Winter on the Senio - New Zealand soldiers hold the front in Emilia-Romagna

 

L’inverno sul Senio - le truppe neozelandesi tengono il fronte in Emilia-Romagna

La 2^ Divisione neozelandese passò il Natale del 1944 ed i primi mesi del 1945 in fredde case di Faenza e Forlì. I soldati trovarono le due città, malridotte dai bombardamenti e dalle battaglie e svuotate di civili, grigie e tristi. Tranne per il mese di febbraio, quando la Divisione stava in riserva nelle Marche, fu un periodo estenuante, di ansiosa attesa e di noia. Le due brigate di fanteria facevano a turno a mantenere la linea (con due battaglioni al fronte e una in riserva).  

I soldati al fronte, a ridosso dell’argine sud del fiume Senio, passarono giorni e notti spaventosi riparati come meglio potevano in un paesaggio spettrale di neve e fango, dove ogni movimento destava sospetto. Coloro che invece non erano in servizio cercavano di alleviare le loro condizioni fisiche e di distrarsi. Un’attività popolare, e non sempre legale, fu Il cosiddetto “foraggiamento” ovvero la ricerca di cibo diverso e più interessante di quello che passava l’Esercito, a scapito spesso di animali domestici non custoditi. A volte spuntava un contadino nascosto che giustamente reclamava un compenso. Si diedero da fare anche per migliorare le loro condizioni di vita. A Faenza riuscirono a rimettere in funzione una fabbrica di stufe, per la gioia di soldati e civili. Fabbricarono anche bruciatori a gasolio, e perfino pattini, per pattinare sul ghiaccio in una cava. L’Esercito offriva ai soldati concerti e film ed a Forlì avevano un club, soprannominato il Dorchester, in un’ala del palazzo della Regia Accademia Aeronautica, con sale per biliardo, scrittura e lettura, e due ristoranti completi di orchestre e cantanti.

Passarono il loro secondo Natale bianco in queste città-caserma, un Natale memorabile (per molti il migliore di tutta la guerra), grazie al pasto speciale e al vino, ma anche per la neve e l’allegro suono delle campane. Per i soldati al fronte, che dovettero rimandare i festeggiamenti al 29 dicembre, fu un Natele in un senso più autentico, passato nelle cantine, o nelle stalle in compagnia di asini e buoi, condividendo il magro pasto con i pochi contadini rimasti.

Il 30 dicembre 1944, l’offensiva fu rimandata alla primavera successiva, ma bisognava difendere il terreno conquistato. I soldati neozelandesi rientrarono al fronte all’inizio del nuovo anno e lì rimasero per altri due mesi snervanti, in condizioni durissime, prima di ritornare in riserva. La Campagna d’Italia era di nuovo in stallo e sembrava dimenticata. Per la vittoria, avrebbero dovuto attendere l’aprile del 1945.

******

28 Māori Battalion moving up to the Senio (Ref. WH2Mao49a)

Faenza and Forli were the winter barracks of the 2^nd New Zealand Division. It was in these two towns that the New Zealand soldiers spent Christmas 1944 (their second white Christmas in Italy) and, intermittently, the following months, holding the line until the spring offensive.  The soldiers found these two industrial towns bleak and drab, with little much to relieve the dullness and stress of watching and waiting. 

As the historian of 18 Armoured Regiment wrote: “Comfortable as the Faenza billets were (and they were as good as the 18^th had struck), nobody really liked the place. At the best of times, it was a flat, unattractive town. Now, oppressed by the bitter dead cold, deserted by most of its citizens, it had lost what little beauty it might have had. …Forlì, half ruined and bulging at the seams with a very mixed collection of soldiers, was no more attractive than Faenza. It was the same flat, ugly industrial town”.

  

A typical street in Faenza today

                A street in Faenza in December 1944                 (Ref. WH2-26BaP035b)

Forli was so cold the water froze in the taps and even canned food froze. The soldiers, however, found an earthenware stove factory no longer operating which they smartly got working again to provide stoves for the freezing billets. They also developed their own diesel oil burners. In Supply Company, some men even fashioned skates out of angle iron to play ice hockey on the frozen water in a quarry. In their efforts to make life more interesting and more comfortable, they were not always choirboys.  Foraging acquired a much broader definition as the men ransacked the ruined houses for items of comfort or souvenirs, and regularly helped themselves to livestock to add a little variety to the Army diet. 

“The farmlands surrounding Faenza still held a certain amount of livestock, some of which was gathered in at fairly regular intervals by ‘recce parties’ and dealt with in due time by the unit cooks. There were of course encounters with a few Italians who inevitably appeared unexpectedly at apparently deserted casas while the foraging was in progress. On one occasion the enemy gunners took a hand and ranged on a 19 Regiment jeep which had ventured into a forward area in search of an ox calf reported to be fat and eminently suitable for human consumption” (D.W. Sinclair, 19 Battalion and Armoured Regiment).

However, according to most accounts, they had a merry Christmas – for some, their best Christmas in the Army. The presence of snow, the pealing of the ubiquitous bells, the special Christmas meal, and the wine no doubt all played a part.

