On October 1st the 67th Recce party reached Palazzuolo sul Senio quickly moving on to Badia di Susinana, the guns followed them on the 3rd October. The 67th Field Regt and 75th Medium Regt were moved up to provide support. There was no room for any more Artillery until the engineers could build bridges and clear the roads towards Faenza. After three weeks and many casualties the 67th Field Regt were relieved by the 2nd and 19th Field Regiments. The advance up the Senio Valley was inevitably slow. There were many bridges on the road passing Mt Ceco, one in particular took much time to replace. This was before Casola Valsenio, being 100 metres long and 30 metres above the gorge. It would be a month before the Indian Division took the town. On Friday 13th October a shell struck the window sill of the farmhouse housing 266 Bty Command Post. Major Shepherd had just left the room to take a phone call. Lt John Hartridge ACPO was killed and Capt Dudley Masters who had just entered the room, was seriously wounded. Lt Hartridge was buried the same day in the 1st Div Cemetery in Palazzuolo. Later to be transferred to Faenza War Cemetery. Sunday 15th October, Private Burden a cook was killed when he, along with two others, dived from the cookhouse into a trench, to be followed by a shell which killed him and seriously wounded the others. A 1st Division Memorial now stands in Palazzuolo. 24th October the Regiment was the furthest forward Field Regt and subject of much enemy activity. Gnr Hyde was awarded a Military Medal for his actions during the bombardments and for saving Sgt Thompsons life. Sgt Welch was seriously wounded in the lungs, The Guards Brigade passed through the position to relieve the American 88th Division on Mt Battaglia following seven days of severe German counter attacks. Casualties were very high on all sides. Captain Cookson and Capt Roberts spent a few days with the Guards Brigade on Mt Battaglia before the 67th were withdrawn, stories of the numbers of dead were not an exaggeration. On 31st October news came through that 1 Div were to move over to the right to relieve the American 88th Division on Monte Grande. On November1st the Recce Parties left with Major Kerr carrying 48 hour rations. . 1 Div Memorial View from 266 OP Oct 1944 (Averill Family Collection) View from below 266 OP Oct 2019 (Mt Ceco in the distance). Lt John Hartridge age 21 Friday 13 October 1944 Pte Burden age 37 Sunday 15th October 1944 Faenza CWGC (Colour Photos Courtesy Hartridge Family Collection)
From A History of the 67th Field Regiment by PM Credited to Ubique AM Cheetham Shepherd Family Collection
Lt Hartridge was the youngest officer in the 67th Field Regt. He was Commissioned soon after leaving school, posted to North Africa in October 1943. He became Assistant Command Post Officer to CPO Bill Beadle at Anzio. Letter home by Lt Bill Beadle. 6th November 1943 Tunisia "We have just acquired a new officer called Hartridge, a young public schoolish chap but quite likeable for all that! I mention him because he went to Oundle and was in the same house as and a contemporary of John, whom he remembers well and with a certain amount of respect. I will write to drop a line to John when I have time, telling him". Letter by Lt Bill Beadle 13th June 1944 "I have visited Rome and seen a good part of the city and the whole population was wild with happiness. So before seeing the sites and the ruins, we spent the first day seeing the people. Everyone had flowers to throw into our trucks and we could not stop for a moment without being overwhelmed by embraces, kisses and a babel of congratulations and cries of welcome. Myself, Alan Brown (D Troop GPO) and John Hartridge (who was at school with John Eades) were touring in my jeep and before long we were in earnest conversation with a dapper little man called Marino Baldisseri who spoke good English and had spent 20 years in London, latterly as Harry Roy’s star trumpeter. We took him aboard and he showed us the sights". Lt Lewis, Lt Adam (South African), Lt Brown, Capt Daly, Lt Hartridge (Lt Adam replaced Lt Bill Beadle as CPO after his death in Florence) (Shepherd Family Collection) Friday 13th October 1944 Major Shepherd BC 266 Bty On this particular morning John, who had been on duty all night, went to bed after breakfast. I was writing to you on my bed. I was called to the telephone and left the room. Something made me stop at the door and go back to pick up your letters and the one I was writing, to carry them into the next room to finish off, thinking that I should be near the ‘phone. They were shelling around the place as I spoke on the phone. I sat down and wrote you three or four lines, when the house was shaken and smoke poured out of my room. I went straight in – could see nothing for smoke and dust – just hearing faint cries of help, I found Dudley Masters very badly injured. He must have gone in just as I went out. He was wounded in the head and face, left arm, right hand, right leg and chest. However, he could walk and I got him out. In hospital they took a large splinter out that was touching his heart and a piece of wood 3 inches long from his head! He is doing well and was very lucky. I only hope his hand will be ok. The shell actually came in the window at a most unlikely angle. The only place it could have done the damage. Eventually I found John under a pile of rubble – still in bed. I saw nothing could be done for him, shut everyone out – and he died in a very short time. He never knew a thing. We buried him the same afternoon, in a military cemetery just outside a small village in the mountains.
