大象传媒

In the planning for what was hoped to be the last major Battle of the Italian Campaign,the breaking through of the Gothic Line and subsequent crossing of the River Po and the rolling up of the German Armies,by five Allied Armoured Divisions. The Canadian Corps of 1st Canadian Div and the 5th Cdn Armoured div supported by the British 21st Tank Brigade of 12th RTR;48th RTR
And the 145th R.A.C. were given a major part of this Battle and a very subtle deception plan was put in place.

The Canadian Corps would 鈥渄isappear鈥� 鈥� all the way down to Naples where much needed rest and recreation would take place along with a mock up of Amphibious landings to ensure that the Germans knew that we were going to land further up the coast for another Anzio type left hook.

The first plan was for all of the 8th Army plus the US 5th Army to break through near the Florence area on the centre of the Gothic Line defences. This however was changed by the 8th Army Commander Lt.Gen Oliver Leese and the Canadians , Poles and 5th Corps would break through near the Adriatic Coast whereas the US 5th Army would carry on with the British Xth Corps at Florence. In a post mortem of the battle ,it was found that this change of plan had cost us two 鈥済ood weather weeks鈥� as the monsoons had started in the middle of September as we were still struggling to capture the Coriano Ridge feature.

The deception plan went forward however and found a brigade of Canadians not attached to the main Cdn Corps appearing in the Florence area where Kesselring and his staff finally 鈥渒new鈥� where the Canadians were and reinforced that area from the east coast. Meanwhile we in the 21st Tank brigade were trundling northwards on the secondary roads to Siena making sure that everyone knew we were heading towards Florence. It is difficult to disguise 180 - 40 ton tanks moving through many villages ! This reinforced the German idea that the main blow would be struck at Florence.

Meanwhile the main Canadian Corps had advanced to Fabriano and we did an 180 turn from Siena back to Fabriano, then on to Jesi where we crossed the River Metauro on the 25th August beginning some of the fiercest fighting to take place in Italy before finally taking Rimini on the 23rd September. The opening to the Po River valley was however closed as the Germans 鈥� assisted by the heavy rainfalls had flooded the whole area making the five Armoured Divisons unable to proceed and so the long crawl towards to Alps continued. The horrendous casualties also continued with no reinforcements available as they were all scheduled for the NW Europe campaign. We continued to send more and more divisons to them thus weakening ourselves so that we had to strip AA units , RAF base Wallahs , Navy types to fill the ranks. By the time the Spring finally dried the earth once more 鈥� we were a sorry lot, and glad to see the end of the war in Italy at the back end of April 1945.

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