- 3 days ago
Ortona turned into a trap, and two Canadian battalions had to invent a way through it. As German paratroopers turned the Adriatic town into a fortified maze of rubble, mines, and booby traps, the Loyal Edmonton Regiment and the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada fought street by street, then house by house, until the battle was measured in walls instead of roads.
This military history story follows Captain Bill Longhurst, Major Jim Stone, and the improvised tactics that changed the fight: smoke charges, mouse holes blasted through walls, anti-tank guns fired into buildings, and tanks used in ways nobody had planned for. It also captures the grim human side of the Ortona battle, from Christmas dinner in a ruined church to the collapse of whole houses on soldiers inside.
A powerful World War 2 documentary-style narration for listeners interested in Canadian war stories, WW2 history, battle of Ortona, Canadian Army history, and German paratroopers in Italy. It is ideal for anyone searching for military history storytelling, Second World War combat analysis, and immersive historical narration about courage, improvisation, and urban warfare.
This military history story follows Captain Bill Longhurst, Major Jim Stone, and the improvised tactics that changed the fight: smoke charges, mouse holes blasted through walls, anti-tank guns fired into buildings, and tanks used in ways nobody had planned for. It also captures the grim human side of the Ortona battle, from Christmas dinner in a ruined church to the collapse of whole houses on soldiers inside.
A powerful World War 2 documentary-style narration for listeners interested in Canadian war stories, WW2 history, battle of Ortona, Canadian Army history, and German paratroopers in Italy. It is ideal for anyone searching for military history storytelling, Second World War combat analysis, and immersive historical narration about courage, improvisation, and urban warfare.
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LearningTranscript
00:00December 21st, 1943, Ortona, a small port town on the Adriatic coast of Italy, and a street called the Corso
00:09Vittorio Emanuele.
00:11Major Jim Stone of the Loyal Edmonton Regiment is moving up that street with a handful of his men,
00:17hugging the right-hand wall, because the left-hand side is being swept by a machine gun in a window
00:23nobody can find.
00:24The town looks empty. That is the first lie Ortona tells you.
00:30Every doorway on that street has been looked at by a German officer and given a purpose.
00:34Some of them are doorways. Some of them are wired.
00:39Then, from the far end of the street, something heavier opens up.
00:43An anti-tank gun, sided low behind a steel shield, firing straight down the Corso at anything that moves on
00:49it.
00:50A gun like that does not wound men. It removes them.
00:54It has the whole street measured, and Stone and his men are standing inside the measurement.
01:00There is no cover to reach. There is no way around it.
01:03The buildings on both sides are held, so Stone does the thing that was later written up in a citation,
01:09in language so flat you could read past it.
01:12He pulls a smoke grenade, throws it out into the road, and goes into his own smoke at a run.
01:18One man, alone, toward a gun crew who know exactly where that smoke came from.
01:23He reaches the shield. He drops a grenade over the top of it into the crew.
01:28Then the street is quiet, and his men come forward.
01:32He was 35 years old.
01:34Born in Gloucestershire, in England, he came out to Canada as a young man and worked in the bush,
01:40underground in the mines, and on cattle ranches in the Alberta North.
01:43In 1939, he walked into a recruiting office in Edmonton and enlisted as a private soldier.
01:50Hold on to him. He is going to be in front of you for the next eight days, and a
01:55great deal longer than that.
01:57A Canadian correspondent named Matthew Halton stood close enough to this fight to broadcast it,
02:03and what he sent home to the CBC that week is still the truest sentence anybody has written about Ortona.
02:10It wasn't hell, he said. It was the courtyard of hell.
02:15If what the Canadians did in this town matters to you,
02:18a subscribe helps these stories reach the people who still want to hear them.
02:23Now, the men at the other end of that street.
02:26They were Fallschirmjäger, German paratroopers of the 1st Parachute Division,
02:31and specifically, the 2nd Battalion of the 3rd Parachute Regiment.
02:36You need to understand who that is before we go any further,
02:40because the entire question of this video rests on it.
02:43Five months earlier in Sicily,
02:46British paratroopers had dropped in darkness and seized the Prima Sole Bridge in a brilliant stroke.
02:52These men came down onto the same ground,
02:55fought the British paras for it, and took it back.
02:58British infantry had to come up and capture that bridge all over again.
03:02At Centuripe, a hill town in the Sicilian interior,
03:06it took a full British division to prize them off it.
03:09They were not conscripts, they were volunteers,
03:12hand-picked, rested, loaded with automatic weapons,
03:16and they had a habit of holding ground that other people had written off as theirs.
03:20In December of 1943, they were, by common consent on both sides,
03:26the finest defensive troops in the Mediterranean.
03:29Facing them, two Canadian infantry battalions,
03:32the Loyal Edmonton Regiment and the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada,
03:37from the 2nd Brigade of the 1st Canadian Infantry Division.
03:41Farm boys, clerks, miners, fishermen, high school kids, a few old soldiers.
03:48Volunteers as well.
03:49Every man in that division had put his hand up,
03:52from a country of 11 million people,
03:54carrying British weapons, inside a British army,
03:57in a campaign Canadians had been promised was the soft underbelly of Europe.
04:01Here is what makes this worth your time.
04:04Nobody intended to fight a battle in Ortona.
04:07Montgomery's staff expected the Germans to pull out of the town,
04:10the way they had pulled out of a dozen towns along that coast.
04:13The Canadians were supposed to walk through it.
04:16Instead, when Stone's men crossed into the southern outskirts on the 21st of December,
04:21they found that the paratroopers had spent days
04:24turning the medieval center of Ortona into something no Canadian had ever seen.
04:28They had brought the fronts of houses down into the side streets,
04:32on purpose, filling them with loose stone 10 and 15 feet high,
04:36and sighted machine guns in the buildings above to cover every pile.
04:41They had mined doorways and staircases.
04:43They had left walls standing with nothing behind them,
04:46so that a man diving for shelter dove into the open,
04:50onto a spot a gunner had already chosen.
04:52And they had left one route open,
04:55the wide main street,
04:56straight up the spine of the old town,
04:58into the central squares.
04:59The whole town was a funnel, built by professionals,
05:03designed to take an attacking force and feed it into two or three open piazzas
05:08where the paratroopers had massed their fire.
05:10The Canadians walked into it.
05:13I am not going to pretend this went smoothly, because it did not.
05:17In the first 48 hours, Canadian infantry died at street corners and in doorways,
05:22in ones and twos,
05:23then in fives and sixes,
05:25and the advance began to be measured in single buildings.
05:29Three of the Edmonton rifle companies would come down to about 60 men each,
05:34companies that should have had well over a hundred.
05:37By any military arithmetic that existed that December,
05:40this should have been the end of it.
05:42Elite troops dug into a stone town,
05:45ground prepared,
05:46against tired infantry with no doctrine for city fighting,
05:49in the rain,
05:50at Christmas.
05:52Eight days later,
05:53the paratroopers were gone,
05:55and the town was Canadian.
05:57That is the question in front of us.
05:59Not whether the Canadians were brave.
06:01You already know they were brave,
06:03and bravery on its own gets you killed in a place like Ortona.
06:06The question is,
06:08what two Canadian battalions did in eight days
06:11that an elite German division,
06:12with every advantage of ground,
06:15could not find an answer to?
06:17The first piece of that answer
06:18belongs to a captain in the Edmontons
06:21named Bill Longhurst.
06:23On the second day,
06:24somewhere in the wreckage south of the main square,
06:26he stopped looking at the street.
06:28He started looking at the wall.
06:31Hold that image.
