Ghosts of Ortona, page 46
CHAPTER NINE
The forward localities Alon M. Johnson, “The Last Patrol in Ortona,” The Forty-Niner 94 (1991), 35-38.
This is Matthew Halton Matthew Halton, CBC Radio broadcast, January 4, 1944, CBC Radio Archives.
The official civilian death toll Sources for the following multi-page narrative of civilian suffering are di Tullio, 1943; Iubatti, Testimonianze; and Giannetti et al., La Battaglia di Ortona, 148.
Code-named “Morning Glory” Zuehlke, Ortona, 226.
Precisely at 0800 hours Ibid., 229-30.
Comic relief was provided War Diary, 12th Canadian Armoured Regiment (Three Rivers Regiment), December 27, 1943. RG24, vol. 18206 (1943/11 to 1944/04).
I think before leaving Ortona James Riley Stone: My Army Recollections (Reel 1, Side 2). Interview by William Thackray, May 13, 20, and June 3, 10 and 17, 1980. University of Victoria Canadian Military Oral History Collection, Reginald H. Roy Collection.
A. Staples, Letter to Reginald Roy Seaforth Highlanders of Canada Archives. Box 998.135.118.
The tragic consequences “Italian Civilians,” 1 Can Div Intelligence Report, 9 Jan 44. In appendices to TRR War Diary, RG24 vol.18206. See also Cavasin, “Hai Visto i Canadesi,” 72.
The railway yards were crowded The source for this paragraph and the next is di Tullio, 1943, 49-52.
Meanwhile the Germans Di Luzio, Ortona Guerra e Dopoguerra, 54-5.
In the air it feels Ibid., 56-7.
A. Staples, letter to Reginald Roy Seaforth Highlanders of Canada Archives. Box 998.135.118.
It was the last day of 1943 Johnson, Action With the Seaforths, 225-6.
This is a gray morning Iubatti, Testimonianze, 83-4.
1 The time period and numbers of dead were specified in the Italian Presidential decree of June 16, 1959 that conferred on Ortona the Gold Medal for Civilian Valour for its suffering during the war. See also Zuehlke, Ortona, 375.
2 Di Tullio, 1943, 80. The man was actually a former Italian soldier who had acquired the sweaters in trades with British prisoners whom he had guarded at a POW camp.
3 Denis must have been picturing San Tommaso, because Santa Maria delle Grazie (the church in Piazza San Francesco/Dead Horse Square) did not have a dome. Also, the crushed body could not have been at San Tommaso. There are multiple testimonies from Seaforth veterans locating the body near where they fought in Dead Horse Square; it was not the Seaforths but the Edmontons who fought in front of San Tommaso; and during the battle, the square in front of San Tommaso was impassable to Canadian tanks.
4 In 1998, political scientist Piero Ignazi surveyed AN members who attended the party’s pivotal congress of that year. He found that 61% agreed that “fascism was overall a good regime.” As for the party’s electoral appeal, AN voters were disproportionately male (55%) and young (50% under the age of 40). The AN had a slight edge of support among students, entrepreneurs, and the self employed. Its regional strengths were in Rome and in the Mezzogiorno, Italy’s historically underdeveloped south (which includes Ortona’s region of Abruzzo). While most political analysts considered the AN to be “far-right,” its ideology was not as xenophobic as most European parties with that label. Ignazi, Extreme Right Parties in Western Europe, 50-2. See also Griffin, “The ‘Post-Fascism’ of the Alleanza Nazionale”; Griffin, Fascism, 103-5; and Ginsborg, Italy and its Discontents, 288-300.
In 2009, the AN dissolved and merged with Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right Il Popolo della Libertà (People of Freedom). In 2012, a number of former AN leaders broke away from Berlusconi’s party and founded Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy), a new party that positioned itself as a continuation of the MSI and AN political tradition. The FdI showed that alignment very clearly by adopting the old MSI and AN tricolour flame as its symbol. One of the FdI founders, Giorgia Meloni, had started her political career in the MSI youth wing in Rome. In Italy’s 2022 national election, the FdI won a plurality of seats and Meloni became Italy’s prime minister. For a thorough English-language history of Italy’s post-WWII far-right politics, including the evolution of the MSI into the AN and the current FdI, see Broder, Mussolini’s Grandchildren.
