Hitler's Last Stand (2018) s04e05 Episode Script

1
(theme music bellows)
NARRATOR:
October 1944, northern Italy.
A Canadian Private from an
experimental Tank Hunter platoon
faces down a German Panther tank,
armed only with a PIAT.
He knows the best range to make
his shot is less than 20 yards.
It’s an absolutely terrifying ordeal.
You had to practically stand right up in
front of the tank in order to hit it.
- (rapid gunfire)
- (dramatic theme music continues)
NARRATOR: The soldier waits until the tank
is within ten yards
(tank rumbling)
before he launches.
(theme music bellows loudly)
On June 6th, 1944. Allied forces
finally land troops in Normandy
to open the Western Front.
(low mumbled foreign language)
NARRATOR:
But Nazi fanatics and die-hards
continue to fight ferociously
for survival.
- (rapid fire)
- (dramatic theme music bellows)
D-Day was a battle.
They still need to win the war.
- (theme music crescendos)
- (flames whoosh)
October 21st, 1944.
The Savio river, northern Italy.
Soldiers from the Seaforth Highlanders
of Canada wade warily through the water.
(distant gunfire)
As the Seaforths enter the river,
it's really dark,
it's raining really hard,
and the water levels of the Savio River
are beginning to rise rapidly.
NARRATOR:
Platoon Leader Lieutenant D.H. McKay
scans the far shore.
(soft thematic music plays)
More than the mud and cold current
make the crossing a challenge.
While under fire from the enemy,
he must also locate soldiers from
Princess Patricia’s Canadian
Light Infantry Regiment on the other side.
(distant gunfire)
The PPCLI have crossed before them.
They're being shelled
quite heavily and frankly
the Seaforths don't know if the
PPCLI have been overrun or not.
NARRATOR:
The Canadians had landed
in Italy more than a year earlier.
They started in Sicily, long before D-Day.
Sicily is the supposed soft underbelly
of Europe because Churchill, above all,
does not want to invade France
and Normandy at this particular time.
He doesn't think the
western Allies are ready for it,
and yet there's tremendous
pressure from Stalin and
the Soviets to draw away
pressure from the Eastern Front.
NARRATOR:
But the progress has been very slow.
The Germans incorporate
the Italian terrain
into their defense lines.
And they built bunkers,
barbed wire, minefield and so on.
And this makes it extremely
difficult for the Allies to
proceed from bottom
of the boot up to the north.
NARRATOR:
Despite the effort of American
and Commonwealth troops, the bitter
fighting means that 15 months later,
the Germans still occupy
a swath of northern Italy,
including its industrial heart.
By October 1944, the
Canadians who fight with
the British Eighth Army emerge
from the Apennine mountains.
The mountains have been such
a terrible barrier with river after river.
NARRATOR: From the western
edge of the Adriatic sea
ALEXANDRA: It looks as if they're just
finally going to be able to get
to flat ground and
actually make a run for Bologna.
NARRATOR:
But numerous rivers still cut across
the plain, and the
enemy remains determined.
In response to the Canadian
breakthrough the Germans know that
this is extremely dangerous
for the entire position in northern Italy.
So, they bring in reinforcements
to stop the Canadian advance.
NARRATOR:
To exploit the natural defenses,
they have withdrawn to
the west side of the Savio river.
(thematic music grows suspenseful)
(rapid gunfire)
The German ninth Panzergrenadier Regiment
defends a sector about five miles long,
along the Savio,
north of the city of Cesena.
The Commander of second Battalion,
Captain Ekkehard Maurer,
has been assigned here
as part of his officer training.
Captain Ekkehard Maurer is
only 25 years of age during this time.
He got posted into this thing
only a couple of days earlier.
He pursues a General Staff Officer corps.
And at this moment,
he's on a front-line posting,
which is rotational.
NARRATOR: Maurer knows
Canadians have crossed the Savio.
