“Really, Squib,” he replied primly, “how should I know what’s going on? It’s not my job to set the world on fire! That’s up to the high-priced help. All I do is put the pieces together after you silly characters get everything mucked up!”
Grinning, I went in search of the Intelligence Section truck—the Brain Wagon. This was the first time I had visited my old section since being posted to Seven Platoon, and that seemed like years ago. Two of the scouts greeted me with exaggerated salutes and a cheerful, “Welcome back!”
“Battle” Cockin, the English intelligence officer who had replaced me, was under the truck’s canvas canopy, bending over a big situation map covered with transparent plastic. He was busily marking our own and enemy positions on the slick surface with red and blue grease pencils. I peered over his shoulder and for the first time since landing in Sicily was able to get some idea of what was happening in the “big picture.”
The Italians having virtually given up, and the four German divisions then in Sicily being insufficient to hold the whole of the island, the enemy was attempting to establish a fortress zone in the northeast corner, defended by a line running some fifty miles westward from Catania on the east coast into the mountains, then northward to meet the coast again near the town of Cefalù.
Cockin explained that while American forces were closing in on this enclave from the west, Eighth Army’s major thrust had been stopped south of Catania by massed German armour. The 1st Canadian Division had therefore been ordered to break the deadlock by making a left hook which would threaten Catania from the northwest.
Valguarnera had, in fact, been the opening battle in this operation. Stabbing at the map with his finger, Cockin went on to explain the form.
“We must swing eastward now, you see. But first we have to crack the hinge of Jerry’s defence line on the other side of the Dittaino. Here.”
The broad Dittaino River valley, five miles north of our bivouac, lay at the foot of a formidable range of barren mountains which reared toward the distant, snow-capped cone of volcanic Etna. Protruding from this ascending range, and lying directly in our path like some titanic, anchored battleship, an outlying bastion of the ascending mountains towered some three thousand feet above the valley, dominating the entire countryside for miles around. This was the “hinge.”
Cockin pointed on the map to a small village named Assoro which seemed to be poised on the very lip of the sky-raking promontory.
“Very tough nut, I do believe,” he said in his clipped, professorial style. “Key to the whole position though... First fortified by the Sicels about a thousand years BC. Been a citadel against invasion ever since... Old Roger the Norman built a cracking great castle there when he conquered Sicily... supposed to have been impregnable in his time... Shouldn’t wonder, eh? Need a goat with wings to scale that bloody thing!”
“Any idea who’s holding it?”
“Corps Intelligence thinks 15th Panzer-Grenadier Division’s on our front. Part of old Rommel’s crowd, y’know. Tough bunch of buggers, but tough or not, somebody’s got to turf ’em out. Could well be us. Let’s hope so, eh?”
I felt carefree, even exhilarated, as I made my way back to the olive grove where the company was bivouacked, for I had not yet acquired the old soldier’s trick of automatically calculating the risks of a new operation—of weighing the odds. I was still naive enough to share Cockin’s hope that Assoro might be ours to take.
When I woke next morning the sun had barely cleared the distant peaks but my groundsheet, spread over a pile of straw to make a mattress, was already hot to the touch. Someone was shaking my arm. I rolled over muzzily and found Al Park’s long face hanging over me.
“Up and at ’em, sonny boy! Alex’s gone off to BHQ for an O-group. Looks like there’s another job of work for willing hosses!”
DURING THE NIGHT the Loyal Edmonton Regiment had reached the Dittaino and established a bridgehead across it. Before dawn they were relieved by our sister unit, the Royal Canadian Regiment, and, as the sun rose, men of the RCR crouched in hurriedly dug slit trenches and stared up in awe at the mighty crag of Assoro.
The Germans on the promontory remained unperturbed. They had little reason to be concerned, for it was obvious that a frontal attack up the tortuous and twisting roadway that climbed laboriously from the valley floor would be suicidal. Nor, apparently, could Assoro be outflanked. The only possible approach from westward was guarded by the hillcrest town of Leonforte which occupied almost as strong a natural defence position as Assoro itself. To the east lay a waste of gullies and gorges of the kind we had faced at Valguarnera, but one that ended at the foot of a nearly vertical rock face which soared almost a thousand feet to terminate at the ancient Norman castle crowning Assoro’s summit.
