts into a livid ball of flame and billows thick black smoke and the next day durnford finds himself trying to give solace to one of the medics from the rap the regimental aid post who completely breaks down in front of him so it's not just farley moat no no it's it's everywhere um uh and uh yeah so so what you've got though is battles playing out all over along this along this ridge line there's separate battles it's the same but different everywhere isn't it basically the germans defending in a in a in a in a sort of uh vicious doughty way um counter-attacking when they feel they need to um uh and the canadians chipping away as best they can but taking casualties as they go and there's there's smoke everywhere obviously from all the gunfire and and people using smoke for attacking there's low cloud there's rain it's i mean it's literally the fog of war isn't it so orientation is very difficult i mean i was you know thing to remember is no one ever knows where they are actually uh on any battlefield not really no chances are nobody knows jim nobody knows um and nobody knows no and and the another advantage in the gully is that the southern slopes are not just steep but they're made of soft clay so you can you can dig in easily but also as you say they can't be reached by shell fire or mortar fire um and the further west right at the far end of the gully the germans the artillery is um you know they've they've dug in they've mined it they've zeroed their guns and they're you know i mean they've done what you do in this in this instance as you use the landscape to your advantage you have everything zeroed in so when there are you know so for instance if enemy troops are seen at location a you just tell everyone fire on location a you don't have to do a uh you don't have to do a fire order with con with with coordinates whatever you go okay that's a it's such an odd feature and i would i you know i'd urge anyone to just look it up on google earth if you just put in or google maps just look put in ortona you'll see it i mean there it is just just directly south of ortona this huge great scar running kind of west to east out to the sea it's so it's such an unusual feature i mean this is interesting though isn't it because from the german perspective however although here we are saying this is a formidable defensive position it sort of ideally suits the germans and all that on from from uh grenadier verner mort who we met the last episode from his perspective he doesn't he doesn't think this is uh going particularly well does he no he just wants to go back and befriend his italian miller you know he would become chummy with you know he he was quite happy at being in working in the quarter masters department he's not interested in being in a hole in the in the mud and rain and shelling and fog of war and all the rest of it absolutely wretched yeah and he's been in his he's been in his foxhole um uh in the in a shattered vineyard on the northern side of the gully um uh for the opposite the hasty piece basically as they keep coming the canadians just keep on coming and he's number three on a machine gun uh uh so getting the getting the ammunition basically he's not been trained for this role it's helping the um the man the mg42 that's um slung over the uh over the lip and he's like an emotional roller coaster he's either he's either gripped by incredible fear or this sort of resigned calm essentially um and yeah and because because they're defending they aren't taking the initiative so they're just basically waiting um uh for when it when it comes and and they expect they're going to be shelled and they hope that they hope um there isn't a shell with their name on it and on the 12th of december they are shelled again and uh as uh as they're hiding crouching while this soil and grit filth clatters around them they hear screams and shortly uh shortly after one of their fellows is an oberge fighter slithers across the mud and slips into their foxhole and he's he has the news that overfebber muller has been hit his belly has been torn open by shrapnel muller is dying and their foxhole is filling up with blood and the oberge freighter wants their help to get muller out of the foxhole yeah morc is disgusted by this because muller is a is a really popular nco he's good natured chap he's funny highly respected soldier really experienced And in Sardinia, when they'd been in Sardinia together, Mork had gotten home really well.

23:07And they'd shared many an evening over a bottle of wine or, you know, schnapps or whatever. And Mork goes, nah, he was dying in a filthy hole without any help. But the trouble is, it's daytime. The last thing you're going to do is get out of your foxhole and start scrabbling around no man's land, you know, where you're exposed. Because they're not in the gully, these guys. They're still on the kind of, you know, just to the south of the gully on the ground between the morrow and the gully. So there's nothing they can do. And they all feel absolutely terrible and frustrated by their inability to do anything.

23:42But, you know, and of course, all soldiers are particularly fearful of stomach wounds because they're nearly always fatal. And everyone knows that, you know, and he's holding there, clutching his guts with the blood pouring out and all the rest of it. But Muller doesn't die quickly, and then darkness falls, and his screams ring out across the desolate landscape. You know, the screams of pain, of despair for his mother, for his wife. And Moore noted, it was truly awful to have to listen to his screams calling out to the others, and the awful sounds he made. But then came deliverance, as the cries became one heartbreaking wine.