But he has no idea
how far they’ve advanced.
From the village of Pieve Sestina,
Maurer will dispatch
the heavily armored vehicles
of a Kampfgruppe towards
the river to intercept them.
(thematic music bellows)
(rapid gunfire)
Still under fire,
and despite the darkness,
Canadian Lieutenant McKay and his men
link up with the Princess Patricias.
The Seaforths must've been
pretty excited to connect.
That means that the
Canadians had a bridgehead.
They were holding out and the
Seaforths weren't going to be
alone in fighting against the Germans.
NARRATOR: The Princess Patricia’s
point out enemy positions
including six machine gun nests,
that had kept them pinned down.
SOLDIER:
Drake, hand over your guns.
NARRATOR:
They also volunteer to exchange weapons
with McKay’s men after the wet crossing.
They know that the Seaforths are going to
leapfrog over them to engage the Germans.
And to do that they need clean, dry guns.
- (solo gunshots ring out)
- (music turns dramatic)
Move out.
NARRATOR: Companies D and B must clear
the enemy within 500 yards of the river.
Germans have occupied the local
farmhouses and outbuildings
and protect each one with up
to three machine gun posts.
(rapid fire in distance)
Many remain concealed until
the Canadians step too close.
(rapid gunfire)
But the flashes of their guns
in the dark
allow the Seaforths to outflank them
(rapid gunfire)
and eliminate the
machine gun nests from behind.
(gunshots)
(music intensifies)
As company B and company D secure their
objectives on the west side of the Savio,
two more Seaforth Highlander
companies A and C arrive and
position themselves
to continue the advance.
Their mission is to cut off the
main north south road to Cesena
which runs parallel to the river.
This route is an important
transportation corridor for
the enemy and they
expect defenses to be heavy.
A platoon of Tank Hunters
is attached to C company.
Like so many of these things in war time,
the Canadian Tank Hunting
strategy came out of failure.
NARRATOR: Commanders reported
soldiers often panicked at just
the threat of enemy tanks.
And so it was very important
for commanding officers and
the soldiers themselves
to have strategies as
to how to attack these tanks.
NARRATOR:
Tank Hunters train to trap and destroy
all kinds of armored vehicles like
tanks and self-propelled guns.
They use only weapons
they can carry; anti-tank mines,
and Thompson sub-machine guns,
and the armor piercing rounds
of the Projector Infantry Anti-Tank;
the PIAT.
The strategy starts
with immobilizing the prey.
Tank hunters bury mines
across roads in front of
the armored advance.
When triggered, the
mines destroy the tank tracks
to stop it.
PIAT teams move in to fire bombs
straight into the tank’s hull.
The ideal range is just 20 yards.
Soldiers with Tommy guns
protect the PIAT operators
and take out any escaping tank crew.
After the Germans blew the bridges,
the rising Savio river means
the Canadians can’t bring
their own armor into the fight.
(thematic music plays)
These platoons are their best
chance against German tanks.
C company closes in on
the crossroads located beside
the parish church of Pieve Sestina.
With reports of enemy armor,
the Commander of the Seaforths
new tank hunting platoon,
Sergeant Keith Thompson,
must dispatch his teams.
He positions his men in ditches
on either side of the approach
and rushes into the road himself,
to bury the mines before
the German tanks arrive.
(tank engine roars)
(dramatic music crescendos)
NARRATOR: According to Canadian Tank
Hunter strategy, Sergeant Keith Thompson
must stop, or at least slow down,
the approaching enemy column.
(thematic music)
As a first step, he moves
to bury Hawkins grenades into the road
to cut off access to the intersection.
(music continues)
The Tank Hunters use the number 75
or Hawkins anti-tank grenade.
It was developed after Dunkirk for the use
of the British army and the Home Guard.
A Hawkins grenade is
a two pound explosive charge.
It's rectangular in shape
and kind of looks like a flask.
