for almost two miles (3 km), remained in German hands and on the night of 23 October the battalion took part in a brigade attack on the feature. The approach march to the brigade assembly area took the 1st Surreys along three and a half miles of winding mountain tracks with steep, muddy gradients. After a heavy artillery barrage, "A" Company, commanded by Major Saunders and "D" Company led the assault on Monte Spaduro with "C" Company bringing up the rear. By one o'clock in the morning, after heavy fighting, the battalion had achieved the objective, but persistent sniping and machine-gun fire from the cover of deep gullies pinned down "A" Company and prevented "C" Company from moving up to its correct position. The following afternoon, Saunders tried to flush out the Germans with two-inch mortars but this failed. The use of heavier weapons was considered but dismissed; the enemy was too close. When two men in the 1st Surreys attempted to move their position, one was sniped in the head and killed, the other took a bullet in the arm. Saunders grabbed a rifle and bayonet and, taking two men with him, worked his way round to the gully. Reaching a point above where the enemy appeared to be, he charged down the gully towards them, yelling as he did so. Four German soldiers with two Spandau light machine-guns surrendered. Saunders was awarded an immediate MC. The Battalion then spent a miserable winter holding these mountainous unsheltered positions in bitterly cold and wet conditions. In the spring of 1945, the 78th Division had returned to the Eighth Army, now under Lieutenant-General Richard L. McCreery, on the Adriatic front to join British V Corps. One of the army's objectives was to break through the German defences on the rivers Senio and Santerno and then drive through the Argenta Gap, a strip of land between Lake Comacchio and flooded land south of the river Reno, to form a pincer with U.S. Fifth Army attacking through the central Apennines to surround and destroy the German armies south of the River Po. On 14 April, the 1st Surreys and the 2nd Battalion, Lancashire Fusiliers, as part of 78 Division's 11th Infantry Brigade, moved up to a concentration area in readiness for an assault on the Argenta Gap. The Lancashire Fusiliers had suffered heavy casualties and Saunders was transferred from the 1st Surreys and