Stalingrad Of The Adriatic: The Sangro (Part 1)

Al Murray (0:02)

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James Holland (1:21)

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James Holland (2:05)

During the early afternoon, one of the other companies moved up lift of us through Marabella. They met a little ground opposition but drew a spate of enemy shellfire and had a tory time. They were pinned down a couple of times, but it was a long range stuff and no one could do anything to help them, so they courageously came to their feet and pushed on through the gouting burst of high-explosive until they were in comparative safety on the far side of some terraces.

It was horrible to watch and it was easy to identify with the feeling of vulnerable helplessness that comes when fire grows so intense that it seems to batter you to the ground in blasting waves of concussion. Then, as the fire snackened, one felt the great sympathy for the moral and physical effort needed to rise up and plod onwards. We had a bird's-eye view from the hill, and it was far easier for us to estimate the safest time to move than it was for the participants in the thick of it all.

Your heart welled and your fist clenched with effort as you tried to encourage some prime figure still hesitating on the ground. Come on, come on, boy, now, now's your chance. You can reach that wall in the next move, then you'll be safe. And then to realize that your effort was in vain. The figure you were urging would never move again. And that, of course, was Corporal Roger Smith of A Company, the 24th Battalion, New Zealand Expeditionary Force.

Al Murray (3:37)

Yes. And welcome to We Have Ways of Making You Talk with me, Al Murray, James Holland. Our second World War podcast for all your second World War needs. And our needs bring us to, well, I mean, the title of this is interesting in itself, this series, this little series we're doing. It's the Stalingrad Of The Adriatic. Now, the thing is, if something's being called that, what, within a year of Stalingrad itself happening, right, it's got to be bad.

James Holland (4:05)

Yes.

Al Murray (4:06)

That tells you two things, doesn't it? It tells you how Stalingrad have borrowed its way into everyone's imagination as the sort of worst possible urban fighting the world has ever seen, and how quickly other places picked up that baton and ran with it, so to speak.

And what we're talking about, of course, Jim, is the campaign at Ortona.

James Holland (4:31)

So this is very much a sort of Duke series, really. And I think, you know, it's indicative of Eighth Army that has fought through North Africa into Tunisia. And here it is again, still surging forward in Italy. And it's a Commonwealth force above and beyond anything else, really, isn't it?

Al Murray (4:50)

Well, for anyone who's joined us in recent years or within the last few months, Duke is, in fact, an acronym that we coined on We Have Ways.