It can be buried like a mine,
it can be attached to something
like an explosive charge,
and it can even be thrown like a grenade.
NARRATOR:
Multiple Hawkins grenades can be strung
together for a more explosive result.
One grenade might not do the trick,
but you know that a string of
them will most likely disable
any sort of armored vehicle
that rolls across them.
(thematic music continues)
NARRATOR:
Thompson finishes laying his trap.
As the sound of the
armored vehicles gets closer,
he camouflages the
grenades with leaves and dirt.
(car approaching)
(music intensifies)
His check complete,
Thompson jumps in the ditch
with the other Tank Hunters from
the Canadian Seaforth Highlanders.
(car approaching)
The lead German vehicle
approaches the road junction.
Thompson watches as the wheels
roll between the grenades
and fail to detonate the explosives.
Well, Sergeant Thompson's reaction
was probably of disbelief.
He had just set up this
minefield and somehow this
German staff car goes right through
it without triggering one mine.
NARRATOR:
Thompson and some of his soldiers spray
the moving vehicle
with their machine guns.
(heavy machine gun fire)
While another Tank Hunter
jumps up with a PIAT.
At just the right moment,
he launches a bomb at very close range.
The PIAT is a hand-held weapon that fires
a two and a half pound bomb,
filled with RDX and TNT explosives.
The force of impact can tear through
up to four inches of armor.
(loud explosion)
The explosion of the PIAT bomb stops
the car and kills the driver.
(music bellows)
A German officer escapes
the wreckage and attempts to alert
the armored column behind him.
But Thompson and the
others move in for the kill.
- SOLDIER 2: Fall back!
- NARRATOR: Then reset the trap.
It doesn’t take long.
Not far behind the lead staff car,
a German self-propelled gun
bears down on the crossroads.
(music intensifies)
Self-propelled guns, or SPG,
look much like tanks.
But their gun is in a fixed case-mate
instead of a rotating turret.
But in these conditions, operating both
vehicles would be a challenge.
Given the rain and the darkness,
visibility was extremely poor.
We can assume that the driver of
this self-propelled gun didn't
understand and didn't see what
was going on in front of him.
(music grows dramatically)
NARRATOR:
Most likely unseen, a Canadian Private
takes aim with his PIAT.
But his bomb misses the mark,
and the enemy self-propelled gun
continues to rumble toward them.
(dramatic music crescendos)
(intense thematic music)
As the German armor nears the crossroads,
the Tank Hunters hold back to see
if Sergeant Keith Thompson’s minefield
can stop the self-propelled gun.
The vehicle’s track
crosses the Hawkins grenades.
This time, it sets off an explosion.
What's interesting is that in retrospect
Sergeant Thompson is probably pretty happy
the staff car didn't set off the mines,
because now what happens
of course is he's immobilized
the higher value target.
NARRATOR: With damage to its track, the
self-propelled gun comes to a standstill.
Bringing the vehicle to
a stop is ideal for tank hunting.
You have a better chance of hitting it
and causing more damage
from the PIAT if you're
aiming at a stationary target.
NARRATOR: The Canadian Tank Hunters move
into the open to finish the job.
A PIAT team lines up their shot.
(gunshot)
With an armor piercing hit,
the SPG ceases to be a threat.
Other tank hunters scramble
onto the gun to finish its crew.
- They drop a grenade into the hatch.
- Fire in the hole!
- (muffled explosion)
- (suspenseful music)
(rapid gunfire)
The self-propelled gun is inoperable
and blocks the road.
(tank roaring)
The armored column has been dispatched
by Captain Ekkehard Maurer,
second Battalion Commander of
the German ninth Panzergrenadier Regiment.
The ninth Panzergrenadier Regiment
is the successor
of the Old ninth Infantry Regiment,
the traditional Prussian Regiment
that was based in Potsdam near Berlin,
and was seen as a source for
the aristocratic German
or Prussian Officer Corps.