5 In my fieldnotes, I recorded that Tommaso’s father was a railway worker. I don’t have a note of it, but I remember Tommaso telling me that he came from a fishing family. It’s possible that he was referring to earlier generations of his family, but it wouldn’t be unusual if his father made a living from both fishing and wage labour at different times in his life. Shortly after rejecting the Fascist Party and being fired, Tommaso’s father died, and the family was left destitute.
6 The Italian word paese can mean either country or hometown. When used with reference to one’s hometown, as Tommaso did here, it evokes a deep emotional sense of rootedness and belonging.
7 In Italy’s streamed public school system, the liceo classico is the most prestigious, with a curriculum that emphasizes the humanities and the study of ancient languages and literature.
8 Some Ortonesi accounts mention that there were “Salò republicans” fighting alongside the Germans in Ortona. These would have been soldiers of the Italian Social Republic. As they were integrated with the German 1st Parachute Division, they may well have belonged to Fascist Italy’s “most ferociously committed and destructive fighting force,” the Folgore Parachute Division, most of whose members remained loyal to Mussolini and Nazi Germany after the armistice (see Morgan, The Fall of Mussolini, 46).
9 Giannetti et al., La Battaglia di Ortona, 147. Doctor Bernabeo dates this incident on December 24, not Christmas Day as Stefano Durante recalled. It isn’t clear from Bernabeo’s account if he was actually present in the hospital at the time. He may have written the story based on what he heard later from his nursing colleagues.
10 Ibid., 148. Bernabeo dates this December 26. The War Diary of the Three Rivers Tank Regiment observes it happening at 11:00 on December 27.
11 Adriano believed that the Canadians were going to carpet bomb Ortona on December 28 if the Germans had not retreated. I only noticed this detail while I was writing this book, and Adriano has since passed away, so unfortunately there’s no chance to ask him more about it. (At the time, I thought he meant that the Germans were going to carpet bomb.) In my three months in Ortona, I never heard such a thing from anyone else. However, in his graphic history, Saverio di Tullio describes the threat that was supposedly made on Christmas Day: “With the outcome of the battle still uncertain, the Allies warn civilians and Germans [via an airdrop of leaflets] that a carpet bombardment of the city will be carried out at 10:00 on 28 December” (di Tullio, 1943, 95). No source for this is given by di Tullio, but in a published collection of local testimonies, there’s a story by Alberto Giuliani who claims that a Canadian soldier told him on December 28 that this is what they had planned to do. Giuliani cites another source that says, “On December 25, two reconnaissance planes dropped leaflets in which the British warned the Germans and the civilian population to evacuate the city by 10 am on December 28” (Università Frentana, Affidandosi alla Memoria, 49). Returning to Adriano’s belief, I notice that he didn’t mention this alleged threat of carpet bombing in his published memoir.
In the Canadian records that I’ve studied, there’s no mention of any such plan. On the contrary, on the evening of December 27, Brigadier Bert Hoffmeister gave orders for the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, which had been held in reserve, to move forward the next morning into Ortona, take over the attack from the exhausted Edmontons and Seaforths, and try to push the Germans out of the castle area and the cemetery (Zuehlke, Ortona, 345). On the morning of December 28, PPCLI troops were already advancing to these positions when reports began coming in that the Germans had left. Indeed, it was probably PPCLI troops who met Tonino and Uncle Guido at the cemetery church.
In any case, it’s understandable if some Ortonesi feared imminent destruction by Allied bombardment. Everyone knew what had happened to Pescara. On August 31, 1943—while Italy was still officially at war with the Allies, though secret negotiations for an armistice were underway—Allied bombers attacked the city, levelling much of its centre and killing more than 2,000 civilians. On September 14, six days after the armistice, Allied bombers returned. Many residents initially cheered at the sight of them, believing they signalled the start of an Allied invasion that would free them from the Germans. In reality, the aim was to destroy more of Pescara’s infrastructure, denying its use to the Germans; but in hitting the train station at a busy hour, the bombers killed hundreds more civilians (Serafini, Danni di Guerra, 22). Later, during the Eighth Army’s November–December offensive up the Adriatic coast, Allied fighter-bombers flew “hundreds of sorties” in support. Six towns within twenty kilometres of Ortona were heavily bombed. According to the British official history, “Ortona was spared because of a hope that it would fall quickly and be useful as a rest-centre for troops during the coming winter, and as a port” (Molony et al., The Mediterranean and Middle East, 509).
