World War 2 was no joke and the number of human beings killed as a direct or indirect
result of World War II is staggering. Honestly, my jaw drops every time I read into it, and
I can't help but take a step back and contemplate how those figures are far, far more than just
that. Every one of them represents a human being and a whole genetic line.
Military persons, of course, make up a portion of these figures, and in this series, we're
going to look into not only military deaths, but some of the most catastrophic military
casualties — which we'll define as including deaths, injuries, illnesses, captures, and
even desertions. We'll be looking through a fairly broad scope, considering freakish
casualties to military units on the scale of formations to commands while keeping that
scope pointed at identifiable military operations rather than attempting to encompass the war
as a whole. It's also important to note that it's pretty much impossible to calculate casualties
with precision, and the actual military casualties may be far less or more than the figures gathered
for this series.
In this third entry into the series, our scope encompasses the Western Front and the Mediterranean
and Middle Eastern Theatre and all the operations therein.
After landing in Sicily in July 1943 and Italy in September, the Allies intended to punch
up through Italy and liberate Rome. To do this, they needed to penetrate the German
Winter Line, which included the Gustav Line. While fighting over the Gustav Line cost both
sides a great deal of blood, death claimed most of her victims in the town of Cassino
and Monte Cassino, the 6th-century Benedictine abbey on the hill behind the town. Harrassed
by incredibly accurate German artillery, the Allies assumed the Germans had eyes in the
abbey at the very least, so they caved in the abbey's head with a raid from the sky,
only for the Germans to occupy the ruins right after. The next Allied attempt to capture
the town and abbey was beaten back, so the Allies bombed the town before trying and failing
once more. Throwing themselves against the hill three times now, the Allies had taken
massive casualties, yet their objectives remained in German grip. Only on their fourth offensive,
Operation Diadem, and with great many reinforcements, were the Allies finally able to seize the
town and abbey and penetrate the Gustav Line. These offensives are known collectively as
the Battle of Monte Cassino, and the Allied victory here, among other victories in the
area, allowed them to continue upward and break Dora and Hitler Lines on their approach
to Rome, which they liberated from Nazi occupation on the 4th of June 1944.
Once reinforced in Operation Diadem, the Allies had about 240,000 men toiling for the Winter
Line. These were soldiers of the U.S. 5th Army, commanded by Lieutenant General Mark
W. Clark, and the British 8th Army, commanded by General Sir Bernard Montgomery. Notably,
the Polish II Corps attributed to the 8th Army, and were, understandably, a little more
than eager to kill some Nazis.
While the German Army Group C were defending Italy and the Winter Line, the German 10th
Army was the primary contender in the Battle of Monte Cassino. While the total strength
of German forces involved in the battle is unknown, there were at least elements of nine
divisions there at some point, and command of the 10th Army was the task of General Heinrich
von Vietinghoff.
The belligerents fought and died in difficult river crossings, bridges, bridgeheads; flooded
valleys; rocky hills and mountains littered with boulders, ravines, gullies, and goat
tracks; room-to-room in the pulverised town; and in the ruins of the Benedictine abbey.
The Allies fought uphill against machine-gun and artillery positions and had to negotiate
mines, barbed wire, and booby-traps, all while the rain turned the battlefield into a freezing
mire.
Major Hardy Parkhurst of the British Royal Northumberland Fusiliers describes what he
saw: “All the trees were naked, stark and leafless. Route 6 dwindled into a ‘sheep
track’ which wound its way through shell craters, bomb craters, and the gaunt remains
of houses. [...] The whole of the area in front of the town was a ghastly marsh, caused
by lack of drainage and the bombs and shell which had blown everything to pieces. All
the craters have filled with water, which stank horribly and were very often a watery
grave. [...]"
Andy Stephens tells the story of his father, Albert Leonard Stephens of the 2/7 Battalion
of the Queen's Royal (West Surrey) Regiment, who was only 23 in the Battle of Monte Cassino.
Fleeing after Germans had overrun his battalion's position, a grenade blew up next to him, and
he was thrown into the air. Albert remembers hitting the ground, rolling, and falling over
a ridge, where he blacked out. When he woke, Albert "[...] described his left boot as being
bloated and distorted, and his left lower leg being little more than shredded skin."
Alone on the side of the frigid mountain, he waited for death, until he was eventually
he was taken to a cave "[...] full of wounded German soldiers." There, German soldiers — "[...] probably
of the 29th Panzer Grenadiers or the 94th Infantry Division [...]" — treated Albert,
removing shrapnel and amputating his shredded leg from below the knee. While he was taken
as a POW, he made a full recovery and eventually got back home to be a father to Andy.
