War Stories III (19 page)

Naples, and the supplies that were to be delivered through the harbor, were essential to a swift Allied advance on Rome. Knowing this, Kesselring had ordered his engineers to render the port unusable—and they used the two weeks between 16 September and 1 October to destroy equipment and supplies, set booby traps, and mine the roads in and through the city. For several weeks after the Allies' arrival, there were still booby traps and delayed-fuse bombs going off in Naples.

Once again the British-American attack ground to a snail's pace. For three months, Kesselring's highly disciplined troops fought a series of effective delaying actions—mining roadways, blowing up bridges, and ambushing every Allied advance as he slowly withdrew north to his
Winterstellung
—or “winter position.”

Meanwhile, SS troops began systematically rounding up Italian Jews and transporting them to Auschwitz, Poland, for extermination. The first “shipment,” 1,100 Roman Jews—two-thirds of them women and children—departed for the killing center on 18 October. Only fourteen men and one woman survived. Within a month, 8,360 Italian Jews had been deported.
The Germans' meticulous records showed that 7,749 of them were murdered in Hitler's
Endloesung
—his “Final Solution.”

By the time Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin met for the “Eureka Conference” in Tehran on 28 November 1943, supplies were flowing well through Naples, but the Allied advance on Rome was consuming men and materiel at an alarming rate. Skillfully using the terrain to the defenders' advantage, Kesselring inflicted heavy Allied casualties by contesting every hilltop and river crossing during a series of bitterly fought Allied offensives. On Christmas Day, 1943, instead of celebrating the liberation of Rome, the Allies were being held in check seventy miles south of the city, along the German's heavily fortified Gustav Line.

Anchored at Gaeta in the west and Pescara in east, Kesselring's defenses included more than 75,000 landmines, bunkers, revetments, and dug-in tanks and artillery. The German 1st Parachute Division—one of the finest units in the Wehrmacht—held Monte Cassino, a sixth-century mountaintop abbey and the linchpin of the Gustav Line. By controlling the Monte Cassino heights, they blocked access to the Liri Valley and the approaches to Rome.

On 31 December 1943, Eisenhower was officially transferred to London to take over preparations for Operation Overlord—the cross-channel invasion of Hitler's “Festung Europa”—Fortress Europe. Two days later Ike's successor, General Sir Harold Alexander, the new Allied commander in the Mediterranean, dusted off a proposal for bypassing the Gustav Line defenses that Eisenhower had earlier discarded.

Dubbed Operation Shingle, the plan that Eisenhower rejected called for a diversionary amphibious assault at Anzio—on Italy's west coast—thirty miles from Rome and fifty miles north of the Gustav Line. Ike had vetoed the operation because he believed it would consume men, materiel, and shipping necessary to both Overlord and Anvil/Dragoon—the invasion of southern France. He was also concerned that putting an Allied force so far behind enemy lines risked annihilation if the element of surprise was lost.

General Alexander, convinced by Churchill that Rome must be captured, had no such qualms and promptly resurrected Shingle. After several days of debate with General Mark Clark's 5th Army planners, General John
P. Lucas, commanding the U.S. VI Corps, was ordered to carry out the Anzio assault—not as a diversionary operation, but as a major Allied offensive.

Lucas was allocated more than 375 U.S. and British ships—including sixty LSTs and 2,600 Allied aircraft—to support landing elements of the U.S. 1st Armored Division, the U.S. 3rd, 34th, and 45th Infantry Divisions, the British 1st and 5th Infantry Divisions, a full brigade of U.S. Army Rangers, and two regiments of the U.S. 82nd Airborne at Anzio.

Seven days after coming ashore, Lucas was to link up with the remainder of Mark Clark's reinforced 5th Army—which was to have punched through the Gustav Line and headed north. The entire force was then to make a final push into Rome. It
almost
worked.

On 20 January 1944, the U.S. II Corps began its assault on the Gustav Line—with the U.S. 36th Infantry Division attacking to force a crossing of the icy-cold, fast-flowing Rapido River. Two days later, at 0200, after a very brief pre-H-Hour bombardment to preserve surprise, Lucas started landing his VI Corps at Anzio.

The Germans were completely surprised. The landings—the British on the left and the Americans on the right—were virtually unopposed. By dark on 22 January, Lucas had more than 35,000 men and 3,250 vehicles ashore and moving rapidly inland. Within the next seventy-two hours, the VI Corps had established a beachhead that was more than six miles deep and ten miles wide—but still well short of the Alban hills, the high ground that overlooked the Anzio beaches.

Then, Lucas learned that far to his south, the 36th Division had been repulsed with horrific losses at the Rapido River. Units of II Corps that were to have been charging north through a gap in the Gustav Line were in fact not able to move even a mile in the direction of Anzio.

Concerned that the link-up force from the south would not be able to break through the Gustav Line before the Germans counter-attacked his shallow beachhead at Anzio, Lucas ordered a halt to further offensive movement and directed that the units already ashore dig in. Meanwhile, under
harassing attacks from the Luftwaffe, he completed his build-up of forces and supplies ashore.

Kesserling, initially stunned by the audacity of the Allied landing at Anzio, was subsequently surprised that Lucas did not exploit the situation. Noting that the lead elements of the Allied force had not advanced to the Alban hills, he began moving every available German not committed to the immediate defense of the Gustav Line to prepare for a major counter-attack against the Anzio beachhead. Among them there were the Hermann Goring and 4th Parachute Divisions—two of the best in the Wehrmacht.

By 29 January, Lucas had almost 70,000 troops, 500 artillery pieces, and 250 tanks ashore. Confident that he had landed sufficient troops and supplies to renew his offensive, he ordered the breakout from the beachhead to commence on the night of 30–31 January. The 1st and 3rd Ranger Battalions were to spearhead the attack by infiltrating German lines and seizing a strategic road intersection in the small town of Cisterna. Corporal Raymond Sadoski, a Connecticut Yankee, was among the elite Rangers committed to that operation. Neither he nor his comrades knew that the Germans were preparing a counter-offensive of their own—and would meet them in force.

U.S. Army Ranger Ray Sadoski was captured by the Germans during the battle at Cisterna. During the fight, 767 U.S. Army Rangers had infiltrated behind enemy lines. All but six were killed, MIA, or captured. The next day, German propaganda cameras recorded several dozen of those elite U.S. soldiers being paraded past the coliseum in Rome under the guns of their captors. They would be POWs until the end of the war.

His breakout repulsed, Lucas once again shifted to defense, while the German 14th Army continued to reinforce around the Anzio beachhead. Further south, efforts to punch a hole in the Gustav Line continued to chew up American and British units. On 11–12 February 1944, the U.S. 34th Division was driven back after a disastrous assault against German 1st Parachute Division positions surrounding the Monte Cassino Abbey. Two days later, General Alexander ordered the abbey bombed. It was one of the most controversial orders of the war in Europe—and one of the least effective for the Allies.

On 15 February, more than 400 tons of bombs dropped by 230 B-17s and B-25s turned the ancient Benedictine monastery to rubble. The 1st Parachute Division—which had until now carefully avoided setting foot on the hallowed ground—immediately occupied the hilltop, turning the wreckage into a redoubt. An Allied attack the next day by New Zealanders and Indian troops—on the heights where the monastery stood—met with disaster.

That same day at Anzio, the German 14th Army, now more than eight divisions strong, charged out of the Alban hills and smashed into the VI Corps lines protecting the beachhead. One the Americans who suddenly found himself in desperate hand-to-hand combat that afternoon was a young U.S. Army infantry captain, Felix Sparks.