12 According to the website of the German War Graves Commission: “In 1959 and 1960, the reburiers of the Volksbund [the Commission] recovered 20,076 bodies from countless smaller cemeteries and scattered field graves and interred them in Cassino.” https://kriegsgraeberstaetten.volksbund.de/en/friedhof/cassino, accessed May 6, 2025.
CHAPTER TEN
[T]here is within Grossman, On Killing, 4.
Those who would not fire Ibid., 3-4.
Canadian soldiers normally fired Engen, Canadians Under Fire, 139.
…make sure of it – wait Canadian Army Training Memorandum No. 38 (May 1944) quoted in Engen, “S.L.A. Marshall and the Ratio of Fire,” 45.
Immediately following the act Grossman, On Combat, 167.
In the air environment Grossman, On Killing, 110. See also Dyer, War, 57.
At mid-range distance Grossman, On Killing, 111.
When it comes to killing Ibid., 114-16.
At close range the resistance Ibid., 118.
Even harder is to kill Ibid., 122, 129-30.
Regardless of the distance Ibid., 112, 158.
Most soldiers do not ‘kill’ Ibid., 92.
In his later book Grossman, On Combat, 167-8.
…hatred and animosity toward the enemy Engen, Strangers in Arms, 94.
“Lili Marleen” had been banned Evans, The Third Reich at War, 575-6.
…genuinely a struggle Granatstein, The Last Good War, viii.
…a necessary war against evil Cook, The Fight For History, 434.
Seaforth veteran Bill Worton CBC, “Return to Ortona.” 25 mins. February 1, 1999.
Soldiers don’t make war “Former Enemies Reconcile: Battle of Ortona Vets Meet for Christmas Feast,” Kingston Whig-Standard, December 26, 1998, 18.
On learning that the Germans Rosie DiManno, “Old enemies make peace at last. Canadian, German veterans sit down together for Christmas dinner,” Toronto Star, December 26, 1998, p.A3.
It was just like in a boxing CBC, “Return to Ortona.” 25 mins. February 1, 1999.
And yet there are those Levi, The Drowned and the Saved, 91. Levi described his arrest in Aosta in The Periodic Table, 127-38. His memoir of Auschwitz, If This is a Man, begins with his arrival in Fossoli.
[T]he war against the evils Griffiths, Dare to be True, 142.
My father’s news Mowat, And No Birds Sang, 7.
Dark gore was still Ibid., 303.
Then Mowat found a Canadian Ibid., 303-4, 306.
Consider the following definitions Leydesdorff et al., “Introduction: Trauma and Life Stories,” 1; Neimeyer et al., “Mourning and Meaning,” 240; Hunt, Memory, War and Trauma, 7.
Writing in 2009, Brett Litz Litz et al., “Moral Injury and Moral Repair,” 700, 702-4.
A moral injury may Molendijk, Moral Injury, 79.
The stories of Bob Ibid., 74-5.
The unsettled, self-contradictory Ibid., 75.
[M]any societies used to have rituals Ibid., 162, quoting B.J. Verkamp, The Moral Treatment of Returning Warriors in Early Medieval and Modern Times (Scranton: University of Scranton Press, 1993).
These traditions share Ibid., 162-3.
Importantly, what is absent Ibid., 161.
Finally, Molendijk found that Ibid., 163-4.
1 Durnford quoted in Roy, The Seaforth Highlanders, 130 note 32. In The Generals, Granatstein observes that “Vokes was a tough-talking officer” known for his “constant and colourful cursing and womanizing” (p.132). He adds, “soldiers who admired these traits thought highly of him” (p.265). Vokes’ remark about scalping is quoted in Dancocks, The D-Day Dodgers, 28.
2 Engen, “Killing For Their Country,” 125. Basically, the concern about Marshall’s work is that he left no documentation of how he came up with his statistical data: “there is only Marshall’s word that his claims regarding the ratio of fire were supported by the empirical evidence of his interviews.” Engen’s own research on Canadian rates of fire in World War II casts further doubt on Marshall’s findings. See Engen, Canadians Under Fire, and Grossman’s response, “S.L.A. Marshall Revisited …?”
3 Looking back, I think I became overly cautious; there were sensitive ways I could have asked the veterans for their thoughts about the war’s moral purpose, and I could have asked about that near the end of each interview after I’d given them plenty of neutral space to talk.
