The Eighth Army on the Sangro

Under 20 November 1943 war chronologies note briefly that the British forces of General Bernard Montgomery “continue slow progress on the eastern side of Italy”. The phrase captures well the nature of the autumn fighting along the Adriatic: instead of a pursuit of a retreating enemy, it was a slog from river to river through rain and mud. On that day the Eighth Army took the first step in its largest operation of the autumn – a brigade of the British 78th Division waded across the Sangro river and seized a small bridgehead on its northern bank. Beyond it, on the ridges of the hills, lay the eastern part of the German Winter Line.

From the Trigno to the Sangro

After taking Termoli and beating off a German counter-attack in early October, the Eighth Army was stuck for several weeks on the Trigno river, held up by the autumn rains and destroyed roads. Its supplies came along long, washed-out roads from the ports the British had taken in September – Taranto and Bari – and every demolished bridge had to be replaced. The attack across the Trigno began on the night of 1–2 November; on 3 November the 78th Division took San Salvo, and General Traugott Herr’s German LXXVI Panzer Corps fell back to the Sangro. According to British studies, by 9 November the Eighth Army’s leading units were already on the lower reaches of the river, opposite Paglieta and the river mouth.

In the mountains on the left flank, General Dudley Russell’s 8th Indian Infantry Division was still clearing the ground between the Trigno and the Sangro. According to accounts of the fighting, on 10 November its 17th Brigade took Castiglione Messer Marino, where the Eighth Army fought during the Allied November offensive against the Winter Line, and in the following days Casalanguida and Perano. Between 14 and 18 November the division shifted to the right, to the lower Sangro, and its place in the mountains was taken by General Bernard Freyberg’s 2nd New Zealand Division, newly arrived from Egypt. The New Zealanders went into action on 17 November and, together with the Indians, secured Perano on the southern bank of the river.

On the far bank the Germans had two positions. The first, right by the water, is called in some studies the Sangro forward position, while others count it as part of the Bernhardt Line. The second, a few kilometres further on, ran along the Li Colli ridge through the fortified villages of Fossacesia, Santa Maria Imbaro and Mozzagrogna; this was regarded as the Adriatic end of the main defensive line. The Germans, however, had been weakened. Because General Mark Clark’s American Fifth Army was attacking the Mignano Gap, Field Marshal Albert Kesselring had withdrawn the 26th Panzer Division and the 29th Panzergrenadier Division from the Adriatic. On the lower Sangro Herr was left with only the 65th Infantry Division – a fresh unit without combat experience – and with the 1st Parachute Division in the mountains.

Montgomery’s plan

General Harold Alexander, commander of the 15th Army Group, drew up a three-step plan for November and December. First the Eighth Army was to strike: break through the front on the Adriatic, reach Pescara and from there, by the road through Avezzano, threaten Rome from the north-east. Then the Fifth Army was to advance in the Liri valley, and finally there would be a landing behind the German lines. Montgomery, as usual, was unwilling to attack without full preparation. According to historical studies, he massed some 690 guns in front of the Sangro, including more than 500 25-pounder gun-howitzers, and nearly 190 Sherman tanks.

The main attack was to be made by General Charles Allfrey’s V Corps: General Vyvyan Evelegh’s 78th Division, the 8th Indian Division, the New Zealanders and the 4th Armoured Brigade. General Miles Dempsey’s XIII Corps – the British 5th Division and the 1st Canadian Infantry Division – was to feign a thrust in the mountains, in the area of Alfedena and Castel di Sangro, straight towards Avezzano, so as to draw German reserves there. The main attack, with the river forded, had originally been set for 20 November. The weather decided otherwise.

The bridgehead of 20 November

From as early as 9 November patrols of the 78th Division had been crossing to the far bank at night, looking for fords and probing the German minefields. From 15 November, however, it began to rain heavily. The Sangro, a river fed from the Apennines, rose and fell within a few hours; fords that could be waded waist-deep one day were impassable the next. Instead of fording the river, the engineers had to build four bridges, one of them capable of taking tanks, and to reach the river itself along tracks laid across waterlogged meadows.

The main attack was postponed, but on 20 November the 36th Brigade of the 78th Division crossed the lower Sangro to cover the building of the crossings. The Germans counter-attacked and pushed a battalion of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders back to the southern bank, but the Royal West Kent and Buffs battalions held on on the flat plain at the foot of the Li Colli ridge, opposite Fossacesia. By 22 November five battalions were on the northern bank. On the night of 22–23 November Indian soldiers of the 3/8th Punjab Regiment and British troops of the 1/5th Battalion, the Essex Regiment, crossed the river further upstream, near the mouth of the Aventino, and attacked the hilltop villages.

Rain and flood

Then the river burst its banks again. According to British accounts, at dawn on 23 November the newly built bridges stood cut off in the middle of a flood almost a kilometre wide. Lorries sank in the mud, and ammunition and food were carried into the bridgehead on men’s backs and by mule. The air force, which was to support the attack, could not operate under the low cloud in the mountains. Montgomery put back the date of the attack from day to day and scaled down its objectives: instead of a march on Pescara, first the capture of the Li Colli ridge and Lanciano, and only then further steps. On 24 November Allfrey issued his final orders.

For the soldiers on the Sangro, the “slow progress” mentioned in the chronologies meant weeks in sodden uniforms, fire from German mortars on the high bank and the constant repair of roads. For the Germans every day gained was worth its weight in gold: further positions were being built beyond the Sangro and the Moro, and Hitler had accepted Kesselring’s concept of defending Italy far to the south of Rome – on 21 November the field marshal took command of the entire Italian front as commander of Army Group C.

Significance

The bridgehead of 20 November became the foundation of the Battle of the Sangro. The main attack began on the evening of 27 November with an artillery barrage and fighter-bomber strikes. On 28 November Gurkhas of the 17th Indian Brigade broke into Mozzagrogna, but a German counter-attack drove them out; the village was retaken by men of the Frontier Force Regiment. On 29 November the Irish Brigade, with tanks of the 4th Armoured Brigade, captured the Li Colli ridge and Santa Maria Imbaro, and the New Zealanders advanced on Castel Frentano. Fossacesia fell on 30 November and San Vito in the first days of December, and on 4 December the Eighth Army stood on the next river, the Moro. The German line on the Adriatic had been broken through, but not shattered.

The fighting that followed brought disappointment. Kesselring brought the 26th Panzer Division and the 90th Panzergrenadier Division to the Adriatic, and in December the 1st Canadian Division bled itself white in the fighting on the Moro and for Ortona, which was taken only at the end of December after a week of street fighting. The Eighth Army did not reach Pescara at all that winter. At the end of 1943 Montgomery left for Britain to prepare the invasion of France; command of the Eighth Army passed to General Oliver Leese.

The slow progress on the Adriatic was in fact a sign that Alexander’s plan – to take Rome quickly before the winter – had failed. The weight of the fighting shifted west, to the Gustav Line at Monte Cassino and to the Anzio beachhead. The front on the Sangro and the Moro froze for several months into winter trench warfare and moved again only in the summer of 1944, after the German defences in the Liri valley had been broken.