Another son tells the story of his father, Polish Karol Jastrzebski, who was in charge
of a medical team under the Polish II Corps in the Battle of Monte Cassino. Karol tended
to injured soldiers and picked up bodies, and his son wrote that Karol had "tears in
his eyes remembering caring [for] badly injured soldiers, some with limbs blown up[,] [...] [who
were] overjoyed by the victory." Karol's son continued: "They were dying not being able
to see their love[d] ones[,] yet the victory was sweeter than death." Karol finally got
home in April 1947 after being forced to stay in England after capturing Bologna from the
Germans in April 1944. Karol's son remembers holding his father's hand at the bus stop
when he was leaving to join the Polish Army in 1939. When he saw his father again, he
was eight years older.
While the original strength of the German 10th Army is unknown, it sustained somewhere
around 20,000 casualties defending the Winter Line in the Battle of Monte Cassino, and while
the Allies were victorious, the U.S. 5th Army and British 8th Army's toil against German
defences resulted in around 55,000 casualties.
In the mountains over Cassino, the Polish II Corps took a German position which was
soon recaptured by the Germans. They slugged it out for three days, though, on the 12th
of May, the Germans chased the Poles out with artillery and mortars, almost obliterating
the leading battalions and inflicting just shy of 3,800 casualties. On the 16th of May,
the Poles made an attack on Monte Cassino and — after taking many more casualties
— planted a Polish flag in the ruins on the 18th, signifying Allied victory.
After the Allied landings in Operation Overlord, American and British forces had pushed up
through France and into Belgium, holding the forested Ardennes region shared between those
two countries and Luxembourg. The Fuhrer pulled many of his best men from the Eastern Front
to launch the Ardennes Counteroffensive, known also as the Battle of the Bulge. Hitler's
intent was to cut the Allies off from the port of Antwerp in Belgium, sever their lines,
and ultimately hammer them until they negotiated for peace. This dream of his relied mostly
on bad weather; the Allies had air superiority, and the cloud-cover would nullify that. It
had some success at the start — on the morning of the 16th of December 1944 — but the Allies
held onto Elsenborn Ridge and the town of Bastogne, choking the German advance; and
when the weather cleared up, Allied air swooped in and cut German forces and supply lines
to pieces, forcing the survivors to retreat eastward and crippling the German military
as a whole. While the Battle of the Bulge devastated the Germans, the Allies also suffered
tremendous casualties, with the battle being the largest and bloodiest for the Americans
in World War II.
The U.S. 6th Army Group, 12th Army Group, and the British-commanded 21st Army group
peaked in the Battle of the Bulge at around 700,000 men, though that was after reinforcements
had come to the aid of the 230,000 Allied troops who copped the first blow of the German
counteroffensive.
That first punch involved around 410,000 Germans from the Army Group B, which included the
5th and 6th Panzer Armies and the 7th Army. Reinforced, Army Group B peaked on December
24th, when it was about 450,000 strong.
The great fir trees of the Ardennes, while lush in warmer months, were heavy with snow,
and a thick fog clung to region, broken only by pellets of freezing rain. In these misty
winter days, soldiers huddled in foxholes in snow camouflage, suffering all manner of
cold-induced miseries — trench foot, pneumonia, and frostbite to name a few. U.S. Cpl Kenneth
R. Yockey described it: "I was assigned to be the jeep driver [...] With the windshield
down over the hood we had no protection from the bitter cold, piercing wind. The weather
was sub-zero and the wind felt like sharp knives. [...]"
If that wasn't enough, the belligerents were, of course, in battle, and much of it was waged
between tanks and other armoured vehicles, as well as rifle-to-rifle. The fighting obviously
had an effect on the terrain as well; U.S. soldier Charlie Sanderson described it: “Did
you ever see land when a tornado’s come through? Did you ever see trees and stuff,
twisted and broken off? The whole friggin’ forest was like that."
U.S. Pfc Joseph V. Pillitteri recounts entering a farmhouse that an American tank had fired
into: "I went into the [...] room [...] that the shell entered. In the room were two German
soldiers. One had his head half blown off and I could see his brains moving. The other
one had both legs blown off and was in shock." Pillitteri went on to describe shooting and
capturing a German later in this same encounter: "I shot a burst of bullets through his shoulder
and collarbone. He started to cry and pick up his overcoat [...] When I got back to my
squad the prisoner I shot was still crying and he wanted to see his mother. When my Sergeant
heard him, he wanted to kill him – saying he was thousands of miles from his mother.
I got between them and I told my Sergeant he was my prisoner and I didn’t want any
more harm to come to him."
U.S. veteran Charles F. Appman survived the infamous Malmedy Massacre on the 17th of December.
After being captured, the Germans herded the American troops into a frozen field; some
of them started pulling out pistols and shooting their prisoners, and "Then almost immediately
they opened with machine-gun fire. I hit the ground with the rest and made believe I was
dead. [...] We just hoped and prayed while we lay there listening to them shoot every
man that moved." After lying there for an hour with the blood of his friends trickling
onto him, Appman and some other survivors made a break for it, and he managed to escape.
Appman suffered post-traumatic stress disorder, though this did not stop him from getting
home and raising a family.
