Montese

FactsBattle fact sheet

Move 1The position on the board: a flank piece

In April 1945 the Allies mounted the final offensive in Italy, with the aim of breaking the German front in the Apennines and opening the way to the Po Valley. In the U.S. IV Corps sector, where the Brazilian Expeditionary Force stood, the main attack fell to the 10th Mountain Division, according to the English Wikipedia.

To the FEB fell Montese, on the flank. In the language of the board, it was a supporting piece: the move that mattered was on another axis, and the Brazilian role was to apply pressure beside it. That secondary position is what explains everything that comes after.

The terrain also changed in nature. Monte Castello was an open slope: you climbed under fire, but you could see where the fire came from. Montese is a town on top of a hill, with stone houses, narrow streets, windows, cellars and a bell tower. The board stops being a ramp and becomes a grid of houses, each one able to hide a piece.

There is also a difference that does not show on the map. The troops attacking in April had spent a whole winter on the Apennine line after the first attempts against Monte Castello. They are the same men, but they are no longer green troops.

Move 2The preparatory move: the patrol of 12 April

Before an attack, someone has to go and look at the ground. On 12 April 1945, Sergeant Max Wolff Filho, 33 years old, who had already carried out more than 30 patrols, set out at the head of 19 volunteers to reconnoiter the area between Monteforte and Riva di Biscia, in the no-man's-land in front of the Brazilian lines.

He was hit by a machine-gun burst and did not come back. A reconnaissance patrol is not for fighting; it is for bringing back where the enemy is, how many there are and where you cannot get through. Two days later, the division attacked that same ground.

On the board, this is the move that does not show on the scoreboard. The town that fell in an afternoon fell on ground that patrols like his had been mapping in the dark, one stretch at a time, over weeks of static line.

Move 3The opening: 2 hours and 15 minutes

At 13:30 on 14 April, the 11th Infantry Regiment attacked the triangle formed by Montese, Hill 888 and Montello, with three battalions. The 1st Infantry Regiment attacked in the same action: the two directions of attack appear in the legend of the map drawn by Autran in 1946.

The infantry did not go alone. According to the English Wikipedia, the advance had M8 armored cars and Sherman tanks, which gave the Brazilian attack a visible weight of armor in a flank sector.

At 15:45, Montese was occupied. It took 2 hours and 15 minutes against a defended town, on ground of stone houses in which every window is a firing position. This is where most versions end the story.

Move 4The middlegame: taking is not holding

Urban combat has a rule that the open slope does not: occupying the ground is not the same as being safe on it. On a slope, a machine gun covers a sector; in a street, every door and every cellar opens a new angle, and the building left behind may still have someone inside.

On the other side was the German 114th Light Division, the Jägerdivision, troops geared to rough terrain and urban combat. The Germans did not accept the loss: they counterattacked and, above all, began to shell the town the Brazilians had just occupied.

It is at this point that the attacker's advantage is reversed. While advancing, the troops choose where and when to expose themselves. Once they have occupied, they sit still inside a target the opponent knows, because until a few hours before it was his.

The counterattacks only ceased on 16 April. On the 17th, the troops were still mopping up resistance at Montebuffone. The town fell in an afternoon; holding it took the rest of the four days.

Move 5The opponent's reading: the flank taken for the center

The volume of fire is the figure that weighs most, and also the one the sources record least consistently. The Portuguese Wikipedia speaks of about 1,800 shells on the Brazilian division, out of a total of 2,800 fired against the four Allied divisions in the sector, which comes to 64%. The Brazilian Army Blog speaks of more than 3,200 shells expended in the battle. The numbers do not square with each other; what the two versions have in common is the concentration of fire on the FEB, at around two thirds.

Why did a flank division draw most of the artillery? The English Wikipedia records that the Brazilian advance with armor led the German command to consider Montese a possible real Allied objective in that sector. It is interpretation, not document, but it fits with the rest: on the first day, the main attack of the 10th Mountain was held, while on the flank a force was entering a defended town, with tanks, and not stopping.

Seen from the German position, the secondary move looked like the main one. And the opponent responded to what he saw, concentrating fire there. Brazilian speed, which was the virtue of the attack, became the signal that drew the artillery.

Move 6The bill

Between 14 and 17 April, the FEB suffered 426 casualties, among killed, wounded, captured and missing. The Portuguese Wikipedia details 34 killed within that total.

The comparison with the opening of the attack is the whole lesson of the episode. The 2h15 measured the quality of the Brazilian move; the four days measured the opponent's response. The two numbers describe different things, and rolling them into a single sentence, as if the casualties had fallen during the capture, is the kind of compression that erases what actually happened.

The objective was achieved on the first day and the town was held. The price came not from a Brazilian planning error, but from being exactly at the point the opponent chose as the most dangerous. Two weeks later, the same troops would encircle an entire German division at Fornovo di Taro.

VerdictWhy it ended the way it did

MythsWhat is told and what the record shows

• What is told

  Montese was a quick, clean victory: the town fell in two hours.

  What the record shows

  The town was occupied in 2 hours and 15 minutes, from 13:30 to 15:45 on 14 April. But the counterattacks went on until 16 April, the mopping-up until the 17th, and the FEB totaled 426 casualties over those four days.

• What is told

  So many casualties show the Brazilian troops were unprepared.

  What the record shows

  The troops achieved the objective on the first day, against the 114th Light Division, geared to combat in rough terrain and urban areas, and under the most concentrated artillery fire in the sector. The casualties came from holding the town under that fire, not from failing to take it.

• What is told

  The FEB was the only Allied division to reach its planned objective on the first day of the offensive.

  What the record shows

  The claim appears in a single source, the Portuguese Wikipedia, without independent confirmation. What holds up is more modest: the main attack of the 10th Mountain Division was held on the first day, and the FEB achieved its objective.

QuestionsFrequently asked questions

SourcesSources

1. Batalha de Montese — Portuguese Wikipedia — pt.wikipedia.org
2. Battle of Montese — English Wikipedia — en.wikipedia.org
3. Spring 1945 offensive in Italy — English Wikipedia — en.wikipedia.org
4. O dever cívico-militar de exaltar a Batalha de Montese — Brazilian Army Blog
5. Max Wolff Filho — Portuguese Wikipedia; and Revista Sociedade Militar, on the "king of patrols" — pt.wikipedia.org
6. Map "Combate de Montese", signed Autran, 1946 (Wikimedia Commons) — commons.wikimedia.org
7. 29 April — Capture of Fornovo and surrender of the German 148th Infantry Division — Brazilian Army General Personnel Department

Images

• Fig. 01 — Brazilian Expeditionary Force in Montese: a reconnaissance car in a street of shrapnel-riddled houses.: Força Expedicionária Brasileira · Public domain
• Fig. 02 — "Combate de Montese, 14-IV-945", drawing signed by Autran in 1946. The thick arrows are the directions of attack of the 11th Infantry Regiment; the thin ones, of the 1st.: Força Expedicionária Brasileira (drawing signed Autran, 1946) · Public domain
• Fig. 03 — Brazilian soldiers in position in Montese, with stone houses ahead.: Força Expedicionária Brasileira · Public domain
• Fig. 04 — FEB vehicles in a street of Montese; in the background, the damaged tower.: Força Expedicionária Brasileira · Public domain
• Fig. 05 — The church of Castelluccio di Montese after the shelling.: Força Expedicionária Brasileira · Public domain
• Fig. 06 — The map of the Montese area: Army Map Service, Italy 1:50,000, sheet 97-I "Fanano", 2nd edition, May 1944.: U.S. Army Map Service · Public domain