Stalingrad Of The Adriatic: The Town (Part 4)

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2:59Al Murray: Christmas! At home, the bells will be ringing and people will be talking of peace. What peace? Our pockets are full of it. 1.30 at night. The Porters have arrived. They have even brought something good for us. Your Father Christmas is here for the radio operators. We open the parcels. For each of us there is a little Christmas cake, chocolate, walnuts, almonds, oranges. We sip our sweet malt wine and celebrate Christmas. For Prennitz, promotion to und offiziers arrived. While I become Obergefreiter, we cheer ourselves up, talk again about what is happening at home and tell stories. The tanks begin firing again on the so-called Christmas morning.

3:44Al Murray: The battle begins again. It is raining heavily. Day after day, it is always the same music. The soldiers on both sides are doing almost the impossible. The Hitler's basher slicks, and the dish-shaped helmets on the other side duck down. Bullets fan out close to us. Will I be hit too? Wast me all die in Otona? But then, von defends von self to the weary last breath. And that is, I was ventriloquizing there for your interest and hopefully delight. Siegfried Baer from Fifth Company, Third Falschim Jäger Regiment, in his funny helmet, his smock and his dark blue trousers, holed up in Ortona in the winter of 1943.

4:30Al Murray: In fact, Christmas Day. Merry Christmas, Jim. Yes. To the Falschim Jäger, I think we're saying, aren't we? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, again, you know, he's another of these characters. He's quite a sympathetic character, really. You know, he writes this little journal, and it's all very, very touching, very human, very moving, really. And I think, you know, the awful thing about Otona, the battle with Otona, is it's horrible for everybody. Yeah. You know, whoever you are, it's just awful. Yeah. But reefed in pointlessness from the joint, strategic pointlessness from the German point of view. Why bother?

5:01Al Murray: Just bug out, sort your lines out, move back where you can hold the Allies up, possibly forever in Italy. And then from the other point of view, why bother if you're the Duke forces? Why bother if you're General Alexander? What you probably ought to do is give yourself a chance to get your breath back, get your lads straight, get your lines straight, get your bridges fixed. And, you know, more haste, less speed, perhaps, is what's going on here. Yes, welcome to Where Ways Make Your Talk. with me, Al Murray, James Holland, for our fourth episode of The Stalingrad of the Adriatic, Ortona. And this episode is episode four, The Town.

5:41Al Murray: So we finally got you there after two weeks of bloody fighting. Efforts from... Yes, because we've had the Sangro. We've had the Morro. Yep. We've had the Gully. Yep. And now we've got the town. Exactly. There's a lot of thes in this series. Yeah, exactly. And I rather like this way of slicing the places up. Well, Tona is on the eastern coast of Italy. It's a small fishing town. Anyway, the hasty peas have been pulled out on the 19th of December. You know, hooray for Farley Mowat. You know, he survived. He thinks it's all, you know, they're out the other side. Yeah. And the rule of thumb is, you know, by this stage of the war, is that Allied frontline infantry and armour are really in the thick of it for more than about four days.

6:27I mean, if you look at the Normandy campaign, that's 48 hours to four days that you'd have a battalion in the front line something like that um and perhaps six at most and because that point you know exhaustion and casualties invariably are too great to to continue effectively yes so so it's not just about human concern it's also practical you're disorganized aren't you yeah you can't you can't function properly because you know you've lost officers and you've lost some ncos and the whole thing just starts to sort of you know It just doesn't work. But, but, but, but Otona, those rules are different just as they were in San Pietro and on Monte Samucro and, you know, um, and the casino battles that, are to follow this.

7:05You know, companies will be pulled out one at a time for rotation through, through these mobile bath units that are brought up to San Vito, but they're still in shelling range there. And, and, you know, on the 16th of December, San Vito is actually unexpectedly shelled and kills five and wounds 15 from a single platoon, just as they're having a bath. Oh, Oh, God. Yeah, so that also doesn't fill people with a huge amount of confidence and, you know, it's not exactly good for morale.

