The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 (The Liberation Trilogy) by Rick Atkinson
Major General Lucian K. Truscott, Jr., (left) commander of the U.S. VI Corps, and Lieutenant General Ira Eaker, the senior U.S. air commander in the Mediterranean, inspect sandbag-and–wine barrel fortifications around the Anzio airfield on April 6, 1944.
American soldiers march in step with their shadows toward Cassino along Highway 6, north of the Mignano Gap.
An Army chaplain baptizes a corporal in the ornate fountain at Caserta, the mammoth eighteenth-century palace where both Mark Clark and Harold Alexander kept headquarters among the twelve hundred rooms. A nearby reflecting pool was large enough to accommodate landings by Clark’s pontoon airplane.
Actresss Marlene Dietrich, who frequently entertained Allied troops in the war zone, stands in a mess line while visiting the 47th Bombardment Group in this undated photograph. After meeting Patton in Sicily, Dietrich described him as “a tank too big for the village square.” (Courtesy of Russell H. Raine)
Fifth Army soldiers lined up outside the San Carlo opera house in Naples to see This Is the Army, a musical comedy by Irving Berlin.
U.S. Army military policemen toasting bread over molten lava from Vesuvius. The volcano’s spectacular eruption, which began on March 18, 1944, would be the last of the twentieth century.
Artillery fire rakes Castle Hill above Cassino town on February 6, 1944. The famous Benedictine abbey looming on Monte Cassino would survive another nine days before Allied bombers pulverized the building.
Lieutenant General Oliver W. H. Leese (left), who succeeded Montgomery as commander of the British Eighth Army, was described by one American officer as “a big ungainly bruiser.” In this photo, taken near Cassino on February 17, 1944, he stands next to the gallant Polish commander, General Wladyslaw Anders.
A former dentist who had become one of the British empire’s preeminent soldiers, Lieutenant General Bernard C. Freyberg commanded the New Zealand Corps at Cassino. An acquaintance suggested, “His great fearlessness owed something to a lack of imagination.”
A German propoganda leaflet at Cassino, depicting the slow pace of the Allied advance in Italy (Courtesy of Major R. C. Taylor)
“Sprout after sprout of black smoke leapt from the earth and curled upward like some dark forest,” one journalist wrote after watching the obliteration of Cassino town, by air and artillery bombardment, on March 15, 1944. Castle Hill can be seen through the smoke and dust in the upper right.
Lieutenant General Fridolin von Senger und Etterlin, commander of the XIV Panzer Corps at Cassino, had studied at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar before World War I. His high forehead, hooked beak, and sunken cheeks gave Senger the air of a homely ascetic; his long fingers and aesthete’s mannerisms suggested a man “more French really than Prussian,” as his daughter later claimed. (U.S. Army Military History Institute)
The senior U.S. air commander in the Mediterranean, Lieutenant General Ira C. Eaker, flying toward Anzio on April 15, 1944. “In the air in Italy,” Eaker declared of the enemy, “the Hun is absolutely flat on his back.”
Tanks from the 1st Armored Division roll from an L.S.T. in Anzio harbor on April 27, 1944, among the reinforcements preparing to blast out of the beachhead after four months’ confinement.
Audie Murphy, a Texas sharecropper’s son and fifth-grade dropout who became the most celebrated soldier in the U.S. Army, seen here as a lieutenant in 1945 with the Congressional Medal of Honor around his neck (Texas Military Forces Museum)
“Radiate confidence, and enjoy taking risks,” advised General Alphonse Pierre Juin, commander of the French Expeditionary Corps, who believed that the formidable enemy defenses in the Gustav Line could be outflanked only by “invading the mountains.”
One of the twelve thousand goumiers in the French corps, irregular Berber tribesmen known for their agility and ruthlessness
Allied soldiers carry a dead comrade from the rubble of Monte Cassino, shortly after the abbey finally fell to Polish troops on May 18, 1944. Dead German defenders, including one stripped of his hobnail boots, lie along the trail.
Beneath the masonry shards atop Castle Hill, South African engineers clear Highway 6 through Cassino town on May 21, 1944.
