Joseph Harold Weaver

A few years ago my cousin Michael posted a picture of our great-uncle’s grave on Facebook. The picture came courtesy of the ‘War Graves Photography Project’, whose website provides headstone pictures from around the world of British Commonwealth soldiers. I had heard that a brother of my grandmother died in the Second World War, but otherwise I knew nothing about Joseph Harold Weaver, not even his name. The cemetery was located in Italy and since I live in Germany, I planned to visit it the next time I was in the region. I finally had the opportunity in April, 2014.

In this blog post, I’d like to share the results of the research I completed on his military unit’s activities on the days surrounding his death in 1944, and share my experience visiting the same locations in 2014. Unfortunately, this article is incomplete. It contains an indirect history of Uncle Harold’s final days. Indeed, the only 'facts' I know about him are that he served for the Cape Breton Highlanders, a Regiment of the Eleventh Canadian Infantry Brigade, was killed in action on September 1^st, 1944, and is buried at Montecchio War Cemetery in Italy. Therefore, I can only speculate on what he was doing/seeing during his final days, based on a few accounts of the Canadian military in Italy during World War II (see below for a list of these sources).

1944

Harold was attached to the Cape Breton Highlanders at the time of his death, but had also spent time with the West Nova Scotia Regiment. Both units were active in Italy from 1943-1945. The West Novas had participated in the invasion of Sicily in the summer of 1943 before advancing to the mainland a couple of months later. The Highlanders arrived in Naples to reinforce the Italian campaign on November 10^th 1943 and they saw their first action in mid-January.

The strategy of the Italian campaign is complicated because the main Allied leaders, Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt, disagreed on its aims. However, as a secondary front, an important goal included drawing German resources from Eastern Europe and from France, where the Allies planned to land an invasion force in 1944.

After losing early battles in the south, the Germans pulled their forces north and dug into the mountains south of the Po Valley, where they formed a trans-Italian defensive position known as the Gothic Line. To buy time to properly fortify the line, they left smaller forces along the route north. The Allies had to fight through these in the spring and summer of 1944, but by the end of August they had reached the Foglia, a small river south of Rimini. Of course the Germans were not relying on this muddy stream to halt the Allied advance. Instead, they had dug into the hills that rose north of it.

Oddly, forward patrols scouting the territory north of the Foglia discovered little German activity. In fact, the Germans were holding some troops back out of fear of an Allied amphibious attack from the Adriatic.

Allied commanders had planned a full-scale assault of the Gothic Line for September 2^nd, but the advantageous situation on the ground prompted them to reconsider. Quick movement could catch the Germans unprepared. Therefore, on August 30^th at 1600, Harold’s previous unit, the West Novas, began the attack. Their initial approach was met with silence. The Germans held still. Then the Novas stumbled into hell. The marshy ground between the Foglia and the town of Osteria Nuovo was lined with Shu-mines (Schuetzenminen), which were designed to maim rather than kill. The logic followed that a dead soldier could be left in the field, but an injured one would be carried back, thus removing three soldiers from the fight.

German Turret Gun, near Tavullia, Italy

Meanwhile, at 1730, the Harold's Highlanders and the Perth regiment crossed over onto safer ground near Montecchio. The Perths aimed to take Point 111 to the north-east of the village while the Highlanders stormed Point 120 (these designations refer to their elevation in meters), which hung over its northern edge.

The Highlanders discovered that the reports that Point120 may have been deserted were far from the truth. They made several unsuccessful attempts to capture the hill on the night of the 30^th/31^st at the cost of 19 lives and 50 injured. Nevertheless, their efforts made it easier for the Irish Regiment of Canada and the New Brunswick Hussars to take the hill the next morning.

For the Highlanders, they now had a new goal: the 200-meter-high Monte Marrone three kilometers north of Montecchio. They advanced on the straw-covered hill during the night of the 31^st and met little resistance. By 600 AM they had dug in near the summit, accompanied by Hussar tanks.

Harold and his unit were among the first to break through Hitler’s precious Gothic Line. On a parallel ridge, other regiments were advancing to Point 147 and then to 208, where a memorial to Canadian soldiers stands today.

The only detailed account of the events on Monte Marrone I found comes from Private Bill Metcalfe (died 2000) in Morrison and Slaney’s book The Breed of Manly Men: History of the Cape Breton Highlanders (1994). In his account, he recalls that in early hours of September 1st, he dug a trench into a slope near the peak and covered it with straw. In the light of the rising sun, someone caught a glimpse of a German soldier moving about 500 yards to the east and opened fire. Metcalfe criticizes the action because it was nearly impossible to hit the enemy at such a distance. He surmises that frustration over never “getting a good shot at the enemy” at Point 120 had loosened the soldier's trigger finger. The small arms fire alerted the Germans to the Canadian position. By breaking through the line at such an early stage, the Highlanders had exposed themselves to the enemy on multiple sides.