7:32Al Murray: We've heard lots of depressing things in this series so far, but that, I think, for me, that's the biscuit taken because you think... Really? You think, finally, I've got out this... You know, you were talking about having to wear your battle dress for three weeks. You know, finally, you get out of your filthy battle dress. you get that the horrible underwear that that you've had on for for scores of days you get in that bath and how hot you know maybe it's hot maybe it's hot enough and you're thinking finally just a moment to myself a moment of and then that happens that's i mean i'm sorry that's the worst thing i've heard okay well i think the worst thing that i've heard is is what is just around the corner but i don't want to do a spoiler um oh great no let's put a real downer on things i'm sorry you've upset yeah sorry about that yeah no there's a there's a there's a there's an episode that has stayed with me let's put it that way um um which we're just coming to yeah anyway farley moat um he's not bold about the rain because he's just happy to be out the line and and he survives leaves yet feels a total wreck you know too many of his mates have died already we've seen too much we knocked off his feet by shells and by mines and lived in mud and filth and surrounded by endless destruction and misery and he says says too difficult trying to find the sense and meaning in any of this pray god we get a decent break we needed more than you could ever know you know by all norms even in the italian theater the hasty peas would be out of the line that'd be it they wouldn't be expected to do something for another six weeks minimum they're still at san leonardo when a heavy single caliber a single heavy caliber shell screams in with a tearing air sucking sigh and slams into the regimental aid post oh no so moat is some distance from this but the concussion still buffets him and a searing hot wind courses through his nostrils and a huge cone of soil and debris is flung up into the air and when it subsides all that remains is debris and bits of both the RAP and Charlie Karakawa, who's the indefatigable battalion medical officer.

9:43So he's gone as well. And while the mess is being cleared up, the CEO, Bert Kennedy, is summoned to a 1st Brigade O group, which is an orders group, which is where you kind of get briefed on what you're going to be doing. And as usual, Moa has to accompany him. And they're both in a bit of shock, as you can imagine. And there they learn that they're not being sent to the rear after all, but rather are to mount an attack to the west of the town to draw off any German reinforcements while the second brigade fights through Otona itself. And they get back and Mowat's mate, Al Park, says to him, what's the word, Squibb?

10:18Are we going into reserve? And Park and Mowat have trained together in Scotland and they've both been an able company when they landed in Sicily under Alex Campbell. And they're really, really good mates. And Park is now able company, second in command, has aged 10 years since Sicily, just like they all have. And Moet has to go, no, they're not. They've got another date with the Tedeschi first, the Tedeschi being the Italian word for Germans. And Park goes, ah, well, what the hell? Who wants to make old bones? See you in Valhalla, chum. Anyway, this is the really bad bit. Just coming up, warning alert.

10:55Al Murray: Jim, I thought the RAP being shelled and everyone, the MO being vaporised and all the wounded all being torn to pieces was the bad part. That's bad, but for vivid awfulness, what's to come is worse. Okay, so we've had the bronze is the blokes in the bath, silver is the RAP, and now gold awfulness comes too. They send in the attack. This attack goes in the early morning. It's a diversionary attack. Only a diversionary attack, so almost even more pointless than the rest of them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But same difference if you're the enemy, you're going to go, oh, well, are they diverting us? I don't know.

11:26Al Murray: Stop them anyway. so they advance the infantry pbi um advance behind a creeping barrage passchendaele style you know vayonets fixed probably rifles at the trail the reverberations of which of this barrage seem to be pounding as rhythmically as uh farley mo it's increasingly heavy thumping heart he had his he had that arrhythmia didn't he in a previous episode so he's his heart's in his mouth dry mouth adrenalized as far as he possibly can be but he's running on empty and they're advancing you know open country or toners away to their right the landscape is dotted with farm buildings but also drainage ditches which of course are excellent excellent uh defensive points um later in the afternoon um kennedy sends moat off to find a squadron of shermans that's due to be supporting them and he's he did that before when he had to liaise and he's picking his way through the mud and that's slithering his way in between the drainage ditches and he's just paused by a stone farm building when a salvo of naval werfers moaning minis scream in and land 50 yards away and the blast knocks him off his feet 50 yards away and in through the doorway directly onto a prone figure that gives off a loud gurgling belch huge belch and there's a sickening stench and moat farly moat once he's gathered his wits realizes he's fallen onto a dead German paratrooper and then sees there's two more sprawled there in the mud of manure and a fourth still alive sitting against the wall.

