The desert sun seemed intent on reducing men to shadow and bone. The Coldstream disembarked at Algiers in November 1942 and began their campaign with endless marches across the bone-dry Algerian interior. From Banaki Farm to Guelma, they tramped over red-clay roads that melted under midday heat and cracked into hard ridges by nightfall. Dust clung to every surface, filled the fibers of uniforms, and ground between teeth. Mortar tubes, heavy in the best of conditions, became brutal burdens for George Rossiter and his mortar platoon who handled the heavy equipment after mile through terrain as hostile as any enemy.
They reached the hills east of Medjez el Bab in January 1943 to occupy hilltop observation posts overlooking valleys of thorn-scrub and shale. German and Italian patrols moved under cover of olive trees and sun-bleached ruins. Forward companies dug shallow scrapes into dry earth, bracing for contact, while the mortars hauled their 3-inch tubes up ridgelines under cover of darkness.
The nights turned bitter and the sharp drop in temperature turned packed dirt to brittle crust. Rossiter worked in shifts, rotating between fire missions and standing watch over the mortar pits. Resupply convoys navigated narrow mountain tracks under threat of ambush and mules often replaced trucks where roads vanished. Soon, rations were limited, tea grew scarce, and ammunition was precious.
FONDOUK PASS
By April, the Coldstream were thrown into the fighting at Fondouk Pass. The terrain was deceptive—flat approaches leading into steep escarpments and rocky defiles. German artillery zeroed in on chokepoints and minefields waited along the flanks. The mortars used folds in the terrain to mask their flash, coordinating with forward observers stationed behind cairns and boulders, while the battalion attacked in waves under their covering fire as smoke shells arced overhead.
Rossiter’s section fired until the barrels scorched to the touch. Range estimates were hurried and bearings improvised when landmarks disappeared behind drifting dust clouds. Communication was a mix of hand signals and scribbled notes passed between runners. The platoon had become indispensable to the battalion as their fire broke counterattacks and silenced machine gun nests hidden in wadis.
From there, they advanced through Massicault and Djebel Mergueb in May as the German line was collapsing, but still capable of vicious resistance. Up gullies where brush crackled underfoot and visibility vanished at ten yards, the mortars suppressed enemy movements during the push toward Tunis, and when the capital finally fell, the Coldstreamers stood among its dusty outskirts.
ITALY
The olive groves of southern Italy concealed mines, German snipers, and the shattered remains of villages caught between Allied ambition and Axis resistance. Into this war-torn landscape came the 2nd Battalion, Coldstream Guards in landing craft scraping against the gravel beaches of Salerno in September 1943. Salt spray and black smoke mingled in the air as the first waves of Guardsmen disembarked onto the beaches.
The mortar platoon traded the sandstorms of Tunisia for the mountainous terrain and bitter resistance of the Italian mainland. At Salerno, the fighting was immediate and personal. German forces, deeply entrenched and armed with pre-sighted artillery, met the beachhead with a fury that stunned even the most hardened men. The platoon dragged their mortars into cover behind low stone walls and broken farmhouses to lob shells forward of the assaulting infantry.
In the days that followed, the Salerno bridgehead was held by sheer grit. The terrain was unfit for fighting with terraced hills, thick vineyards, and ancient stone compounds that resisted both shell and bullet. Rossiter's mortar fire blanketed ridges and tree lines, suppressing enemy positions that had pinned rifle companies to the ground. When German counterattacks surged, his team provided the curtain of fire that allowed Coldstreamers to regroup and hold their ground.
After Salerno, the Coldstream pushed north toward the Volturno Line. Flooding rains mired the roads and water seeped through boots, socks, battledress and packs. It was a miserable prelude to a winter that descended as the battalion approached Monte Camino. The cold sapped strength from fingers and turned equipment brittle. The battle for Camino in December 1943 was a brutal affair – a multi-day ascent up a steep mountain against emplaced German machine guns and mortars. Rossiter and his men carried their weapons up mule paths and through icy gullies, setting up wherever there was clearance. Their targets were rarely seen, but the effect of accurate mortar fire thumping in coordinated pairs was a barrage of death over the hill crests onto unseen but very real German fortifications.
MOUNT ORNITO
In the mountains in Frebruary 1944, on the brutal slopes of Mount Ornito, Rossiter’s mortar platoon faced their most punishing trial to date. The terrain rose steep and exposed with approaches that were narrow and treacherous, threaded only by precarious mule tracks that turned to icy sludge. The slopes, jagged and bare of cover, gave way to sudden ridges and exposed saddles where snipers waited with practiced patience. Rain turned to sleet, sleet to snow, and the wind cut through wool and oilskin with equal cruelty.
Slit trenches were impossible to dig in ground that was rocky and frost hardened, so the men constructed crude stone sangars, barely enough to shield them from the fragments that rained daily. Forward companies, dug into the high points of 711 and 759, were often within grenade range of the enemy – close enough to hear their movement and close enough to lob death by hand in daylight standoffs. For twelve days, the battalion endured a fight without rest.
