Continuation of the War Journal of Corporal Harry Winther

Winter in Ravine

After the battle of Ortona which the historians called the bloodiest battle of the war it really settled down to rain, we pushed forward as far as we could but soon everything was a sea of mud. The tanks were bogged down and unable to move for six weeks, when they were finally winched out with long cables. The crew dug slit trenches and spent a miserable winter protecting their tanks from enemy patrols.

My company was fortunate to move into a deep ravine where the enemy had planned to spend the winter. They had dug three large caves into the bank where most of the fellows moved in. I moved into a small one person cave, by this time I had four blankets and an Italian ground sheet which was large enough to fold over and close with dome fasteners making a perfect sleeping bag. I dug a shelf for my candle and made a stove from an ammo box, hung my ground sheet over the entrance and here I lived for six weeks in the coziest home I had through the entire war.

The rain kept coming down and the mud got deeper but we managed to keep a road open to Ortona by tearing buildings down and putting the bricks in the road, that way a truck could come up at night with ammo and rations. Most of the ammunition and rations during this period was brought to the front by mule trains. By this time Big Ditto from Loon Lake; who would never admit to any occupation other than bootlegger, had set up a still, he claimed his brew was powerful enough to make you blind for a while. I sampled it once but that was enough. We were safe from machine gun fire but every once in a while the enemy would drop some mortar bombs on us, one afternoon they had the luck to land a bomb on our ammunition dump, setting our bomb cases on fire, the ammo started exploding so it was quite noisy for a while.

On the morning of April first a large shell struck the roof of one of our caves causing it to cave in. I was down at the creek getting some water when Jimmy Perrins came running down yelling to bring our shovels, Chief Robert Bear was buried up to his neck, I thought he was having an April fool’s joke but we grabbed our shovels and found the cave entrance completely blocked, however a crack had opened up in the roof where we got in and dug Bear out. Chief Bear picked up his blankets and disappeared for three days to commune with his spirits. We fire a few mortar bombs every day, since October my platoon of thirty men has fired 18,000 twenty pound bombs with four mortars.

In the same period we have had 44 casualties. McDonald has been wounded three times making him eligible to go back to Canada which he did. Around the middle of March I got my first and only leave, a week at a rest camp near Barri which is about seventy miles south, the trip took thirty hours by train, the camp had a nice beach and a canteen and everything was pretty quiet. I met De Montarell and we went into town together. We walked around for a while then rented a horse drawn carriage and saw the sights in style. I had a ticket to the opera to see Madam Butterfly but since Monty had no ticket we spent the evening in a Bistro drinking cherry brandy with music singing and lots of laughs.

As soon as I got back to the front Cpl. Westman and I were sent on a mine clearing course. We actually had a pretty good time with lots of spare time. Normally the engineers cleared the mines. We preferred to tie a long cable on a mine and pull it out with a mule, if it exploded fine, if not it was safe. In the evening George and I went down to a mill and bought a little bag of ground wheat, we brought it in to a family we had met and Mamma cooked up a huge pot of spaghetti. We ended up with about twenty people for supper with lots of food, wine and a good time for everybody, of course we were the guests of honour.

A British regiment, the Northumberland Fusiliers are taking over our front and rumour has it that we’re moving across the mountain to the west side of the country. Our platoon strength was down to nineteen men from thirty but now we’re finally getting some reinforcements, some of them are quite nervous, Sgt. Reynolds tells them to hang around with Gus (that’s me) for a while as I have a reputation for being lucky. Most of our company has pulled back so we are doing three hour shifts on night sentry. It’s a bit nerve wracking to be out front in a slit trench when its pitch dark and raining, one of our machine guns on my right flank fires a few bursts every few minutes, a mortar on my left fires a bomb once in a while and the enemy fires back, you begin to wonder if anyone cares what happens to us. I remember thinking that if a person could foresee himself getting into this situation he would have to be out of his mind if he didn’t do everything in his power to prevent himself ending up out here. I

had a bit of chocolate from Edith’s last parcel which reminded me that there might still be better days ahead sometime in the future. Sometimes when we have very little sleep for days on end I find that I have to concentrate very hard to determine whether life here in the trenches is my normal existence or if there really was some vaguely remembered better life in the past.

Matrice

There are rumours that we are going into reserve, it rained all day and three of our trucks and my carrier are stuck, we shoveled and pushed and by evening finally reached the little town of Matrice where we stayed in houses for about ten days. The only source of water is a spring in the town square, about daylight the housewives would arrive with water jugs which they carried on their heads, then the squabbling would begin and sometimes a little hair pulling. On the hillside an old woman was plowing with a cow and a donkey, they didn’t pull very well together but she managed to plow a little every day.

Rations were very poor here but a local farmer sold us a little steer for 10 L. Black Jack McKay butchered it so we had fresh meat for a while. On Halloween night seven of us bought a three gallon demi-john of vino and had a little celebration, our mail had caught up with us and best of all the parcels from home so we could have a little snack on the side. Perrins, Castiday and I had made friends with a family that lived up on the hillside. We had made plans to all go to mass together on Sunday morning and then have chicken dinner at their house, however Sunday morning at daylight we were all loading our equipment, the whole village came down to see us off, our friends were crying and lamenting that we were going back to war and would all be killed.

By evening we were seventy miles away across the mountains and are now dug in on the outskirts of Casino. Every building has been completely demolished by bombers, hundreds of people are buried in the rubble and the stench of death is carried on the wind. The monastery on top of the hill is being bombed by aircraft and bombarded by cannon and mortars. We’re moving forward very rapidly now, brought three thousand prisoners through our lines today. Jimmy Perrins and I are on a reconnaissance looking for a position to move our mortars and machine guns forward. We have just moved into the edge of a little clearing where five officers are having an O-Group, a second later a shell lands right between them.

When the smoke clears all we can see are limbs up in the trees and body parts all over the ground. We come out into an open plain where a massive tank battle to break the Hitler line took place the day before. We stand in one place and count one hundred disabled tanks from both sides, many are burned with the crew still inside. We continue forward and suddenly realize we’re under observation by the enemy. The first 88 mm. shell goes over our heads and explodes a couple of hundred yards up the hill, by this time we’re running as hard as we can, however the second shell lands just below us, the shrapnel goes over our heads but the concussion just drives us into the ground.

I noticed later that it had shattered the crystal on my watch. As we advanced we encountered the massive fortifications of the Hitler line. I happened to be first into a huge concrete and steel bunker which had been evacuated in a great hurry, the first thing I saw was a fresh loaf of sourdough rye bread like mother used to bake which I quickly shoved under my tunic for evening snacks. I also picked up a portable typewriter which became a great favorite with the boys to write letters home. They even had live chickens which some of the boys quickly appropriated.

After breaking through the Hitler line we went into reserve. I was quite surprised one day when Sgt. Major Tribe announced that Sgt. Reynolds and myself had been recommended for O.C.J.U which meant we would be sent back to England for a six month officer training course. However, a few days later it turned out we didn’t qualify as the minimum level of education was grade eleven. A few weeks later we found out that Army Headquarters in England was recruiting corporals and sergeants with battle experience to train and promote to the rank of lieutenant and then as Commissioned Officers they would be in the forefront of the coming invasion of Europe next spring. Instead I was offered a promotion to sergeant with a transfer to another company, which I turned down as I didn’t want to leave the boys I’d been with through all the battles.

Continued final part 9 - In Hospital

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