The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 (The Liberation Trilogy) by Rick Atkinson
“Cassino was so ideally situated”: interrogation report, Richard Heidrich; memo, Crowne to Norstad, “Preliminary Memorandum on Cassino.”
“The Germans would do well”: Böhmler, 213.
Three hundred and fifty Allied tanks: Phillips, 269–71, 298, 305, 336.
The planned pace of one hundred yards’ advance: Molony V, 787; Phillips, 272 (“like a flotilla”); “Operations of N.Z. Corps,” 28; Parton, “The Bombardment of Cassino.”
Teeming rain fell at dusk: StoC, 443; “Operations of N.Z. Corps,” 26; Majdalany, Cassino, 179.
In the dying light, a single intrepid company: John H. Green, “The Battles for Cassino,” AB, No. 13, 1976, 1+; Phillips, 289, 347; “Report on Cassino Operations,” June 5, 1944, HQ, Fifth Army, Robert J. Wood papers, MHI, 16; Smith, 116; “Operations of N.Z. Corps,” 28 (ruined radios and cut phone lines).
Several hundred feet above the town: Dharm Pal, The Campaign in Italy, 1943–1945, 129; “Operations of N.Z. Corps,” 27.
This isolated, eight-acre lodgment: Majdalany, Cassino, 201; Phillips, 349 (“moral lien”).
“The fire was so heavy”: Parker, 254; The Tiger Triumphs, 61–63 (amputated limbs); Majdalany, Cassino, 201 (dead mule at the bottom); Molony V, 794 (mutinied rather than cross); C. M. Emeis, “Report on Italian Campaign,” June 15, 1944, NARA RG 337, AGF, observer reports, #111, box 55, 12; Prasad, ed., 131; Böhmler, 235 (bags of blood).
Enough food and ammo fell: Smith, 7, 126–27 (“God help us all”).
“Freyberg’s handling”: diary, MWC, March 17, 1944, Citadel, box 65; Phillips, 299–301; Molony V, 793; Smith, 122.
“I told Freyberg”: diary, MWC, March 17, 18, 23, 1944, Citadel, box 65; Phillips, 352 (he intended to abandon the attack).
“Push on, you must go hard”: Majdalany, Cassino, 186; Smith, 125; Prasad, ed., 132.
“Almost every building”: “Operations of N.Z. Corps,” 31–32, 41–42; Molony V, 800 (“unexpected encounters”); Phillips, 323; The Tiger Triumphs, 59; Robert S. Rush, The U.S. Infantryman in World War II, 131 (“Little Stalingrad”).
Just before dawn, three hundred paratroopers: Smith, 127; Majdalany, Cassino, 190–91; Stevens, 303 (“smother of enemies”); Parker, 237 (through arrow loopholes).
An arcing signal flare: The Tiger Triumphs, 56–57; Parker, 241 (“We talked a bit”); Prasad, ed., 135; Green, “The Battles for Cassino,” 1+; Molony V, 797; Stevens, 305 (fur-lined gloves).
Two thousand yards across the crest: Green, “The Battles for Cassino,” 1; AAR, “The Attack on Albenette House,” n.d., Co. D, 760th Tank Bn, in “Report No. 140, Army Ground Forces Board, AFHQ-NATO,” Apr. 3, 1944, CARL, N-7245-G (“cause chaos”); Prasad, ed., 137; Phillips, 311.
Then the noose cinched: Green, “The Battles for Cassino,” 1+; “The Attack on Albenette House” (“I hated to shoot the mules”); Pal, 137.
General von Senger on several occasions: Frido von Senger und Etterlin, “War Diary of the Italian Campaign,” 1953, FMS, #C-095b, MHI, 102–3; Frido von Senger und Etterlin, Neither Fear nor Hope, 226.
Little reliable information: Senger, Neither Fear nor Hope, 214–15; Smith, 119 (“Things are not too splendid”); Molony V, 791, 802; Böhmler, 233.
Yet the failed Allied tank foray: Böhmler, 233–35; Phillips, 304–5 (22,000 smoke rounds); Majdalany, Cassino, 188 (“unpleasant wounds”); Prasad, ed., 136 (“screened nothing from nobody”).
As for the town, Senger thought: Senger, “War Diary of the Italian Campaign,” 101; Senger, Neither Fear nor Hope, 216; Molony V, 793–94, 802–3.
