Ellis

In the early hours of 22 October, C Company of the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada reached the church of Pieve Sestina, about 500 yards short of the main road north of Cesena. Including the tank hunters, Maj. Stewart Lynch had about 50 men. They had no tanks and no anti-tank guns, and the river behind them had risen six feet in five hours. Enemy tanks could be heard moving nearby. Sgt. K. P. Thompson laid a string of Hawkins grenades across the road at the junction beside the church and camouflaged them. Smith led his PIAT team across an open field under fire to a roadside ditch, then went back across the road with Pte. James Tennant for a second PIAT. First into the trap came a Volkswagen staff car, which passed between the mines. Behind it, a self-propelled gun struck one, lost a track and was finished off with PIAT bombs and grenades. Then came a Panther with infantry riding on its hull, sweeping the ditches with its machine guns. Tennant was hit. At 30 feet, in full view of the enemy, Smith fired. The Panther stopped and began backing away. About ten German infantrymen jumped off and charged him. Smith moved out into the road and killed four of them with his Tommy gun at point-blank range, and the rest fell back. Another tank opened fire and more infantry closed in. Gathering abandoned magazines from a ditch, Smith stood over his wounded friend until, in the words of his citation, the enemy “finally gave up and withdrew in disorder.” He then got Tennant to cover and medical help, and went back to his place by the road. “In the end there was just Jimmy and I, and then he got wounded so that left only me,” he said years later. “So I had to stay out there by myself while everybody else was in the church.” By 0600 the Germans had gone. Smith’s Victoria Cross was the only one ever awarded to a Seaforth, and the third and last won by a Canadian in Italy.

The rain that had covered the crossing now threatened to cut the bridgehead off. Gen. Vokes noted that the water gap widened from 45 feet to 300 feet in 24 hours. The engineers could offer no hope of getting supporting arms across for at least a day. At 0705 on the 22nd, Brigadier Bogert told his battalions to hold their positions. Daylight brought one piece of good luck. German machine-gunners on the riverbank, unaware of what had happened on their flank, walked back with their mess tins to the farmhouse kitchens that were now D Company’s headquarters. “This surprised and surprising breakfast line-up netted us 56 prisoners of war,” Bell-Irving wrote. By the end of the morning the battalion held some 150. The Germans still had tanks, and the Seaforths had almost no PIAT bombs left. At 1215 a tank and infantry drove A Company out of the buildings on the main road. The artillery observation officers, calling down fire from the guns east of the river, became the bridgehead’s strongest defence. Supplies crossed by assault boat and later by raft, and nearly 200 prisoners worked as porters and stretcher-bearers. Telephone lines laid across the river were carried away by floating haystacks. On the afternoon of the 23rd, Maj. R. Clark led a patrol back towards the main road. The covering 2-pounder jammed, and Clark was killed in the withdrawal. By 0300 on the 24th a floating bridge was open, and at dawn the Germans pulled back. Lt-Gen. McCreery wrote to Bogert that the battle had been “a great example of how determined, well trained infantry can destroy enemy tanks with their own weapons.” The four days cost 2nd Brigade and the West Nova Scotia Regiment 191 casualties, 33 of them fatal. The Germans had simply withdrawn to the next river. 📷The Marecchia River, seen overrunning its banks following heavy rain, is sweeping a Bailey Bridge downstream. Army Numerical 73, 41995. 📷Seaforth's with Stens, Enfields & a PIAT, in Bagnacavello, Senio River, Italy. From the Album (Scrapbook) of Major W.David Blackburn.