13:03I mean, can you imagine anything worse than landing on a bloated, dead German where you've just knocked all those noxious gases out of it by landing on him?

13:13Al Murray: Exactly. That's no ordinary burp. You're not just getting the terrible black bruit he had for breakfast. and Mowat stares at the remaining Falschimjäger, the one who's still alive. He's convinced he's about to be killed, but the German doesn't move at all. And the German says, Wasser? Huff you, Wasser? Finally, Mowat gets to his feet and then realises that the German's left hand is clutching the stump where his right hand had been. And he says, Dark Gore was still touting between his fingers and spreading in a black pool about his outthrust legs. Most dreadful was a great gash in his side from which protruded a glistening dark mass, which must have been his liver.

14:00This gentleman's just a kid. He's young, he's pale-eyed.

14:02Al Murray: Again, he asks for water. But Moa doesn't have any. All he's got is rum in his water bottle. And he tries to tell him, nein Wasser, kein Wasser, only rum. But the boy looks at him so pleadingly, he goes, all right then. and gives him the water bottle, holds it to his lips. He takes a few gulps and then drinks some himself. And not long after that, the boy dies. We're right in it, this episode, Jim. That's gold, isn't it? I mean, surely. Of the three appalling things of this episode so far. That scene is just, I can't ever get it out of my mind that way. It's just, it's so totally awful. I don't know how you would ever recover from that.

14:47Al Murray: You'd think about that room in that farmhouse forever, every day. Every night you'd dream of it, wouldn't you? Surely. Well, and the vivid way with which he describes that in his memoir rather suggests that that's exactly what's happened. But anyway. Yeah. He leaves the dead. He gets back to the Shermans, finds his Shermans, and gets a ride back to join Baker Company, who are forming up to Mounted New Tack. I mean, imagine someone says, how was your trip up, chum? Oh, fine. You know, what would you say to anyone? He slides off the tank into the mud. His legs then collapse and so does the rest of him.

15:21Al Murray: And for a while, he's out cold with the shock of this experience. As might our listeners be, Jim. Let's be honest now. You've served us a treat here, James. Thank you. Yes. Well, you know, I'm sorry about that. But anyway, there is better news. And that is that Major Alex Campbell, who is one of the most loved figures in the Hasty Peas, is back. He's had jaundice. He was the Able Company commander. and he rejoins Abel Company on Christmas Eve and everyone loves him. He's a huge bearer man, brave as a lion, leads from the front, gentle too. I don't know if those of you who listened to our Sicily series that we did, you may remember that he's the one who charges up the hill when they land on the beach and they find the commandos on the other side of the hill, the other side of the house.

16:05And that's Alex Campbell. But he's a big sort of gentle figure as well. And he's enjoyed his rest camp, although impatient to get back to the company because he feels guilty about being out. And he has written a raft of letters, which I got copies of, and they're really touching. And he sends home some Christmas presents. And he also remembers to send a card to his beloved niece, Janeline. And he writes to her. So he writes,

16:31Al Murray: I hope Santa Claus will be good to you this Christmas. You better stop growing so fast or I won't have any little girl to play with when I come home. I love you, Alex. So anyway, he's marching along the road from San Vito of a new column of replacements who've turned up. And there he spots Farley Mowat, who's one of his old sidekicks from Abel Company, one of his junior subalterns when he'd been company commander. Mowat has sort of recovered after his brief collapse and he's being driven in the commander's jeep in the direction of the village. So Mowat is really cheered to see him because he's this constant and nothing ever gets to Campbell and he lifts everyone's spirits and all the rest of it.

17:09And he's looking as big and fit and indomitable as ever. And Campbell says to him,

17:14Al Murray: Farley, still here and not a general yet. Must be all that verse you write. Bad for promotion. And he then hands a piece of paper over. He reaches into his battle dress, hands over a scrumpled piece of paper and tells Moet that he's been versifying too. And Campbell says to him, Read this when you get time and tell me what you think. And Moet takes it and tucks it into his own battle dress and then falls in beside him and the men he's been due to collect himself. And there's 140 of them straight from Canada, an entire company's worth. And despite the freezing sleep, they're chatting easily and a number of them are singing and spirits are being lifted.