06:32A Canadian captain standing in a wrecked room,
06:36looking at a wall.
06:37Because before we can go through it,
06:39you need to see what going up the street cost.
06:43December 21st.
06:44While Jim Stone's men worked their way up the main road,
06:48the Seaforth Highlanders came in on the eastern side of the town
06:52and cleared a church called Santa Maria di Constantinopoli.
06:56Remember that church.
06:57In four days,
06:59it is going to be the strangest room in this story.
07:03Behind the infantry
07:04came the Shermans of the Three Rivers Regiment,
07:07the French-Canadian tank crews
07:09who had been with this division since Sicily.
07:11And almost immediately,
07:13the tanks found the first surprise.
07:16They could not get anywhere.
07:19Every side street in the old town was blocked,
07:22chest high or higher,
07:24with the smashed fronts of houses.
07:26That rubble had not fallen there.
07:28It had been put there.
07:30This is the part that changes how you see the whole battle.
07:34So stay with me.
07:35The German paratroopers had been given days to prepare Ortona,
07:39and they had used a specialist asset to do it.
07:42Their own parachute engineers.
07:44One of them was a combat engineer named Karl Bayerlein
07:48of the 3rd Company of the 1st Parachute Engineer Battalion,
07:52and he kept a diary through those weeks
07:54that eventually ended up in the Canadian War Museum.
07:57That is how we know the German side of this from the inside.
08:00His trade and his battalion's trade was demolition,
08:04not defending Ortona,
08:05building it into a weapon.
08:08Here is how the weapon worked.
08:10Bring down the house fronts to seal every narrow street
08:13so that armor cannot enter
08:14and infantry has to climb over a pile of loose stone in the open.
08:18Sight machine guns on the upper floors of the buildings
08:21looking down on each pile.
08:23So a man climbing it is silhouetted against the sky
08:26for 3 or 4 seconds.
08:28Mind the doorways.
08:30Wire the windows.
08:30Booby-trapped the furniture inside the rooms
08:33so that a soldier who kicks in a door
08:36and takes cover behind a table
08:38is killed by the table.
08:40Then leave one route open.
08:431.
08:44The wide main street running straight up the spine of the town
08:48into the central squares.
08:50Think about what that means.
08:52The Germans had not fortified the town.
08:56They had written a script for it.
08:58And every Canadian who entered
09:00was being invited to play the part the script gave him.
09:03A German gunner on a second floor
09:06above one of those squares
09:07did not need to search for targets.
09:10He did not need to be a marksman.
09:13His gun was already laid on a corner
09:15on a doorway
09:16on the top of a rubble pile.
09:19And his entire job
09:20was to wait for a Canadian
09:22to appear in a place already measured.
09:25That is not a firefight.
09:27That is a machine.
09:28And on the 22nd of December
09:30the Canadians walked into the machine.
09:33The Edmontons pushed up the main street with tanks
09:36and with 6-pounder anti-tank guns
09:38manhandled forward by their crews
09:40using armor-piercing shot
09:42to punch holes in the rubble
09:43and blow the barricades apart.
09:45They cleared the first square
09:47the Piazza della Vittoria.
09:49It cost them.
09:50Then Stone tried something
09:52that made perfect military sense
09:54and nearly finished his company.
09:56He drove straight up the highway
09:57with everything he had
09:58past the buildings on either side
10:00without stopping to clear them.
10:02Speed instead of grinding.
10:04Get to the center of the town
10:06get behind the defense
10:07unhinge it.
10:08It is exactly what an aggressive commander
10:10is supposed to do
10:11and it is exactly what the Germans
10:13had built the script around.
10:15He got as far as the Piazza Municipale
10:17the town hall square
10:18and there the road ended
10:20in a wall of rubble
10:21sown with mines.
10:22He could not go forward
10:24and every building he had raced past
10:26was still full of paratroopers
10:28who now stood between his company
10:30and the rest of the Canadian army
10:32and who had been waiting
10:34for precisely this.
10:36His men were in a town
10:38where the enemy was in front of them
10:40behind them
10:41above them
10:42and under them
10:44because the sellers connected.
10:46That was the first hard lesson
10:49of Ortona
10:50and I want to put it plainly
10:52because everything that follows
10:54comes out of it.
10:55In a town held by these men
10:57you cannot bypass anything.
11:01You cannot rush.
11:03Every single building
11:04has to be taken
11:05and taking a building
11:07the normal way
11:08kick the front door
11:09come in off the street
11:11work up the stairs
11:12means walking into a mine
11:14on the doorstep
11:15or a machine gun
11:17on the landing.
11:18By the evening of the 22nd
11:20the Canadian advance
11:22was being measured in houses
11:24not streets
11:25houses.
11:27The Edmonton's commanding officer
11:29Lieutenant Colonel Jim Jefferson
11:31and the brigade commander
11:32Bert Hoffmeister
11:33were looking at a casualty list
11:35from two days of fighting
11:36in a town
11:37that the army's own plan
11:38had assumed would be empty.
11:41Nobody above them had a solution.
11:43There was no Canadian doctrine for this.
11:45There was no British doctrine
11:47handed down for this.
11:48Every man who knew anything useful
11:50about fighting inside a European city
11:52was either in the Soviet Union
11:54or dead.
11:55So the solution had to come
11:57from inside the town
11:58from somebody in the rubble
12:00and it had to come
12:01within a day or two
12:02or there would not be enough
12:03Canadian infantry
12:04left in Ortona
12:06to matter.
12:07Which brings us back
12:08to Captain Bill Longhurst
12:10of A Company
12:11and that wall.
12:12Longhurst had watched
12:13what the street did to his men.
12:15He had the same problem
12:17everybody had.
12:18The enemy was in the next house
12:19twenty feet away
12:21and the only recognized way
12:22to get there
12:23was to go outside
12:24into the fire
12:25cross the gap
12:26and come in at ground level
12:28through a door
12:29the Germans had prepared
12:30for exactly that.
12:32Twenty feet.
12:33There was a wall
12:34between him and the Germans
12:35and it was not twenty feet.
12:37It was less than a foot
12:39of stone and plaster.
12:41He called up
12:42two of the battalion pioneers
12:44and told them
12:45to build him something.
12:46They took plastic explosive
12:48and tied the charges together
12:50into a shape
12:50the Edmontons
12:51started calling
12:52a beehive.
12:54Then Longhurst did the thing
12:55that separates this
12:56from every other good idea
12:58that got a man killed
12:59at Ortona.
13:00He told them
13:01to carry it up
13:02to the top floor.
13:04Not the ground floor.
13:06The top.
13:08The pioneer set the beehive
13:10against the upstairs wall
13:11and Longhurst took his men
13:12down to the floor below
13:14and they crouched there
13:15in the dust
13:16and waited.
13:18Nobody in the Canadian army
13:19had done this deliberately
13:21at scale before
13:22and not one of them
13:24knew what was standing
13:25on the other side
13:26of that wall.
13:27The charge went off
13:28above their heads.
13:30Now,
13:30what a beehive charge
13:32does to an interior wall
13:34is not what you might picture.
13:36It does not neatly open a door.
13:39It punches a ragged gap
13:41through stone and plaster
13:42and fills both rooms
13:44with a solid gray fog
13:46of dust.
13:47And for a few seconds
13:49after it,
13:50everyone on both sides
13:51of that wall
13:52is blind and deaf.
13:55Longhurst's men
13:56had counted on those seconds.
13:58They went up the stairs
13:59into the dust,
14:01threw grenades
14:02through the gap
14:02before a man went through it,
14:04and then went through firing.
