The Second World War (103 page)

Montgomery wanted to break through to turn the flank of the Germans facing Clark’s Fifth Army, but heavy autumn rains in the second week of November delayed his attempt to cross the River Sangro. The ground was so waterlogged that his tanks could not move, and cloud cover so low that
his air support, still called the Desert Air Force, could not operate. The Sangro was in spate to such an extent that pontoon bridges were simply swept away. On 27 November, even though the rain had hardly let up, the 2nd New Zealand Division crossed ‘
and the dog-fight
for possession of the high ground began in earnest’.

Montgomery summoned all the war correspondents on the Italian front to a briefing. He spoke from the steps of his caravan still in desert camouflage, concealed in an olive grove overlooking the Sangro valley. He was wearing suede desert boots, khaki corduroy trousers and a battledress tunic open at the neck with a silk scarf. He was, wrote the Australian correspondent Godfrey Blunden, ‘
a slight little man
with a sharp nose, shrewd, calculating blue eyes overhung by greying eyebrows. He spoke in a dry precise voice with the faintest trace of a lisp.’ His address, laying down his ‘great principles of war’, ‘was interrupted only by chirrupings from a cage full of lovebirds and canaries resting against the side of the caravan’.

At the beginning of December, Montgomery ordered the Canadian 1st Division to attack along the coast towards Ortona. Twenty-five kilometres beyond lay Pescara and Route 5, which led across the Apennines to Rome. Their commander, Major General Christopher Vokes, a redhaired mountain of a man, ordered his men forward in a series of frontal attacks against the 90th Panzergrenadier Division. After an initial success, they came up against the German positions guarding a ravine running south-west of Ortona, which the Germans had planted with mines. For nine days, Vokes flung battalion after battalion into the attack, until his men called him the Butcher. Montgomery sent messages asking why progress was so slow. The Canadians found that they were facing not just panzergrenadiers, but also the 1st Fallschirmjäger Division, whom they recognized from their round paratroop helmets.

On 21 December, the Canadians finally broke through. German demolition teams blew the ancient town to pieces before their eyes, yet the paratroopers still managed to hold the ruins for another week and booby-trapped almost everything that was left. The massive Vokes collapsed in tears of rage at the losses in his division that month–2,300, of whom 500 were dead, and numerous cases of battle fatigue that left men paralysed and speechless. Montgomery cancelled any further attacks for the time being.

Montgomery’s own supply system was again in disarray. On 2 December, a heavy Luftwaffe air raid on the port of Bari had taken the Allies badly off guard. Seventeen ships were sunk, including one Liberty ship, the SS
John Harvey
, which was carrying 1,350 tons of mustard-gas bombs. Delivered in great secrecy, these bombs were to be held in reserve in case the Germans resorted to chemical warfare. The port was in chaos, with oil
pipelines severed and set ablaze. Another ship with 5,000 tons of ammunition caught fire and exploded. As the
Harvey
burst apart, killing the captain and all the crew, huge surges of water were thrown up by each explosion. The mustard gas washed over all those thrown into the sea as well as many all around in the dock area. War correspondents soon found that any reference to the raid in any form was suppressed by censors.

The secrecy surrounding the mustard gas and the death of all those on the
John Harvey
meant that doctors caring for servicemen and civilians alike could not understand why so many of them, unable to open their eyes, were dying in such pain. It took two days before doctors were reasonably certain of the cause. Over a thousand Allied soldiers and sailors perished and an unknown number of Italians. The port itself was out of action until February 1944. It was one of the Luftwaffe’s most devastating raids of the whole war.

Both of Alexander’s armies were now condemned to a costly campaign in harsh surroundings. Southern Italy was ‘
not a happy place
in that cold winter of 1943’, an Irish Guardsman observed. Unhappiest and most destitute of all were the civilians, ready to snatch at any food scraps or pick up any cigarette butt tossed away by a soldier. Survival was a desperate business. In Naples an amateur prostitute would offer herself for 25 cents or a can of rations. In Bari on the Adriatic coast, ‘
five cigarettes
would buy you a woman’. Uninspected brothels were marked ‘Out of Bounds’, but that seemed only to present the challenge of the forbidden to many soldiers. American military police, known as ‘Snowdrops’ from their white helmets, would take great pleasure in bursting into such establishments to check whether any military personnel were present. Venereal disease rates rose to levels far beyond those in Sicily, with more than one soldier in ten infected at any one time. Penicillin was not officially available for such non-military use until the early spring of 1944. It was only justified as a way of getting more men back into the firing line.