Assoro had been successfully defended four thousand years earlier by men armed only with bronze swords, slings and spears. According to Cockin, it had never been successfully stormed since. Now, in our time, it was held by some of the world’s best soldiers, armed with the most modern weapons. Assoro appeared to be virtually impregnable.
So indeed it seemed to Brigadier Howard Graham, commander of 1st Brigade, who had been given the task of taking it. And so it must have seemed to Lieutenant Colonel Bruce Sutcliffe when he in his turn received the order to mount the actual attack.
Having told Jimmy Bird to have the battalion O-group waiting for his return, and accompanied only by Cockin, Sutcliffe set out in mid-morning of July 20 to make his reconnaissance. Reaching the Dittaino, the two men crossed the dry riverbed on foot and made their way to a forward observation post. This was no more than a shallow slit trench, barely sufficient to shelter the artillery observer who already occupied it. Sutcliffe and Cockin crouched in the open, map boards in front of them and binoculars levelled, the lenses winking in the sun as they anxiously scanned the mighty battlement looming ahead of them. They did not realize that they were being regarded in their turn.
On the Assoro scarp the crew of an Eighty-eight laid their gun over open sights. Seconds later a cloud of yellow dust and black smoke obscured the observation post in the valley below... and under its pall Sutcliffe lay dead and Cockin dying.
The loss of those who had been killed in the tumult and confusion of earlier actions had not yet been deeply perceived by us, but this new stroke of death was something else. It shredded the pale remnants of the illusion that real war was not much more than an exciting extension of battle games, and it fired us with rage against the enemy. This killing, before battle had been joined, seemed singularly vicious, almost obscene. When I heard news of it, I began to understand something of Alex Campbell’s hatred of the Germans.
With Sutcliffe’s death, command of the Regiment passed to Major Lord John Tweedsmuir. Barely thirty years of age, soft-spoken, kindly, with a slight tendency to stutter, he was a tall, fair-haired English romantic out of another age... his famous father’s perhaps. “Tweedie,” as we called him behind his back, had as a youth sought high adventure as a Hudson’s Bay Company trader in the Arctic, then as a rancher on the African veldt, and finally as a soldier in a Canadian infantry battalion. But until this hour real adventure in the grand tradition had eluded him.
Going forward on his own reconnaissance that afternoon in company with the new second-in-command, Major “Ack Ack” Kennedy, Tweedsmuir looked up at the towering colossus of Assoro with the visionary eye of a Lawrence of Arabia, and saw that the only way to accomplish the impossible was to attempt the impossible. He thereupon decided that the battalion would make a right flank march by night across the intervening trackless gullies to the foot of the great cliff, scale that precipitous wall and, just at dawn, take the summit by surprise.
When Brigadier Graham, a Hasty Pee himself and Lieutenant Colonel Sutcliffe’s predecessor as the Regiment’s commanding officer, heard the plan, his immediate reaction was to veto it. Years later he told me:
“It seemed like arrant madness. The likelihood that Tweedsmuir would lose the
whole battalion seemed almost a dead certainty. I had a horrible vision of Balaklava and the Charge of the Light Brigade, and I was about to tell him: nothing doing! But then I thought, my God, he just might pull it off. So I let him go... but I sweat blood for the next twelve hours.”
My own first knowledge of what was afoot came at our company O-group. Having given us the general plan, Alex trenchantly filled in the details.
“There’s to be a special assault company of twenty picked men and one officer from each of the rifle companies, and I’m to command the lot. We’ll carry nothing but weapons and ammunition. We’ll lead the battalion cross-country, scale the cliff and take the castle. Then we’ll hold it till the rest of the unit gets there. Ryan, you’re senior subaltern so you’ll stay back and take command of Able. Park, you’ll help him out. Mowat, you’ll come with me.”