14:07And here is where you need
14:08to pay attention,
14:09because this is not just
14:11a clever way
14:12to avoid a street.
14:13This is the moment
14:15the whole battle turns over.
14:17Think about where they came in.
14:19The top floor.
14:21Every assumption
14:22the German defense
14:23of Ortona was built on
14:25assumed the Canadians
14:26would arrive from below.
14:28The mines were on the doorsteps.
14:31The booby traps
14:32were on the ground floor windows
14:34and the furniture
14:35in the front rooms.
14:36The machine guns
14:37were upstairs,
14:38looking down into the street,
14:40because that is where
14:41the enemy comes from.
14:43The staircase,
14:44the killing point
14:46of every house fight
14:47in history,
14:48belonged to the defender,
14:50who stands at the top of it
14:52and drops grenades
14:53on men climbing up.
14:55Longhurst had just inverted
14:57all of it.
14:58His men were now
14:59above the paratroopers,
15:01in the same building,
15:02with the staircase
15:04below them.
15:05It was the Germans
15:06who had to come up,
15:07into grenades.
15:09It was the Germans
15:10who,
15:11if they chose
15:11to leave instead,
15:13had to go out
15:14the front door
15:14into a street
15:15covered by
15:16Canadian Bren guns
15:18and,
15:18increasingly,
15:20by Sherman tanks
15:21parked and waiting
15:22for exactly that.
15:24The Edmontons
15:25called the whole
15:26a mouse hole,
15:27and the word
15:28went down
15:28the battalion
15:29in hours.
15:30By the following day,
15:32the seaforths
15:33were doing it too.
15:34Now hold on
15:35to something,
15:36because I am going
15:37to come back
15:38to it at the end,
15:39and it matters
15:39more than the trick itself.
15:41Bill Longhurst
15:43was a company commander
15:44in a colonial
15:45volunteer battalion,
15:46standing in a ruin,
15:48inventing a technique
15:49under fire,
15:50and nobody had
15:51to approve it.
15:52He did not send it
15:54up to brigade,
15:55he did not wait
15:56for a doctrine pamphlet,
15:57he built it,
15:59used it,
15:59and it spread
16:00by word of mouth
16:01between Canadian soldiers
16:03in a matter of hours.
16:05File that.
16:07It is the real answer
16:08to the question
16:09in the title,
16:10and we are not
16:11ready for it yet.
16:13Because if mouse holing
16:15had been the whole answer,
16:16this battle would have
16:17lasted two days
16:19instead of eight.
16:20Here is the limit of it,
16:22and the Canadians
16:23hit that limit
16:24immediately.
16:25A row of houses
16:27is only a row.
16:29Sooner or later it ends,
16:30at a corner,
16:31at a cross street,
16:33at one of the open piazzas
16:34the Germans had picked
16:35as their killing grounds.
16:37You cannot blow a mousehole
16:39through a public square.
16:40At every one of those gaps,
16:43the Canadians had to come out
16:44into daylight,
16:45in front of guns
16:46that had been sighted
16:47days earlier
16:48by men who knew
16:49every paving stone.
16:51And the technique
16:52ran on explosive.
16:54Enormous amounts of it.
16:56So the Canadian engineers
16:57started scavenging,
16:59going back over ground
17:01the Germans had held
17:02and collecting German mines
17:04and German demolition charges,
17:06and using enemy explosive
17:08to blow enemy walls.
17:10That is what improvisation
17:12actually looks like
17:13in a town fight,
17:14not inspiration.
17:16Men crawling through rubble
17:18to steal the enemy's dynamite
17:20because their own
17:21has run out.
17:21The grenade figure
17:23from those days
17:24tells you the same story
17:26from another angle.
17:28Canadian infantrymen
17:29in Ortona
17:30were being issued
17:31a dozen to 15 grenades
17:33a day,
17:34each,
17:35and using them.
17:36Picture that
17:37for one soldier.
17:39Fifteen times
17:40in one day
17:41throwing a bomb
17:43into a room
17:43you cannot see into
17:45and then going
17:46into the room.
17:47Anti-tank guns
17:49came into it as well,
17:50which is one of the
17:51strangest sights
17:52of the battle.
17:53Six-pounder guns
17:55are built
17:55to kill tanks.
17:56In Ortona,
17:58the crews manhandled them
17:59into the streets
18:00by hand,
18:01laid them on a window
18:02or a doorway
18:0360 yards away,
18:04and fired high explosive
18:06through the opening
18:07to bring the inside
18:09of the room down
18:10on whoever was in it.
18:11The Three Rivers tank crews
18:13worked out their own version.
18:15An armor-piercing round
18:17to punch a hole
18:18through the wall,
18:19then a high explosive round
18:21through the hole
18:21they had just made.
18:23This is the point
18:24in the battle
18:24where the Canadians
18:25stopped fighting
18:26the town
18:27the Germans had designed
18:28and started dismantling it.
18:31And now,
18:32I want you to look
18:33across the wall,
18:34because the paratroopers
18:35were not spectators,
18:37and they were not stupid.
18:39They were professionals,
18:41and professionals respond.
18:43They worked out
18:44very quickly
18:45what was happening.
18:46The Canadians
18:47were no longer
18:48crossing the streets.
18:50The Canadians
18:50were living inside
18:51the buildings,
18:53coming through the walls,
18:54coming down from above.
18:56Whole sections
18:57of Canadian infantry
18:58were now moving
18:59and sleeping
19:00and fighting inside.
19:02German prepared houses.
19:04So the paratroopers
19:05drew the obvious conclusion.
19:07If the Canadians
19:08insist on being
19:08inside the houses,
19:10then the houses
19:11are the weapon.
19:12Their parachute engineers,
19:13Carl Beierlein's people,
19:14stopped thinking about
19:16blocking streets
19:16and started thinking about
19:18a different kind of demolition.
19:20Pick a building
19:20on the Canadian line of advance.
19:22Pack the structure
19:23with explosive,
19:24leave it.
19:25Leave it open
19:26and inviting
19:27and empty-looking,
19:28with maybe a way in
19:30that a tired Canadian officer
19:31would consider
19:32the safe way in.
19:33Then withdraw,
19:35watch it from across the square,
19:36and wait until it is full.
19:38Not booby traps on a door,
19:41the entire building,
19:42rigged to come down
19:43on a platoon.
19:45That is what was waiting
19:46on the 24th of December
19:47in a square
19:48the Canadians
19:49had started calling
19:50Dead Horse Square,
19:51where the Seaforth Highlanders
19:53were pushing forward
19:54past the school building.
19:55A section of Seaforths
19:57went into it,
19:58eight or ten men.
19:59One came out.
20:00One man walked out
20:01of that school.
20:02The rest of the section
20:03was under it.
20:05I want to stay with that
20:06for a moment,
20:07because the tactical consequence
20:09matters more
20:09than the casualty figure,
20:11and this is the kind of thing
20:12that gets skipped.
20:13Up to the 24th of December,
20:15a Canadian soldier in Ortona
20:17was afraid of things
20:18he could reason about.
20:20Mines have locations.
20:21Machine guns have arcs.
20:23Snipers have windows.
20:25You can learn a street,
20:26and men learn fast
20:27when the price is that high.
20:29After the school,
20:30there was nothing left
20:31to reason about.
20:32Any building might be a bomb.
20:35The one you are standing in
20:36might be a bomb.
20:37The safest-looking house
20:39on the square,
20:40undamaged,
20:41quiet,
20:41empty,
20:42with a nice clear entrance,
20:44was now the most frightening
20:45structure in the town,
20:47because that was exactly
20:48the kind of building
20:49the German engineers
20:50preferred to rig.