4 War Diary, Seaforth Highlanders of Canada, December 26, 1943. Library and Archives Canada. RG 24, vol.15256 (1943/12 to 1944/07). Granted, their youth may have contributed to the fact that they were captured—or killed. The British army war photographer Bill McConville took close-up shots of at least two dead German paratroopers in Ortona, both of whom appear to be teenagers. (Those images are in the archives of the Imperial War Museum.) The paratrooper shown on the title page of this chapter, photographed by Canadian army photographer Terry Rowe, looks similarly young, despite holding the rank of corporal. Of course, this focus on youthful subjects may also reflect selection bias on the part of the photographers.
5 Kesselring was tried and convicted in Venice in 1947. Initially sentenced to death by firing squad, his sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment. In 1952, he was released on compassionate grounds due to ill health. The trial summary is available at: https://www.worldcourts.com/imt/eng/decisions/1947.05.06_United_Kingdom_v_Kesselring.pdf. The British War Crimes Section report is available at: https://phdn.org/archives/www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/partisans1.htm.
A major recent initiative to document German war crimes in Italy is the project, “The German Massacres in Occupied Italy (1943-1945)” led by historian Dr. Carlo Gentile at the University of Cologne. It began work in 2019 with support from the German–Italian Future Fund—a bilateral initiative created by the governments of Germany and Italy to create a “shared culture of remembrance” with regard to Nazi and Fascist crimes. The project’s findings are published at: https://www.ns-taeter-italien.org/en/. That site includes a page specifically on the German 1st Parachute Division: https://www.ns-taeter-italien.org/en/perpetrators/1fallschirm-jaeger-division. Descriptions of the Ardeatine, Civitella, and other major massacres can be found under the “Massacres” menu item. (All online sources accessed on June 28, 2025.)
6 The research project for the Atlas (Atlante delle Stragi Naziste e Fasciste in Italia) is directed by Dr. Paolo Pezzino, historian at the University of Pisa. For the list of documented crimes by the 1st Parachute Division, see: https://www.straginazifasciste.it/?page_id=297&ricerca=515. The Atlas is only available in Italian, but an English-language account of the Pietransieri massacre can be found at: https://www.ns-taeter-italien.org/en/massacres/pietransieri.
The Canadian Army’s official history does not mention the Pietransieri massacre—the Canadians were probably unaware of it—but it does describe what the West Nova Scotia and Van Doos soldiers saw of the paratroopers’ scorched earth tactics in villages throughout the valley: “With typical thoroughness the Germans had seized all food stocks and cattle, evicted the unfortunate inhabitants and then demolished and burned their homes…In all, ten villages were deliberately and systematically destroyed, with no house left standing. The enemy had spared little thought for the peasantry, who now homeless were trekking, some with carts and mules, into the brigade’s forward areas, blocking the roads and bringing with them the problem of their care and transportation to the rear areas.…They brought pathetic stories of ruthless destruction and of women being held as hostages because their menfolk refused to work on the German defences” (Nicholson, Official History, 280-3).
7 The Francavilla massacre is documented at https://www.straginazifasciste.it/?page_id=38&id_strage=2583. One of the researchers was Ortona historian Andrea di Marco.
8 Stories of four of the German veterans who were on the Reconciliation trip can also be found in two history books—but these are limited to their wartime experiences and don’t mention the Dinner of Reconciliation nor their ways of remembering more generally. Fritz Illi, Willy Fretz, and Carl Bayerlein contributed stories to Zuehlke’s Ortona. Joseph Klein makes a few appearances (as Jupp Klein) in Holland’s The Savage Storm.
9 Mowat, And No Birds Sang, 303-6. In My Father’s Son—a later memoir reflecting on his wartime service—Mowat credited his commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Bert Kennedy, with possibly saving his life. In early January 1944, recognizing the danger posed by Mowat’s deteriorating mental state, Kennedy pulled him “out of the line” and got him assigned to brigade headquarters as a junior liaison officer. “Not to mince matters,” Mowat recalled, “I was saved.” With deliberate understatement, he described his mental condition as “burn out,” invoking his father’s euphemistic term for World War I comrades so psychologically broken they effectively committed suicide. As his father put it, “They didn’t even know what was the matter with them and there wasn’t anybody to tell them because we were all too inexperienced to see” (Mowat, My Father’s Son, 33-8).
