Saturday, May 1, 2021

BREAKTHROUGH!

 


BREAKTHROUGH INTO THE VALLEY OF THE PO

April – June 1945

Excerpted from
by John Bascom


         

April in the Apennines arrived to much improved spring weather and great anticipation among Allied troops.  March had been marked by the usual patrols, skirmishes and shelling.  It had been a month of holding the line and preparation.  My father had been hospitalized in Livorno for much of the time, but returned to his unit in April.

The officers of the Allied Armies were busy planning the great offensive that would, once and for all, crush the Germans in Italy.  Back in Germany proper, American forces had breached the Rhine River at Remagen, and a metaphorical floodgate had opened allowing the Allies to pour into central Germany.  The Russians were on the doorstep to the east.  German resistance was crumbling; hundreds of thousands of prisoners had been taken, Hitler was hiding underground in Berlin, and Nazi officials were already fleeing the country.  Many had surrendered or committed suicide.  The end was in sight.

Conditions and morale among the German officers and men continuing to resist in Italy must have been abysmal.  Still, the Gothic Line stood strong, stretching across the northern Apennines from coast to coast in a two-hundred-mile line from the Ligurian Sea in the Mediterranean west to Rimini on the Adriatic.  Their line was opposed along it’s entire length by the Allies, over one million men strong.  Better equipped and motivated, our forces were ready for the great and final assault to begin.

British forces along the Adriatic and the American 92nd on the west coast began attacks northward in early April.  In addition to pushing the Germans off the line in those areas, it was designed to pressure them into pulling troops from, or at the very least prevent them from reinforcing their forces in the center of the line south of Bologna.  It was there, in the center, that General Clark had planned the final, killing blow.  Both coastal attacks met with good results and fulfilled their objective of pinning the Germans down there.

The Red Bull and other divisions of II Corps continued to be positioned between Florence and Bologna astride north-running Route 65 and its parallel byways.  On April 14, with weather fair and troops ready, the great assault commenced.  It was marked by an earth-shaking roar of artillery, followed by air attacks from thousands of bombers dumping countless tons of high explosive and antipersonnel munitions.  Then came the screaming, swooping fighter planes firing machineguns and rockets.  The massive explosions continued throughout the day.

The air and artillery attacks were followed by a full-force assault of infantry.  The squad and platoon-sized probes a hill or village at a time were a thing of the past.  With improved roads, tanks accompanied our foot soldiers.  Artillery and air continued to prepare their advance.  Once again, the 135th Regiment found itself positioned south of and ready to attack Mount Belmonte one last time.  They moved out on command to take the eastern flanks and hills adjacent to the mountain.


Spring attack to break the Gothic Line.  Position and planned path of the 34th Division shown right center.  Mount Belmonte is shown immediately above and slightly left of the Division’s starting position

On the eastern Adriatic Coast, the British had achieved a breakthrough and surged across the Gothic Line defenses into the Po Valley.  Swinging westward, they threated to continue north behind German lines, trapping the entire German army between them and the Americans charging northward. 

At first German resistance to the advance of the 135th Regiment was as fierce and stubborn as before.  Casualties ran high on both sides.  But the enemy could not negate the months of Allied preparation, stockpiling ammunition, and our resolve to end things once and for all.  And above all, the devastating air and artillery bombardments.  According to military historians Jay Roth and Judith Nichols, German prisoners

“…revealed the ordeal that had been theirs during two terrible days of air and artillery preparation.  Many were still trembling when captured: others stared with vacant eyes, numbed and speechless.  Still others told of the hell they had endured.”

 

Realizing their precarious position, the German defenses in the Apennines began to collapse.  The Red Bull Division and its sister II Corps units surged north, taking objective after objective.  The previously impregnable Mount Belmonte was quickly overwhelmed.  German units, all hopes of successfully resisting dashed, began a scrambling retreat out of the Apennines and across the Po River, which defined the southern edge of the Po Valley.  Their aim was to form a secondary defensive line north of the Po River and then retreat further north in an orderly fashion until the refuge of the Alps could be achieved.

Bologna is an ancient and historic city located about sixty miles north of Tuscan Florence.  It was the prize the Red Bull Division struggled to attain in the previous eight, bloody and frustrating months.  Bologna has a rich Renaissance heritage and hosts many historic and architecturally important sites.  


A teaming city—one of Italy’s largest—it is home to over a million people.  The Piazza Maggiore is the sprawling square with lovely arched colonnades and medieval buildings of classic beauty.  There sits the Fountain of Neptune and the Basilica di San Petronio.  Graceful towers adorn the city including one that is leaning, reminiscent of the famous tower in coastal Pisa.  Bologna boasts the world’s oldest university, the 1088 AD University of Bologna.

But the beauty and historical significance were not the reasons it was coveted by both the Allies and Germans.  It sits squarely in the west – east center of the entrance to the Po Valley, directly in the middle of the Nazi’s defensive forces.  Immediately to the city’s north lies the west – east oriented Po River, a perfect defensive barrier for the enemy’s retreating armies.  Taking Bologna and the river were the keys to shattering German lines and opening the Po Valley to attack by our troops, tanks and aircraft.

As the grand assault in the quest for Bologna began in mid-April, the 135th Regiment deployed on the right flank of II Corps.  While resistance as always was brisk, they quickly took their objectives around Mount Belmonte and pushed forward east of and finally astride Route 65.  After several days of fighting the battered and retreating Germans, the 135th entered Bologna, their original target at the outset of the Gothic Line campaign back in September 1944.  They and a sister Polish unit fighting with the Allies were the first to gain the prize.  It had taken less than a week to advance the final twelve miles to the city, something that had not been accomplished in months of earlier fighting.  The German’s had already withdrawn north across the Po River in an attempt to establish their next line of defense as planned.  The mission of the 135th was to secure the city and remove any mines or booby traps left by the enemy.  Other Allied units along the entire length of the Gothic Line were making good progress as well.

The Red Bull’s stay in Bologna would be short lived.  After securing the city, its defense was handed over to other units.  The Division had bigger fish to fry. 

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Next Installment: The Allies defeat the Nazis in a frantic series of battles ranging across the Po Valley and into the far corners of Northern Italy, while our soldier comes closer to death than ever before 

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