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Chapter 14 – The Gurkha Lorried Brigade Joins the Fray

When men of 43rd Indian Infantry Brigade came forward for their first ordeal by battle, they found themselves in a countryside of fields and vineyards, with the late fruit still on the vines. It was rolling land, so that they saw little except the gentle slopes of the ridges before and behind; but likewise in the north-west they saw a tall mountain on the horizon, which bore three castles on

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its crest, and which commanded the countryside for many miles around. On all sides of San Marino the ground fell away in ridges broad and narrow, with watercourses between them. These ridges were slashed by deep eroded ravines, whose streams fed rivers which twisted and turned, now north, now south, now directly east, on their way to the Adriatic. There was no constant grain to the ground, and the high crests tended to be higgledy-piggledy in direction. The rounded contours of the ridges along the Adriatic gave fruitful soil, so that greenery and farmhouses showed everywhere. The countryside was crazy-patched by farm boundaries, each with its hedgerow and ditching, and sometimes with sunken lanes. Arcady to the pastoral, it was a countryside stiff with menaces for the soldier.

During the month which the Gurkha Lorried Brigade had spent in moving forward, the officers and men had found full comrades in the officers and men of First British Armoured Division. The British troops consisted of Second Armoured Brigade, and 18th Lorried Infantry Brigade. The armoured regiments were the Queen’s Bays, Ninth Lancers and Tenth Hussars. The riflemen took a proprietarial pride in their armoured escorts, and the tankmen in turn admired the good humour, discipline and soldierly bearing of the Gurkhas.

On September 5th, after a fortnight near Ancona, First Armoured Division moved into the line on the left of the Canadian Corps, taking over from elements of Forty-Sixth and Fifty-Sixth British Divisions, who were committing more and more of their strength to the stern struggle on the approaches to the Conca. The plan of battle called for the storming of the Passano–Coriano Ridge. The unblooded Gurkhas, with 18th Lorried Infantry, would strike for the left flank of the ridge, and would exploit northwards towards Coriano, which was the most westerly objective of the Canadian Corps. Further to the west, Fifty-Sixth and Forty-Sixth Divisions would join in. assaults upon Croce and Gemmano.

From the flat beaches at Riccione to Gemmano is slightly over seven miles. Five divisions were to move into battle on this narrow front. The deployment of the enemy was equally dense. In the coastal sector First Parachute Division, One Hundred and Sixty-Second Turcoman Division, and Twenty-Ninth Panzer Division confronted the Canadians. Twenty-Sixth Panzer and Ninety-Eighth Infantry Divisions were opposed to First British Armoured Division. Further to the left, Two Hundred and Seventy-ninth Infantry Division, Fifth Mountain Division, Seventy-First Infantry Division and One Hundred and Fourteenth Jaeger Division were arrayed against two British and one Indian Divisions. On the Gurkhas’ front, Twenty-Sixth Panzer Division, which had held its ground in Eighth Army’s opening attack, was strongly supported by artillery, and confident that it would break the teeth of any assault.

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On the evening of September 12th, the assault battalions moved silently towards the line of the Fosse del Valle, a small tributary of the Conca which it was necessary to cross before a start line could be established. The night was dark, warm and dry. The low skyline of the ridge ahead indicated the objective. Along its crest, the glow of smouldering fires identified the villages: during the day bombers had plastered key points with incendiaries which would act as a guide for the advance. The Gurkhas themselves had left nothing to chance. Air photographs had been intensively studied, and the riflemen had been told the number of hedgerows they must count before they closed with the enemy.

As 2300 hours five hundred and four guns crashed into action. Passano Ridge disappeared in the dust and smoke of the torrent of shell cast upon it. The Gurkhas, arrayed on their start line, began to trudge forward. But the Germans likewise were standing to their guns, and immediately laid a counter-barrage on the line of the Fosse del Valle. Star shell illuminated the slopes with chandelier flares. Enemy outposts inside the barrage – close to the start line – gave trouble, and a flanking machine-gun nest was knocked out just in time. The Gurkhas marched steadily up the hillside. On the crest of the ridge spandau teams which had survived the bombardment sprang from their bolt holes and spat fire down the slopes. Out of the night the little hillmen swarmed to close quarters, for the hand-to-hand fighting in which they have no peers. One Gurkha officer killed six Germans, another five, in clearing farmhouses. Three German tanks were pounced upon, and their crews slaughtered. Half an hour after midnight, 2/8 Gurkhas had taken all objectives with twenty-seven prisoners. 2/10 Gurkhas were slowed up by tenacious resistance, and it was an hour later before they reported success. They had taken sixty-seven prisoners. Casualties in both battalions had been light.

