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    Ortona Street Fight
    Ortona Street Fight
    Ortona Street Fight
    Ebook106 pages1 hour

    Ortona Street Fight

    By Mark Zuehlke

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    December 20, 1943. Two Canadian infantry battalions and a tank regiment stand poised on the outskirts of a small Italian port town. They expect to take Ortona quickly. But the German 1st Parachute Division has other ideas. For reasons unknown, Hitler has ordered Ortona held to the last man. Houses, churches and other buildings are dynamited, clogging the streets with rubble. Germans with machine guns lie in ambush. Snipers slip from one rooftop to another. The Canadians seem to have walked into a death trap. This is a battle fought at close range, often hand to hand. Casualties on both sides are heavy. In the end, raw courage and ingenuity save the Canadians.

    Ortona Street Fight is a riveting telling of what is considered one of the most epic battles that Canadian soldiers have ever fought.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOrca Book Publishers
    Release dateApr 1, 2011
    ISBN9781459800304
    Ortona Street Fight
    Author

    Mark Zuehlke

    Mark Zuehlke is the author of six critically acclaimed works on the Canadian Army in World War II. He has a reputation for bringing to life the story of young Canadians at war. Among his notable books are Holding Juno: Canada’s Heroic Defence of the D-Day Beaches, June 712, 1944; Juno Beach, Canada’s D-Day Victory, June 6, 1944; and his trilogy of the Italian theatre: The Gothic Line: Canada’s Month of Hell in World War II Italy; Ortona: Canada’s Epic World War II Battle; and The Liri Valley: Canadas World War II Breakthrough to Rome. His most recent book, For Honour’s Sake: The War of 1812 and the Brokering of an Uneasy Peace, received many positive reviews, including one from the Globe & Mail.

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    3.5/5

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    • 4/5
      Mark Zuehlke, with his clipped, factual, journalistic style presents the facts of one of Canada's little known, bloody struggles and triumphs of WWII, the Italian campaign.Without fanfare or blatant patriotism, he illustrates the tenacity, one might even say insanity, of Canadian troops who, once again, seized and held a strategic objective. If I were teaching WWII history in Canada, this is certainly a book I would incorporate into the curriculum. Well researched, well written, well done.

    Book preview

    Ortona Street Fight - Mark Zuehlke

    ORTONA

    STREET FIGHT

    MARK ZUEHLKE

    Copyright © 2011 Mark Zuehlke

    All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

    Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

    Zuehlke, Mark

    Ortona street fight [electronic resource] / written by Mark Zuehlke.

    (Rapid reads)

    Electronic document issued in PDF format.

    Also issued in print format.

    ISBN 978-1-55469-399-3

    1. Ortona, Battle of, Ortona, Italy, 1943. 2. Canada. Canadian Army. Canadian Infantry Division, 1st--History. I. Title. II. Series: Rapid reads

    D763.182077 2011          940.54’215713           C2011-900329-5

    First published in the United States, 2011

    Library of Congress Control Number: 2010943298

    Summary: A dramatic account of Canada’s first major triumph of World War II—the December 1943 battle for Ortona, Italy.

    Orca Book Publishers is dedicated to preserving the environment and has printed this book on paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

    Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

    Design by Teresa Bubela Cover photograph courtesy of Library and Archives Canada Frederick Whitcombe, NAC, PA-163411

    www.orcabook.com

    Printed and bound in Canada.

    14   13   12   11   •   4   3   2   1

    For Major John Dougan, brave soldier, post-war Rhodes scholar and fine Canadian.

    CONTENTS

    CHAPTER ONE

    CHAPTER TWO

    CHAPTER THREE

    CHAPTER FOUR

    CHAPTER FIVE

    CHAPTER SIX

    CHAPTER SEVEN

    CHAPTER EIGHT

    CHAPTER NINE

    CHAPTER TEN

    CHAPTER ELEVEN

    CHAPTER TWELVE

    CHAPTER THIRTEEN

    CHAPTER FOURTEEN

    CHAPTER FIFTEEN

    CHAPTER SIXTEEN

    CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

    CHAPTER ONE

    DECEMBER 21, 1943

    They had numbered about sixty at dawn. Now just seventeen still stood. The others had been killed or wounded. The survivors faced the hundred yards of open ground where the company had been butchered. Twice they had tried to cross it. Twice they had stumbled through the mud, firing from their hips, screaming defiance. Twice they were forced back by the same drenching German fire that had cut down their comrades.

    Beyond that open stretch of land stood the outskirts of Ortona. Between lay abandoned vegetable gardens and olive trees so torn by shellfire that they looked like twisted fenceposts. A tight row of two- to three-story buildings faced the open ground. Explosions had shattered all the windows. Enemy paratroopers were using the openings to snipe at the Canadians. More snipers were on the rooftops or dug in at the base of the buildings. Still more paratroopers hunched behind machine guns, MG42s, whose rate of fire was so fast each long burst sounded like someone ripping a sheet in half.

    The Canadian dead lay scattered in the open, broken toy soldiers in wool khaki uniforms. Most lay facedown, arms stretched ahead of them. They had died running toward the buildings. The survivors hated leaving the dead where they had fallen. But it had taken all of them just to bring out the wounded.

    In a few minutes Lieutenant John Dougan expected to join the dead, for he was about to lead the men in another charge. Dougan thought it madness. His company commander agreed. Major Jim Stone had said as much into the radio handset. But the battalion commander on the other end had told him to get on with it.

    Stone, Dougan and the company sergeant major had then huddled in a ditch running with muddy rainwater. Stone decided only a third of them would attack. The others would fire everything they had from the ditch. They would try to make the Germans duck from their guns. Stone was a fair man and brave as a lion. He broke a match into three lengths, dropped them into a helmet, and each man drew a piece. Dougan never won gambles. His was the short one.

    Can you lay down some smoke to cover us? he asked. Private Elwyn Springsteel said he could see the German machine-gun positions. He and his loader would blind the enemy with smoke bombs from the company’s two-inch mortar.

    That would help. But Dougan still thought he and the six men going with him would die. He desperately searched for a way to reach the buildings that did not require crossing that open ground. Then he saw the ditch. Narrow. Barely three feet deep. From the deep ditch where they huddled, it ran across the open ground to a large apartment building. If they hunched over and ran up it single file, maybe the Germans wouldn’t see them. Unless they had a machine gun aimed up the ditch.

    Dougan had been fighting Germans for six months. He and the rest of 1st Canadian Infantry Division had landed in Sicily on July 10, 1943. They had fought their way across the island as part of the British Eighth Army. Then they had crossed onto the toe of mainland Italy and marched up its craggy boot. Now it was December. They found themselves in this muddy hellhole on the Adriatic coast. Ortona stood roughly parallel to and east of Rome. Italy’s capital was the prize they marched toward.

    Dougan had noticed earlier that the Germans expected the Allied troops to be logical. And logic said a rifle company should advance across open ground in sections spread out over a wide front. This was supposed to create too many targets for the defender to deal with. Some were bound to survive to overrun the defensive positions. Stone’s ‘D’ Company had tried to do this twice already. Going up a ditch in a bunched-up line was illogical. So Dougan was going to gamble that the Germans would not be prepared for it. Or so he hoped. "Hell, we’re all going to die anyway. Might as well give

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