While the cornucopia of American industry shipped into Naples harbour stimulated an enormous black market from pilferage, ordinary Italians were close to starvation. The Germans had seized their food supplies, which were already drastically reduced through Fascist maladministration. The only edible product the occupiers had left untouched were chestnuts from mountain forests, which they considered to be nothing more than food for pigs. Italians, deprived of wheat, ground the chestnuts to make flour. One of the greatest shortages was of salt, which meant that it was impossible to slaughter and cure a pig, assuming you still had one after the Germans had passed through. German commanders and officials ignored even the pleas of Mussolini’s minister for agriculture. There were virtually no men to work the fields, since the Germans had taken Italian
soldiers for forced labour. Inevitably, widespread malnourishment led to children suffering from rickets. But the greatest killer, especially in Naples, was typhus. With little soap and hot water available, lice spread the disease rapidly until the Americans brought in large quantities of DDT to spray on the population.

Churchill, while convalescing in Marrakesh after Christmas from his bout of pneumonia, became impatient at the static battle lines across Italy. He returned with enthusiasm to General Mark Clark’s earlier plan to outflank the German line with another amphibious landing closer to Rome. Eisenhower had been distinctly uneasy about the idea, known as Operation Shingle, but both he and Montgomery were leaving the Mediterranean for London to prepare for Overlord. Churchill had the field to himself and more or less assumed command. Clark himself was now rather less convinced of Shingle’s likely success, with only two divisions allocated. If the Fifth Army failed to break through the Gustav Line, this landing force could easily find itself trapped.

The operation to land and supply two divisions required a considerable quantity of shipping–nearly ninety Landing Ships Tank (LSTs) and 160 landing craft. But most of them were due to sail for Britain in mid-January 1944 to be made ready for Overlord. Churchill, using a great deal of prestidigitation with facts and dates, managed to persuade Roosevelt that Operation Shingle would not delay things at all. Although Brooke supported the plan, he was uneasy with the idea of the prime minister playing at commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean. ‘
Winston, sitting in Marrakesh
, is now full of beans and trying to win the war from there!’ the newly promoted field marshal wrote in his diary. ‘I wish to God that he would come home and get under control.’

Churchill, holding court in the Mamounia Hotel, summoned senior officers from all over the Mediterranean. He was dismissive of any doubts and refused to postpone the planned date of 22 January to allow time for rehearsals. The beaches round Anzio, a hundred kilometres behind the German lines, were selected. Most of those present backed the plan, largely because the stalemate had to be broken, but they were well aware that it represented quite a gamble. Churchill underestimated the logistical problems and the ability of the Germans to move troops to counter-attack the landing faster than the Allies could reinforce the bridgehead. Everything thus depended on the Fifth Army’s ability to cross the Rapido River, seize the strongly defended town of Cassino and, hardest of all, then take the mountain fortress of Monte Cassino which loomed above it. Not only did Monte Cassino dominate the immediate vicinity, but it also provided a grandstand view of the whole area for German artillery observers.

Once again, the British X Corps would advance on the left closest to the sea. Clark had wisely placed on his right the newly arrived French Expeditionary Corps, with two divisions of tough North African troops. The
goumiers
were good mountain fighters. They travelled light, used every fold in the ground with great skill, and were ruthless to their enemies, killing silently with knife and bayonet. The main attack would again be in the centre, this time a few kilometres south of Cassino, towards the Liri Valley. This would involve crossing the Rapido and its mine-infested banks under fire, and then attacking strong German defences on higher ground.