17:52But this lessens, of course, as they near the wreckage of San Leonardo and stops altogether by the time they reach the battle scarred salient that has developed just to the west of Ortona. And a new salvo of shells scream over just as they're nearing battalion headquarters and by the time the shelling stops, seven of the new boys are dead or wounded. Oh, God. They're not even fired a single bullet. God. And by this time, the battle in Autona itself has only just begun.

18:23Al Murray: Jim, we need to take a break. And it's shorter than normal, but I'm sorry. Just a... Everyone needs a moment. How about you? I need to go get a nip of some rum. God, believable. Unbelievable, this. Absolutely relentless and brutal. And we do have... It's Farley Mowat's account we have to thank for the sort of vivid glances into this, isn't it? It's the truth. His account is absolutely amazing, isn't it? Well, yes, but also these accounts from Werner Mork and from Seafried Bear and, you know, Dermford's diary is very affecting and stuff. And a lot of the kind of descriptions of the landscape and stuff come from Harry Wilson.

18:57And, you know, there's a lot of them. But, yeah, I would agree. And the Farley Mowat is amazing.

19:03Al Murray: We'll take a quick break and then the battle for Otona will begin. We'll see you in a tick.

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20:59Al Murray: Welcome back to Weird Ways of Making a Talk. With me, I'm Murray, James Holland. So, Jim, Otona. We've been dangling Otona to people for three and a half episodes now. Finally, finally, the battle for the town is underway. And we started the episode with Siegfried Baer, his account of Christmas Day. Let's go to Siegfried. Now, he's been at the 2nd Battalion's headquarters. Yes, because he's in the 5th company. He's there as a radio telegrapher. There's only one battalion holding the town. but a company of pioneers, German engineers, have blown up both ends of a series of streets and left others open in order to try and canalise the Canadians and corral them into carefully prepared killing zones.

21:42Al Murray: So in other words, they've restricted the Canadians' ability to move and flank. Yeah, and one of the main roads they go through is the main drag. So you have this square with a bank on. There's a very famous picture of a Canadian tank in the middle of the square. There's another series of photographs take it all on the same day. It's not quite Robert Capper, but it's not far off it. And you can see a wounded guy being put into a little arch doorway. That's all there still. And they're being canalised down the main drag, the sort of main high street, which is now a sort of pedestrianised place.

22:16And you can completely see when you're there why the Germans would do this, and create that into a sort of prepared killing zone. So piles of rubble are then laced with booby traps. So paratroopers are able to use their machine guns very effectively. And you may remember that the smallest number of men in any infantry is the squad, the section, the group, and it's 10 men. So it's a grouper in the case of the Germans. And usually you would have one small light machine gun per section squad grouper. But in the Falschmjäger, you have two MG42s, which are these ones that kind of fire at 1 ,400 bullets a minute.

22:56And it means that the buildings either side of these narrow streets are used as machine gun positions and also placed on different floors. And they also make liberal use of snipers because then, you know, what else have you got is the truth of it. Roads are mined, cellars and roofs not through so they can move much more easily from one building to another without venturing onto the street. You know, that's the key thing. And as the Canadians begin moving into the town, Seafried Bear is sent forward with the rest of Five Company. and by the 23rd of December is in a building near the main square, which I just mentioned.

23:29So he's just off this street, and there's a little kind of fountain in the middle of it. The town is already largely wrecked because it was bombed three days earlier on the 20th of December in a sort of prelude to the town battle. And also, of course, it's been shelled relentlessly as well. But although the main drag, this main road coming off the main square, is quite wide, the rest of it is all narrow streets and alleyways and so on. And of course, the raucous din of battle in this very sort of constrained area is absolutely terrible. You know, with the whine and the wump and crash of shells and almost never ending chatter of small arms, you know, sharp and tinny and jarring.

