The Liri Valley by Mark Zuehlke

Author:Mark Zuehlke [Zuehlke, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: HIS027100
Publisher: D & M Publishers
Published: 2003-03-24T16:00:00+00:00

While the Canadian gunners were helping the French repel the German armoured counterattack, 1 CIB Brigadier Dan Spry and a party of Royal Canadian Regiment officers crossed the river in an inflatable rubber boat. They sought to determine whether Major General Chris Vokes’s idea of launching a one-regiment amphibious attack across the river into Pontecorvo was feasible. The party consisted of Spry, RCR commander Lieutenant Colonel Bill Mathers, the commanders of Mathers’s infantry companies, and the regiment’s artillery officer.11

Nothing Spry saw convinced him the attack was possible. Both riverbanks were steep and approximately twelve feet high. To carry out the attack, the RCR would first have to cross the river in inflatable rubber boats far enough to the east of the Hitler Line that they would avoid being seen. They would then have to carry the boats to a crossing point opposite Pontecorvo. In full view of the enemy, the regiment would have to scramble down the far bank, paddle across the thirty-foot-wide river, climb the opposite steep bank, and crawl up the 300-foot terraced hill to fight their way into the town. Of course, the Germans would be raking the troops with machine-gun and mortar fire every inch of the way. Spry thought the plan crazy, but he consented to Mathers’ conducting a more thorough reconnaissance.12

Accompanied by some French officers, Mathers reconnoitred the river’s edge opposite Pontecorvo. He then returned to French Brigade headquarters and briefed his waiting commanders: Captain Dick Dillon, Major Sandy Mitchell, Major Rick Forgrave, and Captain D.W. Rose. Mathers enthusiastically described how the attack could be executed. The company commanders listened in stunned silence. The men then returned to the regiment, while Mathers set off on an even more thorough reconnaissance mission.13

The moment the four officers reached regimental headquarters, Mitchell took them to see Second-in-Command Major Strome Galloway. Before the war, Mitchell had been a sergeant who had worked his way up through the ranks. A tough, no-nonsense soldier, he knew his business and hated wasting lives unnecessarily. Mitchell spelled out Mathers’s scheme. Dillon told Galloway, “It’ll be a suicide.” Galloway agreed. “We’ll go see the brigade commander,” he said. At brigade headquarters, Mitchell no sooner started describing Mathers’s plan than Spry gestured him to stop. “That’s all nonsense,” he said. There was a new plan, approved by Vokes, and the river operation was dead.14

Vokes was still determined that 1 CIB would break through at Pontecorvo. During the day, the Princess Louise Dragoon Guards reconnaissance regiment had been patrolling aggressively in the pocket between the river and the east-west road approaching the town. They had swept up twenty-two prisoners and killed about an equal number in exchange for two of their own killed and nine wounded. Vokes took a look at the prisoners and decided “they were a very scruffy lot . . . pleased to be out of the war and volunteered the information their fellows . . . were ready and eager to surrender the moment opportunity afforded.” This, Vokes later wrote, “convinced

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