General Freyberg also prowled: Stevens, 96; Phillips, 316 (“Another lovely day”); Freyberg, 467 (his arithmetical scribbles); Smith, 132 (“both groggy”); http://www.catholicforum.com/saintS/saintb02.htm (date St. Benedict died); diary, MWC, March 21–22, 1944, Citadel, box 65 (he rallied Alexander); Winston S. Churchill, Closing the Ring, 509.
“Unfortunately we are fighting”: Arthur Bryant, Triumph in the West, 127; “Report on Cassino Operations,” 21; Majdalany, Cassino, 193 (“Passchendaele”).
Alexander concurred, as did Clark: memo, A. Gruenther to I. Eaker, Apr. 5, 1944, in “The Bombardment of Cassino,” CARL, N-6058; diary, MWC, March 23, 1944, Citadel, box 65.
That calumny: “Notes on Converation Between Commander 13 Corps and Lieut. Col. Nangle, commanding 1/9 Ghurka Rifles,” ts, May 28, 1944, in diary, General Sir Sidney Chevalier Kirkman, Jan.–Sept. 1944, LHC; Trevelyan, 207 (paper bag holding a carrier pigeon); Smith, 138 (“spot of shooing”); Kirkman, article on 3rd and 4th Cassino, 94+.
At 8:15 P.M. on Friday, March 24: “Operations of N.Z. Corps,” 43–44; Molony V, 801n; Majdalany, Cassino, 204, 209 (keg of rum); Smith, 138 (“Never will I forget”).
By late Saturday, a swastika flag: Senger, “War Diary of the Italian Campaign,” 93; Trevelyan, 208 (“a heavy fall of snow”).
The New Zealand Corps disbanded at noon: Prasad, ed., 142; Phillips, 341; Molony V, 803. During the last three weeks of March, the 1st Parachute and 15th Panzer Grenadier Divisions reported 1,800 casualties, but during the eleven-day battle for Cassino in March the German losses are estimated at roughly 1,200.
“that valley of evil memory”: Parton, 360; GK, March 24, 1944.
“a persistent feeling that something, somewhere”: StoC, 447; Molony V, 806; Smith, 141 (“The strongest defences in Europe”); Phillips, 344 (“little of that tactical originality”).
Something had gone wrong: Brian Holden Reid, “The Italian Campaign, 1943–1945:A Reappraisal of Allied Generalship,” Journal of Strategic Studies, March 1990, 128+; OH, Andrew J. Goodpaster, Aug. 17, 2004, author (“unsynchronized schemes”); OH, Robert J. Wood, March 4 and 15, 1948, SM, MHI (probing for soft spots); “Report on Cassino Operations,” June 5, 1944, HQ, Fifth Army, Robert J. Wood papers, MHI, 21 (almost 600,000 artillery shells); Phillips, 338 (“a battle of the First World War”).
the strategy of “naked attrition”: Molony V, 806n, 835, 852 (“a crawling monster”); Chester G. Starr, ed., From Salerno to the Alps, 120 (six hundred tanks parked); Phillips, 339 (never could fling more than one-tenth); J.F.C. Fuller, The Second World War, 1939–1945, 272; Reid, “The Italian Campaign, 1943–1945,” 128+; Smith, 144 (“military sins no less”).
“Bombardment alone never had”: Calculated, 331; corr, E. N. Harmon to MWC, March 28, 1944, ENH, box 1.
“A little later when snow goes off”: Churchill, Closing the Ring, 509 (“war weighs very heavy”); Fuller, 274 (“presiding deity”).
It weighed heavy on the far side: Senger, Neither Fear nor Hope, 219.
Dragonflies in the Sun
“After you get whipped and humiliated”: Parker, 69; Howard H. Peckham and Shirley A. Snyder, eds., Letters from Fighting Hoosiers, vol. 2, 71 (“a callousness to death”); corr, 324th Service Group, n.d., censorship morale reports, NARA RG 492, MTO, AG, 311.7 (“We get quite a kick”).
“One goes on fighting, killing”: Trevelyan, 1; Sevareid, 417; John Muirhead, Those Who Fall, 4, 122.