Men of 21 Battalion in Faenza on Christmas Day, 1944 (NZDF Archives)

The 28 Maori Battalion (billeted in Forlì) even managed to produce very successful hangis. As their battalion historian, J.F. Cody, recorded: “Columns of smoke rose high in the air from the ovens where the fires crackled (only God and the Māori knew where the wood came from; nobody else could find any) and heating stones burst with a noise like rifle shots. Sacks of Italian puha stood ready to be cooked with the mutton-birds for it is the oil of mutton-birds that gives the puha a flavor that to the Māori is a gastronomic delight. The ovens were opened at midday and the battalion's second white Christmas in Italy was a complete success.”

For the battalions holding the front on Christmas Day, who had to postpone their celebrations until 29 December, the Christmas experience was perhaps more authentic, as Lt. Col. Haddon Donald, describes in his personal memoir, In Peace & War: A Civilian Soldier’s Story: “Christmas Day 1944 was spent in the line with little activity from either side. Padre Sergel visited every Company and Christmas carols were sung in cellars and in stables. The troops messed in with local families, often in stables with their donkeys, cattle and poultry in a truly Christmas atmosphere.”

In their free time in Forli, the soldiers out of the front had plenty of diversions. In the official history of the, Medical Units of 2NZEF in the Middle East and Italy, J.B. McKinney recorded: “Ample entertainment, provided by concert parties and cinemas, was available for the troops in Forlì. An ambitious soldiers' club, the Dorchester, occupying a complete wing of the imposing building of the Regia Accademia Aeronautica [the Royal Airforce Academy], was open all day with its billiard room, writing rooms, and two restaurants, each with its own orchestras and singers and well-staffed with waiters and waitresses, and, more important, each serving beer with meals”.

19 Battalion billet in Faenza (Ref. WH2-19BaP030a)

For the men in the line, however, covering a 9-km section of the stopbank from Tebano - just south of the Via Emilia (Route 9) - to Felisio, the first experience on the Senio was far from pleasant. Initially, the enemy was within earshot, on the other side of the near stopbank, but was quickly convinced to withdraw across the river. Even so, the proximity of the enemy, and the whiteout caused by the weather conditions, took a heavy toll on the men’s nerves. As 18^th Armoured Regiment’s historian recorded, “… only two or three hundred yards from the stopbank, you could not avoid the ‘Senio jitters’ at night, jumping at shadows and strange noises, always half expecting a white-clad raiding party to come stealing over the snow; for Jerry still commanded the stopbank on our side of the river. … It was a weird, frightening place, this Senio.” 

The Gothic Line marker on the Senio 

The south stopbank of the Senio 

“The Senio - wrote  24 Battalion historian, R.M. Burdon - ran deep and narrow between artificial banks or earthworks raised to protect the surrounding country against floods. The outer wall of these stopbanks sloped steeply upwards to a narrow, flat surface on their summit, between which and the actual river bank a flat ledge extended inwards. The ledge was protected and hidden by the outer wall of earth, and under this wall the enemy had burrowed for safety, building dugouts and machine-gun emplacements. Even if driven off the near bank, he would still be able to make it barely tenable for attacking troops by concentrating fire upon them at close range from the further bank. Altogether the Senio and its protective earthworks constituted a most formidable barrier.”

The attack across the river was repeatedly postponed because of the weather and conditions on the stop-banks were far from pleasant. Those in the line spent days on end (roughly 10-15 at a time) in cold and often water-filled trenches and flooded gun-pits. Patrols were very risky but vital for discovering enemy positions and strength. It was particularly important to verify the width and depth of the water courses, and the strength of the current, and the only way to do this was to swim, with all the inherent risks (which one intrepid soldier of 26 Battalion actually did, on Christmas Eve night, under the noses of the Germans, returning with very useful information).

The two New Zealand brigades, whose battalions took turns on the stopbank, manned the front alternately. The endless shuffling in and out of the line, from slit trenches and foxholes to cheerless billets in Faenza and Forlì, took its toll on the men’s spirits.  Rotating duties in and out of the line (usually two weeks at the front and one out) with training, in freezing conditions, the troops passed two more dismal months.

Their experiences on the ‘hated Senio’, as the men called it, equalled and sometimes surpassed the misery of Cassino. As Field Marshall Lord Carver confirmed in The Imperial War Museum Book of the War in Italy 1943-1945 “…many of the soldiers [in both Fifth and Eighth Armies] were manning the front line in conditions reminiscent of the First World War.  Whether in the mountains or in the plain, in the front line they were in trenches or foxholes, usually wet and cold and under enemy observation in daylight so that any movement drew fire from small arms, mortars or artillery “.

The appalling weather on the Senio was one of the reasons why General Alexander decided to call off the whole operation on 30 December, however, the ground gained had to be defended and there would be no furlough yet for the Division. The hardships of that harsh winter only added to the general frustration and disillusionment. The Italian Campaign became what Freyberg’s Intelligence Officer, Geoffrey Cox, called ‘a forgotten front’. A battle of nerves and endurance lay ahead of them. The long-desired exhilarating pursuit was not to be until the following spring, after the big, coordinated attack across the Senio.