NARRATOR: They had arrived in
Italy during the summer of 1943.
And moved into defensive position near
the east coast in September of ’44.
Maurer needs more information about the
Canadian advance in order to thwart it.
The Germans are on their back-foot here,
and they are extremely
surprised to see how far
the Canadians have already
penetrated into their lines.
NARRATOR: In addition, the
Canadian artillery barrage has
disrupted communication lines,
compounding the problem.
German Commanders cannot
communicate with each other, so,
the left neighbor doesn't know what his
right neighbor is doing and
Or even communication further up
the chain of command is barely possible.
NARRATOR: But Maurer still has significant
weaponry at his disposal,
including Mark V Panther tanks.
The Panzerkampfwagen or Mark V Panther
is one of the most powerful and
feared tanks in Hitler’s army.
The Germans developed the
medium sized tank rapidly
in 1941 in response to the
threat posed by the Soviet T-34.
The Mark V stormed onto
the battlefield in 1943 topped
with a powerful
75 millimeter high velocity gun,
and a pair of MG34 machine guns,
capable of unleashing
hundreds of bullets per minute.
At 45 tons, this
Panther is heavy but fast.
A 700-horsepower motor generates
a top speed of 28 miles per hour.
As a Mark V tank grinds up the road,
another team of Canadian Tank Hunters
dashes across a field.
Private Ernest Smith scouts
for the best possible position.
Private Smith is an interesting guy.
He's clearly brave.
And he's clearly a natural leader.
When things get hot, even
though he's not in command,
he takes the initiative
and people follow him.
NARRATOR: Smith’s natural
fighting instincts have been
rewarded with numerous promotions.
But they don’t seem to stick.
Private Smith earned a reputation for
being a troublemaker. Being insubordinate.
He was promoted to Corporal nine times
and demoted to Private nine times.
He clearly had a problem with authority,
but there was no question
that he was a hell of a soldier.
NARRATOR: With his Commander and
fellow Tank Hunters occupied
with the German self-propelled gun;
(explosion)
Smith has his eyes on the
Panther tank further ahead.
- (explosion)
- (music bellows)
He directs his PIAT team
into a ditch with a view of the road.
But as the tank creeps closer, he decides
that a single PIAT isn’t enough.
With the operator set, Smith and Private
James Tennant hurry to fetch another.
Leaving that one operator
by himself is a risky move.
When you are firing a PIAT half
of your vision is blocked by the weapon.
Normally they work in twos so that
if a German does sneak up on you,
you have someone watching
your back to defend you.
NARRATOR: Smith’s company
needs to reach the main highway
to cut off German reinforcements
to the city of Cesena to the south.
But instead, they encountered
part of a German tank Kampfgruppe.
To coordinate their action,
C company has established
a headquarters in the rural parish church.
With the tank closing in,
Smith and Tennant must be quick.
They locate another
PIAT at the headquarters.
With the weapon in tow,
the duo races back to their position.
As they near the road
(rapid gunfire)
machine gun bullets rip
into the ground around them.
(rapid gunfire)
(rapid gunfire)
NARRATOR:
From the protection of a ditch,
Canadian Private
Ernest Smith gets his bearings.
He sneaks a peek over the edge and
sees the tank getting closer.
The Panther sweeps the
road with its machine gun.
Smith is probably
worried about two things,
first of all his own position
with his friend James Tennant
but also the lone PIA
operator that he left behind.
NARRATOR: A minefield like the one which
stopped the self-propelled gun earlier
would have been helpful.
But it’s too late now.
James Tennant must get the
PIAT charged and ready to fire.
Private James Tennant is one of Smith's
closest friends in the Regiment.
The sources identify
them as thick as thieves.
(yells)
NARRATOR:
A machine gun blast strikes Tennant.
- (gunfire continues)
- (muffled groans)
He’s alive but seriously wounded,
and can no longer operate the PIAT.