“Watched an amputation last night”: diary, John G. Wright, American Field Service driver, May 29, 1944, author’s possession, 26; Schrijvers, 77 (“possessed by a fury”); e-mail, David Roberts to author, May 23, 2003 (flatulent noises); J. Glenn Gray, The Warriors, 139, 164 (“help me to keep my humanity”).
A survey of infantry divisions: Schrijvers, 77; John B. Romeiser, ed., Combat Reporter, 211 (“The more you hate”); Wagner, 64 (“He has no right to do this”); Collins, 97 (wounded German prisoners); Trevelyan, 149 (“sure hate their guts”).
“There’s no rules in this war”: Quentin Reynolds, The Curtain Rises, 212; “Comment Sheets,” censorship reports, NARA RG 492, MTO G-2, box 387 (“Take No Prisoners”).
“three R’s—ruthless, relentless, remorseless”: diary, Norman Lee Baldwin, Dec. 13, 1943, HIA, N. L. Baldwin papers.
“This is a war for keeps”: Annette Tapert, ed., Lines of Battle, 124.
Eager boys no longer scaled: John
“dragonflies in the sun”: Scrivener, 60, 134–35 (those queued up for water); Robert Katz, The Battle for Rome, 205–19 (a B-17 day); Trevelyan, 229–30 (Graffiti on city walls); George F. Botjer, Sideshow War, 103 (“Allies, don’t worry”).
“Everything went”: Scrivener, 36; Walter von Unruh, “Inspection of Italian Theater of War,” 1947, FMS, #D-016, MHI, 17 (“Do you want work?”); Walter Warlimont, “OKW Activities—The Italian Theater, 1 Apr.–31 Dec. 1944,” n.d., FMS, #C-099b, MHI, 13 (Fifty thousand Italians).
The shadows soon deepened: Michael Burleigh, The Third Reich, 741–42; Richard Lamb, War in Italy, 1943–1945, 41–42 (arrest all Jews in the city), 55; Botjer, 100 (son of a Stuttgart chauffeur); Trevelyan, 62, 117 (“intolerant, cold, vengeful”); Alessandro Portelli, The Order Has Been Carried Out, 85–86; Martin Gilbert, The Second World War, 467; Katz, 71–75; Dan Kurzman, The Race for Rome, 61; U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Web site, articles on Italy and Rome, http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/.
Even for Romans not facing extermination: C.R.S. Harris, Allied Administration of Italy, 1943–1945, 170; Trevelyan, 229 (felling trees); Robert H. Adleman and George Walton, Rome Fell Today, 81–82 (neighborhoods went without power); “Contributions of Italy Toward the Allied War Effort,” Aug. 31, 1945, OSS, MHI Lib, 38n (infant mortality spiked); Kurt Mälzer, “The Problem of Rome During the Fighting Near Anzio-Nettuno,” Jan. 1948, FMS, #D-314, MHI, 8 (destruction of supply trucks).
Prices doubled: Botjer, 92; Katz, 283, 276 (shot them as they faced the Tiber); Trevelyan, 229 (ground chickpeas).
Blackshirts finding a film too tedious: Botjer, 95; Scrivener, 148 (five hundred eavesdroppers), 152 (priest condemned for subversion); Trevelyan, 287; Portelli, 125.
Soon half of Rome was said to be hiding: Lang, “Letter from Rome” Trevelyan, 97; Kurzman, 183 (had their shoes removed); Anthony Cave Brown, The Last Hero, 492 (“They pulled out the hairs”); Riccardo Luzzatto, Unknown War in Italy, 114 (“Long live Italy”).
Allied planes flying from Brindisi: “History of Special Operations (Air) in the Mediterranean Theater,” n.d., U.K., NARA RG 94, E 427, 95-USF-2-0.3.0, 270/50/29-30/G-1, 5; Eugene Warner, “Morale Operations, Report for 16–30 April 1944,” HQ 2677th HQ Co., OSS, MO branch, NARA RG 226, OSS history office, E 99, box 25, folder 1, 1–9 (Intended to inspirit Italian insurgents); OSS activities, March 1944, NATOUSA, NARA RG 226, E 99, OSS history office, box 122; Anthony Cave Brown, ed., The Secret War Report of the OSS, 222 (Das Neue Deutschland).
In Rome, the OSS by March 1944: “Italian Operations Centering on Rome,” n.d., NARA RG 226, OSS history office, E, 99, box 41; Carl J. Friedrich, ed., American Experiences in Military Government in World War II, 133; Patrick K. O’Donnell, Operatives, Spies, and Saboteurs, 62 (German order of battle).
