Second World War, The

by Corrigan, Gordon

  On 12 January 1944 the Free French Corps, comprising two divisions, one of Moroccan and one of Algerian troops commanded by French officers and part of Fifth Army, attacked in driving snow to the north of Cassino. It made some progress and was then held up by the men of a German mountain division. The French Corps commander, General Alphonse Juin, lately Commander-in-Chief Vichy French Forces in North Africa, was convinced that just one more division would allow him to get through the defences and round behind Cassino, but Clark was not convinced and the French had to go on to the defensive where they were. On 17 January the British X Corps, reinforced by 5 Division from Eighth Army, crossed the River Garigliano near the west coast and established bridgeheads from which it was hoped to outflank Cassino, but swift reaction by the Germans brought a counterattack by two panzer divisions from Rome on 21 January and the advance was halted. Although X Corps could get no further, it had drawn at least some of the German reserves on to its front, which Clark hoped would assist the next phase of his attack, which would see the British 46 Division making a diversionary attack across the Garigliano farther north while the American II Corps attacked across the River Rapido just north of Cassino. This would happen on 20 January and would precede the seaborne landing on 22 January, which was to be at Anzio, a port and town sixty miles up the coast from the Gustav Line. The attack by 46 Division was a failure: the fast-flowing river washed assault boats away or overturned them, the engineers were unable to get a bridge across, and German minefields and a stout infantry defence forced abandonment, with those few infantrymen on the other side of the river left to their fate. Without a diversion, the II Corps attack went in anyway, spearheaded by 36 Division of the Texas National Guard.* Starting at 2200 hours, the Texans were required to cross the river and then attack the German fixed defences. The approach to the river was overlooked by Monte Cassino, all stores and boats had to be manhandled through the mud, and minefields on the opposite side covered by German mortars meant that when, on the second day, 36 Division did manage to get two battalions across, they were pinned down and unable to move. Two foot bridges that the divisional engineers managed to put in place were quickly washed away and efforts to lay a Bailey bridge across to take armour had to be abandoned. The attack stalled, and by the afternoon of 22 January all those who had been on the enemy bank were dead or prisoners. That night the seaborne force landed.

  The Anzio landing, Operation Shingle, took place at 0200 hours on 22 January when the US VI Corps put one British and one American division, a British commando brigade, an American Ranger battalion and an American parachute regiment ashore. The landings took place to no opposition and the corps commander, the fifty-four-year-old Major-General John P. Lucas, had every reason to be pleased with himself and began to bring ashore tanks of the US 1 Armoured Division. In hindsight, if Lucas had cracked on as soon as he had landed, and pushed inland to the Alban hills, he might have achieved something, but as it was he waited to land the rest of his corps, consolidate his position and stockpile rations and ammunition. By 24 January his lodgement was fifteen miles wide and seven miles deep. Unfortunately for Lucas, the delay gave the Germans time to assemble six divisions to lay siege to the beachhead. Major-General Lucian Truscott, one of Lucas’s divisional commanders and who would eventually take over from him in command of the corps, was soon to comment that the Anzio situation bore grave similarities to Gallipoli, with the same amateur (Churchill) being its inspiration.

  Now the need to break through the Gustav Line became urgent if VI Corps at Anzio was not to be snuffed out, and the Germans handed a massive propaganda coup. Clark renewed his assaults, with all three corps, the British X, the US II and the Free French, attacking, but, although they got into the outskirts of the German defences in some places and on 7 February men of 34 Division’s 168 Infantry Regiment got to within a few hundred yards of the monastery on Monte Cassino, they could get no farther. The German defence was just too good, and that afternoon Clark ordered his men to pull back and he closed the battle. The Gustav Line was still intact. Meanwhile, at Anzio, Lucas, now reinforced by the American 45 Division, at last attacked out of his beachhead on 30 January, one day before a planned German attack on him. Initially VI Corps made some progress, with the British 1 Division gaining a mile and a half in two days, but the Germans were able to reinforce, and, when Tiger heavy tanks arrived on 1 February, Lucas could only accept that the advance had ground to a halt and he ordered his men to dig in and defend where they were.

  While 15th Army Group was gearing itself up to deal with the Gustav Line, major command changes had taken place in the Mediterranean. General Eisenhower and General Montgomery were recalled to England, the former as Supreme Allied Commander and the latter as Land Forces Commander for Overlord, the cross-Channel invasion. General Sir Maitland Wilson, chosen as much for his diplomatic skills as for his sound military common sense, replaced Eisenhower as Supreme Allied Commander Mediterranean, and Lieutenant-General Oliver Leese, late of the Coldstream Guards and previously an armoured division and corps commander in North Africa and Sicily, replaced Montgomery at the head of Eighth Army.