24:17And then finally, there was peace. I mean it's grim isn't it yeah I mean it's just it's just dreadful

24:27Al Murray: yeah well on neither side of the hill is it is it anything other than a picnic yeah exactly yeah it's horrible and by the early hours of the 13th of December the moon's up and it's casting a soft glow over the battlefield and Mork he's shocked he's upset and he thinks I can never get the sound of Muller's cries out of my mind just that they're permanently in his mind forever as he sees it and they also he also knows that him and his comrades they know that they're rather isolated the shelling stopped and that often means next thing you know there's an infantry attack and they haven't had any orders and their foxholes aren't aren't connected aren't joined up so there's no communication trenches so now you've got four men in one hole a single machine gun and no contact with the rest of the platoon let alone the rest of the company yeah a mock says uh all that we could do now was sit back and wait to see what would happen i mean it's hard not to feel sympathy isn't it yeah yeah it yeah i gotta say and also this because we do we have talked a lot about i mean we talked we touched on it in this series you know defending is everywhere is good to defend, isn't it?

25:47Al Murray: We've never found a piece of country where we haven't ended up going, it's a good defensive country, this really, right? And obviously the advantage of defending is you haven't got, you really haven't got, you've got to divide up what you're going to do, but you haven't got to decide where, what, decide, take the initiative, right? But that does mean you have to sit there and wait and wait for things to happen. And that can't be easy on the nerves either. Going forward is a nightmare. It eats away a man. Yeah, exactly. Certainly sitting and waiting to receive it is also terrible. You know, there's no easy way out here.

26:22Al Murray: Right. Well, we're going to take a brief break and then we'll have a quick look at what's well, we'll have a look at what's going on at the top. Why is Mork, Grenadier Werner Mork, where he is and who has made those decisions? And James Holland will possibly offer an opinion whether that person knows what they're doing or not. We'll see you in a tick.

26:58We'll see you next time.

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28:23Al Murray: welcome back to we have ways to make you talk with me i'm marion james holland now jim uh who is it we've talked about chris folks is the acting commander of the canadians and you know So his style, his push-on, crack-on style. What's going on in the German command structure right now? Well, the German command structure is to just not give any ground at all as long as possible. And commander-in-chief is Kesselring, and he's been having this sort of fight with Rommel, who's been Army Group B commander up in the north. So a lot of the troops that are actually in Italy have been falling under Rommel's jurisdiction, and Kesselring hasn't had the authority to move them south.

29:02But that little kind of power struggle has now come to an end with Rommel being moved out to go and inspect the defences in Normandy. And that's, of course, where he's going to end up being commander-in-chief of Army Group B, which is going to move to the Western Front. And Kesselring becomes commander-in-chief of all German forces in Italy. And unfortunately for Kesselring, for everyone who's involved in the Italian campaign from the german point of view and in fact from the allied point of view this means he's now got hitler's eyes on it and hitler's eyes on it means you can't do anything because he's now micromanaging from you know yeah rustenberg or wherever you know the wolf's lair yeah and having the the furor spotlight is a is a really really bad thing because you can't just sort of hide stuff you can't hide decisions and you can't surrender and you can't give ground and lemelson general um joachim lemelson who is the temp acting commander of um aok 10 the german 10th army is very keen to withdraw to uh to um you know back in mid-november but that request when put to hitler has been completely turned down and again lemelson's all for pulling back from the from the morrow too but instead the 76th panzer corps have to fight on and on um giving ground only when those holding it are either virtually annihilated or physically literally unable to hold it anymore and or tona Lelgson has already lost almost two entire divisions because the 65th Infantry Division, which was defending the Sangro, which is what we were discussing in the first episode, that's gone.

30:37Now the 90th Panzer Grenadier, for which Werner Mork is a part, has also been absolutely butchered. And withdrawing in some kind of order and allowing AOKN-10 to kind of build up far greater strength in depth is clearly a much more sensible use of the still comparatively limited assets the Germans have rather than letting these units get ground down. And, you know, today, if you're sort of losing casualties of sort of 30 % to 35 % of your unit, you are considered inoperable. Yeah. But units here are down to sort of 10%, 15%, 20%. I mean, they're absolutely stripped bare. and they're still being flung into this meat grinder with mounding desperation.