The Germans moved a gun into position and fired at the Canadians. Metcalfe, whose slope was exposed to the enemy, had to abandon his trench. He then witnessed the tanks near him take hits, which in one case caused its shells to explode. The Germans “started firing high explosive shells and some mortars”. Metcalfe was able to retreat into a gully downslope where he took cover until Allied air power eliminated most of the German fire by midday. By late afternoon, the enemy fire had completely ceased, but not before mortally wounding five Highlanders. My cousin Marcel recalls being told that Harold had died of shrapnel wounds. This would be consistent with the shelling his regiment endured that day.

The final event Metcalfe describes from September 1^st was his attachment to the squad tasked with preparing the dead for burial. He explains how they wrapped their fallen comrades in the G1098 blankets every infantryman carried. Metcalfe points out that these blankets served the second function of a “shroud for [a soldier’s] remains”, and thus “in effect, the infantryman carried his coffin”. The assignment affected Metcalfe personally:

As I helped bring the shattered bodies of my buddies to a central location and then wrap them in the blankets and secure them with the telephone cable, I suddenly felt closer to them than I ever had before.

Uncle Harold must have been one of the men Metcalfe and his team handled that evening.

Famed war correspondent and former wife of Ernest Hemmingway, Martha Gellhorn, was reporting from the Gothic Line as the Canadians broke through. She witnessed so much death and destruction that it prompted her to write the following:

It is awful to die at the end of summer when you are young and have fought a long time and when you remember with all your heart your home and whom you love, and when you know that the war is won anyhow. It is awful and one would have to be a liar or a fool not to see this and not to feel it like a misery, so that these days every man dead is a greater sorrow because the end of all this tragic dying seems so near.

At this point, the outcome of the war was indeed no longer in doubt. However, for those who survived the breaking of the Gothic Line, their nightmare was far from over. The fight to Rimini was hard and bloody. Tom Canning, an 89-year old veteran of the 145^th Regiment Royal Armoured Corps, who is a regular contributor to the WW2talk.com forum and who provided me with some information on the Gothic Line, described this period as his month of hell. The Highlanders would lose many men on the Coriano Ridge east of Rimini in the coming weeks and over 100 more before the end of the war. Tragically, seventeen of them would fall on May 1^st, 1945, the day after Adolf Hitler committed suicide.

2014

The vast countryside struck me first as I approached Montecchio. Road maps deceive the eye as the hills swell the region's surface area. Originally, I had planned to cycle from my B+B to the places I wanted to visit, but I was glad I drove. I would obviously recommend anyone else visiting the area to do the same. (They should also invest in a detailed map and be careful with GPS as it might send them down dirt roads with potholes that look like they were formed by landmines).

Canadian War Memorial - Tavullia, Italy.

Italian and Canadian Flags

German Turret Gun

We first visited the Canadian War memorial just outside the town of Tavullia (known as Tomba de Pesaro during the war). It is located on a small patch of land known to the Allies as Point 208. Once they had captured this point, commanders were confident that the Germans could not reverse their advance. The monument includes one of the many German turret guns that once capped the surrounding hills. Four plaques provide basic information on the Gothic line and the Canadian regiments involved in the fight, including a map of Allied movements in the area (unfortunately, the elements have rendered it nearly unreadable). The monument is kept tidy, although it could use a little maintenance: a few tiles are broken and the Italian and Canadian flags are starting to tatter. The view which stretches over the Gothic Line's initial hills is breathtaking. No war scars remain, just miles of idyllic landscape.

View from War Memorial. Canadian forces advanced to this point along the ridge to the left
on August 31st/September 1st, 1944

Casa Montesecco

From the war memorial, we drove down Via Montegrappa, which follows the ridgeline that Allied troops had traversed to Point 208. We passed an old farmhouse on the right known as Casa Montesecco, which served as tactical headquarters for the Germans. One can recognize the engraved “E” near the front door, which in the early 19^th century had designated the house as property of Eugene de Beauharnais, the viceroy of Italy under his famous step-father Napoleon I.

A short while later we turned left onto Via Redipuglia. Supposedly, the remains of a German bunker still exist in a field behind one of the farmhouses there, but I chose not to search for it through the tall spring grass. Instead, we continued into the valley to the town of Montecchio. I noticed that none of the buildings there looked more than a half a century old, in stark contrast to the nearby medieval towns of Urbino and Saludecio. Indeed, the Nazis had razed the town in preparation for the Allied advance.

Montecchio War Cemetery. Point 111 in background.

Montecchio War Cemetery lies on the eastern edge of the town at the foot of a hill once known as Point 111, which the Perths had captured with a bold bayonet charge on the night of August 30^th/31^st, 1944. Less than a kilometer to the east, rows of trees and modern homes occupy Point 120, where the Highlanders lost 19 men the same night.

The 582-soul cemetery is well maintained. The lawn is green and trimmed. The flowered gravestones are clean and include the soldier’s name, age, rank, unit, and date of death. A unique message is engraved near each stone’s base. Harold’s inscription, which I assume my great-grandparents authored, reads:

More and more each day we miss you.