The mortar platoon fired more 2- and 3-inch mortar rounds on Ornito than they had in all of North Africa combined. Each tube, frozen and caked with mountain grit, was worked without pause. The bombardments answered to the constant German 'stonks' that saturated the Coldstream’s forward slopes. Illumination flares lit the snowfields at night and smoke canisters heralded bayonet charges across the summit. When the Coldstreamers finally reached the plains beyond Ornito, there was little rest.
MONTE CASSINO
By the time Sergeant Rossiter stood in the shadow of Monte Cassino, the 2nd Battalion had already endured months of attrition. The shattered monastery loomed above them, its broken stones masking machine gun nests and mortar pits. German Fallschirmjäger occupied every fold of the mountain, transforming it into one of the most formidable defensive positions of the war. The war diary for the period best illustrates the daily life for the battalion at Cassino.
‘Forward of the Rapido few roads were recognisable. The road to the Crypt was only a footpath round the bomb craters but it was well worn and easy to follow. The forward companies were very hard to find, living as they did in Sangars and cellars under heaps of rubble. The platoons in many cases had section or two-man posts which could only visited by night, and when two men of 4 Company were killed on the morning on April 20th, they lay undiscovered until the evening. By day each post could observe for a short way, but could probably see no more than a broken wall and the remains of a house beyond. From this meagre and unrecognisable data, it was hard for companies to estimate their exact positions on a large-scale map or air photograph.’
The fall of Monte Cassino was a turning point, but it did not bring rest. As the Germans withdrew, the battalion pushed toward Northern Italy, moving through a patchwork of crumbled towns and pocked fields. The war became one of movement again as they crossed rivers, seized bridges, and flushed out pockets of resistance. Rome came and went in early June. The Guards advanced without ceremony, passing civilians waving white rags and hungry children pressing toward the supply lorries.
The battalion approached the Gothic Line, a final belt of German fortifications carved into the Apennines. Rain returned with vengeance, making supply roads treacherous and positions hard to hold. The mountains rose steep and cold again. Rossiter's men climbed into wind-battered escarpments to set up their tubes, shells carried by hand across slippery paths. Once more, the mortar platoon played a vital role in breaking the enemy line, hammering bunkers and suspected observation posts. At Monte Penzola and surrounding ridges, where the Coldstream came under fierce artillery fire, Rossiter’s platoon was tasked with neutralizing enemy mortar nests that had pinned down forward companies. The terrain offered little cover. Mortar teams operated in exposed gullies and behind shattered rock walls, adjusting fire by flashes and sound in the dark.
In April 1945, as the Axis crumbled in Northern Italy, the Coldstream Guards raced northeast in pursuit of retreating forces. Villages surrendered en masse and German columns collapsed in disarray, but even with victory feeling close the Allies were vigilant. The platoon remained occupied with plenty of mortar screens across suspected escape routes, choking off movement and aiding in the encirclement of enemy remnants.
They entered Trieste in early May under uncertain circumstances. Yugoslav partisans were already in the city, and tensions ran high. But for a few days, at least, there was no more fighting.
PALESTINE
With the Coldstream Guards restructuring in the aftermath of victory, Rossiter, among the regiment's longest-serving veterans, transferred to the 3d Battalion. In early 1945, this newly reinforced unit prepared for deployment to what would become one of Britain’s most volatile postwar commitments.
Palestine in 1945 was a land under tension. The British Mandate, strained by years of conflict and mounting political unrest, had become the epicenter of competing nationalisms. Jewish paramilitary groups, Arab resistance factions, and weary British soldiers shared uneasy streets and contested boundaries.
The sun beat down with an intensity Rossiter had not felt since the North African campaign. Dust curled in spirals off the cobbled streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Patrols passed bullet-scarred walls and cratered alleyways. It was urban warfare without a front line, where danger might emerge from behind a market stall or the roof of a boarding house.
Younger Coldstreamers, fresh from depot or draft, learned quickly that Palestine demanded the alertness of war but the restraint of peacekeeping. Daily duties meant guarding convoys through the Judean hills, escorting political figures, and maintaining curfews in the volatile quarters of Haifa.
By 1948, the British withdrawal from Palestine was underway. The 3rd Battalion departed the region in stages, and Rossiter's time in the Middle East came to a quiet end as the Coldstream Guards shifted into peacetime duties and ceremonial obligations. Seven years later, having made rank of Drill Sergeant, he was awarded the Long Service and Good Conduct Medal – a fitting recognition for nearly two decades of unwavering commitment. Though he ultimately assumed the role of Regimental Sergeant Major, his name would not appear in many headlines or histories, but he was remembered in barracks halls and drill squares by those of the exclusive Coldstream.