Mediterranean and North Africa · Canada vs Germany
Battle of Ortona
20 December 1943 – 28 December 1943
The 1st Canadian Division fought German paratroops house by house through the Adriatic port of Ortona over Christmas. The town was taken but Eighth Army's winter advance on the east coast stalled soon after.
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Day by day
— Into the town
The 1st Canadian Division has spent three weeks crossing the Moro and clearing the Gully beyond it, and on 20 December the Loyal Edmonton Regiment and the Seaforth Highlanders walk into the southern edge of Ortona expecting a rearguard. Waiting for them are two battalions of the 3rd Parachute Regiment, who have mined the side streets, blown the houses down to make a single approach and sited their guns along it. The town has 10,000 people in it and about 1,600 defenders.
— Mouseholing
The streets are killing grounds, so the Canadians stop using them: beehive charges blow a hole through the party wall of an upstairs room, a section goes through it, grenades the house and blows the next wall. They work along whole blocks without going outside, while the paratroops mine the cellars and pull buildings down on top of them. Meanwhile the 1st Canadian Brigade swings inland to cut the coast road north of the town.
— Christmas Day
The Seaforths are taken out of the line in relays through the day and fed Christmas dinner at long tables in the church of Santa Maria di Costantinopoli, a few hundred metres from the fighting: soup, pork, cauliflower, Christmas pudding and a bottle of beer each, with the organ playing. Then they go back. The Edmontons hold their ground in the town centre and eat where they stand.
— The paratroops go
With the Canadians into the piazza and the flanking brigade closing on the coast road at Torre Mucchia, the paratroops thin out and slip away in the dark on the night of the 27th, taking their wounded. Patrols find the town empty on the morning of the 28th. The December fighting cost the 1st Canadian Division 2,339 casualties, and Eighth Army's winter advance up the Adriatic stops a few kilometres further on.
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