lighting. Wolff himself spoke with a gentle, yet husky voice. Like that other Nazi ‘charmer’, General Reinhard Heydrich, Wolff understood the benefits of winning others over, of putting people at ease and becoming a trusted confidant.
Wolff was also prepared to take risks. Just three days before, on 10 May, the Highest SS and Police Chief in Italy, wearing a civilian suit, had had an audience with Pope Pius XII at the Vatican, in which he had asked for the Pontiff ’s help in making contact with the Allies with a view to opening peace negotiations. Although no one had witnessed the conversation, there were a number of people – including Germans – who had helped set up the meeting, and were aware of Wolff’s reasons for wanting the audience.
Little came of the talks, but Wolff had begun playing a dangerous game, making peace feelers – however tentative – without higher authority. His motivation, however, had been simple. He had begun to doubt that Germany could win the war, but hoped it could in some way dictate the peace that would follow. So Wolff, the arch-Machiavel, wanted to find a way out – a way in which Germany could end the war while there was still a chance of bargaining. The battle had only just begun again on the ground, but one of the most powerful men in Italy hoped words, rather than more bullets and bombs, might end the bloodshed. And if that was the case, he might have a chance of surviving the judgement day that would inevitably follow.
* Both Gestapo and Sipo are abbreviations: the former for Geheime Staatspolizei, the German secret state police; the latter for Sicherheitspolizei, the Nazi security police.
Breaking the Gustav Line 17–18 May 1944
Near a village not far from Route 6, the Via Casilina, and about fifteen miles behind the front line stood rows of pup tents, trucks, jeeps, and canvas stores belonging to the Canadians of the Perth Regiment. They were infantrymen, part of the 11th Infantry Brigade, but attached to the Canadian 5th Armoured Division. All knew they would soon be joining the battle they had heard raging to the north-west.
Since listening to the opening barrage and seeing the night ripped apart by the flash of the guns, large numbers of the Perth men had regularly hovered around the Intelligence Officer’s tent, scanning the bulletin board for updates on the progress of the battle. Among them was twenty-year-old Stan Scislowski, a private with ‘Dog Company’. A bright young man from Windsor, Ontario, Stan had been working for the car manufacturers, Chrysler of Canada, before being drafted into the army. After basic and then advanced infantry training, he had been posted overseas to Britain with the No 3 Canadian Infantry Reinforcement Unit, and then assigned to the Perth Regiment.
The Perths had shipped out to Italy at the end of October 1943, and at the beginning of January had been sent to the Adriatic Front. At the River Riccio they had gone into battle for the first time, a sobering experience in which they had been criticised by the divisional commander, Major-General Vokes, for not showing enough determination. ‘It had been a rough baptism of fire no one had expected,’ noted Stan, ‘an ass-kicking that we’d have to face up to and live down over the months ahead.’61
Although they had manned a section of the Cassino Front in April 1944, the Perths had not been in battle since. Not that Stan personally felt a sense of trepidation just yet. He’d been terrified that first time he’d gone into combat, but although they could now hear the battle raging fifteen and more miles away, he was too far back to feel fear. And anyway, roaring overhead almost incessantly were reams of fighter-bombers, flying back and forth between the front and their bases nearby. ‘At times,’ noted Stan, ‘the roar of engines was so loud as the low-flying planes flew northward with their bomb-loads that conversation was out of the question.’ But Stan found it comforting to know that their air forces had such complete mastery of the skies.
The Allied air forces had not let up their effort once the battle had begun. This was why 90th Panzer Division was having such a difficult time getting to the front: daylight travel was out of the question. Increasingly, there were fewer vehicles available as more and more trucks and cars were left burning and riddled on the side of the road. Petrol was in ever-shortening supply. So too was ammunition. And there were other important side effects too. The men were badly undernourished: Jupp Klein and his men felt hungry all the time. It also made it harder for post to reach the front – which was why Major Georg Zellner had still not received any letters from home.
One of those contributing to the massed swarms of aircraft over the battlefield that day was Lieutenant Charles Dills of the US 27th Fighter-Bomber Group. He had begun the battle seconded to Fifth Army headquarters for a few days to fly General Clark and other senior commanders around and in and out of the Anzio bridgehead. On his first flight with the army commander, Charles had found himself flying with Clark sitting next to him in the co-pilot’s seat. Knowing Clark flew, he offered the general the chance to take the controls for a while. ‘He agreed,’ says Charles. ‘He was a pretty nice guy. I had a lot of respect for him.’
His stint as a courier pilot with Fifth Army headquarters had finished a few days before, however, and he had immediately returned to the 27th Fighter-Bomber Group at their airfield near Caserta. On 18 May his flight was taking part in an armed reconnaissance over the Ceprano area, a town on the Via Casilina, some fifteen miles north-west of Cassino. Their task was to look out for any significant troop movements and to shoot up and bomb anything they saw while they were about it. The day before they’d been sent up with a more specific target: a mortar position north of Aquino. The drill was always the same: fly towards the target at around 14,000–15,000 feet, high enough to avoid the countless enemy flak batteries, then nearing the target, the leader would waggle his wings and the rest of the pilots would fall in line behind him, turn on their backs and, one by one, follow him down in a dive. ‘From a distance,’ says Charles, ‘this procedure might resemble a number of balls on a slightly tilted table following one another, coming to the edge of the table and then dropping straight down.’ Once over the target they would level out of the dive then drop their bombs – usually one 500lb bomb and six 20lb fragmentation bombs – and then flatten out, usually at around 5,000 feet, but often higher depending on the intensity of flak. ‘You drop the bombs as best you can,’ explains Charles, ‘and then get the hell out of there!’
Also flying that day was Leutnant Willi Holtfreter. After bailing out of his Messerschmitt on 1 May, he had luckily landed well behind German lines. Although he had not been seriously injured he had, nonetheless, been packed off to hospital in Montefiascone, near Lake Bolsena, ‘for observation’, and had been kept off flying duties ever since. On the 18th, however, he was finally back on operations with the 9th Staffel – or squadron. That morning he was up before dawn, as the fighter pilots always were, stumbling out of their quarters and then taking a short ride to the airfield. Breakfast would be eaten at the dispersal tents and then they would sit out on deck chairs, dozing or playing the card game Doppelkopf, waiting to be scrambled. ‘Our hearts would always beat faster whenever the telephone rang,’ admits Willi. If it was a scramble, they would hurry to their planes where their groundcrew would be waiting for them, their Messerschmitt 109Ks ready.
On that day, Willi was scrambled and took off at 11.35 a.m. Orders were to cover the Via Casilina: troops were on the move and they were to do their best to protect them from Allied bombers and strafing fighter-bombers – the dreaded jabos* as the Germans called them – although how one flight of 109s was supposed to make much difference was anyone’s guess. ‘We knew how outnumbered we were,’ says Willi. ‘It was obvious. Whenever we spotted any bombers there were always so many fighters accompanying them