20:51The paratroopers
20:52had found a way
20:53to attack Canadian infantry
20:55without being anywhere near them,
20:57and Canadian infantry
20:58kept going forward anyway.
21:00I am not going to dress that up.
21:02They went into buildings,
21:04knowing what the last section found,
21:07because the alternative
21:08was the street,
21:09and the street was worse.
21:10What they changed
21:12was the order of operations.
21:14Shoot the building
21:15before you enter it.
21:16Bring the tank up
21:17and put rounds
21:18through the windows.
21:19Bring the six-pounder up
21:21and collapse the ground floor rooms.
21:23Go in through a wall
21:25nobody has prepared,
21:26not through a door
21:27somebody has.
21:28Send the engineers
21:30over the ground first.
21:32None of that
21:33made a rigged house safe.
21:35It made it less likely
21:36that a whole platoon
21:37would be standing in one
21:38when it went.
21:40Now lift your eyes
21:41off the street for a minute,
21:43because on the 23rd of December,
21:45something changed
21:46above the soldiers' heads,
21:47and it decides this battle.
21:50Brigadier Bert Hoffmeister,
21:5236 years old,
21:53a lumber salesman
21:54from Vancouver
21:55before the war,
21:56commanding the brigade
21:57that was being fed
21:58into this town
21:58building by building,
22:00worked out what
22:01Ortona actually was.
22:02Not a delaying position.
22:04Not a rear guard.
22:06The Germans were not leaving.
22:08They had wired the place
22:09weeks in advance,
22:11and were now
22:11feeding men into it.
22:14Ortona was the
22:15Adriatic anchor
22:16of the German winter line,
22:18and they intended
22:19to hold it.
22:20So Hoffmeister
22:22stopped fighting it
22:23like a town
22:24that was about
22:25to be abandoned,
22:26and started fighting it
22:27like a fortress.
22:29More armor.
22:31Eight additional tanks
22:33allotted to each
22:34of his battalions.
22:36Seventeen pounder
22:37anti-tank guns,
22:38the heaviest thing
22:39the Canadians had,
22:41brought around
22:42to the southeast,
22:43where they could fire
22:44into the town
22:45from a distance.
22:46And the part
22:47that nobody inside
22:48those streets could see.
22:50The other two brigades
22:52of the Canadian division
22:53were ordered
22:54to swing wide,
22:56around to the west
22:57and the north,
22:58and cut the roads
23:00behind Ortona.
23:02Mark that.
23:03Two Canadian brigades,
23:05outside the town,
23:07walking around it
23:08in the mud,
23:09while the Edmontons
23:10and the Seaforths
23:11held the paratroopers
23:13by the face.
23:14It will not matter
23:16for four more days.
23:18On the fourth day,
23:19it is going to matter
23:20more than anything else
23:21in this story.
23:23The Germans escalated too,
23:25and they escalated first.
23:27On the 24th,
23:28General Richard Heydrich,
23:30commanding the
23:311st Parachute Division,
23:32did something
23:33he had been resisting.
23:34He committed
23:35his divisional reserve,
23:36the 2nd battalion
23:38of the 4th Parachute Regiment,
23:40into Ortona.
23:41The battalion
23:42that had been holding the town
23:43had been in it
23:44since the 20th,
23:45fighting day and night,
23:47and was wearing out.
23:48Fresh paratroopers
23:49now came down
23:50into the old town,
23:51and the order
23:52that came with them
23:53was the one
23:53German commanders
23:54in Italy
23:55had learned to dread.
23:56Hold at all costs.
23:58Look at what that order
23:59means from inside a cellar.
24:01It does not mean
24:02fight well.
24:03It means you do not
24:04get to leave.
24:06So Christmas Eve
24:07in Ortona
24:07is two forces,
24:09both reinforced,
24:10both ordered forward,
24:12jammed into about
24:12eight blocks of stone.
24:14And this is where
24:15the shape of the
24:16Canadian battalions
24:17starts to show.
24:19Not their courage,
24:21their shape.
24:22Those three
24:23Edmonton Rifle Companies
24:25were down to roughly
24:2660 men apiece.
24:28Officers were gone.
24:30Sergeants
24:31were running platoons.
24:32And beginning
24:33on Christmas Eve
24:34and through Boxing Day,
24:36reinforcements
24:37came up the road
24:38into Ortona
24:39and were pushed
24:40straight into
24:41rifle companies
24:42in contact.
24:43Think about
24:44who those men were.
24:46A reinforcement
24:47arriving in Ortona
24:49on the 24th of December,
24:511943,
24:52is a young Canadian
24:53who has never
24:54been shot at,
24:55walking into
24:56the worst street fighting
24:58of the campaign
24:59to join a platoon
25:01of strangers
25:02who have been awake
25:03for four days
25:04in a town
25:05where the buildings
25:07explode.
25:08He is handed
25:09a dozen grenades
25:10and told which wall
25:12they are going through next.
25:14That happened
25:15over and over
25:16and the companies
25:18kept functioning.
25:19That is not a small thing.
25:22That is an army
25:23that works.
25:25Jim Stone
25:26was still in the middle of it.
25:27So was Bill Longhurst,
25:29whose mouse holes
25:30were now standard practice
25:31across both battalions.
25:33Over on the seaforth side,
25:35their commanding officer,
25:36Sid Thompson,
25:37had a habit
25:37his own men remarked on
25:39for the rest of their lives.
25:40He came forward,
25:42constantly,
25:43into the rifle companies,
25:44into the houses,
25:45where a battalion commander
25:46is not supposed to be.
25:48The regiment's historian
25:50put it simply.
25:51To see the commanding officer
25:52up there
25:53gave confidence
25:53to the private soldier.
25:55They needed it.
25:56Because by the evening
25:57of the 24th of December,
25:59the Canadians
25:59had ground their way
26:00to the central squares
26:01and were now up against
26:03the strongest part
26:04of the German position,
26:05with fresh German paratroopers
26:07in it,
26:08and the advance
26:08had very nearly stopped.
26:10It is Christmas Eve.
26:12The Germans are
26:13shelling the town.
26:14There is sleet.
26:16Nobody in either battalion
26:17has slept properly
26:18since the 20th.
26:19And at that moment,
26:21with the fight jammed
26:22and the reinforcements
26:23still arriving,
26:24the Canadians did something
26:25that sounds,
26:26when you first hear it,
26:27like sentimentality,
26:29like the kind of story
26:30that gets told at reunions
26:31and softened over the years.
26:33Both battalions arranged
26:35Christmas dinner.
26:37Not behind the lines,
26:38inside Ortona,
26:40a few hundred yards
26:40from the German paratroopers,
26:42with the fighting
26:43still going on.
26:44It was not sentimentality.
26:46It was one of the most
26:47quietly ruthless decisions
26:49of the battle,
26:50and it tells you something
26:51about these two armies
26:52that no amount
26:53of tactical analysis will.
26:55December 25th, 1943.
26:58The church of Santa Maria
26:59di Constantinopoli, Ortona,
27:01about 300 yards
27:02from the German front line.
27:04The seaforth quartermaster
27:06had spent days scrounging,
27:07and what he produced
27:09belongs in a museum.
27:10White tablecloths,
27:12real china plates,
27:14soup,
27:14roast pork with applesauce,
27:17cauliflower,
27:18mashed potatoes and gravy,
27:19Christmas pudding,
27:21mince pie,
27:23chocolate,
27:23oranges,
27:24nuts,
27:25cigarettes,
27:26and a bottle of beer
27:27for every man.