While casualties vary, lower estimations defer that the U.S. 6th Army Group, 12th Army Group,
and 9th Army suffered 89,500 combined casualties, including 19,000 deaths, 47,500 wounded, and
23,000 missings. British casualties were much, much lower, around 1400, though German Army
Group B was right up there with U.S. army groups, with estimates between 63,000 and
98,000. The price of victory for the Allies was steep, though it's argued that the Ardennes
Counteroffensive cost Hitler the war.
On the 13th of September 1940, Italy invaded Egypt, stopping only on the 16th of September,
when they'd pushed through to Maktila, just beyond Sidi Barrani. From there, they spread
out and set up five fortified camps around Sidi Barrani, where they waited for reinforcements
and supplies. In response, General Archibald Wavell ordered Lieutenant General Henry Wilson
to push the Italians out of Egypt and back into Libya, an operation under the codename
Compass
The British captured Italian fortified camps at Nibeiwa, Tummar West and East, and Makita
— arresting surrendered forces on the way — before closing in on and taking the town
of Sidi Barrani and arresting Italians in the Buq Buq area. Having taken so many prisoners,
the British were initially unable to continue their enemy's retreat through Libya, so they
regathered before rolling through and taking Italian garrisons along the country's northeastern
coast, around Jebel Akhdar, and down to El Agheila. At that point, the British had fragmented
the Italian army and taken thousands and thousands of prisoners.
Lieutenant General Henry Wilson passed the hot potato to Richard O'Connor, who took command
of the Western Desert Force (WDF), comprised of the 4th Indian Infantry Division and the
7th British Armoured Division. The WDF was about 36,000 strong and supported by the Royal
Air Force and Royal Navy. When the WDF regathered before pursuing the fleeing Italians, the
4th Indian Infantry Division was tag-teamed out for the 6th Australian Division.
The Italian 10th Army was comprised of 150,000 infantry, 1,600 guns, 600 tanks, and 330 aircraft,
and commanded by Marshal Rodolfo Graziani, who doubted the capabilities of his infantry-based
force to take on the British and their vehicles
Operation Compass played out through the sand dunes and escarpments of the desert, as well
as through desert and coastal settlements and fortified camps. Tanks, armoured vehicles,
and artillery saw heavy use, bombardments came from the sea and sky, and one armoured
regiment even rode into battle on a sandstorm. The days burned and the nights froze, and
the winds carried fine sands which got into the eyes and lungs and coated machinery, equipment,
and food. Any distance travelled through the desert was twice as costly as any other terrain;
it was a logistical nightmare.
“Frightened, dazed or desperate Italians erupted from tents and slit trenches, some
to surrender supinely, other to leap gallantly into battle, hurling grenades or blazing machine-guns
in futile belabour of the impregnable intruders. [...]. Italian artillerymen gallantly swung
their pieces on to the advancing monsters. They fought until return fire from the British
tanks stretched them dead or wounded around their limbers.”
Liborio Bonadonna was a young Italian farmer living in Tripoli, Libya with his wife and
parents when he was forced into the Italian Army. Liborio was captured by the Allies in
Buq Buq in December 1940, and after three years in POW camps in India, he was sent to
Australia, to a camp in Cowra, New South Wales. Becoming ill, Liborio then was transferred
to Murchison, Victoria where he was considered for repatriation based on his medical condition.
When the time came to leave, he was deemed — ironically — too sick to travel. He
appealed his situation until he was shipped to Naples, Italy on the British Empire Clyde
near the end of 1946. Here, his condition required him to be operated on, and he had
to appeal several times before he was returned to Libya, where he went on to have children
and grandchildren. It just goes to show that the suffering didn't always end for POWs when
the war did. It took Liborio over six years after his capture to get back home.
Captain Ian Hutchison of the Australian 2/3rd Battalion ordered a platoon under his command
to an advance on Italian machine-gun position in a sangar. When one of Hutchison's privates
got there, the private "jumped on the wall and stood thrusting with his bayonet at an
Italian machine-gun team" and another of Hutchison's men "kicked the heads below with his heavy
boots." In the captured sangar, Hutchison saw a group of "British" tanks approaching
and called to them, at which point they gunned one of his men down, clearly not British.
Another of his men tried to throw a grenade at the tank, but it got caught in his own
clothing and filled him with shrapnel. Hutchison successfully defended his post against the
Italian tanks and was awarded a Military Cross. But this isn't about him. It's about that
poor guy who accidentally killed himself with his own grenade. How many sons didn't go home
because of accidents like this?
For less than 2,000 casualties, the WDF managed to kill 5,500, wound 10,000, and capture over
130,000 Italians of the 10th Army, as well as make them lose 420 tanks and 845 guns.
It was a clean victory for the British, who initially planned Operation Compass as a five-day
raid but were ready to exploit success if it came their way.
General Archibald Wavell wrote to Lieutenant-General Henry Wilson, saying: "I do not entertain
extravagant hopes of this operation but I do wish to make certain that if a big opportunity
occurs we are prepared morally, mentally and administratively to use it to the fullest."