When dawn broke the Brigade had made excellent progress in consolidation. Their officers, peering through the smoke from the crest of the ridge, were less concerned with what lay ahead than what had happened behind. The enemy barrage still fell in curtain fire along the Fosse del Valle, and there were no signs of urgently needed support weapons for the defence of this tankable terrain. Would bridges be thrown across in time for British armour to come up, or would the panzers arrive first ?

Of this battle, as of nearly every battle in Italy, the story is really of two battles – the storming of the high ground by the infantry, and the equally grim fight against time by the sappers and armour to construct crossings and to get support weapons forward before the enemy could throw his reserves at the newly won positions. It is perhaps as well that the anxious officers on Passano Ridge could not see the grim

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destruction on the tracks leading to the Fosse del Valle. Smashed and blazing vehicles cluttered the approaches, and supplied fresh targets in the long lines of blocked transport. One “Ark” Bridge had been knocked out by a direct hit, and the other had gone astray. Other crossings were disorganized by serious casualties among the sappers. Tanks and self-propelled guns, striving to penetrate the barrage, had been disabled and overturned. Queen’s Bays and troops of anti-tank gunners, chafing at the delay, disentangled themselves and swung away on a long detour. After a search they found a crossing of their own. At dawn the armour came sweeping up the ridge led by Honey tanks carrying much needed ammunition. The forenoon was nearly spent before the counter-attack developed. It struck at “D” Company of 2/10 Gurkhas, who blasted the first waves of enemy infantry into the ground. The panzers sheered off when they found artillery waiting for them. Thereafter hour by hour, the tanks, self-propelled guns, and the deadly 17-pounder anti-tank guns thickened around Pesano, until counter-attack counted as suicide.

The ridge had been won, and Eighth Army had elbow room to continue the battle. Far away in Whitehall the soldier’s eye of the Prime Minister had followed the course of the fighting. His congratulations on “this brilliant feat of arms” was a proud tribute to the first engagement of Gurkha Lorried Brigade.

From their weapon pits and strong points around Passano the Gurkhas looked northward into the valley of the Marano with Ripabianca Ridge between them and the river, and the higher Mulazzano, ridge dominating the further bank. On September 14th, 18th Lorried Infantry Brigade with 2nd Armoured Brigade in support, pushed obliquely across the Gurkhas’ front, and after bitter fighting cleared Ripabianca of the enemy. On the next day 43rd Brigade took up the running. Desert Air Force spent the afternoon hammering Mulazzano Ridge. By 1700 hours, 2/6 and 2/8 Gurkhas were deployed on the eastern bank of the Marano. A terrific artillery shoot crashed down on the high ground across the river. The Gurkhas leapt into the stream, clambered up the far bank, and surged into the smoke. The early hour of the attack had taken the enemy by surprise and had forestalled the arrival of reinforcements which at that moment were moving up the reverse slopes of Mulazzano Ridge. The artillery wrought fearful havoc among these columns. A complete mortar company was found afterwards, slaughtered to a man as they hurried along a sunken lane to battle positions. German dead were strewn everywhere – in the ditches, under the vines, in the broken farmhouses. More than fifty machine-guns were picked up on the Brigade front. One hundred and twenty-five prisoners were taken, together with all the equipment of the battalion which held Mulazzano – half-track vehicles, telephones, wireless sets, mortars; and certain interesting documents which should not

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have been allowed so far forward. 2/6 Gurkhas had very few casualties, and the 2/8 battalion on the left lost under fifty men in all.

Once again, from the crest of Mulazzano, a river and a ridge confronted the victorious Gurkhas. This time the ridge lay five miles away across a wide watercourse, and it was less a ridge than a hump in the plain upon which the fortress of Sanarcangelo stood, with its walled town closely clustered about it. Between the Gurkhas on the high ground and the Marecchia river lay a low valley through which a metalled road led up to San Marino. Beyond this road three miles of broken land intervened. Then came the watercourse of the Maricchia, one thousand yards wide, with a number of small streams feeling their way through the gravel. Behind the river Sanarcangelo sat on its knoll, with the main highway from Rimini to Bologna skirting its southern walls. Beyond the highway, the plains of Northern Italy opened in a cape of low fruitful farmlands.

While the Gurkhas consolidated at Mulazzano, the two flanking divisions – Fourth British Division from the east and Fifty-Sixth London Division from the west – launched converging attacks over the difficult ground on the Gurkhas’ front. The enemy fought grimly, with great strength in anti-tank and self-propelled guns. 2nd Armoured Brigade went forward to punch a hole on to the plains. It was a black day; Queen’s Bays alone lost thirty tanks along the Marecchia valley. When the armour assault failed 43rd Brigade was ordered forward to reconnoitre the crossings and to join in the battle.