27:28The battalion went in
27:30by company,
27:31in rotation,
27:31straight out of the fighting
27:32and straight back into it.
27:34Thirty minutes,
27:36an hour,
27:37two if the street
27:38they came from
27:39was quiet.
27:40Lieutenant Wilf Gildersleeve,
27:42the signals officer,
27:43sat down at the church organ
27:44and played.
27:45There were carols,
27:46there were pipers.
27:48And the padre,
27:50Major Roy Durnford,
27:51stood in the doorway
27:52watching filthy,
27:53unshaven men
27:54in wet battle dress
27:55come in off the street
27:56in ones and twos,
27:58sit down at a table
27:59with a cloth on it
28:00and be handed a plate.
28:01Durnford said
28:02the thing that has survived
28:03every other word
28:04spoken in Ortona that day.
28:06Well, he said,
28:08at last I've got you
28:09all in church.
28:11One of the men
28:12at those tables
28:13was a private
28:13from New Westminster,
28:15British Columbia,
28:15named Ernest Smith,
28:17whom the battalion
28:18called Smokey.
28:20He had a talent
28:21for being demoted
28:22and a greater talent
28:23for fighting,
28:24and he looked
28:24at the tablecloths
28:25and the china
28:26and said what a lot
28:27of them were thinking.
28:29I don't know
28:30what goes through
28:30the minds of those people
28:31who are in charge of this.
28:33Remember him.
28:35Ten months later,
28:36alone on a road
28:37in a rainstorm
28:38at the Savio River,
28:39Smokey Smith
28:40would take on
28:41German tanks
28:41with a P-I-A-T
28:43and earn
28:44the Victoria Cross.
28:46Outside,
28:47all of this time,
28:48the fighting
28:48never stopped.
28:50Durnford could hear
28:50the machine guns
28:51through the hymns.
28:53One officer,
28:54Lieutenant Dave Fairweather,
28:55spent the day
28:56quietly worried
28:57that there was
28:57too much beer
28:58and liquor in the building
28:59and that somebody
29:00was going to go back
29:01into the line
29:02drunk and die of it.
29:03and at seven
29:04in the evening
29:04when the last company
29:06got up from the table
29:07and went out the door
29:08to return to the street,
29:09a German shell
29:10came down among them.
29:12One man killed,
29:13two wounded.
29:14On their way back
29:15from Christmas dinner.
29:18That is Ortona.
29:19There was no hour
29:20of that day
29:21when the town
29:21let anybody go.
29:23A few hundred yards away,
29:25the loyal Edmonton regiment
29:26got no church.
29:28Jim Stone's Christmas dinner
29:29on the 25th of December
29:31was a cold pork chop
29:32carried forward to him
29:33on a Bren gun carrier.
29:35His men were fighting
29:37through the buildings
29:37around the central squares
29:38while the Seaforths
29:40were singing
29:40and that afternoon
29:41they took ground.
29:44Now I want to do something
29:45with this scene
29:46that most tellings
29:47of Ortona never do.
29:48Because this is usually
29:50where the story goes soft,
29:52the famous Christmas dinner,
29:53the photograph,
29:54the carols
29:55and the ruined church,
29:56a nice human moment
29:58in a terrible battle.
29:59Look at it as a soldier.
30:01Look at what it required.
30:03To pull a rifle company
30:04out of contact,
30:06feed it hot food
30:07at a table
30:08and put it back,
30:09you need a second company
30:11to hold that ground
30:12while the first one eats.
30:14You need a chain of supply
30:15that can push pork
30:17and beer
30:18and china
30:18up a road
30:19under shell fire
30:21into a town
30:22that is still
30:22being fought for.
30:24You need a quartermaster
30:25with the nerve
30:26to spend two days
30:28on dinner
30:28during the worst week
30:30of his regiment's war.
30:32You need,
30:33in short,
30:34depth,
30:35men,
30:36transport,
30:37food
30:37and a system behind you
30:39that keeps producing
30:40all three.
30:42Now look across
30:43at the paratroopers.
30:44They could not do this.
30:46Not because they were
30:47less clever
30:48or less brave,
30:49they were neither,
30:50but because
30:51by the 25th of December
30:53they had nothing left
30:54to rotate with.
30:56Heydrich had already spent
30:57his divisional reserve
30:59the day before.
31:00The battalion
31:01that had held the town
31:02since the 20th
31:03was burning down
31:04to a stub
31:05and the fresh battalion
31:07was being fed
31:08into the same stone grinder.
31:10Their orders
31:11were to hold
31:12at all costs,
31:13which in practice means
31:15there is no relief,
31:16there is no rotation,
31:18and the only way
31:19out of this town
31:20is to be carried out.
31:22Two armies,
31:24eight blocks apart.
31:26One of them
31:26could take a man
31:27out of the line
31:28for an hour
31:29and give him
31:30a plate of pork
31:31and a bottle of beer
31:32and send him back functioning.
31:34The other
31:34could not take him out
31:36at all.
31:37That is not a story
31:39about Christmas spirit.
31:40That is a story
31:42about which of these
31:43two forces
31:43could still absorb losses
31:45on the 26th of December.
31:48and which one
31:49was quietly running out
31:50of everything.
31:52And on Boxing Day,
31:53the Canadians pushed.
31:55The Edmontons
31:56cleared the town hall square
31:58at last,
31:59the Piazza Municipale,
32:01the square Stone's company
32:02had been stopped
32:03in front of
32:04on the 22nd.
32:05Four days
32:06for one square.
32:08From there,
32:09the town opened
32:10into three separate streets
32:12running north,
32:13and the battalion
32:14had to split its effort
32:15three ways.
32:16The Seaforths
32:17went at Dead Horse Square
32:18with everything
32:19the brigade
32:20had given them.
32:21Eight tanks,
32:22anti-tank guns
32:23firing high explosive
32:24into the buildings,
32:26mouse holes
32:27going in
32:27on both flanks.
32:29They took it
32:30and pushed northeast
32:31to join up
32:32with the Edmontons
32:33in the next square.
32:34The Germans
32:35made them pay for it
32:36with something new.
32:37In the Piazza Plebiscito,
32:39the paratroopers
32:40had manhandled
32:41anti-tank guns
32:42up onto the second floors
32:44of buildings,
32:45firing down
32:46into the open tops
32:47and thin upper armor
32:48of the Shermans
32:49as they came
32:50into the square.
32:51Two Three Rivers tanks
32:53were knocked out there.
32:54In eight days
32:55of fighting in Ortona,
32:57those were the only tanks
32:59the regiment lost,
33:00and they lost them
33:01to guns in windows.
33:03Everything about Boxing Day
33:05says the same thing.
33:07The Germans
33:07were still deadly,
33:09still inventive,
33:10still finding new ways
33:12to kill Canadians,
33:13and they were losing
33:14the town anyway,
33:16one square at a time.
33:18By that evening,
33:19the Edmontons
33:19held the Piazza Municipale
33:21and were working north,
33:22and one of their companies
33:24had found a solid building
33:25to use for the night,
33:26a place to bring
33:27the ammunition up,
33:28get out of the sleet,
33:29hand out grenades,
33:30and get some sleep
33:31before the morning.
33:32An officer
33:33and 23 of his men
33:35were inside it.
33:36The German engineers
33:37had been in that building
33:38first.
33:39Night,
33:40the 26th of December.
33:42The building
33:42came down on them.
