Stalingrad Of The Adriatic: The Gully (Part 3)

Al Murray (0:12)

Welcome, everybody, to We Have Ways of Making You Talk, me, Al Murray, and James Holland for our third episode of Stalingrad Of The Atlantic. And this is the episode three, The Gully. So we've worked our way over the Sangro, over the Morro, and now we're in the gully on our way to Ortona, the road to Ortona. I think in our last episode, we very much lent into the fact that this is, it's a meat grinder. If you're in the situation that the British find, the Allies find themselves in, if you can't use all your elements, if you can't, if the weather doesn't play ball, you can't bring all your fantastic elements to bear that you have at your disposal, things are difficult and they're even more difficult if you're an infantryman, because that's who has to do the fighting. They've got to fix bayonets, they've got to go in, they've got to do their bit.

And we also saw that trying to improvise your way around that, with perhaps a silent attack where you don't put a barrage in first, that doesn't work either. So the options are all are all bad, aren't they?

James Holland (1:16)

None of it works apart from just losing lots of men in the process of trying to get, you know, a quarter of a mile of land.

Al Murray (1:23)

Exactly.

James Holland (1:23)

At the end of the day, it's a meat grinder, you know.

Al Murray (1:26)

We followed Farley Mowat as basically he went forward and his nerve really began to, he felt like he was being sucked into some sort of void as his nerve began to desert him. I'm not judging the guy for that one bit because my nerve would have long deserted me, given everything he'd been through. And he's a young man, you know, full of full of beans and he he's finding it very, very different.

So this is the battle to try to get to Ortona, let alone the battle for Ortona itself, isn't it?

James Holland (1:55)

They're still not there, Al. Okay, they're still not there. It's just, it's crazy, you know, it starts on the night of the 5th, 6th of December. You know, a huge amount is expected of these people.

Al Murray (2:06)

Yeah.

James Holland (2:06)

You know, somehow the Hasty Peas have managed to hold on to this very fragile bridgehead that they've got. And people who've listened to the first two episodes will remember that they're on the eastern side, the kind of Adriatic coastside of this above the morrow. They've managed to get over to the other side of the morrow. So they're on the northern side now, but only just, you know, with their fingertips effectively. You know, they're on the kind of eastern edge of this totally now battered village of San Leonardo. And during 36 hours on the 9th and 10th of December, they hold off 11 counterattacks, all of which cost considerable blood to the Germans of the 200th Infantry Regiment. But also, of course, chipping away at the Canadians at the same time. And I think it's really important to remember that the Germans are predisposed to always counterattack. So you do have opportunities to wear them down. It's not just sort of, you know, hurling over shells and mortars and hoping one will land in a foxhole. You know, they will get up at some point. And when they get up, that's when they're, of course, so incredibly vulnerable, just as is the same as true for the Canadians attacking. And then can you can you imagine it? You know, Saturday, 11th December, new orders arrive and everyone's going, well, I wonder what they're going to be. I mean, it's very black out. It goes forth, isn't it?

Al Murray (3:16)

Yes.

James Holland (3:17)

And the orders are to break out of the bridgehead and attack north.

Plans is to launch out at four o'clock the same day, the 11th of December. They haven't got much time to get organized. It's just about light at that point. It's a fairly suicidal order. But actually, this is even only a diversion from the main event, which is an attack by the third brigade. And you may remember that they had been at Castel de Sangro attacking the Falschermierga on the top of that castle, on the top of that very high point in 1009 And they've now come over.

And the furbricate are going to be attacking from the ruins of San Leonardo. And Farley Moat just writes, once again, we were to be the goat in the tiger hunt. You know, so as you can imagine, morale is absolutely tip top. Moat is at the battalion headquarters on the ridge, which is a collapsed shed and peering out over the sea of mud and blasted farm buildings and burnt out tanks and the flotsam of battle and shattered vines. You know, it's a scene of total desolation and of course made worse by the gray of a winter afternoon sky. And suddenly something moving catches his eye. So he gets that whips out his binos, his field glasses, and he spots two huge pigs eating the bloated corpse of a mule. And he knows they'd be just as happy to be gorging on dead soldiers. I mean, what a horrible, horrible vision, don't you think?