67th Field Regiment Route Sept/November 1944 The Regiment took the Arrow Route SR302 from Firenze to Faltona, then Borgo San Lorenzo where they crossed the River Sieve. Onward to Ronta then Biforco (Now a suburb of Marradi) which was taken by the 2nd North Staffs here they were then faced with heavy German reinforcements. They then turned left up the SP306 to Palazzuolo sul Senio, which turns to the right to Badia di Susinana, this is in the area where John Hartridge was killed between here and Baffadi. The Germans occupied Casola Valsenio.
(Shepherd Family Collection) Capt Dudley Master manning Lt Beadles underground Command Post on night duty at Anzio 1944. I’m writing from a good deep dugout with the wireless pipping away in one corner and my table full of maps and message forms in another. While on a sandbag, a primus roars away merrily, for the next “Tea up”. It’s 0300 hours and a fine night, though frosty and apart from the occasional boom in the distance you’d hardly know there was a war on. It’s like that for 20 hours of the 24 and in other 4 things happen so fast that you have to go all out to keep up with them! During the calm 20 we dig, dig, dig and under the many returns demanded by RHQ sometimes we even shave. In other words we’re well back into the rhythm of battle again and those lazy months in Tunisia might never have been. Of the two lives I’m not sure that I don’t prefer this one, for if one has to be uncomfortable, one might as well feel that one’s discomfort is being put to good use! My C.P. in fact becomes my one hobby during times like the present. As the days go by and we stay in the same position I gradually enlarge and deepen it until eventually it becomes a small underground house with most mod cons. The present one started as a slit trench but now it is a home with three rooms nine feet down, roofed with four inch timber and corrugated iron. The walls are lined and strengthened with empty ammunition boxes and there are innumerable shelves for all our cooking apparatus, books and other non-military equipment. Apart from such domestic amenities it is of course designed also to fire the guns and the various artillery boards, map tables, telephones and wireless sets are laid out and electric lighted to perfection.
Major DCL Shepherd MC Of course there is something desperately subtle about our present type of war. It lacks the heat and temper of big battles as we had at Anzio and in Africa. It is a cold and clumsy slogging as much against nature as anything and one feels much more the loss of ones friends. You feel like helpless insects in the mountains, fighting more against an evil spirit than a human enemy. Major Shepherd with his OP Party and muleteer. (Shepherd Family Collection) The actual technicalities of mountain warfare and the physical effort I am now used to. The wet and wind are hellish. Imagine sleeping out with at the most one wet blanket at 3000 feet on an exposed hill still in pouring rain. Yet one does it and one’s work and cooks one’s food and revels in every moment of sunlight and survives and soon forget misery. Major Shepherd near his OP Oct 1944 (Shepherd Family Collection)
Lt Hartridge (OCTU photo) 1st Div Memorial Palazzuolo sul Senio (a small village in the mountains.) Faenza War Cemetery (Hartridge Family Collection)