  By the end of January the Gustav Line still barred the way to Rome: Fifth Army had put all its divisions into the line and all had taken considerable casualties, while on the east coast a combination of determined Germans, difficult terrain and foul weather had halted Eighth Army too. Alexander now considered that, as Kesselring’s reserves had been deployed to deal with the Anzio landing, Clark could now be reinforced by three divisions from Eighth Army, 2 New Zealand, 4 Indian and 78 British, to be formed into a corps which, as it was to be commanded by Lieutenant-General Bernard Freyberg VC, would be named the New Zealand Corps. Clark’s plan for the Second Battle of Cassino was essentially a rerun of the first, with the New Zealand Division attacking the town and 4 Indian Monte Cassino and the monastery area. Neither Freyberg nor Major-General Tuker, commanding 4 Indian Division, thought that this stood any chance of success and protested to Clark. Tuker, with three Gurkha battalions in his division, was convinced that the sensible thing to do would be to reinforce the French in the mountains and push on with them, getting behind Cassino and into the Liri Valley, and Freyberg concurred. It was unfortunate that Clark did not welcome Freyberg’s presence. At forty-eight years old, Clark was the American army’s youngest three-star general and had made his name as a superb staff officer and administrator. He was very conscious of public relations and reluctant to allow anyone else to share any glory that might be going. He had a reputation as a commander who lacked tactical originality and always conducted operations conventionally. Freyberg was older, had been a general for longer and had considerably more operational experience, while Tuker was an officer of an empire of which many Americans disapproved. The two men’s objections were listened to and rejected. Tuker then asked that, as his line of advance was overlooked entirely by the monastery, the building should be bombed. This caused a problem. The Germans had announced a 300-metre neutrality zone around the monastery and had always insisted that they would not use it for any military purpose. American reports suggested that this was not true, and when Tuker asked for it to be bombed, Freyberg, Clark, Alexander and finally Wilson agreed on the grounds of military necessity, although fully aware that they would be accused of cultural vandalism.* On 15 February the monastery was duly reduced to piles of rubble by Allied bombing, an operation which killed a number of Italian refugees who had taken shelter there, and with their neutrality zone now breached, the Germans swarmed into the cellars and built positions amongst the ruins. Nothing had been achieved and, when 4 Indian Division attacked, it was observed every foot of the way, and not even the Gurkhas could get to the top. When the New Zealand Division attacked the town, nestling at the bottom of the hill, it was a similar story, and on 18 February Clark accepted defeat.

  Meanwhile, at Anzio, Colonel-General Heinrich von Vietinghoff’s Tenth Army had launched its counter-attack against Lucas’s VI Corps on 17 February. At fi
rst they forced the American and British defenders back almost to their original beachhead, but then Allied artillery, naval gunfire support and massive air bombardment began to tell and by 20 February both sides were utterly exhausted and settled down, the Allies to defend and the Germans to contain. Lucas was now removed from command, not before time in the opinion of some, and returned to the USA, being replaced by Major-General Truscott, who had hitherto been commanding 3 Division.

  Alexander was convinced that the pressure must be kept up on the Germans and the Third Battle of Cassino was a holding operation while stocks and troops were assembled and prepared for a truly mammoth smashing assault on the Gustav Line. The Third Battle would be almost a repeat of the Second, and again it would be the responsibility of the New Zealand Corps, with 4 Indian Division attacking the monastery and Monte Cassino, and the New Zealand Division Cassino town. Freyberg insisted that he would not attack until there had been three clear days without rain, to allow vehicles and tanks to move, and at last on 15 March the attack began with carpet-bombing of the town. This provided no advantage, except to the Germans, as ruins are far more easily defended than undamaged buildings. The plan was to support the infantry with a mixture of British and American armour, but the bombing had blocked every route into the town and any attempt by the engineers to shift the piles of rubble immediately drew shell and mortar fire from the Germans, and the attack achieved little. Simultaneously, 4 Indian Division went for the monastery, but, apart from a small group of Gurkhas who captured Hangman’s Hill, a few hundred yards below the summit, they too could achieve nothing. The battle went on, with the British making occasional gains but unable to reach the summit or to break through the German lines. On 20 March, Freyberg threw in his third division, the British 78 Division, but it too could do little, and on 23 March Freyberg withdrew his men from their exposed outposts, consolidated what little he had gained and closed the battle down.

  The Fourth, and as it happened the final, Battle of Cassino, Operation Diadem, was much better prepared for than any of the others, and here Alexander took over the planning personally, with the intention of bringing the maximum amount of firepower on a twenty-mile front between Cassino and the sea. The inter-army boundary was changed and Eighth Army now took over the Cassino sector, moving the bulk of its troops to the west, leaving only enough men in the eastern, Adriatic, sector to hold the front. Alexander’s plan was for Fifth Army to push up the west coast to link up with the US VI Corps at Anzio, which, now reinforced by two more divisions, would break out, and then the whole would swing inland to cut off the retreat of the German Tenth Army. The Free French Corps would attack to the south of Cassino, break through and then wheel right into the Liri Valley, while the British XIII Corps of the British 4 Division and the Indian 8 Division would attack to the north and wheel left. The monastery and Monte Cassino itself would be attacked by the Polish Corps of two divisions, supported by a Polish armoured brigade. Ready to exploit the breakthrough once it occurred would be the Canadian Corps of the Canadian 1 Infantry Division and the Canadian 5 Armoured Division, and the British 78 Division and 6 Armoured Division.