Smith likely considers his options.
He can hide in the ditch with Tennant
and hope he doesn't get shot.
He can bring Tennant to
a medical aid station and
expose themselves to German fire,
or he can take matters into his own hands.
He has a split second to make the choice
and he decides to engage the Germans.
NARRATOR: Smith grabs the PIAT and
readies himself at the edge of the ditch.
At this moment, Smith is one man,
against perhaps one of
the most powerful tanks of
the entire Second World War.
If he misses his shot,
it's unlikely he will survive.
NARRATOR: He charges the weapon as he
waits for the German Mark V Panther tank.
Smith has no back up, and while
the PIAT has armor piercing capabilities,
its reputation with soldiers is mixed.
It was really first used by the Canadians
in Sicily and it wasn't yet perfected.
The shells would hit the
sides of tanks and not explode,
of course this meant it was
still very dangerous
and so the initial use
of the PIAT was not really
inspiring a lot of confidence.
NARRATOR:
And even as reliability increases,
one thing stays the same;
the range.
The maximum range of a PIAT is 100 yards.
NARRATOR:
And worse, the Tank Hunters determined
the optimal distance for a hit,
to be only 20 yards at night.
(music bellows)
You had to practically stand right up
in front of the tank in order to hit it.
And so, it's an
absolutely terrifying ordeal
and it really required heroism
from these Canadian soldiers.
NARRATOR: Tank Hunters even
customize their PIATs
by drilling new sights to
accommodate the tight range.
Smith waits until the tank is 30 feet,
or just ten yards, away.
Then jumps from the
ditch and into the road.
(rapid gunfire)
With a bomb in the
spigot and barely time to aim,
Smith launches his attack on the Panther.
As they fight for control of the sector,
the Germans begin to appreciate the
scale of the Canadian offensive.
Captain Ekkehard Maurer is
forced to further bolster defenses.
To the north, the Canadians are
overrunning the German lines
so that the Germans are
in such a desperate position
that they need to deploy their
battalion HQ into the battle.
(rapid gunfire)
NARRATOR:
Maurer finds himself under attack.
(speaking in native language).
If headquarter troops
are deployed into fighting,
it means the situation
is extremely critical.
And this is actually one of the
last resorts for the defenders.
NARRATOR:
The Canadians storm his position,
and Maurer is injured by a hand grenade.
He must withdraw from the fight.
(rapid gunfire)
On the road beside the
parish church at Pieve Sestina,
Private Ernest Smith
scores a direct hit on
the German Panther tank.
The giant beast grinds to a halt.
The wrecked Panther V tries to reverse.
When Smith hits the
Panther he immobilizes it.
The problem is he now has
to deal with about ten Germans
who were riding on the back,
who now hop off and start
moving forward towards him.
NARRATOR:
At very close range and all alone,
Smith doesn’t have a lot of options.
NARRATOR: The PIAT that Canadian Private
Ernest Smith had used against the tank,
is useless against multiple
advancing enemy soldiers.
He reaches for his
Thompson submachine gun.
Here, Smith does something
kind of incredible.
Instead of retreating, he moves out
farther on the road and engages
the German Grenadiers with his Tommy Gun.
NARRATOR:
Arguably the most notorious firearm ever,
the Thompson submachine gun was
designed as an automatic weapon
that could be
operated by a single soldier.
The sub of submachine refers to
compact bullet caliber relative
to those fired by rifles.
New box magazines deliver 30 rounds,
with a staggering rate of fire
up to 700 rounds per minute.
The American weapon was first
sold to the British military for
about $225 per unit in 1940.
Winston Churchill himself would quip;
“General Thompson’s gun
may be, pound for pound,
the most devastating
weapon devised for war.”
Efficiencies to lower the cost make
the Thompson ubiquitous
among the allies in Europe.
Smith fires into the attacking
German soldiers at very close range.
- (thematic music)
- (rapid gunfire)
In the firefight, he kills four.