31:26And what that inevitably means is you're counterattacking, because the Germans always counterattack, with penny packets, with really small numbers of men which are never going to do anything other than just get mullered and get cut down. And that's the problem. And, you know, von Sänger over on the other side, you remember him from the 14th Panzer School, I mean, he's just as horrified as Lemelson, But, you know, because it's all very well making the Allies fight tooth and claw. But there has to come a point where the loss of manpower outweighs the disadvantages of losing territory. Especially since strategically they've already lost Italy's most important asset and bit of real estate, which is this flat ground around Foggia that we mentioned in the first episode.

32:08Yeah. You know, because this is where the airfields are. Yeah. That's a massive strategic game for the Allies. And the Germans have given it up barely without a fight. and now they're kind of fighting for every yard and it just makes no sense because because why would you allow so much valuable manpower to be chewed up south of rome when the allies have already got such a great objective and where there's you can trade space for time and you absolutely could go back to the pisa rimini line which is sort of 200 miles north of rome where the mountains kiss both sides of the of the of the coast and where you could have an absolutely impregnable defensive position, which the Allies have no hope of getting through, and where your own supply lines are then much shorter.

32:50But that's not the case. You know, and suddenly the use of the 1st Falschermjäger Division is a case in point. You know, it's never been used as a division since arriving. It's lots of penny packets kind of, you know, flung here and there. And the arrival of the 3rd Falschermjäger Regiment, or Tonya, is the sort of latest example of this.

33:07Al Murray: Well, the thing is, I mean, you know, that if Hitler's watching, you're not allowed to exercise your judgment you're just that that's the end of that so so because he he simply won't let people do their jobs properly in our previous series talking about barbarossa where where basically everyone's everyone's high on the hype they think they think they can they think they can pull this thing off so they fling themselves into it by now you're in a situation where the consequences of abandoning your judgment are everywhere, right? That's why Germany's in this situation is because generals have not been allowed to exercise their judgment, Hitler's in charge, and so on.

33:49Al Murray: And I worry that maybe we're grading into the whole, you know, after the war, all those generals going, well, if only we'd been allowed to do what we wanted to do, then, you know, maybe things would have turned out differently, which is, which is, do you know Do you know what I mean, James? That there is a, that is one of the... Well, yeah, I do, but we're going to be coming up to this and you're going to see how these guys, like von Sanger, and, you know, von Sanger doesn't abandon, doesn't go, I'm out, or this is terrible, and just a disobeyed order anyway. He does it. You know, even the good German von Sanger.

34:22And Lemelson is exactly the same, as we shall see in this battle. I mean, he makes insane decisions.

34:29Al Murray: This is exactly where I was going with it. You see, make no mistake, we're not Little Hart, you know, after the war, we sit small down and says, oh, dear, you poor things. Did Hitler overrule you? And the generals get started on the sort of second stab in the back myth. Like after the First World War, the generals go, it wasn't us. You know, we were let down by politicians. And after the Second World War, they go, we were let down by politicians, by Hitler. But no, they're all cracking on. Even though they say they don't like it, they're doing it anyway. And they don't. Well, and we're running this series through the eyes of a handful of people.

35:08Harry Wilson. Yeah. Farley Mowat. Yeah. Padre Dernford. Werner Mork. But also Seyfried Baer. Right. Who is 21 years old. He's recovering from malaria with a number of other Falschermjäger. He's a Falschermjäger guy from the 3rd Falschermjäger Regiment. so he's part of Heilman's mob and he's at Campo de Giove in the centre of the leg and 20 miles north of Castel de Sangro so he's alright Jack you know he's been having an okay time of it and part of their rehabilitation they've been working on defences of the Gustav line there and Bear's actually been quite enjoying it he's out of the front line the landscape's absolutely stunning the work is hard but they're not being shelled and they're not being shot at and Bear is hoping to spend Christmas there but then on the 15th of December a truck arrives and he and the others are ordered to clamber in because they're going to be joining the battle at ortona yeah and the truck trundles eastwards um and and as they get they get closer they begin to hear the rumble of artillery and it grows steadily louder as the closer you they get and you can just imagine you're sitting back in the truck in the truck and you've been having this sort of reasonably cushy time and suddenly you sort of boom boom you know you can feel the kind of the trembles and the ground and all the rest of it starting to starting to tremor and then just after midnight on the 16th of december they stop close to the coast they're just on the coast road north of you know that's coming south from out of ortona and as bear jumps out he sees clouds flitting across the moon and glimpses the stars while the moon reflects a silvery light on the