I never knew why Alex picked me. He must have been aware since early in my tenure with Seven Platoon that I was not the stuff of which heroes are made. Perhaps he wanted to give me an opportunity which, if I could manage to live up to it, would confer on me a tiny touch of what the French call la gloire and so turn me into a real fighting soldier. On the other hand, since we chosen officers were each to pick our own twenty men, he may have felt he had to take me in order to ensure that the best of Seven Platoon’s unmannered but hard-fighting toughs joined the assault company.
In any event, the mere fact that I had been selected filled me with such overweening pride that, according to a disgruntled Park, I was as swollen with it “as a frog full of fart.” But at the same time I was quivering with internal tremors, not so much at the prospects of what the enemy might do but at the thought of having to measure up to what would be required of me. Fortunately, there was not much time to worry. A scant two hours remained before we were due to move off from the start line.
There was barely time enough to select my men and see that they were briefed and armed for the task ahead. I included all the men of Mitchuk’s section, for, with the exception of A.K. Long, they were the toughest of the tough. I hesitated about Long, but because I felt an inner kinship with him, he too joined our band.
By dusk we had sorted ourselves out, stripped for action, and eaten an enormous meal. As warriors we did not look particularly prepossessing. The large packs and kitbags which contained our spare clothing, boots, blankets and personal possessions had not, through some staff blunder, been offloaded on the invasion beaches. Consequently, after ten days with virtually no chance to repair or clean our clothing or ourselves, we were a dirty and ragged lot. Torn shorts and trousers did not matter much, but our socks were worn to shreds and were so matted and sweat-hardened that some men had discarded them. Worse still, our boots, subjected first to a soaking in salt water and then to many miles of marching on stony roads and rocky slopes, were cracked and gaping; a serious matter for a company of foot-sloggers engaged on a mission such as ours.
Tweedsmuir did what he could. Bren carriers were provided to transport us as far forward as possible. This was not very far. Having crossed the Dittaino on a rough diversion bulldozed by the engineers under enemy shellfire, the carriers were able to climb only a few hundred feet before being halted by a chaos of steep-sided gullies, knife-edged ridges and boulder-strewn torrentes—seasonal riverbeds, now dry as dust.
It was nearly 2100 hours and we were running late. Hurriedly we clambered off our iron steeds and formed up in single file. There was not a breath of wind and the air was filled with a pungent odour that nagged at my memory until I realized it was the tang of sage—a scent I had last smelled in the summer of 1938 on the arid plains of southwestern Saskatchewan where I had gone to study prairie dogs, sage hens, rattlesnakes and burrowing owls. That seemed an interminable distance in the past. Now I was part of a sinuous human centipede crawling on hundreds of awkward feet into the gathering darkness of another desert, in another world.
We did our best to be silent, for we were tensely fearful of discovery. It seemed inconceivable that the Germans would not at least have listening posts on this exposed flank, no matter how secure they felt.
There were some terrifying moments. The first came when our scouts stumbled on a man-made stone parapet that turned out to be a masked machine-gun post. It was unoccupied, but so recently had it been abandoned that crusts of dark bread left lying on the ground were still moist.
Hours later I was in the lead when I heard the rattle of stones on the far slope of a black gully into which we were blindly descending. I sank back into the shadows, tensed for the exploding moment. I heard rifles and Bren guns being softly cocked and held my own carbine before me at hip level, finger sweating on the trigger. There was indistinct movement and then a herd of goats slowly emerged into the dim starlight and, behind them, a ragged Sicilian youth. He did not see us at first but the goats did and snorted as he drove them forward. Then he was face to face with me, gaping incredulously as he took in the motionless shapes of armed men on every side. He said not a word but passed slowly on as in a dream.
As the night began to wane we were driven onward by increasing urgency, knowing we had to reach that massive cliff and scale it before the dawn revealed us to watchers who had the view of eagles. Fatigue was taking its toll but there could be no slowing down. The whispered order came forward, man to man, telling us to let the second assault platoon move into the lead so the pace could be maintained.
