Tuesday, May 11, 2021

Victory in the Po Valley

 

The Battle of the Po

excerpted from One Soldier's Story

by John Bascom


(After nine months of grueling mountain fighting, the Allies break the Gothic Line and the 34th Red Bull Division seizes the key Po Valley city of Bologna, the linchpin in the Nazi's defenses in Northern Italy.  All that remains is to finish them off)

In late April, 1945 the Red Bull Division had finally cracked the Apennine Mountain Gothic Line, driven the Nazi's out of the mountains and taken the strategic city of Bologna.  Now the 34th had bigger fish to fry.

What occurred in the ensuing week was one of the most daring, chaotic and successful moves in military annals.  Rather than the classic pause to regroup and reconnoiter, General Clark grasped the opportunity to exploit the Germans’ panic and finish them once and for all.  Instead of locating and attacking enemy units one at a time, he resolved to disorient them and prevent their retreat into the Alps by swiftly enveloping them in the Po Valley.  There, all the advantages lay with us.  Unlike the commanding and intimidating Apennines, the Po was relatively open, rolling and crisscrossed by good roads.  The terrain was suitable for our superiority in tanks and equipment to move swiftly.  The weather there was more accommodating to substantial friendly air forces.  The Germans had essentially no air capability left.  Still, abandoning our classic military defensive formations in pursuit of an elusive brass ring was a risky strategy.  It left many of our units exposed to assaults should the German’s be able to regroup and reorganize.  General Clark accepted the risk.

Allied units were ordered to race forward, bypassing areas of light resistance in a blitz of our own designed to disrupt and block the retreat of the enemy.  The 135th Regiment was ordered to attack west along Highway 9 that ran parallel to the northern face of the Apennine Range.  Germans were pouring from the mountains in an attempt to cross the Po River and establish new defenses. 

The Regiment was ordered to capture objectives along Highway 9, initially taking and clearing Modena, then pushing on into Parma, about sixty miles west of Bologna.  Germans continued to drift out of the mountains and into the towns all along the highway, requiring brisk fighting to drive them out.  A history of Company L describes it thus:

“The Po Valley was aflame…rolls of powder smoke belching from thousands of weapons darkened the sky on that otherwise bright day.  The resistance was sharp all along the way…”

The 135th continued to fight west along Highway 9, achieving their assigned objective of Piacenza, a strategic town on the Po River over a hundred miles west of Bologna.  It had taken eight bloody months to advance from Florence to the approaches of Mount Belmonte.  In less than two weeks the 135th had moved over a hundred-ten miles through enemy territory in late April.  In the afternoon of April 26th, Company L was ordered to Caorso, some ten miles from Piacenza.  It had been reported to be a German stronghold.  The Company was advised by friendly civilians that the Germans had moved out.  Our men proceeded cautiously into the town square where a crowd of civilians including the mayor greeted them.  Suddenly, enemy burp guns opened up.  The locals dashed wildly for safety while Company L sought cover and returned fire with BARs, machineguns and small arms.  It became all too obvious that German elements remained.  Outnumbered, the men of Company L sought refuge wherever they could.  There were casualties and a few of our soldiers were taken captive.  German troops, retreating from the mountains, continued to pour into the village.  Night fell and enemy tanks appeared.  The Americans were by then scattered, and in the darkness, it was difficult to tell friend from foe.  The Germans hurled hand grenades and directed tank rounds into the buildings where our forces, increasingly outmanned, were hunkered down.  Eventually an estimated six thousand Germans had arrived, a considerable force easily outnumbering the entire nearby 3rd Battalion, not to mention little Company L.

American reinforcements soon arrived, however, and the tide turned.  Most of the Germans escaped north across the Po, but many were killed in Caorso and seven hundred were captured.  Our casualties, while much lighter, were still a painful reminder of the unpredictable fortunes of war.

By April 27th, only two weeks after the breakout over Mount Belmonte had begun, the battle for Highway 9 and the Po River south of the Apennines had been won.  A total of three German divisions had been captured.  Many others had escaped north across the river and were fleeing toward the Alps.  The next day, on April 28, the entire Red Bull Division was ordered to move north across the Po River to aid in sealing the Alpine passes.  Every conceivable vehicle was pressed into service.  Soldiers clung to the hoods, fenders and bumpers of trucks.  The 135th sped back to Modena then north, breaching the Po River on a hastily made pontoon bridge.  



Orders were changed mid-route, and the unit raced toward Brescia, fifty miles north of Caorso where they had been ambushed.  Upon arrival, orders were almost immediately issued to proceed to Milan, the largest industrial and commercial center in Italy.  News soon came that the Italian resistance had liberated the city, and captured then brutally killed Mussolini, the Fascist dictator and ally of Hitler who had led the nation to ruin.  His nude, battered body was infamously hung naked from a balcony in the city square, a final act of violent defiance.



Overall, our combined forces spread across the valley and sped along the well-developed road network in the Po.  The Germans in turn wheeled, dodged and raced with frantic zeal.  Their units fragmented.  Some were simply left behind to be mopped up later by the Allies.  Prisoners began to pour in, some finding and surrendering to American units on their own initiative.  Others continued futile resistance.  According to eye witnesses, it was an amazing spectacle, colorful and exciting.  The demeanor of the German prisoners was one of utter dejection, defeat and hopelessness.



With Milan pacified, the 135th was ordered to take and capture the German 75th Corps.  Upon making contact, that entire corps, tens of thousands of men, surrendered en masse to the Red Bull 34th Division.  In a twist of irony, the German 34th Division surrendered to my father’s division of the same name.  Our forces were given the massive task of rounding up and taking custody of the POWs.

It was about this time that my father experienced the most dangerous and terrifying encounter of his time in Italy.  A few small German units continued to resist.  They either had not gotten or refused to heed the orders to surrender.  My father and several fellow soldiers were manning an outpost set up in a small stone farmhouse on a little hilltop.  They were spotted by a rogue group of Germans, who immediately attacked their position.  A fierce fight followed.  With superior numbers, the enemy stormed the house and burst into the tiny interior, weapons firing.  Dad found himself in the same room with the German soldier who had knocked the door down and rushed in shooting.  My father instinctively fired his weapon, his BAR, from the hip in a reflexive act of self-preservation.  Both men shooting at each other, the German boy collapsed and died before Dad’s eyes.  My father was unscathed.  With the enemy surrendering and the war virtually over, he had come closer to death, saved only by chance, than at any other time during his combat.  My father was incapable of violent vengeance.  But in an odd way, it seems a fitting counterbalance to the tragic death of Woody, his young ward, also before his very eyes.  Fate has a way of evening scores.

Ultimately, we were able to get behind the retreating Germans in this fashion, and bring things to a whimpering end.  On May 2nd, the Germans signed a surrender of all forces in Italy, and the war there was over.  One observer reported

“…the final surrender was received by our troops with a strange calm almost amounting to complacency.  There was neither shouting nor cheering, no celebration was held.  Perhaps it was because the men had foreseen the inevitability of the enemy’s collapse.  Or perhaps our battle-weary soldiers were just too exhausted…”

It is estimated that between September, 1943 and April, 1945, 70,000 Allied and 150,000 German soldiers died in Italy.  The total number of Allied casualties including those wounded was about 320,000, and the German figure (excluding those involved in the final surrender) was over 330,000.

And so the Battle of the Po and all hostilities in Italy came to an end.

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Next: "COMING HOME", the conclusion of One Soldier's Story


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