BATTLE PICTURE

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 14, 18 January 1944, Page 4

BATTLE PICTURE

CANADIANS IN ORTONA (N.Z.E.F. Official News Service.) DIVISIONAL HEADQUARTERS, January 14. With the Canadians on the right flank of the Eighth Army there are several" New Zealanders. I met one of them, Sergeant B. Poppell, who is a sergeant in the Canadian Highlanders. He was born in Ponsonby, and left New Zealand in 1931. He first went overseas with the Canadian forces in 1939 and was on service in the British Isles till the* attack on Sicily. The Sicilian campaign provided bitter mountain fighting in conditions very strange and trying to the troops who came straight from Scotland to the heat of a Mediterranean summer. The men became acclimatised and battle wary as they forced the Germans northward, acquiring the active service technique of improvisation very rapidly. It was a keen, experienced formation which took over the coastal position when the Eighth Army crossed the Sangro, and the Canadians soon showed their mettle again in the speed of their advance over hilly country to San Vito and San Leonardo. Then came the battle for Ortona. It was a fortress within which were countless other fortresses, each selfcontained and each hotly disputed. DETERMINED DEFENCE. , Added to the cross-fire from houses was the constant presence of vehicle and anti-personnel mines, 88- and 75----millimetre guns mounted in buildings and at key points; and determined defence by mortar crews. "When Canadian correspondents said that the fighting was from room to room, it was literally true," said Poppell. "At times we were penned in a room with Jerry separated from .us by she inches of wall. Shells would crash through one wall and out the other. It wasn't pleasant waiting to see whether the shell was armour-piercing or high explosive. He often followed one with the other." Another device adopted by the enemy was to mine buildings in which their own troops were. When the Germans were driven out, an observation post would report the, occupation by the Canadians. Then the building would' be blown up by remote control. Not even churches were immune from this type of warfare. Sergeant Poppell attended the most remarkable Christmas dinner of the war. It was laid out in a church building in a manner worthy of the Lord Mayor's banquet, with the best linen, cutlery, and glassware. Food and drink were in abundance, and an organ played throughout. But it could not drown the noise of machine-gun fire and the bursting of mortar bombs falling round from fighting a mere 400 yards away. Often weary men covered with the dust and grime of the fighting a couple of blocks away came in and ate their fill. Then they went out again to carry on the battle. Many were the adventures of members of a single small formation. Two men found themselves separated from the others. One of them opened a door and was killed by a burst of machine-gun fire. As the Germans entered, the other took shelter behind a crowd of civilians. They denied the presence of the Canadian, who afterwards walked out into the street dressed in woman's clothes and carrying an abandoned baby. So garbed, he appeared before the commander 'of another company, left the baby, and rejoined his own company.