My twenty shadows and I slumped amongst the rocks while twenty others stumbled past. Many of them were limping. My own right foot was an agony because of a cracked sole through which gravel and twigs had worked their way. But I saw one man with no boots at all, stubbornly struggling through the mountains of Sicily on his bare, white feet.
As we fell in at the rear of the assault company, I yearned for one of those magical Benzedrine tablets which had sustained me on the long march from the beaches. I did not think I could hold out much longer.
Yet on we went—and on—until, at about 0400, under the pallid light of the late-rising crescent moon, we scaled the final ridge... and were appalled to find that the base of the mountain wall looming sheer above was still separated from us by a gully a hundred or so feet deep and as steep-sided as any ancient moat.
There was no way around it. Neither was there time to beat a retreat before dawn would catch us in the open. Somehow we lowered our aching bodies into that great ditch, struggled through the rubble of boulders that filled the bottom and finally stood, gasping, at the foot of the precipice of Assoro whose crest was still hidden in the fading night.
During the climb that followed, each of us performed his own private miracle. From ledge to ledge we oozed upward like some vast mould. Those who faltered clung with straining muscles until someone heaved from behind or hauled them from above. Weapons were passed up hand to hand; and no man dropped so much as a clip of ammunition... which was as well, for any sound by one would have been fatal to us all.
Alex had ordered my platoon and one other to lead the climb. My crowd was on the left and we were luckier than our companion platoon for we eventually reached some narrow terraces which may have been constructed in some distant age to grow food for beleaguered dwellers in the castle, but which had been abandoned to thorns and weeds for centuries past. These made progress a little easier, but by the time we had scrambled up over several of them I had reached the end of my tether. Someone heaved himself past me, turned and gave the thumbs-up signal. It was A.K. Long. He leapt up to the next ledge, then caught my hand and pulled me after him.
To the eastward a ripple of light was spreading across the sky. Dawn was bursting on us with subtropic swiftness. Long jumped to catch the lip of what seemed to be the next terrace and disappeared above me. Then with horrifying abruptness the silence was destroyed by the barking of a Tommy gun.
The voice of God Himself announcing the world’s end could not have terrified me more. I was certain that the harsh staccato, reverberating back and forth from cliff to cliff, would assail the ears
of every German within a hundred miles. With a convulsive effort I clawed at the rim of what proved to be the last ledge, and hauled myself over the top.
The crumbling wall of the ancient castle loomed close at hand. Directly in front of me and only a few feet distant, A.K. Long was down on one knee with his Tommy levelled at three German privates standing as rigid as store dummies beside a tripod-mounted telescope. Sprawled at their feet lay an artillery sergeant... the first man to die that day upon the crest of Mount Assoro.
A.K. Long glanced sideways at me and his expression was one of vast astonishment. When he spoke he sounded almost embarrassed, as if he felt he owed me or perhaps the surviving Germans some kind of an apology.
“The crazy bastard... went for his damn gun...”
His voice trailed off and in the ensuing silence we seemed fixed in a tableau of absolute immobility, puppets deprived of the will of a manipulator, unable to move a muscle of our own.
Then the moment shattered. All along the cliff edge steel-helmeted heads began to appear and men hauled themselves up onto the few acres of relatively flat ground which crowned the summit. George Baldwin, leader of another of the assault platoons, saw me and yelled that he would search the castle ruins. I waved agreement, and as soon as the rest of my platoon had crowded up behind me, I led them at a run across the plateau and a few yards down the opposite slope to the shelter of some low, stone walls. Sure that the firing must have alerted the Germans, I expected them to begin shelling us at any moment. But secure in their belief that Assoro was impregnable, they had posted no troops there other than the artillery observation team which Long had dealt with; and if any Germans elsewhere heard the one brief burst from A.K.’s gun, they misread its message.
It was full daylight now. Close below us were the huddled roofs of Assoro village, with skeins of blue smoke rising from the chimney pots. A quarter of a mile farther down the slope a narrow-gutted road ran south to the main German defence positions on the lip of the massif overlooking the valley of the Dittaino.