24:07And Manning's radio bare feels a jolt and renewed sense of panic every time someone warns them of a tank approaching because, of course, they don't have any tanks. and one Sherman rumbles close to their positions but is knocked out by Leutnant Heindorn using a Panzerfaust, which has been used in Italy for the first time. This omnipresent weapon by the end of the war.

24:28Al Murray: Not having any tanks reduces the possibility for a friendly fire instance then, doesn't it? You're not going to... Yes. Not accidentally going to take out a Panzerfaust. Not at all. But the thing is, you say it's the first time it's being used in Italy. It's the only one they've got. And now they've used it. It's the only one in Autona. I mean, this is partly because they're airborne soldiers and this is the way they're structured. They don't have any anti-tank weapons after that at all. And the Canadians are working out how to do this, how to do this fighting in built-up areas. And they're learning on the hoof because they haven't been trained in urban operations.

25:05And what they're doing is the infantry are crawling really closely behind the tank. The tank is using its main gun to hammer kind of suspected hot spots of machine guns, which it is getting, by the way. Yeah. And also spraying kind of liberally with machine guns. And then once in, the Canadians are then going up and down these buildings. They're doing this sort of up and down. And what you do is you go from floor to floor, knock a hole through, go down the other side, up again. But trying not to use the streets. You're trying to just go through the buildings, which are all kind of jammed together.

25:40Al Murray: And this is a room by room, house by house affair. You have to clear every single room, every single house. You know, the Fibio Emanuel from this sort of period talks about how, you know, it's a three-dimensional battlefield that you're, because of elevation, because someone can be in a top room in an attic. And that you've got far more to think about than if you're going across, you know, Salisbury Plain or whatever, or the fields outside Autona. You know, that suddenly it's a multidimensional battlefield and that much more complicated to deal with. But they're forcing them back, aren't they?

26:14Al Murray: Basically, as the Canadians move on with their armour, the men from Fifth Company are being forced back. One by one, the blokes are wounded or killed. But Bares stays on his radio, passing his messages backwards and forwards, reports, orders and dragging it with him, carrying it with him as they move back down the street. and it's only when it gets dark that things calm down again. Do you know what? You know, I've just been doing this Dunkirk book. Yeah. And I did a whole thing on the Siege of Calais. It's exactly the same. It's literally the same process. Yeah. The Germans moving it. The Germans are the Canadians.

26:52The British are the equivalent of the Valsham Jäger. I mean, it's just amazing. But again, just brutal and just unbelievably tough.

26:59Al Murray: I mean, you know, I don't want to bore any regular listener, but this is not unlike the armour moving forward in a certain city in Holland, in the Netherlands, against airborne soldiers. In Holland, yeah. Yeah, who run out of anti-tank answers. Christmas Eve. Let's just jolly things up with Christmas Eve, Jim. The following morning, Christmas Eve. Of course, if you're German, that's when you do your presents on the evening of Christmas Eve, isn't it? That's your big day. It's your big day. Shells are screaming and exploding. Gunfire in the streets. Tank thunders by, firing. then fires Feldwebel Erwin Waltz who's due to be commissioned cries out and collapses bleeding and he dies soon after and Baird says the world is full of deceit and mockery Christmas all around again are screams of pain and death 10 more men have been killed that day already and 3 more wounded Baird radios for reinforcements because he might as well right I mean you are going to radio for reinforcements aren't you but all he's told is resist, resist.

28:02Al Murray: And he says, again, we have to abandon some houses. Houses? Ruins. So they move on to a new house. He's got the radio on the ground floor. That night, having survived the day, he needs fellow radio operator, Heinz Kerstin. They draw up two armchairs that have been left. They're a small sofa and a coffee table. And they find some sugar and a barrel of wine in the cellar. So Merry Christmas. They light the fire. They warm and sweeten some wine. An almost Christmas-like atmosphere rains. Our thoughts fly home. At 1.30 a.m., the food carriers arrive. So there is this, you know, there is a supply line as such.