Clark’s plan was unimaginative. Several of his divisional commanders were uneasy, but they did not voice their doubts openly. They suspected that Clark’s obsession with taking Rome could cost many of their men’s lives. Clark nevertheless had to mount an all-out attack to give the Anzio landings a chance of success. The 36th Division, which had been battered at Salerno, was to lead the II Corps attack against the village of Sant’Angelo overlooking the Rapido, which was defended by the 15th Panzergrenadier Division. To their south on the night of 19 January, the British 46th Division crossed the Garigliano. But they were forced back in some disorder after the Germans counter-attacked rapidly and their pioneers opened some sluice-gates upriver above the confluence with the Liri. A torrent of water roared down, scattering the assault boats.

On the night of 20 January, the 36th Division began its approach to the Rapido in a heavy river mist. Chaos ensued as many companies lost their way. German pioneers had slipped across to plant mines on the east bank, and as the would-be attackers tramped forward lugging the heavy rubber assault boats, a man would scream when his foot was blown off. Panzergrenadier mortar crews, aiming by sound, fired off a rapid sequence of rounds. Machine guns firing on fixed lines holed many of the assault boats that were launched.

Battalions that made it to the other side were forced to pull back, and next day the divisional commander was ordered to send them across again. They had more success the second time but were trapped in small bridgeheads, where they were shelled and mortared relentlessly. Eventually, the remnants of the division were pulled back, having suffered just over 2,000 casualties. It was a futile, bloody battle which led to much recrimination at the time and later. But, combined with the British attack on the left, it had convinced Kesselring that the moment of crisis was at hand. He had ordered forward his two reserve divisions near Rome, the 29th and 90th Panzergrenadier Divisions, to reinforce the line along the Garigliano and the Rapido. This meant that the Anzio–Nettuno sector was unprotected two nights later.

On 20 January, the British 1st Infantry Division and the US 3rd Division, supported by Commandos and Colonel Darby’s three battalions of Rangers, began to embark in ports on the bay of Naples. Units marching to the ships, accompanied by bands, gave the impression of a victory parade before the battle had even started. The 1st Battalion of the Irish Guards marched to the tune of ‘St Patrick’s Day’. ‘
I was amazed to see
the Italians lining the street cheering and clapping us on the way,’ wrote one of them. ‘I realised that many of the guardsmen had Italian girlfriends among the cheering crowd; many of these walked in step with their soldiers and gave them flowers and trinkets.’ Security was so bad that most of the locals knew where the soldiers were headed.

The overall commander of VI Corps and thus of Operation Shingle was Major General John P. Lucas. He was a kindly man, who gave the impression of an elderly uncle with his white moustache and wire-rimmed spectacles, but he lacked any killer instinct. Senior officers could not resist offering encouraging advice, almost all of which proved both contradictory and inaccurate. The most disastrous came from General Clark himself. ‘
Don’t stick your neck out
, Johnny,’ he told Lucas. ‘I did at Salerno and got into trouble.’ Clark provided no clear objectives. He suggested that he should secure the beachhead and not put his corps in danger.

To everyone’s astonishment after the exuberant Italian send-off, the Germans had not the slightest inkling of the landings planned at Anzio and Nettuno. They were taken completely by surprise. In fact when the Americans and British landed in the early hours of 22 January and asked locals where the Germans were, all they received were shrugs and nods in the direction of Rome. Just a few were rounded up. They had been foraging for their units in this tranquil area, which had been a beach resort for Fascist officials from Rome.

Although the Germans had not prepared conventional military defences, they had deliberately wreaked environmental sabotage on the area. At vast expense in the 1930s, Mussolini had drained
the Pontine Marshes
and settled 100,000 Great War veterans to farm the reclaimed land. Mosquitoes, which had plagued the region, were virtually eliminated. After the Italian surrender, two of Himmler’s scientists planned revenge on their former ally. They had the pumps turned off to flood much of the area again and destroyed the tidal gates. They then introduced the malaria-carrying breed of mosquito, which could survive in brackish water. The German authorities also confiscated stocks of quinine, so that the disease spread. The inhabitants not only found their land and homes wrecked, but more than 55,000 contracted malaria the following year. It was a clear case of biological warfare.