No OSS spy in Rome was more flamboyant: Katz, 49; http://muse.jhu.edu/cgi-bin/access.cgi?uri=/journals/annual_of_bernard_shaw_studies/v024/24.1carter.html (George Bernard Shaw); diary, Peter Tompkins, Jan. 1944, NARA RG 226, E 99, OSS history office, 190/6/10/7, box 47, 21, 42, 49 (a Roman prince); “Peter Tompkins, Author,” obituary, WP, Feb. 1, 2007, B-6.
Favoring a blue sharkskin suit: Katz, 144; Peter Tompkins, “The OSS and Italian Partisans in World War II,” Studies in Intelligence, spring 1998, http://www.cia.gov/csi/studies/spring98/OSS.html (daily radio bulletins); Brown, The Last Hero, 487–88, 495; “Italian Operations Centering on Rome.”
Still, it was part of the good fight: diary, Tompkins, Feb.–March 1944, 55–58, 77, 61, 67, 70–71, 130; Brown, ed., 202; Brown, The Last Hero, 494.
An estimated 25,000 Italian partisans: “Contributions of Italy Toward the Allied War Effort,” 26–27; “The Resistance Movement in German-Controlled Italy,” CCS Joint Intel Committee, March 8, 1944, weekly summary, #61, NARA RG 334, NWC Lib, box 326; Luzzatto, 80–82.
“Singing at the top of our lungs”: Katz, 204.
From the Piazza del Popolo: diary, Tompkins, 127–28; Portelli, 134.
He was in fact a medical student: Katz, 49–51, 57–62; Portelli, 161; author visits, May 10, 2004, Dec. 1, 2006.
As the singing troops approached: transcript, war crimes trial of Albert Kesselring, Feb.–Apr. 1947, Venice, NARA RG 492, MTO, AG HQ, 290/53/32/5-6, 000.5, boxes 816–18; Katz, 62, 72, 224.
“blown down by a great wind”: Trevelyan, 213; Portelli, 136–37, 139 (“pulp with a coat”); Katz, 68; diary, Tompkins, 127–28 (at least one head); Trevelyan, 213 (firing wildly).
Lieutenant Colonel Kappler was enjoying: Katz, 58–62; transcript, Kesselring trial (thirty-two men dead); Kurzman, 176 (“Revenge!”); Portelli, 142 (water and salt).
Late that afternoon the German high command: transcript, Kesselring trial.
“I am giving you now a Führer order”: ibid.; Kenneth Macksey, Kesselring: The Making of the Luftwaffe, 207; Lamb, 57.
Kappler spent all night: Katz, 101, 116–18; Lamb, 59 (Kappler added fifteen more); Trevelyan, 222; Portelli, 150, 175.
“I feel the flowers growing”: http://www.john-keats.com/biografie/chapter_viii.htm#last_days_and_death; Portelli, 7 (tuberoses perfumed the air); transcript, Kesseling trial (Five sharp cracks).
Five by five by five they staggered: Katz, 140–42; Portelli, 28.
Relatives of the dead from the Bozen Regiment: Botjer, 100.
A brief public statement: Katz, 273; Lamb, 61; “Under the German Yoke,” ts, n.d., CEOH, X-39, 12–13, 16 (“You will be avenged”).
“When Rome falls”: memo, Wallace Carroll to “Bannes,” Psychological Warfare Bureau, May 31, 1944, Wallace Carroll papers, LOC, box 1, folder 6.
Not for three months: diary, Tompkins, Jan. 19, 1944; statement, Brother Robert Pace, Oct. 1946, NARA RG 492, JAG war crimes branch, box 2046; Portelli, 191.
some Roman families received a curt note: Portelli, 188, and jacket art from archive of the Associazione Nazionale tra le Famiglie Italiane dei Martiri.
“I dream of the hills”: Trevelyan, 230.