28:39People bring up the Christmas treats, parcels,

28:44Al Murray: each containing a small Christmas bun, some chocolate, almonds and oranges. Wie zippa, sweet, malt wine und celebrate Christmas. Für Heinz, a promotion der Unteroffizier has arrived. while I become Obergrfeiter. Rejoice. Talk again about what's happening at home. Und Remanis. It's a brief moment of homeliness and celebration in the disgusting meat grinder that we've been discussing. Yes, I mean, but Harry Wilson, you'll be pleased to know, is getting only a marginally better Christmas. I mean, he gets a hilarious card from his mother. But anyway, I'll let you tell the story. He says, well, so he's in his diary.

29:24Al Murray: He writes, wet, dismal, murky, muddy day. He writes about Christmas Eve in his journal. A few days earlier, he'd received a Christmas card from his mother. What did she say, Jim? I hope you're happy and well, and that you like your surroundings better than you did last year, and that you will have a very happy Christmas. The best yet. The best yet. And he reckons there's a very good chance he'll be spending Christmas Day in a hole in the ground with a small cross above it.

29:55but in fact he is still alive as the 24th at least draws to a close and one of his fellows a chap called spears calls by and gives him a half bottle of whiskey but warns him not to drink it all at once so wilson drinks the tot immediately and goes to drink the whole thing immediately and goes to sleep quite contented and he writes another brilliant entry with a thousand bottles

30:18Al Murray: of this stuff. I could see this war through without any bother at all. He's such a tremendous fellow. I love him. Anyway, a few miles away in the salient west of Ortona. So this is just to the west of the town now. Farley Moat spends the night of Christmas Eve in the farmhouse that is now the Hasty Peas Battalion headquarters. And he's down in the cellar when he suddenly remembers as Alex Campbell's poem. So he pulls it out of his battle dress and it's been written in pencil. And every time a shell lands, a kerosene lamp flickers and dust shakes from the ceiling, which combined with Campbell's loopy handwriting makes it a little bit hard to read.

30:59Nonetheless, he manages to make sense of the 17 lines of simple, rather touching and very honest verse. And we have this verse here.

31:11Al Murray: When neath the rumble of the guns, I lead my men against the Huns. I am alone and weak and scared, and wonder how I ever dared accept the task of leading them. I wonder, worry, then I pray, O God, who takes men's pain away? Now, in my spirit's fight with fear, draw near, dear God, draw near. Make me more willing to obey. Help me to merit my command. And if this be my fatal day, reach out, O God, thy helping hand. these men of mine must never know how much afraid i really am help me to stand against the foe so they will say he was a man i've good sorry goosebumps i'm sorry anyway early the next morning able company is sent to clear a group of faustham jaeger who have infiltrated into the canadian salient a little bit overnight so it's now 7 a.m moat is still at battalion headquarters and tries to follow what's going on through the headphones of a radio set but you know these are radios it's winter it's italy of course it doesn't work and abel is off off air so he's it's not until some wounded arrive that he learns what has happened and a sergeant with a gash in his leg tells him and apparently seven platoon um had had begun the attack but had been caught by enfilading fire of three machine guns and at this point instead of trying to outflank the position Alex Campbell then leaps up from his position gives a bellow and charges straight at the enemy firing his Tommy gun as he does so and he's barely gone a few paces before he's riddled with bullets and his body falls into the mud jerking until the life drains from him and that is the end of Alex Campbell and Moet is still struggling to take this all in and tell him what you know taking what the sergeant is telling him when the blanket screening the cellar doorway is pulled back and two stretcher bearers pushing, carrying his great mate Al Park, who is alive, but only just, with a bullet wound across his head.

33:10And as Moet looks into his pale ghostly face and the bloodstained bandages around his friend's head, he feels tears well up and then uncontrolled stream down his face because it's Christmas Day, 1943. Devastating, isn't it? Absolutely. So there's little sense of confidence, hope or Christmas cheer in Autona either, it has to be said. We're not putting this out on Christmas Day, are we? I hope not.

33:36Al Murray: I mean... No, no, no, we can't possibly. We can't possibly. We can't possibly. You know, as I said earlier, you know, the Canadians haven't been trained in urban ops. You know, they're struggling and it's the tank men of the Three Rivers Regiment are just pummeling every building. They're just pounding it, smashing them all down and that's the only way. and alongside them are two battalions one are the loyal edmontons the eddies and our old friends the c4th highlanders having having crossed over to san leonardo on the first night being absolutely hammered i've now got got the prize drawer of actually taking ortona as well i mean it's just extraordinary isn't it uh but anyway liberal use of brain guns tommy guns grenades is the only way and it really is this fighting floor by floor, house by house.