33:43The Germans had rigged it
33:45before they left it,
33:46the whole structure,
33:47not the doorways,
33:48and they brought it down
33:49with an officer
33:50and 23 loyal Edmonton
33:51soldiers inside,
33:52in the middle
33:53of handing out ammunition.
33:55One moment
33:56there was a house.
33:57Then there was
33:58a mound of stone
33:58in the dark,
33:59with the fighting
34:00still going on around it.
34:02The Edmontons
34:03went at that mound
34:03with their hands,
34:04with shovels,
34:05with anything,
34:06under fire,
34:07all night
34:08and into the day.
34:09Out of 24 men
34:10they got five
34:11out alive.
34:12One of them
34:13was not found
34:14for a long time.
34:15A lance corporal
34:16named Roy Boyd,
34:17a young man
34:18from the Peace River
34:19country in northern Alberta,
34:20was lying in a pocket
34:22in the rubble,
34:22alive,
34:23buried.
34:24His regiment
34:25kept digging.
34:26They were still digging
34:27three and a half days
34:28later when they reached him
34:29and brought him
34:29out of the ruins
34:30of that house,
34:31conscious.
34:32He spent five months
34:33in hospitals
34:34in Italy and England,
34:35and a further year
34:37in hospitals
34:37in Calgary
34:38and Edmonton.
34:40He was the only man
34:41of his platoon
34:42to come home.
34:43I would like you
34:44to hold him in your mind
34:45for the rest of this video,
34:47because when people say
34:48Ortona cost the Canadians
34:50a great deal,
34:51Roy Boyd
34:52is what the phrase means.
34:54Now,
34:55what the Edmontons did next
34:56is the reason
34:57this video exists,
34:59and it is the part
35:00that almost never gets told.
35:02They did not report it up
35:03and wait.
35:04They did not absorb it
35:05as a tragedy.
35:06The official history
35:07of the Canadian Army
35:09records what happened
35:10in one flat sentence,
35:12and I want to read it to you
35:13the way Colonel Stacey wrote it.
35:15The Edmontons shortly took
35:17a grim revenge,
35:19blowing up simultaneously
35:20two houses full of the enemy.
35:23Read that again.
35:25Simultaneously.
35:27Two.
35:27Inside roughly a day
35:29of having a technique
35:30used on them
35:31for the first time,
35:33Canadian infantrymen
35:34had taken that technique,
35:36worked out how to do it,
35:38improved on the scale of it,
35:40and returned it
35:41to the men who invented it,
35:42with a coordination problem
35:44solved on the way,
35:45because blowing two buildings
35:47at the same moment
35:48means charges laid
35:50in two places at once,
35:52under fire,
35:53with a plan.
35:54And that is the answer
35:56to the question we started with.
35:58Not the whole shape of it yet,
36:00but the heart of it.
36:01And here it is.
36:02For eight days in Ortona,
36:05two Canadian battalions
36:06changed the rules of the fight
36:08faster than an elite German division
36:11could respond to the change.
36:13Go back over it with me,
36:15because the pattern only shows
36:16when you lay it end to end.
36:18The Germans wrecked the side streets
36:21to force the Canadians
36:22up one road.
36:24Within two days,
36:25the Canadians stopped using roads
36:27and went through the walls.
36:29The Germans held the staircases.
36:32The Canadians came in
36:33through the top floor
36:34and fought downward.
36:35And the Germans
36:36never found a counter to that.
36:39Not in eight days,
36:40not with fresh troops,
36:42not anywhere in the town.
36:44The Canadians ran out of explosive.
36:47They scavenged German explosive
36:49and kept going.
36:51Anti-tank guns were built
36:53to kill tanks.
36:54The Canadians carried them
36:56into the streets by hand
36:57and fired them into bedrooms.
37:00The Germans started demolishing
37:02whole buildings
37:02onto Canadian platoons.
37:04Within a day,
37:06the Canadians were demolishing buildings
37:08onto German ones,
37:09two at a time.
37:11Every single move
37:12the paratroopers made
37:13was answered,
37:15usually within 48 hours,
37:17usually by a captain
37:18or a sergeant in the rubble
37:20rather than by a staff officer
37:22with a map.
37:24Now the other side of the ledger.
37:26And be fair about it
37:27because these were formidable soldiers.
37:30What did the paratroopers invent
37:32in those eight days?
37:33They fought their prepared plan superbly.
37:37They reinforced it.
37:38They found new ways
37:40to use what they already had.
37:42Guns hauled upstairs
37:43to shoot down into tanks,
37:45which is genuinely clever.
37:46But the plan itself
37:48never changed
37:49because it could not.
37:51They had built the town
37:52as a script
37:53before the battle.
37:54They had been ordered
37:55to hold at all costs.
37:57And an army
37:58that is ordered to hold
37:59at all costs
38:00is an army
38:01that has been forbidden
38:02to adapt.
38:03The Canadians had no script.
38:06Nobody had given them one.
38:07There was no doctrine
38:08in any Allied manual
38:10in December of 1943
38:11for taking a European town
38:14from paratroopers.
38:15And because there was no doctrine,
38:17nobody in the loyal Edmonton regiment
38:19was breaking it.
38:20They were free to invent,
38:22and the men doing the inventing
38:24were company commanders
38:25and pioneers
38:26and engineers,
38:28volunteers from Alberta
38:29and British Columbia,
38:30most of whom
38:31had been civilians
38:32four years earlier.
38:34That is what an army
38:35of civilians does
38:36when you put it
38:37in an impossible position
38:38and get out of its way.
38:40On the 27th of December,
38:42the Canadians came on again.
38:44The Edmontons cleared
38:45the Piazza Plebiscito
38:47and pushed
38:48into the next square north.
38:50The seaforths
38:51worked up
38:52Via Montemayela
38:53and blew a mill
38:54the Germans had turned
38:55into a strong point.
38:57The two battalions linked
38:59at the northern end
39:00of the old town.
39:01And now,
39:02I have to be honest with you,
39:04because if I stop here,
39:05I have told you
39:07a lie by omission.
39:08Everything I have just described
39:11would not,
39:11on its own,
39:13have been enough.
39:14Elite troops,
39:15under a hold
39:16at all costs order,
39:18do not leave
39:19because they are losing houses.
39:21The 1st Parachute Division
39:23had spent its whole war
39:25being outnumbered
39:26and outgunned
39:27and staying anyway.
39:29Three months later,
39:30at Monte Cassino,
39:32the same division
39:33would sit in a ruined monastery
39:35and hold it
39:36against Americans,
39:37New Zealanders,
39:39Indians,
39:39and Poles
39:40for four months
39:42and would never
39:43be driven off it.
39:44So the tactical answer
39:46is real
39:46and it is not complete.
39:49Something else happened
39:50at Ortona
39:51that did not happen
39:52at Cassino.
39:53On the 27th of December,
39:55while the Edmontons
39:55and the Seaforths
39:56were pushing into
39:57the last squares
39:58of the town,
39:59a German Corps commander
40:00a long way
40:01from those streets
40:02picked up a telephone
40:03and started making an argument
40:04about Ortona
40:05to the people above him.
40:07He had worked out
40:08something about his own position
40:09that the paratroopers
40:10in the cellars
40:11did not yet know.
40:12His name was Traugott Herr
40:14and he commanded
40:16the German Corps
40:17holding the Adriatic front.
40:19On the 27th of December,
40:21he made the case
40:22to his superiors
40:23that his units in Ortona
40:25were,
40:26in his words,
40:27wasting away
40:28for very little purpose
40:30and he asked
40:31for permission
40:32to pull them back
40:33to a new line
40:34north of the town.
