Stalingrad Of The Adriatic: The Town (Part 4)

Al Murray (0:10)

Christmas! At home, the bells will be ringing, and people will be talking of peace.

SPEAKER_2 (0:15)

What peace?

Al Murray (0:16)

Our pockets are full of it, one-thirty at night.

Supporters have arrived. They have even brought something good for us.

SPEAKER_2 (0:23)

Your Father Christmas is here for the radio operators.

Al Murray (0:26)

We open the parcels.

SPEAKER_2 (0:28)

For each of us, there is a little Christmas cake, chocolate, walnuts, almonds, oranges. We sip our sweet malt wine and celebrate Christmas.

For Brainhits, promotion to Unteroffiziers arrived while I become Obergriffreiter. We cheer ourselves up, talk again about what is happening at home and tell stories.

The tanks begin firing again on this so-called Christmas morning. The battle begins again. It is raining heavily. Day after day, it is always the same music.

Al Murray (1:02)

The soldiers on both sides are doing the almost impossible.

SPEAKER_2 (1:06)

The Hitlers bash our shrieks, and the dished helmets on the other side duck down. Bullets fan out close to us.

Will I be hit too?

Al Murray (1:15)

Must we all die in Ortona?

SPEAKER_2 (1:18)

But then, one defends oneself to the weary last breath.

Al Murray (1:22)

And that is, I was ventriloquizing there for your interest and hopefully delight. Siegfried Baer from Fifth Company, Third Fallschirmjäger Regiment, in his funny helmet, his smock and his dark blue trousers, holed up in Ortona in the winter of 1943 In fact, Christmas Day. Merry Christmas, Jim, to the Fallschirmjäger, I think we're saying, aren't we?

James Holland (1:46)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, again, you know, he's another of these characters. He's quite a sympathetic character, really. You know, he writes his little journal and it's all very, very touching, very human, very moving, really. And I think, you know, the awful thing about Ortona, the Battle Of Ortona, is it's horrible for everybody.

Al Murray (2:03)

Yeah.

James Holland (2:03)

You know, whoever you are, it's just awful.

Al Murray (2:05)

Yeah. But reefed in pointlessness from, from the joint strategic pointlessness from the German point of view, why bother? Just bug out, sort your lines out, move back where you can, where you can hold the Allies up possibly forever in Italy.

And then from the other point of view, why bother if you're the Duke forces? Why bother if you're General Alexander? When you, what you probably ought to do is give yourself a chance to get your breath back, get your lads straight, get your lines straight, get your bridges, bridges fixed. And, you know, more haste, less speed, perhaps, is what's going on here. Yes. Welcome to WW2 We Have Ways of Making You Talk. This is me, Al Murray, James Holland, for our fourth episode of The Stalingrad Of The Adriatic, Ortona, and this episode is episode four, The Town. So we finally got you there after two weeks of bloody fighting, efforts from...

James Holland (2:59)

Yes, because we've had the Sangro, we've had the Morro.

Al Murray (3:02)

Yep.

James Holland (3:03)

We've had the Gully.

Al Murray (3:04)

Yep.

James Holland (3:04)

And now we've got the town.

Al Murray (3:06)

Exactly.

James Holland (3:06)

There's a lot of thes in this series.

Al Murray (3:08)

Yeah, exactly. And I rather like this way of slicing the places up. Well, Ortona is on the eastern coast of Italy. It's a small fishing town.

James Holland (3:18)

Anyway, the hasty peas have been pulled out on the 19th of December. You know, hooray for Farley Mowat. You know, he survived. He thinks it's all, you know, they're out the other side.

Al Murray (3:29)

Yeah.

James Holland (3:30)

And the rule of thumb is, you know, by this stage of the war is the Allied frontline infantry and armour really in the thick of it for more than about four days. I mean, if you look at the Normandy campaign, that's 48 hours to four days that you'd have a battalion in the frontline, something like that, and perhaps six at most. Because at that point, you know, exhaustion and casualties invariably are too great to continue effectively.

Al Murray (3:54)

Yes.

James Holland (3:55)

So it's not just about human concern. It's also practical.

Al Murray (3:58)

You're disorganized, aren't you?

James Holland (4:00)

Yeah, you can't function properly because, you know, you've lost officers and you've lost some NCOs and the whole thing just starts to sort of, you know, it just doesn't work. But, but, but Ortona, those rules are different, just as they were in San Pietro and on Monte Semucro and, you know, in the casino battles that are to follow this. You know, companies will be pulled out one at a time for rotation through, through these mobile bath units that are brought up to San Vito, but they're still in shelling range there.