34:24And rather than risk tripwires and booby traps on the ground floor, they're soon discovering it's better to just knock down the walls. They haven't been blasted already, lobbing grenades, clear the house like that. So you go up and you go down. But the Falschmjager aren't showing any sign of throwing in the towel at all. And some C-Force come across one Falschmjager who's been blinded by shrapnel but is still waving his weapon. And he shouts out, I wish I could see you. I'd kill every one of you. And they're now starting to call Ortona the Stalingrad of the Adriatic. And well, they might. I mean, it's right up there, isn't it, with Stalingrad in terms of awfulness.

35:01So Padre Durnford, remember him? The Devonian with the Seaforth Highlanders? On Christmas Day, he writes...

35:08Al Murray: Jerry sending shells over, deathly chatter of machine guns, rumbling of falling bodies, roar of guns. And I love that entry. It's so spare, but it's so evocative, isn't it? Yeah. It just says all it needs to say. Anyway, he's headed to the Church of Santa Maria in Constantinopoli, which you can still go and see, at the southern end of the town. And tables have been set up for the companies to sit and have a Christmas meal. And roses and violets placed in small cups of water to add a little cheer. I mean, it's really touching, isn't it? And again, he writes, Shells whine and explode. Holy night.

35:46Al Murray: the meal for c company brigadier and colonel cheered the faces of new recruits orders to leave the front a few hundred yards forward a company returns from front weary strained dirty and he collects them for carols in the cloisters which which he's very careful to make make sure it's voluntary and then he repeats the meal again and the entire occasion is repeated another time when b company comes in and finally again when it's d company's turn so every company in in the C4 Firelanders gets a chance to have a bit of a Christmas meal and a sing song if they want it and look at some flowers on the table and the fighting in in Ortona Durnford reckons follows a quickly established routine we shave same house exchange grenades and shoot at his head if out of window and he had ours further horrors everyone there's no lull at all on Christmas day of course um nor on Boxing Day either I mean normally on Boxing Day you're sat around thinking God, I ate too much yesterday, but not in Otona in 1943.

36:43Al Murray: By the morning of the 27th of December, Siegfried Baer learns that there's just 60 men left in the 2nd Battalion. You know, they've been decimated once again, literally. Once again, he hears the rumble of tanks, the clatter and squeak of tracks and the pause, followed by the shot of the main gun, explosion, the rumble of masonry that follows. And the Canadians are everywhere. They're crawling over the roofs. They're crawling through the upper floors. He can hear machine guns, hand grenades bursting. Oberfeldwebel Sabludowsky is killed by a grenade. Another NCO in his company gone there. Sabludowsky had been Leutnant Ewald Pick's best friend.

37:19Al Murray: And he says, the battle rages on. Leutnant Heidorn stands in the archway of the gate and secures a clear path with his machine gun. Suddenly a hand grenade falls in front of his feet and he quickly retreats. The trommies are already in the same house on the upper floors. The leutnant runs up a half-destroyed staircase. We hear gunshots. Henk on heads explode. They have to leave the house. The lightning has fallen. No, not fallen, Bear then thinks to himself. That's a stupid word. After all, someone who fell over, they can get up again. Hydawn's not going to be getting up again anytime soon. He's dead.

37:51Al Murray: Bear says, you know, he's no more. He's lying in a pool of blood amidst the dust and debris of yet another shattered house in this nondescript street in a small coastal town that no one has heard of. No one had heard of. I mean, imagine being one of these Falchim Jäger. You've never heard of Ortona. what are you even doing in Italy? What the hell's going on? What's the point? They scuttle away to a new building. Bear's holding the radio link by a blasted window. The rest of the men are looking at him. What should we do? You know, instructions. When are the reinforcements coming? And all they get again is absolutely resist.