CHAPTER 11: A KETTLE OF GRIEF
Dead Country
Fifth Army meteorologists for months: Charles C. Bates and John F. Fuller, America’s Weather Warriors, 257, 282n; William Murray, “Naples: Variations on a Neapolitan Air,” NYT, Nov. 19, 2000 (one eye open); Tom Gidwitz, “The Hero of Vesuvius,” 2005, http://www.vesuvius.tomgidwitz.com/html/the_hero_of_vesuvius.html, chapter 7; “Activity of Vesuvius Between 1631 and 1944,” http://vulcan.fis.uniroma3.it/vesuvio/1944eng_text.html; “Vesuvioinrete, il portale del vulcano Vesuvio,” http://www.vesuvioinrete.it/e_storia.htm; Moorehead, Eclipse, 69; memo on Vesuvius eruption, “Report of Mission,” May 5, 1944, Fifth Army, MWC corr, Citadel, box 3 (the smoke stopped); Spike Milligan, Where Have All the Bullets Gone?, 20–21 (more anxious).
The eruption began at 4:30 P.M.: Susan Sontag, The Volcano Lover, in Alice Leccese Powers, Italy in Mind, 288–89; Walter L. Medding, “The Road to Rome,” ts, n.d., CEOH, box X-38, 58; Alton D. Brashear, From Lee to Bari, 203–5; Eric Sevareid, Not So Wild a Dream, 367–69 (“The risk of life”); Norman Lewis, Naples ’44, 104–6; Texas, 342 (Peasants wept).
Just after nine P.M. on Tuesday: Milligan, 20–21; memo on Vesuvius eruption, “Report of Mission” (incandescent sheets); “Activity of Vesuvius Between 1631 and 1944,” http://vulcan.fis.uniroma3.it/vesuvio/1944eng_text.html; Kenn C. Rust, Twelfth Air Force Story, 32; “Pliny the Younger’s Observations,” http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/tut/final/pliny.html; Michael Howard, Captain Professor, 86.
“Smoke of a thick oily character”: Harold Macmillan, War Diaries, 397; David Erskin, The Scots Guards, 1919–1955, 229; Brashear, 207 (snow showers); Wynford Vaughan-Thomas, Anzio, 212–13 (“this gesture of the gods”); Lavinia Orde, “Better Late Than Never,” ts, n.d., IWM, 96/34/1, 186; memoir, Aidan Mark Sprot, ts, 1947, LHC, 115.
Ash mixed with rain: W. H. Connerat, Jr., “Ordnance in the North Africa and Med Theater,” ts, n.d., AFHQ, SM, MHI, box 2; corr, J.W. Crawford, Jr., Jan. 3, 2003, to author (“Sweepers, start your brooms”); Fred Howard, Whistle While You Wait, 165 (“Never trust a volcano”).
The world had not ended: Peter Verney, Anzio 1944, 156 (“Anzio Worse Than Salerno”); Anzio Beachhead, 105–6; Warren P. Munsell, Jr., The Story of a Regiment, 65.
Wide-eyed they lined the rails: Vaughan-Thomas, 191; memo, F. J. Lowry, “Guide to Merchant Vessels Unloading at Anzio,” March 7, 1944, SEM, NHC, box 47 (“The chances of being hit”); “History of Ordnance Service in the Mediterranean Theater,” ts, n.d., CMH, 8-4 JA, 85 (fifty vehicles from an LST deck); “Report on Port and Beach Operations at Anzio,” Apr. 29, 1944, 540th Engineer Combat Regt, NARA RG 334, NWC Lib, box 343 (three tons of cargo into a DUKW); “The United States Eighth Fleet,” ts, n.d., in “The Administrative History of the Eighth Fleet,” #139, NHC, folder 2, 3 (277 Luftwaffe raids); Charles Moran, “The Anzio-Nettuno Landings, January 1944,” ts, n.d., SEM, NHC, box 49, 56; memo, “Radio-Controlled Bombs Can Be Jammed,” March 10, 1945, SEM, NHC, box 47, 5–7 (Fritz-X bombs).
The toll could be seen in the hundred or so casualties: Beachhead casualties in early spring 1944 averaged 107 per day. Anzio Beachhead, 105–6; “Evacuation of Casualties by L.S.T.,” Apr. 1944, HQ, Combined Operations, GB COB X-22, NARA RG 334 NWC Lib, box 461.
wounded men on litters: Pyle, 196–97; Paul A. Cundiff, 45th Infantry CP, 159 (outscreamed the screaming shells); OH, Russell W. Cloer, 7th Inf, May 26, 2006, with author (“You came here to suffer”).