Both Allied armies soon discovered in the next stage of the advance that the mountainous terrain and the weather did not present the ‘sunny Italy’ which they had imagined from pre-war tourist posters. That autumn in Italy was like the Russian rasputitsa of constant rain and deep mud. Both British battledress and American olive drab were sodden for weeks at a time. Trench foot soon became a problem for those who did not put on dry socks once a day. Late autumn downpours turned the rivers to raging torrents and tracks to quagmires, and the retreating Germans had blown every bridge and mined every route. The British, although they had invented the Bailey bridge, envied the well-equipped and numerous American engineer brigades. But even the US Army was short of bridging equipment in such an abundant succession of mountain valleys.
The Germans conducted their withdrawal with defended roadblocks and mines, covered by well-camouflaged anti-tank guns. Advance to contact now meant waiting until the lead tank or armoured car hit a mine and was then knocked out by an armour-piercing round ‘coming out of nowhere’. The wide-ranging manoeuvres of the desert war were far behind them. Narrow roads in narrow valleys, and well-defended hilltop villages, meant that the infantry had to take over point position. Less than thirty kilometres north of the Volturno, the advance came to a complete halt.
The Gustav or Winter Line, selected by Kesselring, ran 140 kilometres from just below Ortona on the Adriatic to the Gulf of Gaeta on the Tyrrhenian side. This was the narrowest part of the Italian boot and well chosen for defence. The Gustav Line had the natural fortress of Monte Cassino as its main strongpoint. All the unguarded optimism of the Allied commanders evaporated as Ultra confirmed that Hitler and Kesselring would mount a ferocious defence. This is the point at which Eisenhower should have insisted on a re-evaluation of the whole campaign. With the seven divisions due to be sent back to England for Overlord, the Allies no longer had the numerical superiority required for a major offensive. Churchill and Brooke seemed to think it was somehow unfair that the Americans should insist on sticking to the agreement made at the Trident conference in May.
Reconnaissance on the ground soon confirmed what the maps indicated. For Clark’s Fifth Army the only path to Rome lay along Route 6, which went through the Mignano Gap, guarded by massive mountains on either side. And behind them ran the Rapido River, which in its turn was dominated by Monte Cassino.
On the left, the British X Corps faced the River Garigliano as a barrier. On 5 November, it attempted to outflank the Mignano Gap by seizing Monte Camino–only to find that this huge feature, with one false ridge after another, was well defended by the 15th Panzergrenadier Division in the first part of the Winter Line. The men of the 201st Guards Brigade, unable to break the German defence, found it impossible to dig in on what they called ‘bare-arse ridge’. In freezing rain, they instead had to construct sangars, or shelters improvised with rocks. German mortar fire from above proved even more lethal than usual, with stone splinters flying in all directions. After several days, Clark had no option but to agree to pull them back off what had become known as Murder Mountain. Dead men were left propped in position, weapons pointed at the enemy, as the survivors withdrew.
Higher in the central Apennines to the north-east, the US 34th and 45th Divisions herded goats in front of them across mountain meadows to set off any mines. The uncomfortable truth was that neither the British nor the Americans had really learned the lessons of mountain warfare. In such terrain, trucks could not get near the forward positions. Food and ammunition had to be carried up the steep, zig-zag paths by mules or men. On the way back, the mule-trains would bring back the dead. The muleteers, mainly charcoal-burners hired at a daily rate, were spooked by their gruesome cargo. Wounded could only be brought out at night by stretcher-bearers, a painful journey up and down steep, slippery slopes for both the carriers and the carried.
In the afternoon of 2 December, under black skies and in the midst of yet another rainstorm, 900 guns of Fifth Army artillery opened a heavy bombardment while dripping infantrymen clambered up the slopes, the British up Monte Camino again and the Americans up La Difensa led by the 1st Special Service Force. By dawn the next day, this semi-irregular group had seized the crest and prepared for counter-attacks by the panzergrenadiers. Over the following days, the fighting for La Difensa was pitiless on both sides. The Americans, having suffered some dirty tricks, took no prisoners.
Just to their south-west, the British had finally taken Monte Camino, so the central German position astride Route 6 could now be partially outflanked. Clark sent in the 36th Division on the north-east side to break the Bernhardt Line in front of the village of San Pietro. Monte Lungo on the south-west side of the Mignano Gap had to be the first objective, because otherwise German artillery positioned there would break up the main offensive. A brigade of Italian Alpini, keen to show their mettle against their former ally who had treated them so badly, went bravely into the assault, but they were cut to pieces by heavy machine-gun fire. Clark even tried using tanks, but they stood little chance of advancing in such rocky terrain without breaking or shedding a track. After several days of heavy losses, Monte Lungo was taken from the west, and San Pietro fell soon afterwards. The Germans simply pulled back to their next line.
Clark’s soldiers presented a sorry sight by the middle of December. They were unshaven, had long, dank hair, and dark circles of exhaustion under their eyes. Their uniforms were impregnated with mud, their boots were coming to pieces, and their skin was white and wrinkled from being perpetually wet. Many suffered from trench foot. The Italian villagers from San Pietro, who had taken shelter from the fighting in caves, were also in a sorry state. They emerged to find their homes completely ruined, and their vegetable plots and vines mangled. Almost every tree on the hillsides around had been smashed by artillery fire.
On the Adriatic side of the Apennines, Montgomery’s Eighth Army could have been fighting a separate war. Build-up was slow until harbours were cleared, so the Eighth Army was delayed by supply shortages, especially fuel. The bulk of shipping coming in to Bari was earmarked for the rapid development of Major General James Doolittle’s Fifteenth Air Force, based on the thirteen Foggia airfields.
Montgomery recognized that the primary purpose of the Italian campaign should be to tie down as many German divisions as possible, and to use the Foggia bases to bomb the Germans in Bavaria, Austria and the Danube basin. The mountainous terrain of south central Italy favoured the Germans in defence and rendered it almost impossible for the Allies to make use of their much larger tank forces. The fighting, they found, was far more ruthless than in the desert. On the German side it had taken on what a war correspondent called an ‘ordered ferocity’. The Germans shot ‘every man in a platoon of Canadians who were surrounded, isolated and signalled their surrender’. And ‘any civilian found in the battle area is immediately shot irrespective of whether his home is there’.
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 dow
n 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. T
he 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 Second World War Page 74