Bronte, Operation Husky - observations of a Canadian Soldier.
(saving my work as I go, pics later)
Bronte was our next objective. During our advance the roads were filled with troops and vehicles. Sometimes German fighters got through with bombs attached to their wings.They strafed us and let go of the bombs.Unfortunately, some of those missiles landed in a ravine where troops had scrambled for shelter. What a mess, smashed bodies and the wounded filled that gully. Chaos reigned. One English major on top of the ravine was hysterical; he kept shouting orders and running up and down. He even shouted orders down to me while I was tending a man who had an artery severed and needed all my attention. I shouted back for him to stop his damned yammering and give me a hand. He paid no attention and kept up his nervous behavior. He grabbed one man who was hurrying by and the man knocked him down. I was far too busy to see what happened to him afterwards.
Those bastards came in again, strafing and bombing. At the top of this ravine a signal truck, with two men inside, was hit and burning. The cries of the men trapped inside were very nerve-wracking; they burned to death inside that truck. We were unable to get anywhere near the vehicle and they could not open the doors. The cries and the smell of their burning flesh left me with a long memory of war and death. Here was another odour to add to the smells of war!
The Bronte approaches were heavily mined. With a brilliant manoeuvre under the direction of our young Brigadier Simonds, the minefield was breached. He had the engineers put a wide roll of white tape on their backs, and then had them probe for mines on foot during the night. The tanks followed the tape and caught the Germans flat-footed.
When we caught up with the tanks, the enemy's dead lay everywhere. One group of very young soldiers of the Herman Goering Division had been caught in the open and the flame-throwers made short work of them. This group of twelve lay charred and already rotting when I first saw them - their intestines, flesh, genitals and other body parts lay strewn about as if it were the floor of an abbatoir. That was the first time I nearly spewed. One had to be upwind to view this macabre scene, as the stench was overpowering, sickening. And yes, we used flame-throwers on the enemy just as they did on us. I recall a truckload of Carleton and York(3rd Brigade) with us at Catenanuova who had been burnt by the enemy. This too had been a sorry sight; their flesh was struck to the metal of that lorry.
At Bronte I had occasion to come across a dead German officer, who was greatly bloated. He had a terrible wound in his leg, above which was a tourniquet. There was also a wound at the side of his head. Apparently he had shot himself to avoid capture. I had searched for his pistol but others had apparently beaten me to it.
Even in his state one could see he had been a fine looking man, tall, blond and physically fit, a member of the not-to-be master race. As I looked at the body my thoughts wandered, what were the circumstances of his death? Did he have a wife and children? Would I be alone as he was when my time came?
Alone with the dead in this maze of hills as wisps of white clouds passed the peaks, I wondered if these were the spirits of the dead, that lay scattered throughout these little valleys.
It was very quiet; I sat down , lit cigarette and stared at the body, then at the cigarette. One was an organized space(form), the other had been a special organized space , but was no longer special, but simply a form, not unlike the tobacco.
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