The others fall back in disarray.
As Smith continues to hold the line
a 75 millimeter tank
shell explodes nearby.
He sees another tank approach,
while more German infantry charge through
- the fields in his direction.
- Well at this point,
Smith figures that the second
German tank is out of range.
So, in fact the most pressing problem are
the German grenadiers bearing down on him.
NARRATOR: Smith maintains a steady stream
of fire against the soldiers
(rapid gunfire)
Until he runs out of bullets.
He returns to the ditch to find more,
and locates a spare magazine
near Private James Tennant.
Smith is certainly fighting to defend
the Seaforths hard won position,
but he's also fighting to defend
his friend James Tennant,
who's lying there wounded.
NARRATOR: Smith reloads and jumps back
on the road, staying close to Tennant.
(rapid gunfire)
The German infantry retreats.
But once again the
advancing tank opens fire.
And forces Smith to re-focus.
(rapid gunfire)
At this point in the battle, he decides to
grab his friend and take him to
a medical aide post at a nearby church.
Often when we think of battles,
we think of faceless soldiers
sort of firing at each other
in a melee of combat and chaos,
but in reality, a lot
of battles are made up
of these little human moments.
And this is one of those.
NARRATOR: Smith needs to be patient.
He must wait for a lull
that will allow him to assist Tennant.
When the tank pauses its attack,
Smith uses the opportunity to
help his friend out of the
relative safety of the ditch.
(rapid gunfire)
(thematic music grows)
The battle continues in
the surrounding fields and
along the road, as the rest of
C Company and the Tank Hunters
try to stave off the German counterattack.
The two move as quickly as
they can to the nearby church.
The Seaforth Highlanders C Company
Commander, Major Stewart Lynch,
has established his headquarters
with an aid post at the crossroads.
Smith arrives with the injured Private
James Tennant to get help from the medics.
When a soldier is injured in battle,
he's normally taken to the rear,
taken care of either in a
temporary medical facility
or brought back to hospital.
But when they were at the Savio River,
the river was so swollen there
was so much water going through
it that it was simply impossible
to get the wounded back and so
they were left there, uh, in
terribly vulnerable situations.
NARRATOR: With no way to cross the river,
the wounded can’t be evacuated.
And the flooding creates
other difficulties for Lynch.
At this point, Major Lynch's
biggest concern is reinforcements or
the lack thereof. The simple fact is the
Savio river water levels have
risen so rapidly that he can't
get any reinforcements across.
NARRATOR:
This has been a re-current problem for
the allies throughout
their fighting in Italy.
(melancholy music plays)
Proper Italian bridges were built high
above potential flood waters.
But many have been destroyed.
Some by allied aerial attacks
to prevent German retreat,
others blown up by the Germans to cut off
access to the other bank.
Either way, civilians pay the price.
The allies must often rebuild
during the rainy season when
the rushing waters complicate the job.
As before, allied forces battle
the weather and the Germans.
With the Savio flooding
The banks are so
muddy the engineers can't find
a good spot to build a bridge.
So no infantry's coming across.
No supplies and no armor.
NARRATOR:
The Seaforths are on their own.
SMITH (muffled):
Men are taking a beating.
NARRATOR: Smith would later
recall how dire things were.
According to Smith,
in the church Major Lynch turned
to him and said,
"We're surrounded, what should we do?"
And Smith replies, "Take a
window and get your head down."
Whether it happened
exactly like that or not,
there's no question that Smith
was a good guy to listen to and
a good guy to rely on for
advice in such a hot situation.
NARRATOR:
But Smith himself leaves the sanctuary
to be ready for more enemy activity.
The Canadians have slowed down the
German’s armored column,
but they need to destroy it.
Just outside the church,
Sergeant Keith Thompson and
other Tank Hunters hold off
German infantry who pour across
the fields and down the road
When a German self-propelled
gun swerves towards them.