38:23Al Murray: That's it from head office. But how and with what? They fired their one Panzerfahler two days ago. Leutnant Pick, he looks dejected as well he might. he asks bear for a cigarette and then lights it with a trembling hand suddenly without saying a further word he drops his machine gun and steps out of the house and into the piazza outside bear and the others they they watch a gasp a fountain pick stops and crouches smoking cigarette then points to canadian on the second floor of a building across the square pick shouts all weapons fire at will and so they're all yelling at him everyone else bear and all the other falchium yogi yelling at him to come back.

39:00Al Murray: The shot rings out. Bam. And he's down. And he's the last officer left in the fifth company. Only once darkness has fallen are they able to go and Bear and another fella go out and get him. He's been shot in the lung. He's been out in the street all this time. He's still alive. They take him to the aid post, but he dies there in the early hours of the 28th of December. Bear hurries back. And then finally they get a radio message that they're to fall back. What's the point? At midnight, in single file, we leave Otona, heading north, scrambling along the slope of a vineyard, almost in the direction of home.

39:37Al Murray: Many good comrades have lost their lives in Otona and have brought honour to the flag. I have been wary fortunate. We crossed a deep ruin and followed the coastal road as far as Troy Muccia, where a new position had been assigned. We reached a railway tunnel where the battalion headquarters was located. The trucks were there and we climbed aboard from Zoyer because the road had been destroyed. The enemy will discover the following morning that we have gone. That's it. That's it. The battle is over. The battle is over before the end of the year, but they're still not in Rome. They're still not even in Piscara.

40:11And that piazza where Pic goes out is now the place where the Canadian memorial is to the battle. and it's really touching because it's a Canadian medic tending a wounded soldier. It's really moving. It's really, really moving. And the thing about Battle Tone is there's a lot of photographs from it and you can do lots of then and nows. There's a lovely little cemetery just outside. And, of course, one of the first things I did when I went there was go and find Alex Campbell. Yeah. You know, sit there. And I have to say I absolutely shed a tear when I stood there because I just thought about that.

40:53poem which is it's a terrible poem but it's also so innocent and lovely and touching and vulnerable and heartfelt you know and it's just it just gets to you you know yeah and you just think about all these awful things that happen it's so it's lovely now i mean it's a beautiful place to visit like that that those little sort of plateaus between the morrow to the gully from the gully to the town you know they're gorgeous you know it's it's uh but but you can but you can also you can put a filter over your eyes and you can imagine it looking blasted and everything and it's just it's it's it's it's brilliant place to visit like lots of battlefields if you didn't know you'd never

41:36Al Murray: know you'd never think someone fought over this place you'd never think it's too beautiful it's too peaceful it's too idyllic no there is a lot of spang there's also a really lovely museum there which is very sort of, it's really well done. Like a lot of these little museums, you know, they're kind of actually pretty good, really. But there's something about that Otona battle that has sort of got to me, I would say. You know, it's the Farley Moet, it's also the Seafried Bear account, it's Dermford's Diary, and it's visiting there, and you can just see it. You know, you can absolutely see it all, how it played out, how it got bogged down.

42:14You know, you go to Casa Baradi, you go to, there's a whole load of other episodes and stories, which we haven't included this because it just isn't the space. But, you know, you can go to all these places and picture it all. You know, it's just, it's amazing, really.

42:28Al Murray: Making sure that a battle like this gets remembered. It's a Duke effort. It's the people that the British Empire called on when things had gone pear-shaped. So, you know, it's Canadians, it's Kiwis, it's Indian soldiers. Because, you know, Irishman, we've had, in fact, we've had a little look in, apart from the odd officer here and there, Padre from Devon. We've had a little look in, actually, from British personalities in this. That's the point. It's not even a coalition effort. I mean, what do you even call it? It's a Duke effort. I have to say, though, that first half, if anyone else needed to go for a long walk before they came back for the second half after the horrors of the first half of this episode, I completely understand.

43:14Al Murray: Thanks for joining us. But if you've enjoyed this series, there are many more series up on our Patreon, which you can listen to all in a lump, the way we release these ahead of the normal schedule rather than having to wait week on week. join us on the We Have Ways of Making Talk Patreon thanks very much for listening I don't know I think I might go for some rum in honour of Farley Mowat at his time of deep crisis thanks for listening everyone cheerio