36:45Al Murray: sea and he thinks i was thrilled by this sight yet also unspeakably sad why did such a bloody Vor have to break out between the peoples. And then now at the edge of Ortona itself, and a dead man lies abandoned nearby while the town appears to be nothing but ruins. You know, it's just this sort of jagged remains of buildings against the moonlight. And Bear tightens the strap of his helmet and with the others makes his way into the shattered town. I mean, you can imagine, can't you? And he writes, and this is, you know, why does Vor have to break out between the people? This is from a journal that he keeps at the time.

37:17So it's not Little Heart after the war reflections. This is contemporary.

37:26Al Murray: Yeah. So on the same day, the same day, the Canadians finally take Casa Berardi, which is a three-story farmhouse at the western edge of the gully. Although only after the suicidally brave actions of Captain Paul Triquet and 13 other men who are still standing in his company, which is called the Vandous, the french-speaking royal um uh 22nd regiment and casabaradi basically that uncorks the gully position as it's near the western end but on the northern side so once you once you've got hold of that still there still there casabaradi you can still see it obviously being rebuilt but but but the lower bits of it um you know it did survive the battle so it's it's you know obviously the roof's knocked out and bits holes and all the rest of it but but the building was still yeah ostensibly sanding at the end of it it's still there you can see all the marks on it and all sorts of stuff and it's a lovely lovely house now i mean but yeah and the part of the problem is that the maps that have been issued are terrible the um and maps in italy are notoriously bad because they're based on italian mapping which hasn't been which has just not been great and you're in the undeveloped part of Italy anyway, essentially.

38:40Al Murray: And it seems that usually the reliable core of engineers is not quite caught up with the mapping there. But anyway, we'll let that go. And it's only after they've done really, really rigorous patrolling that they're able to identify enemy positions. I mean, this is one of the things, isn't it? You patrol, you reconnaissance as much as you possibly can before you put an attack in. And if you've got someone higher up saying no no no get on with it now there's every chance you haven't patrolled extensively enough and so there's a machine gun nest you don't know about which opens up on you once you're past it as it were once it's in your flank or in your rear and and that's that it seems absolutely crazy to me there's this approach that volks has been taking i mean i i would have you know tried the first time doesn't work i wouldn't push it in again i'd go right let's hold fire bring up all the artillery which are still kind of you know struggling to get across the sand grow get those bridges built, do really aggressive patrol work in the middle of the night, you know, lob grenades and all that kind of stuff and just sit back until you're ready.

39:42And find out exactly where they are,

39:45Al Murray: how the defense is aligned. Because you can know roughly, but you do actually need to know exactly if you're going to attack successfully. Yes, and then you can pass it on to the RAF and then on the one day the weather is sunny and it's clear skies, you send them over and you do some pinpoint shooting up. And so they do get a couple of, uh days of better weather and um their uh cooperation between the army and infantry is between the armor and the infantry is improving but there's still lots of lots uh lots and lots of young canadian infantrymen um uh you know uh it's caught that's the cost and the final german position in the gully is unlocked and with kassabaradi gone then you can then you can pop open the gully from its flank um but that means you still got to clear it the fighting doesn't end.

40:36Al Murray: But you also have on the Canadians left on their western flank. So further inland, you have the 8th Indian Division. And he's also started to bring over the 5th Division as well. So we're zooming out a bit here, who are next to the New Zealanders. So there's four divisions in line by the middle of December. For all their depletion and for all the attrition, they're still in much better shape than the Germans. So, you know, numbers do count, but you've also got to take the initiative. You've got to pull up your skirts and crack on, haven't you? This is the problem. And there's obviously a tension.

41:10Al Murray: There's obviously this tension. You know, Vox has been deciding to go about things the way he has, but he's obviously got, you know, Monty's staff on his back going, come on, get on with it. What's the hold up? You know, not how hard can it be, but like, get your finger out, crack on. Because they're not going to say anything else, are they? Because the last thing they want is to go, no, no, no, you take your time. and a sort of sense of lassitude to pass downstream. You can't have that happen either. No. And another way, of course, of unlocking Ortona is to unlock Orsonia because it's on the same lateral road.

41:46And again, this is all about sort of folding in from the flanks. So the New Zealanders have another crack at Orsonia. You know, you may remember from the early episodes, this is the one that's perched on this sort of, you know, impossibly on the on this high cliff above this the gorge of them of the morrow and they attack in the early hours of the 15th december roger smith who we mentioned in the early episodes he's not in this one he's one of the 10 left out of battle which you always do in the allies so that you don't have a entire unit completely decimated conditions are actually terrible it's freezing cold there's raining icy showers when the attack is launched and of course the problem is is that by this time, Nilssonia is better defended with more German anti-tank guns, you know, usual mishmash of German units, but stronger defend, more strongly defended than it had been when they first attacked and when the Germans are still trying to sort of get in there.

42:37So partly first Falschermieger, partly 26th Panzer. They get badly mauled, of course they do, but after five days of battle, Nilssonia is still in German hands. And I really can't stress enough just how difficult this is to a place to attack because you've got these two roads. You've got the ridge, and then you've got Cemetery Road, and those are the only two ways in. You can't just go up the steep drop down from the morrow. And you've got a town, and it's built up, and you've got all the problems of Fibua, fighting up in a built-up area. It's just a nightmare. You know, attackers are constantly canalised.

43:16New Zealand 23rd Battalion loses 40 % casualties, and 25 tanks knocked out in just one day of fighting.

43:23Al Murray: What? So the result, attritional stalemate. See, Jim, there's a battle with 25 tanks knocked out. Why don't people know about this? That's a bad day one way or another. They do if you're in New Zealand. Well, yeah, I suppose. Yeah, but you know what I mean? There's encounters in Normandy that get more coverage than that with similar results. Well, Philip Bacchage, was it 14? Well, 14 tanks. yeah right yeah but don't worry about sonia don't worry about sonia exactly yeah and no german photographers there well yeah no german photographers yeah yeah and and poster boys sorry i just i've just struck by the numbers you think well hang on a minute there's no to kind of get excited about it either yeah

44:10Al Murray: so you've um there's a traditional stalemate there then fifth division who are now on the left on the western flank of the new zealanders and they're stretching stretching all the way back to castel de sangro and uh the second innis killings are now posted there and uh captain david cole is a stalwart of the battalion he's been in sicily he's been in italy and he wrote regularly to his parents the place has been more or less obliterated and the house i'm in is one of those one of the few that is intact or should i say was intact because just before penning this letter two shells strike the building blowing clean holes through the walls the entire house shakes everyone's covered in dust and plaster and cole's batman his soldier servant who'd been brewing tea at the time was blown right out of the door but amazingly not a single person's hurt apart from a few bashes and bruises for the batman and a bit of scalding from his tea yeah but but but two days later the remains of the town the mountains and the bowl-like valley of the upper sangro were covered in deep snow few yeah because because unlike rain snow does bring a halt to it and that's it and they spend that you know so the fifth division have a cushy time while everyone else is having an absolute shocker fifth division is sort of stuck in castel de sangro surrounded by snow sort of making tea i mean it's cold and miserable and all the rest of it but they're not actually really they're not really under fire you know and um it's sort of okay but of course it's not okay if you're in ortona where where the fighting is continuing you know we will not stop fighting we will keep going don't care how many people get killed we're just going to keep going uh at a indian division headquarters which is now a freezer which is a small village perched on the ridgeline to the southern side of the morrow they're now in range of of the german guns which as you can imagine is not is not pleasing harry wilson very much whatsoever so ever yeah and on the 14th of december i mean i mean it's interesting we said earlier on didn't we that there's lots of battles all going on simultaneously and that's what's happening here um you know we've we've we've we've been all over but here on the 14th the 17th brigade signal officer is wiped out by a salvo of naval verfa mortars seven of them are killed many more um wounded and this naturally puts the wind up harry wilson and this divisional cipher truck is parked against a haystack and close to a compost heap while the signal office is by a hedge along the track and Wilson says I don't like the look of things at all poised up on the freezer ridge it makes me edgy and you can hardly blame him can you and the Lefevre are about to make an appearance which is for fans of the Lefevre on the night yeah on the night of the 19th December well they can get out at night can't they German plane stooge over and attack the guns now down in the valley And around 10, while Harry Wilson and Spears, who's working with her, are on night duty, two bombs explode really close by, worryingly close.

47:09Al Murray: So he grabs his coat. Harry Wilson rushes out of the lorry, intending to take shelter in his new slip trench, but instead trips over the camouflage netting and falls on his face. It's the Cobb Bus team. Oh, God. Picking himself up and feeling both frightened and foolish in equal measure, he takes cover and tries to calm down. And then the bombers are gone. but then the 105 mil guns in the valley then open fire and the germans start replying with naval werfer and they're nicknamed sobbing sisters or more familiar i think to many listeners moaning minis because they make this horrible uh sound after as they come in don't they and wilson says if this is war give me peace and uh you know he's such a tremendous character harry wilson i mean he's impossible not to like yeah i can't tell you how good his diary is it's it's just yeah non-stop entertainment i think it's fair to say yeah that the canadians have shot their bolt you know at this point yeah however very big way however they they still have to fight clear the gully uh and folks has committed eight of nine battalions yeah yeah go on for you you go well no no you you took the words right out of my mouth in the gym he's committed eight of his nine battalions and they've all been roughed up and mauled and you know they're they they all ought to they all ought to stop but he he can't can he and as we said you know word from the top is no no push on and so what we're going to get is some is classic monty um here where they're going to use a gigantic artillery barrage and another big colossal crack assault to be launched on the 18th of December to break the German line to get to Cider, this crossroads, and they still can't do it.

49:04Al Murray: And it's not for another two days till the evening, the 20th, that they finally take the Cider crossroads, which is halfway along the gully on the Northern Bank. I mean, it's, you know, more than two weeks since they started, which was the objective on day one. The side of crossroads was the objective on the night of the 5th, 6th of December. And here they are on the 20th. They finally got it. I mean, it's possible. And you have to ask yourself, what is the point here? You know, because you're not going to get to Pescara now. You're not going to get to Rome before Christmas. Why don't you just put the brakes on and just, you know, I've started to finish.

49:39And, you know, no one is being, you know, you can definitely point fingers at Vokes and Monte and co and but but yeah the germans i mean what are they doing and this goes back to what we were saying earlier about lemmelsen kassering and so on because you know the 90th panzer grenadier and 65th infantry as we mentioned you know they no longer really exist you know the 76th panzer corps war diary on the on the 12th of december we're now on the 90th now on the 20th of december but on the 12th of december they write in their war diary 19 panzer grenadier division can no longer be attributed as a fighting force current positions can only be held by bringing in new battalions so that's the 90th which is a replacement of the 65th yeah and and it's questionable i would argue whether sending in oberst hallman's third faustham jaeger regiment was it was achieving any more than hurling good off to bad but but but also the first faustham jaeger have become the kind of you know the go-to the elites in inverted commas the kind of guys will always get you out of trouble and Lemelson, you know, writes on the 15th of December and he goes, wherever Heydrich is, he's the, Heydrich is the, is the commander of the 1st Falsch in the U.S.

50:44Division. He goes, wherever Heydrich is, all is well. The others, they simply let themselves be crushed. I mean, he's a, he's a little heart type, isn't he? I mean. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We were just honest soldiers trying to do our best. Yeah, yeah. It's all, it's all that, isn't it? Our hands are tied

50:57Al Murray: by the Führer. Yeah. Bollocks, isn't it? Yeah, it's bollocks. Yeah. Yes, I'm glad we've flushed that out, that particular fox out of the bushes there. It's just bollocks. And it's not the fault of the men that they're being crushed, after all. Because with the pressure of the war and the way things are going, German army training has suffered. People are being brought forward much, much quicker. and you know the the young the youngsters have already been you know the the battle for france may be a miracle from a yeah you know the fall of france may be a miracle in military terms it was actually quite costly for the germans and they're in the balkans in north africa but obviously the soviet union where they've where they've millions of people and and they've they've basically run out of proper fighting age blokes um most of the troops in italy are either teenagers or middle-aged men or eastern europeans who are you know who are possibly ambivalent about where they are although i mean i think it's interesting isn't it you know we've canadians fighting in italy so why are they there that they have to be mobilized and motivated don't they eastern europeans fighting for the germans they need to be mobilized and motivated and if your training's crap you're less likely to be well motivated aren't you um if you're under trained you know we've often talked about what's a boy from alabama thinking as he's taking his carbine up the hill to san pietro you know why is he doing it why is it why is someone from from uh romania or belarus or wherever where have they've been hoovered or poland where they've been hoovered up from why are they in italy what are they doing there defending germany you know anyway and they're being they're being slaughtered by castle ring aren't they if anyone's responsible for what's happening to these people and by men Like Lemelson, you know.

52:50Al Murray: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We have to obey the Fuhrer, so therefore, you know, our hands are tied. Just send more in. But to what end? What are you trying to help? Because Ortona is going to fall. You're not going to hold on to it. I mean, so what's the point? Well, isn't it that, I mean, you know, we talked about the end of the war. There is this idea that, you know, they're going to take down as many of the enemies as they possibly can. You know, it's apocalyptic. This is what this is, isn't it? all this is about is spilling enemy blood, isn't it? It can't be about anything else. I just don't know. It's hard to fathom.

53:24I don't know. I think they've just completely lost sight of what they're doing, to be honest. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think if you actually pin them down, what was your point? I mean, I think they'd really struggle. But, you know, this is the price of having the Hitler spotlight on you in the Italian front, isn't it? You know, so, you know, apart from the threat of being shot for desertion, And, you know, what is the motivation for conscripted poles and Czechs fighting for the Fuhrer and the Fatherland? I mean, nothing. They're cannon fodder. They know it. You know, they're currently suffering a more intense and sustained artillery bombardment than on any other front, including that in Russia.

53:59I mean, you know, across the whole of the Italian front. But then on the 21st of December, I mean, this is just absolutely defies all kind of comprehension at all. Lemelson is actually planning a counterfrost in the Otona section. I mean, with what? i mean you know so so so more and more penny packets you know small little units are being flung into the breach so the reconnaissance battalion of the herman goring division is sent over so yeah you're losing all unit cohesion when you do this you know the third panzer grenadier which is a spent force after fighting from salerno um to the bernhard line that's also moved to orsonia alongside the battered 26th panzer lemelson writes first objective breaks the vest and side of the enemy's defense with the envelopment for myself and with the attack from the vest second objective destruction of the enemy attack group with an offensive from the asiatic and an attack from the ortona area in the direction of san vito i mean what what the frick i mean with what yes it's

55:02Al Murray: completely la la isn't it totally la la yeah i mean these bloody people really murderous murderous sods um and obviously while the germans are making these crazy plans uh at the top you know general alexander harold alexander he's worried about losing the initiative if the front stagnates this is why we aren't stopping for the winter this is why we aren't pausing for spring on the Allied side. He's worried that the Germans are going to bring everyone up and, you know, all this sort of thing. But Kersering, actually, he has 25 divisions in Italy in total, but 10 are still deployed to the north.

55:41Al Murray: But actually, a sober assessment, the idea that the Germans could counter-thrust now, after a month of this really, really horrible meat-grinding battle, they have fewer guns than the Allies. They have no air power of any kind, really, nothing I think respectable. And, you know, by bunging in the old regiment here and a battalion there, they can't do it. Obviously, the Allies are worried about losing the initiative, but the Germans can't take the initiative. Lemelson can't really believe it's possible to turn the tide here. And he must be worrying about... He's having his homework marked, isn't he?

56:14Al Murray: And he's worried about... He's worried about... He's got to issue that order to show Vim, to show Vigor, hasn't he? There's a bit of Hone and Tatane going on here, where you know maybe he's being quite gung-ho in his signals to kesselring but actually just you know maybe from kesselring from lemelson's point of view he's just saying all this but actually having no intention whatsoever of doing it because it certainly doesn't happen well exactly but but he can't write the he can't write a memo that's true can he because because he'll get fired and he just you know these guys they don't want to they don't want to lose their jobs do they they they don't want the ignominy in there yeah you know and the pressure they're under i mean you said you know for for apart from the threat of being shot for desertion if you're if you're if you're a foot soldier he's not under he's not in that situation lemelson isn't going to go to the gallows if he writes a memo going we've had it we can't do anything so what is driving him on he's not he'll get fired and go home yeah exactly return to his schloss would see frau lemons lemelson you know but the thing is you cannot as we've been saying you can say of Alex, Monty and Vokes.

57:23Al Murray: It's obvious they're not going to get to Pescara in 1943. They're definitely not going to get to Rome. This is why the men are calling Vokes the butcher. If anyone knows, they know. And the dead are strewn in the mud of the mire all the way across the battlefield after this two weeks, very intense fighting to, you know, to make up for what they're supposed to do on day one. And a few weeks, you know, a few weeks before it had been this beautiful sea of pale yellow, orange vine leaves. citrus and olive groves, travel agent Italy. And now it's mud, carnage, pigs eating corpses, stench decay, the acrid stench of cordite.

58:01Al Murray: We've said it there. And obviously the smell of the dead. Exactly. It is acrid. The smell of the dead and of shit everywhere because the scene of complete degradation. And just in front of the hasty peas positions are some 170 German dead. and these have all been killed in action before the 11th of december before the 11th of december now we're on the like 21st yeah what's the point yeah i mean not a lot really anyway there we go there's this you know it's fair to say that early earlier in the war the allies would have called off the fighting by now um yeah but here in italy the clock ticking you know that schedule of expectations and you know are we going to do anzio we've got the you know you've got the tyranny of overlord and d-day and everything you know so commanders are compelled to keep going and just try and try again and so ortona is turning into the worst meat grinder of the entire italian campaign to date i think it's fair fair to say but meanwhile vernon morke and his three comrades well they've remained in their foxhole at the eastern end of the plateau above the gully um and then that night on the 21st of december having seen canadian troops to the left and right of them advancing, not in a wide arc, but in columns.

59:14And they suddenly realise that they've been left behind somehow. And obviously they could have mowed down all these Canadians with their machine gun, but they think, you know, but Maugham points out, he says, but if he didn't because we knew this would mean death to us. And, you know, he's absolutely right. So they realise their position's been overrun and somehow they've missed the orders to pull back. So they think, well, what are they going to do? Because they're cut off, they're behind enemy lines. so whispering they discuss what they should do whether they should surrender or try and make a run for it and they decide actually they are going to make a run for it but they figure out their chances would be better if they if they each try it alone so that night having kept their heads down in their foxholes through the day you know darkness has now fallen they disable their mg their machine gun and one by one they creep out and when it's morc's turn he sets off crawling and crouching you know his ears absolutely fine-tuned to every small noise on one occasion after another he he hears low voices which he assumes must be canadian so he creeps away as silently and quietly as he can occasional shell fire is sort of a burst of small arms are cutting through the night the quiet night air but after two weeks fighting the battlefield is quiet you know both sides of of pause before the pausing before the next phase and that plays to his advantage you know the next phase is clearly the battle for the town itself and eventually morgue reaches the german outposts where he's challenged but doesn't know the password of the day with great difficulty i managed to convince convince the sentries that i was not an advanced element of the enemy but just a poor lost couple in the wehrmacht so he's made it and having been debriefed by the local commander he's given a seat on the next transport to the rear he's like yeah You know, I'm out of here.

1:01:00And there he discovers his old comrades in the regiment's supply unit, who are sort of friendly faces, and all of whom have been told he was amongst the dead. So he's been really, really lucky. But he has made it. And I kind of, he's quite a likeable fellow, his old Vernon Walk. You can't kind of feel too hard on him, I don't think.

1:01:18Al Murray: Lives to fight another day, but we'll find out what happens on another day in our next episode. Thanks everyone for listening. If you want to hear these all in one go, if you want to get to Otona quicker than Chris Fokes' men. Push on. Yes, if you want to hear the denouement of the battle, the denouement of the battle. Exactly. Engage in your own colossal crack and become a Patreon member. Join our Patreon and the perks of membership are multiple. It's like being stonked with content, basically. The moaning mini of content that will be barraging you. Anyway, thanks everyone for listening. We'll see you again very soon.

1:01:56Al Murray: Cheerio. Cheerio.

1:02:18Al Murray: We'll see you next time.

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