  At 2300 hours on 11 May 1944 over 1,000 field, medium and heavy guns of 15th Army Group began a ferocious bombardment of the known German positions, and the US II Corps began its advance along the coast behind a creeping barrage and supported by naval gunfire, while the French launched their Berber tribesmen against the southern hills. That same day General Leese ordered the Polish Corps to attack with both divisions, but it was too early; the Germans were not in the slightest ruffled and, although they had taken casualties from the artillery bombardment and continued to suffer from air attacks, they repelled the Poles, who by evening were back where they started. The French made excellent progress, however, and on 13 May they had got through the hills and were looking down into the Liri valley behind Cassino, while on the Fifth Army axis German resistance had stiffened and Clark was making only moderate progress. The fighting became more reminiscent of the battles of the first war, with the attackers inching forward and the advantage always with the defender, but weight of artillery, air power and superior numbers began at last to tell, and when at 1800 hours on 16 May the Poles attacked again with one division the defences began to crumble, and, when the second Polish division was sent forward at first light the following day, the Germans realized that they could no longer hold and withdrew from Monastery Hill. The heights were in Allied hands, but the fighting would go on as the Germans withdrew to previously prepared positions about ten miles back – the Hitler Line. The US VI Corps was ordered to break out on 23 May and, after two days of intensive fighting, it at last linked up with Fifth Army. On the Hitler Line, the German Tenth Army held the Allies up for another two days and then began a fighting withdrawal. Now was the time for Mark Clark’s Fifth Army to close the door and cut off the withdrawing Germans, but in an astounding piece of rank disobedience, which even some of the American generals thought was very bad form, he made for Rome instead, while his astonished troops watched Tenth Army pull back along Route 6, which was kept open by the Hermann Göring Division. Fifth Army, led by its commander, Mark Clark, entered Rome on 4 June 1944, and Clark’s public relations team made much of his getting there before the British. As it happened, the British could not have cared less who got to Rome: what mattered was the destruction of the German Tenth Army, something which was prevented by Clark’s failure to do what he had been told. Had Clark been a British general, or Alexander an American one, Clark would have been sacked on the spot, but one of the difficulties in making war in a coalition is that it is almost impossible to get rid of one’s partner’s incompetents and Clark survived.* The four battles of Cassino cost the Allies 31,000 casualties, killed, wounded, taken prisoner and missing, and they were as yet barely halfway up Italy.

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  If we discount the 700,000 men transported by Darius the Great in his expedition against the Scythians in 511 bc and the crossing of the Hellespont by Xerxes with 2 million men in 481 bc as exaggerations (the entire population of the Persian Empire was only around 4 million), then Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily on 10 July 1943, was the largest single-phase amphibious operation in history, but, when follow-up troops and equipment are included, Operation Overlord, the invasion of Normandy on 6 June 1944, dwarfs them all. On this occasion, 8,000 aircraft, 1,200 warships and nearly 3 million men all combined to land over 133,000 soldiers and their tanks, vehicles and equipment on a fifty-mile stretch of beaches in the bay of the River Seine on one day, and by the end of June that force had swollen to 850,000 men, 150,000 vehicles and half a million tons of supplies.

  The British had never really wanted to invade North-West Europe, not least because they had bitter first-hand experience of amphibious operations that had gone wrong: Churchill had never forgotten the Gallipoli campaign of the first war and Dieppe had been a disaster dressed up as lessons learned. (At this stage, Anzio was still to come.) From the British point of view, an ideal solution would be for the Germans and the Russians to fight each other to a standstill, after which the Allies would enter Europe almost unopposed and dictate a peace that would keep the Soviets as far away from Western Europe and the Balkans as possible. The Americans took a much more uncomplicated stance: Germany should be defeated as soon as possible and this could only happen with a cross-Channel invasion. There was much inter-Allied suspicion; the British suspected the Americans of being prepared to grant concessions to the USSR in Europe in exchange for help in the Pacific, while the Americans suspected the British of pursuing their own imperial interests by pressing the claims of a Mediterranean and Balkan strategy rather than a European one. There was much truth in both attitudes, while the Soviet Union, which had been doing most of the fighting against the Germans since 1941, was interested innothingother than a second front in Europe as soon as possible, to draw German forces away from its own. After much argument, discussion, pleading and horse-trading, the Casablanca Conference of Janu
ary 1943 directed that planning begin for a cross-Channel invasion no later than 1944. The British now had to accept that they would be going across the Channel – for, if they did not agree wholeheartedly, the Americans might well switch the bulk of their efforts to the Pacific and let Europe look after itself – and set out to make the best of it, without abandoning hope that operations in the Mediterranean might yet preempt such an invasion. In March 1943 a joint planning staff was set up under the British Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick Morgan, who was titled Chief of Staff to Supreme Allied Commander and told by the CIGS, Brooke, who at that stage did not really believe in Overlord, that despite its improbability he had to get on and make it feasible. Morgan was hampered by not yet knowing who the supreme commander was to be, and thus he had only his own, fortunately sound, military judgement to go on.