Major General Keyes (left) with Lieutenant General Clark and Brigadier General Robert T. Frederick (right), commander of the 1st Special Service Force, outside Rome in early June 1944
An Italian woman and a young girl cover dead GIs with cuttings from a rose bush on June 4, 1944, the day Rome fell.
American infantrymen shelter behind the turret of a Sherman tank on June 5, 1944. Note the sniper’s bullet hole beneath the “o” on the sign.
Jubiliant Romans throng the streets to greet Clark, the conquering general, on June 5, 1944, as his driver wanders through the city in search of the Capito-line. In the rear seat behind Clark are the Fifth Army chief of staff, Major General Alfred M. Gruenther (left), and Keyes, the II Corps commander.
GIs near Rome read of the Normandy invasion in The Beachhead News. “How do you like that?” Clark complained. “They didn’t even let us have the newspaper headlines for the fall of Rome for one day.”
An American column snakes through Rome’s Piazza del Popolo before pressing north in pursuit of the retreating German armies.
From a window sill above a Roman street, Mark Clark watches his troops sweep across the capital in early June. “You ask the question, ‘What after Italy?’” he wrote his wife. “Perhaps you can tell me.” Clark would remain among the most controversial commanders of World War II, a man whose very name more than a half century later could cause brows to knit and lips to purse.
NOTES
The following abbreviations appear in the endnotes and bibliography.
45th ID Mus 45th Infantry Division Museum, Oklahoma City
AAF Army Air Forces
AAFinWWII W. F. Craven and J. L. Cate, eds., The Army Air Forces in World War II, vol. II unless otherwise noted
AAR after action report
AB After the Battle
AD armored division
admin administration
AF air force
AFHQ micro Allied Forces Headquarters microfilm, NARA RG 331
AFHRA Air Force Historical Research Agency
ag adjutant general
AGF Army Ground Forces
ALM Audie Leon Murphy papers, USMA Special Collections, West Point
AR armored regiment
AS Armored School
ASEQ Army Service Experiences Questionnaire, MHI
ASF Army Service Forces
AU Air University
Battle W.G.F. Jackson, The Battle for Italy
bde brigade
bn battalion
CA working papers for Cassino to the Alps
Calculated Mark W. Clark, Calculated Risk
CARL Combined Arms Research Library, Fort Leavenworth, Kans.
CBH Chester B. Hansen diary, MHI
CCS Combined Chiefs of Staff
CEOH U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Office of History
CGSC Command and General Staff School, U.S. Army
Chandler Alfred Chandler, ed., The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower: The War Years
CINCLANT Commander-in-Chief, Atlantic Fleet
CJB Clay and Joan Blair collection, MHI
CM L. K. Truscott, Jr., Command Missions
CMH U.S. Army Center of Military History, Fort McNair, Washington, D.C.
co company
Coakley Robert W. Coakley and Richard M. Leighton, Global Logistics and Strategy, 1943–1945
Col U OHRO Columbia University Oral History Research Office
corr correspondence
CSI U.S. Army Combat Studies Institute, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas
ct combat team
CtoA Ernest F. Fisher, Jr., Cassino to the Alps
DA Department of the Army
Danchev Alex Danchev and Daniel Todman, eds., War Diaries, 1939–1945: Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke
DDE Dwight David Eisenhower
Destruction I.S.O. Playfair and C.J.C. Molony, The Mediterranean and the Middle East, vol. IV
diss dissertation
div division
DSC Distinguished Service Cross
DTL Donovan Technical Library, now Donovan Research Library
E entry
EJD Ernest J. Dawley, including papers at Hoover Institution Archive
ENH Ernest N. Harmon, including papers at U.S. Army Military History Institute
ETO European Theater of Operations
FA field artillery
FAJ Field Artillery Journal
FCP Forrest C. Pogue, including background material for The Supreme Commander
FDR Lib Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library
FLW Fred L. Walker
FMS Foreign Military Studies
FOIA Freedom of Information Act
FRUS Foreign Relations of the United States: The Conferences at Washington and Quebec, 1943
Ft. K Fort Knox, