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.

Band of Brothers is easily the most well known show on WW2. I try not to do a lot on BoB because it is covered so much, but for small engagements this is probably the most well known of them all. I thought it would be fun to test what it would look like animated.

Thirty feet from a Panther: the true story of Smokey Smith 22 October 1944. The Savio River, Italy. Rain had raised the river six feet. No tanks or anti-tank guns could get across to the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada on the far bank. Then three Panthers, two self-propelled guns and about thirty infantry came down the road at them. Pte Ernest "Smokey" Smith knocked out a Panther with a PIAT at thirty feet, then held the road with a Tommy gun. He became the only Canadian private awarded the Victoria Cross in the Second World War. Every unit on this map is placed from the war diaries and company reports of the men who were there. Tomorrow, 82 years to the day, we release the full video: six days, and the crossing of the Savio. #SmokeySmith #VictoriaCross #SeaforthHighlanders #CanadianHistory #WW2 #ItalianCampaign #LestWeForget – at Casselman, Ontario

If you want to read our very detailed post on the Battle of the Savio River check it out here: patreon.com/Project1944/post…

By the autumn of 1944 the 1st Canadian Infantry Division had been fighting its way up Italy for over a year. Operation Olive, the battle for the Gothic Line, had cost the Division some 2,511 casualties, 626 of them fatal. More than 1,000 others had been evacuated sick, around 400 of them from battle exhaustion. After the capture of Rimini on 21 September, the Division went into Eighth Army reserve to rest and absorb its replacements. The country ahead was the Romagna, the flat, thickly farmed southern edge of the Po Valley. It was crossed by river after river running down from the Apennines to the Adriatic, each held between high dikes. In dry weather they were modest streams. Then the rain came. On 28 September the Fiumicino rose within hours from a shallow stream to a muddy torrent 30 feet wide. One German commander described his last troops’ withdrawal across it as “something indescribable.” The rain went on through the first ten days of October, washing out bridges and cancelling one plan after another. The Canadians were also running short of men. When the Minister of National Defence, J. L. Ralston, visited the front, he was told that all general-duty infantry reinforcements would be used up by about 10 October. On the other side of the line, Kesselring wanted to fall back behind the Po. Hitler refused, and on 5 October ordered that upper Italy be held “not only until late Autumn, but indefinitely.” On 18 October, Kesselring authorised a withdrawal on his own responsibility. The Germans would make their stand on the Savio. When the Canadians went back into the line, Lt-Gen. Burns recorded his divisional commanders’ fear that they were drifting into another winter like the last one, “where the hard fighting and numerous casualties resulted in no great gain.” This is the first of five posts on the Crossing of the Savio, 21–24 October 1944. The full piece and story map are linked in the comments.

This is the action that Pte Ernest 'Smokey' Smith earned the Victoria Cross. Our team painstakingly mapped this fight from the War Diaries. Every position, platoon, company, machine gun post all comes back to an original defensive overprint, aerial photo or war diary entry. But this is a 30 second clip of a much larger battle. The Battle for the Savio River was a Brigade level attack spanning across 9 days. The Italian campaign is often overlooked, living under the shadow of DDay, Market Garden and the Battle of the Bulge. But many of these soldiers had been fighting since 1943 and the invasion of Sicily. Up through places like Ortona, Cassino, the Liri Valley. If you want to watch the full video, check the comments.