As long as memory lasts we will remember you

The cemetery layout is simple and I found Harold’s grave easily in Plot 1, Row E, #9, next to five Highlander comrades who fell on the same day.

From the cemetery, we drove north along Strada Provenciale 36, through the valley between Point 111 and 120. The Highlanders began their march to Monte Marrone here. The road snaked up the slope to a ridge. We parked as close to the top of Monte Marrone as possible, and I waded into the thigh-deep sea of grass that filled the countryside. It might as well have been the Adriatic because it had rained the day before and my shoes and socks got soaked trudging through the thick blades of grass. The problems we have in 2014! Seventy years earlier my uncle and had been dodging mortars and machine gun fire on the exact same spot.

Top of Monte Maronne (From west, looking east)

A well and a wooden cross now sit atop Monte Marrone. The cross, which is dated 1949, does not seem to have any connection to the war. The cement well also appears to be a more recent addition. Except for the occasional car rumbling along the nearby via, peace and tranquility prevailed on the summit. I imagine it has been that way ever since the Highlanders left it.

The view from the top is gorgeous. To the north-east one can see the Adriatic and the beach resorts that stretch from Cattolica to Rimini. Rolling hills dotted with small villages and occasional patches of trees dominate the other directions. The scene reminded me of Tolkein’s mythical Shire. Monte Marrone’s eastern and southern slopes are not steep, and I assume many of the Highlanders had dug in there. Metcalfe gravely recalls that they “were on a forward slope facing the enemy and the rising sun”. I scanned the long ridge that stretched east and realized that on September 1^st, 1944, the Germans still controlled this territory.

View to North - The haze is blocking a good view of the Adriatic. The furthest white buildings in the center of the
picture are resort hotels on the beach south of Rimini.

In mid-April, 2014 the grass on Monte Marrone was lush and green, but in the arid summer heat, the Highlanders had encountered a hill covered in dry straw. In fact, Metcalfe describes German tracer fire igniting the straw covering his trench, forcing him to abandon it.

View to the East - Private Metcalfe and other Highlanders were dug into this slope. The Germans who initially fired upon them were probably located around the plowed field in the center.

Further downhill, the south-eastern slope funnels into a gully. This must have been the one Metcalfe describes escaping to. To the south, the hill flattens out where a few mundane buildings stand. I guessed that was the location of the farmhouse where Metcalfe claimed Tactical Headquarters had moved into.

View to the south - On September 1st, 1944, the Highlanders had penetrated over 3 km over the Gothic Line
Montecchio and the Foglia River are located in the valley in the center.
The wooded hill just to the right of Montechhio is Point 120.
To the left is Point 111 and higher up point 147, which the Perth Regiment took on its way to Point 208
The white building is probably located where the Highlander had set up tactical command in an old farmhouse.

Monte Marrone was the last war site we visited. From there, we drove to the 10km distant Adriatic to enjoy some of the Easter-Sunday sun. It was surprising how much of Metcalfe’s mental sketch you could still see in the landscape. Nevertheless, if you did not know the hill's history, you would never guess that such a horrible event had occurred there. The memory of that bloody battle has all but disappeared.

This brings me back to the last line of the inscription on Uncle Harold’s grave: ‘as long as memory lasts, we will remember you’. In 1945, as a new post-war world was dawning, his parents and siblings probably felt that their memories of him could last an eternity. Now, seventy years later, what is left of that collective memory?

I was born nearly 30 years after he died, so my memory of him comprises a photograph, a gravestone, and a grassy hill overlooking the Adriatic Sea. Though my research partially reconstructed the events leading to his death, it did not broaden my knowledge of his life. As I stood at the foot of his grave and on the summit where he fell, I felt nothing except for the personal satisfaction of reaching the end of a long journey. Learning his tragic story felt like finding out a poorly-developed fictional character had passed.

Therefore, as my cousin Michelle suggested, I hope to learn more about my great uncle before he crossed the Foglia River. If any family members reading this have any direct or indirect memory of him, please share them comment section below. Maybe then, that memory will last longer.

If anyone reading this has plans to visit Montecchio, please feel to contact me for tips or with questions. Please see below for more pictures from the area.

Sources:

Morrison, Alex and Slaney, Ted. The Breed of Manley Men: The History of the Cape Breton Highlanders. The Canadian Institute of Strategic Studies, 1994.
Dancocks, Daniel D. The D-Day Dodgers: The Canadians in Italy 1943-45. McClelland and Stewart, 1991.
McGeer, Eric. The Canadian Battlefields in Italy: The Gothic Line and the Battle of the Rivers. Laurier Center for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies, 2010.

More Photos:

I found the following two photos of Harold online. The top one, which is from a Canadian Legion Veterans' Service Recognition Booklet, I immediately recognized. However, the bottom photo, which is included in his online file at the Canadian Veteran's Affairs, does not look right to me. Could someone confirm or deny whether the second photo is him?