Contradictory information concerning the situation on the flanks raised doubts in Brigadier Barker’s mind. On the Brigade front itself the position remained confused. The enemy was standing at bay, and it seemed obvious that careful reconnaissance, plus a substantial artillery programme, would be necessary to eject him. Intelligence reports, however, insisted that only scattered rearguards held Sanarcangelo and its adjoining ridges, and that a quick attack would significantly affect the battle. At 1915 hours on September 22nd, 43rd Brigade was ordered to establish a bridgehead over the Marecchia that night.. Without reconnaissance or even detailed maps, battalion orders were completed half an hour before midnight. Thirty minutes later 2/8 Gurkhas moved in single file through 2/6 Gurkhas front, heading on a compass bearing for the line of the river. 2/10 Gurkhas set out immediately afterwards, and came up on the left. After an hour’s march through rain and mist, the Gurkhas reached the Marecchia and organized for the assault.

At 0300 hours both battalions crossed the river without opposition and began to close upon Sanarcangelo. A thousand yards beyond the river, on the line of a railway embankment, the leading companies of 2/8 Gurkhas were greeted with intense machine-gun fire from close at hand. The hillmen slipped through and around this opposition, struggled

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forward and seized Point 88 on Sanarcangelo Ridge. Battle flared up on all sides as the flanking British divisions went over to the assault. With dawn it became apparent that the intelligence summaries had painted a too rosy picture. The British line of attack was by no means up to Sanarcangelo Ridge, and the Gurkha thrust had created a narrow and dangerous salient in a strongly fortified position. Sanarcangelo itself was held in force, with self-propelled guns sited well forward to sweep its approaches. The Gurkhas on Point 88 were almost completely surrounded by German machine-gun nests. The wireless sets of the artillery Observation Officers had succumbed, and the only support came from three detached aircraft which appeared out of nowhere and as long as their petrol lasted attacked with audacity and success the self-propelled guns which were harassing the Gurkhas. The reinforcing companies lost heavily from shell fire on their way forward. The enemy threw in a counter-attack supported by tanks which forced the leading companies back to the railway embankment.

2/10 Gurkhas had no greater fortune. “D” Company was half-way up the hill when machine-gun fire opened from a series of nests along the crest. A large manor house was the centre of resistance, and this strongpoint only fell after two attacks. The enemy struck back with a company of infantry and seven tanks. Without anti-tank guns or PIATs, the Gurkhas were obliged to withdraw to the line of the embankment occupied by the survivors of 2/8 battalion. It was characteristic of the melee that while withdrawing 2/10 Gurkhas should have encountered panzers roving freely in the rear of their former positions; that on arrival on the line of the railway embankment they should find one of their companies engaged in hand-to-hand fighting with an enemy force which had struck from the flank; that battalion headquarters should have been attacked by a platoon of the enemy which had bobbed up out of the dark. Everything indicated that the enemy was so sure of his flanks that he could devote the full weight of his battle reserves to the ejection of the gallant few who had penetrated his defences.

Brigadier Barker was not prepared to accept defeat. On September 23rd 2/6 Gurkhas came forward to thicken the fighting line. After a number of attempts tanks managed to make their way across the Marecchia, and the artillery moved up to bring Sanarcangelo Ridge within range. In spite of heavy casualties the hillmen were full of fight, and that evening all three battalions of the Lorried Brigade drew together and surged forward. Tanks of 10th Hussars rolled among them as they struck with a momentum that would not be denied. The ridge was won and 2/6 Gurkhas broke into Sanarcangelo town. The castle garrison was mopped up, and partisans led by the local barber flocked to join the victors. Morning revealed that the Boche had taken his beating and had dropped back across the Rubicon,

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the next water barrier to the north. 18th Lorried Infantry Brigade and a brigade of Fifty-Sixth London Division passed through the Gurkhas, who came out to rest after eleven days of continuous fighting, in which when under fire for the first time they had borne themselves like veterans.

The battle had caused sad losses, of which not the least was the end of a much prized association with First British Armoured Division. To the Gurkhas the White Rhino flash remained a warm and living memory. for the Englishmen who wore it had been mentors, sponsors and great comrades from the time of the Brigade’s arrival in Italy. On October 1st, 43rd Brigade came under command of Fifty-Sixth London Division on the line of the Fiumicino, a stream which wanders down from the Apennine spurs on the left of Sanarcangelo. The cold autumnal rains were now continuous, the crossings of the Maricchia still insecure, and the forward roads impassable for large-scale troop movements. Plans for forcing the Fiumicino were postponed from day to day owing to the vagaries of storm-water.

The emphasis of Eighth Army’s attack tended to shift westwards, on to higher ground and firmer footing. Tenth Indian Division had arrived from Central Italy, and now came forward to relieve Fourth Indian Division. On October 7th the Gurkha Lorried Brigade passed under command of the newcomers and moved eight miles to the east to occupy a less water-logged sector.

This collection transcribed by Chris Gage
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