40:36That request
40:37did not come
40:38out of nowhere.
40:39It had been building
40:40for a week
40:41at the top
40:41of the German command
40:42in Italy
40:43and the sentences
40:44those men used
40:46are worth hearing
40:47because this is
40:48the outside verdict
40:49on what the Canadians
40:50were doing.
40:51Field Marshal
40:52Albert Kesselring,
40:54commanding everything
40:55German in Italy,
40:56had said plainly
40:58that he did not
40:59want to fight
40:59a decisive battle
41:00for Ortona
41:01and then added
41:03the reason
41:03he was fighting
41:04one anyway.
41:05The enemy,
41:06he said,
41:07had made the place
41:08appear as important
41:09as Rome.
41:11General Joachim Lemelson
41:12put it in one line
41:14that you could carve
41:15over the town gate.
41:16It costs so much
41:18in blood,
41:19he said,
41:20that it cannot
41:20be justified.
41:22Sit with that
41:22for a second.
41:24The German high command
41:25in Italy,
41:26discussing a fishing
41:28port of a few
41:28thousand people
41:29held by their
41:31best troops
41:32and the words
41:33they are reaching
41:33for are blood
41:35and justification.
41:37But cost alone
41:38would not have
41:39moved them.
41:40Casino cost more
41:42and they stayed
41:43at Casino
41:44for four months.
41:45Something else
41:46was closing
41:47on Ortona
41:48and the paratroopers
41:49in the cellars
41:50could not see it
41:51because it was
41:51happening in the mud
41:53outside the walls.
41:54Remember what
41:55Hoffmeister said
41:56in motion
41:57on the 23rd of December?
41:59Two Canadian brigades
42:01ordered west
42:01and north
42:02around the outside
42:04of the town.
42:05For four days
42:06that movement
42:07did nothing visible.
42:08The men in it
42:09were not
42:10in the famous battle.
42:11They were slogging
42:12across saturated farmland
42:14and up gullies
42:16in the rain
42:16in a completely
42:17different kind
42:18of misery
42:19and no camera
42:20crew was with them.
42:21By the 27th of December
42:23they were astride
42:24the ground
42:25behind Ortona.
42:26Now look at the town
42:27the way a German
42:28staff officer
42:29had to look at it
42:30that afternoon.
42:32The Canadians
42:33have the southern half
42:34and the central squares
42:35and they are pushing
42:36into the last streets.
42:38Their armor
42:39is in the town
42:39with them
42:40and to the west
42:41and north
42:42other Canadian formations
42:43are working
42:44onto the roads
42:45that the garrison
42:46would have to use
42:46to get out
42:47and that its supplies
42:48and ammunition
42:49have to come down.
42:51The fortress
42:51was about to become
42:52a bag
42:53with the mouth closing.
42:55That is the complete
42:56answer to the question
42:57we started with
42:58and it has two halves
43:00that only work together.
43:02Inside the town
43:03two Canadian battalions
43:04took a defense
43:05built by professionals
43:06and pulled it apart
43:08by inventing faster
43:09than the professionals
43:10could react.
43:11Outside the town
43:12two more Canadian brigades
43:14made staying in it lethal.
43:16The paratroopers
43:17could have held
43:17those houses
43:18for another week.
43:19They were not broken
43:20and I want to be careful
43:21about that
43:22because they were not.
43:23What they could not do
43:24was hold houses
43:25in a town
43:26that was being surrounded
43:27while their corps commander
43:28was telling Kesselring
43:29that the arithmetic
43:30no longer worked.
43:32Elite troops
43:33do not leave
43:34because they are losing.
43:36They leave
43:36when staying
43:37stops making sense.
43:39It was Canadians
43:40at both ends
43:41of that equation
43:42who made it
43:43stop making sense.
43:45Permission came
43:46and on their way out
43:47the paratroopers
43:48gave one last demonstration
43:49of what they were.
43:51Through the night
43:52of the 27th
43:53the town sounded worse
43:54than it had all week.
43:56Heavy demolitions.
43:57Violent fire.
43:59Buildings going down
44:00all over the northern quarter.
44:02To the Canadians
44:04listening in the dark
44:05it sounded exactly
44:06like a defense
44:07being thickened
44:08and fought harder.
44:09Like the 28th of December
44:10was going to be
44:11the worst day yet.
44:13It was a performance.
44:15Behind the noise
44:16the Fallschirmjäger
44:17walked out of Ortona.
44:19On the morning
44:20of the 28th
44:21Canadian patrols
44:22went forward
44:22into a silence.
44:24Jim Stone's Edmontons
44:25and Sid Thompson's
44:26Seaforths
44:27pushed through streets
44:28they had expected
44:29to buy at the usual price
44:30and found nothing to fight.
44:32The Princess Patricias
44:34and the Three Rivers Tanks
44:35came through
44:36the two battalions
44:37and carried the pursuit north.
44:38The Germans left
44:40about a hundred
44:40of their own dead
44:41behind them
44:42in the houses.
44:43Men they had no way
44:44to carry out.
44:45Here is what the town
44:47cost the two Canadian battalions
44:49that took it.
44:50The Loyal Edmonton Regiment
44:5163 killed
44:53109 wounded.
44:55The Seaforth Highlanders
44:5641 killed
44:5862 wounded.
45:00Those are rifle companies
45:01gutted
45:02twice over.
45:03And through the whole
45:04of that December
45:05fighting up the Moro
45:07and at Casa Berardi
45:08and into Ortona
45:09the 1st Canadian
45:10Infantry Division
45:11lost over 2,200 men
45:14of whom nearly 500
45:15were killed.
45:17Numbers like that
45:18go by very fast
45:19so let me stop them.
45:21The men in those
45:21two battalions
45:22who ate roast pork
45:24on white tablecloths
45:25in a ruined church
45:26on Christmas Day
45:27roughly one in three
45:29of them
45:30was dead
45:31or wounded
45:31by New Year's.
45:33And there is a third
45:34column in this ledger
45:35that Canadians do not
45:37talk about enough.
45:38Around 1,300 Italian
45:40civilians died in Ortona.
45:42Most of the population
45:44had left before the battle.
45:46Those who stayed
45:47were in the cellars
45:48underneath everything
45:49I have described to you.
45:51Underneath the mouse holes.
45:53Underneath the buildings
45:54that were being brought down
45:56deliberately by both sides.
45:58The Canadians dug civilians
46:00out of that rubble too.
46:01Major General Chris Volkes
46:03who commanded the division
46:05wrote afterwards
46:06that they had given
46:07the first German
46:08parachute division
46:09a mauling
46:10it would long remember.
46:12He was right
46:13and he was also a general
46:14writing about his own battle.
46:16The sentence I trust more
46:18is Lemelson's.
46:19It costs so much in blood
46:21it cannot be justified.
46:24Written by a German general
46:26about a Canadian effort
46:28while it was still going on.
46:31The paratroopers went north
46:34reorganized
46:34and four months later
46:36they were at Monte Cassino
46:37where they became legends
46:39for a defense
46:40nobody could break.
46:42But when the veterans
46:43of that division
46:44sat down in their old age
46:46to name the fight
46:47that had been worst
46:48a lot of them
46:49did not say casino.
46:51And 55 years after Ortona
46:54one of them came back
46:55to the town
46:56to say so
46:57to the Canadians' faces.
46:59Christmas 1998
47:01Ortona
47:02on the Adriatic coast of Italy
47:04The same streets
47:06rebuilt
47:07Canadian veterans
47:09came back
47:10for the 55th anniversary
47:11of the battle.