(thematic music bellows)
NARRATOR: As the rain continues,
Canadian Sergeant Keith Thompson
confronts yet another threat in the dark.
A German self-propelled gun needs to avoid
the wreckage of the Kampfgruppe.
(music intensifies)
The next German self-propelled gun is
kind of stuck at the road.
There's wrecked vehicles, there's bodies.
So the Germans attempt to out flank the
Canadians by moving towards the church.
NARRATOR: As the teams ready their PIATS,
the supporting Tank Hunters
open fire with
their Thompson machine guns.
But the bullets ricochet
harmlessly off the armor.
As the self-propelled gun comes into range
the Tank Hunters unleash their PIAT bombs.
(music grows more dramatic)
There’s a direct hit and
a second SPG is put out of action.
With Captain Ekkehard Maurer injured,
first Lieutenant Strangen is the
only German officer available to
assume control of the battalion.
Maurer is wounded by a grenade blast,
his adjutant, a First Lieutenant,
takes over command.
And this is quite rare that
a First Lieutenant takes command
over an entire battalion.
It just shows you what a desperate
situation the Germans found themselves.
NARRATOR: But while the Canadians
prove tenacious
the battle isn’t over yet.
Sergeant Thompson and his men mop up from
the earlier attack on the SPG.
They strain to see what will
emerge next from the darkness.
In time, another Panther
tank crawls forward
also trying to move around
the back of the church.
Thompson’s PIAT teams resight and reload.
The tank slows as it reaches the destroyed
self-propelled gun blocking its path.
Operating a 45 ton Panther tank at
the best of times would be difficult.
But in this situation, it's dark out.
It would've been extremely
difficult to navigate around
this battlefield that was
strewn with so much debris.
- (dramatic music grows)
- (flames licking)
NARRATOR:
The conditions prove disastrous.
DAVID: It's wet, it's muddy and the
Panther ends up sliding into a ditch.
NARRATOR: Thompson seizes the opportunity
and motions his PIAT team forward
- SOLIDER: Tank! Tank!
- THOMPSON: PIAT! PIAT!
NARRATOR:
Flanked by the machine gunners.
They knock out the tank with their PIATS.
(rapid gunfire)
As the German crew tries to flee,
two are killed.
Others escape into the darkness.
(thematic music swells)
By 0-600, the Germans withdraw after
losing over 100 men and many vehicles,
including the two self-propelled
guns and two Panther tanks.
Casualties for the Seaforth Highlanders
during the operation amount to 106 men;
including 18 killed and 61 wounded.
The Canadian victory is
so quick and so complete
Hey!
A group of German soldiers who had
been bypassed in the dark,
turn up at their former
command post for breakfast,
not aware it had been captured overnight.
(speaking in native language)
56 are rounded up
and taken as prisoners of war.
(soft thematic music plays)
For his coolness and tenacity,
Sergeant Keith Thompson earns
a distinguished conduct medal.
He’s credited with the preservation of
the Canadians’ bridgehead
in the face of a determined
and strongly supported counterattack.
Ernest Smith earns the Commonwealth’s
highest military honor;
The Victoria Cross.
Smith was the
only Canadian Private to earn
the Victoria Cross
during the Second World War.
And this is an incredible achievement,
but he was also a very colorful character.
For instance, before he
was to meet King George VI
they supposedly locked him
in jail with a few beers to
make sure that he would show up the next
day. And when he did he refused to bow.
He saluted instead.
And I think this was a testament to his
rather complicated
relationship with authority.
NARRATOR: Smith was Canada’s last living
Victoria Cross recipient
when he passed away in 2005.
He was honored as a national hero.
Despite allied hopes for a
quick victory in northern Italy,
after the breakout from
the Apennine mountains,
Bologna wouldn’t be
liberated until April 1945.
And by then, Seaforth
Highlanders of Canada would be
fighting the Germans in the Netherlands.