47:13Old men now
47:14in blazers
47:15walking up
47:16the Corso Vittorio Emanuele
47:18in the winter light
47:19showing their sons
47:21and daughters
47:21a corner
47:22a doorway
47:23a square
47:25and some German veterans
47:27came too.
47:28One of them
47:29was a man
47:30named Joseph Klein
47:31who in December of 1943
47:33had been a 19-year-old
47:35paratrooper lieutenant
47:37in the houses
47:38those Canadians
47:39had been trying to take.
47:41He stood in Ortona
47:42with the men
47:43who had been across
47:44the street from him
47:45and what he said about it
47:47was not about tactics
47:48or honor
47:49or who had won.
47:51War
47:52he said
47:53is a terrible thing
47:54you see the white
47:56of the eyes
47:57of the man
47:57opposite you
47:58and you know
47:59exactly
48:00that if you don't
48:01shoot him
48:02he will shoot you.
48:04That is how close
48:05Ortona was.
48:07That is the whole battle
48:08in one sentence
48:10from the other side.
48:11And then the old men
48:12on both sides
48:13went and had lunch together
48:15which is the only
48:16sane ending
48:17any of this could have.
48:19Now let me take you
48:20back to the Canadians
48:21and tell you
48:22what became of them.
48:23Lance Corporal
48:24Roy Boyd
48:25came home.
48:26Five months
48:27in hospitals
48:28in Italy and England
48:29another year
48:30in hospitals
48:31in Calgary and Edmonton
48:32and a lifetime
48:33of being the only man
48:35of his platoon
48:35who walked out
48:36of that building.
48:38He lived a long life
48:39in Alberta.
48:40Every man
48:41he had been handing
48:42ammunition to
48:43on Boxing Day night
48:44is still recorded
48:45in the register
48:46of the Canadian War Cemetery
48:48at Ortona
48:49where about 1375 Canadians
48:52lie in rows
48:53under the pines
48:54about a mile
48:55from the square
48:56where Stone's company
48:57was stopped.
48:58Bill Longhurst
49:00the captain
49:00who stopped looking
49:01at the street
49:02and looked at the wall
49:03did not get a headline
49:04out of it.
49:05His health gave out
49:06in the mud
49:07of the winter line
49:08a few weeks
49:08after the battle
49:09and he was sent back
49:10to hospital.
49:11When he recovered
49:12the army put him
49:13in charge
49:14of a core scouts
49:15and snipers school
49:16which he ran well
49:17and hated
49:18because what he kept
49:19asking for
49:20over and over
49:21was to be sent back
49:23to A Company
49:24of the loyal Edmonton regiment.
49:27Eventually
49:27they let him.
49:28Men in his regiment
49:30thought for the rest
49:31of their lives
49:31that his brains
49:32and his nerve
49:33deserved far more recognition
49:35than he ever received.
49:37By their account
49:38Longhurst himself
49:39was content
49:40with the fact
49:41that the battle
49:42had been won.
49:43Private Ernest Smith
49:44who looked at the tablecloths
49:46in the church
49:46and wondered
49:47what the people
49:48in charge were thinking
49:49won the Victoria Cross
49:51on a road
49:51by the Savio River
49:53the following October
49:54against German tanks
49:56with a PIAT.
49:58He died in 2005
50:00the last living Canadian holder
50:02of the Victoria Cross.
50:04and Jim Stone
50:05go back to where we started.
50:07A 35 year old major
50:09in a wet street
50:11on the 21st of December
50:13going into his own smoke
50:15at a run
50:15toward a gun crew
50:17who could see exactly
50:18where the smoke came from.
50:20That got him
50:21the military cross.
50:23It was the first
50:24of a long list.
50:26He took command
50:27of the loyal Edmonton regiment
50:29and led it
50:30at San Fortunato
50:31in Italy
50:32where they hauled guns
50:33up a mountain
50:34to break the Gothic line
50:36and won
50:37the Distinguished Service Order.
50:39He won a bar to it
50:40in the Netherlands
50:41in 1945.
50:43Then,
50:44six years later,
50:45on a hill in Korea
50:47called Kapyong,
50:48Lieutenant Colonel
50:49Jim Stone
50:50and the 2nd Battalion
50:52of Princess Patricia's
50:53Canadian Light Infantry
50:55were surrounded
50:56by Chinese divisions
50:57on Hill 677
50:59with the units
51:01on either flank
51:02gone
51:02and the ammunition
51:03going fast
51:04and Stone gave the order
51:06his soldiers remembered
51:08for the rest of their lives.
51:09No retreat,
51:11no surrender.
51:13He called Allied artillery
51:14down onto his own position
51:16to clear the Chinese off it
51:18and he held the hill.
51:20That was his second bar.
51:22The private
51:23who walked into
51:23an Edmonton recruiting office
51:25in 1939
51:26died in Victoria,
51:28British Columbia
51:28in 2005
51:30at the age of 97.
51:33So,
51:34why could elite
51:35German paratroopers
51:36who had held their ground
51:37against everyone else
51:38in the Mediterranean
51:39not hold Ortona
51:41against Canadians?
51:42Not because the Canadians
51:44were better soldiers.
51:45That is the answer
51:46the internet gives
51:47and it is the wrong one
51:48and the men who were there
51:50would be the first
51:50to tell you so.
51:52It is this.
51:53The Germans arrived
51:55at Ortona
51:55with a plan
51:56written in advance
51:57by experts
51:58and an order
51:59that forbade them
51:59to change it.
52:01The Canadians arrived
52:02with no plan at all
52:03because no army
52:04in the West
52:05had one
52:05for a fight like this.
52:07And so,
52:08for eight days,
52:09the rules of the battle
52:10were written
52:10by whoever happened
52:12to be standing
52:12in the rubble.
52:14A company commander
52:15with an idea
52:16about a wall.
52:18Pioneers tying
52:19plastic explosive
52:20into a beehive.
52:21Engineers scavenging
52:23German mines
52:24to blow German houses.
52:27Gun crews dragging
52:28anti-tank guns
52:29into bedrooms by hand.
52:32A quartermaster
52:33deciding that his battalion
52:35would eat roast pork
52:36off white tablecloths
52:38300 yards from the enemy.
52:41Every one of those men
52:43was a volunteer
52:43from a country
52:45of 11 million people
52:46using another nation's weapons
52:49in a battle
52:50that nobody in London
52:51or Ottawa
52:52had planned to fight.
52:54They out-thought
52:55the best defensive troops
52:57in Italy
52:57in eight days,
52:59in the rain,
53:00at Christmas.
53:02And while they were doing it,
53:03a German general
53:05put the verdict
53:06in writing.
53:07It costs so much
53:09in blood,
53:09it cannot be justified.
53:12Every soldier
53:13in the Canadian army
53:15is still taught
53:16how to go through a wall.
53:17It has been 80-some years
53:19and the technique
53:20is still called
53:21a mousehole
53:22and it still comes
53:23from a wrecked room
53:24in Ortona
53:25where a Canadian captain
53:26decided the street
53:27was not the only way forward.
53:30Thank you for staying
53:30with this one to the end.
53:32It was a hard week to tell
53:33and the men
53:34in those two battalions
53:35deserved the time.
53:36If you think
53:37what the Canadians did
53:38in Ortona
53:39is worth remembering,
53:40a like genuinely helps
53:42this story find more people
53:43and if you'd like to hear
53:44more of them,
53:45we're here every week.
53:46And if your father,
53:48your grandfather
53:49or your uncle
53:50served in the Second World War,
53:52I would be honoured
53:53to hear about him
53:54in the comments.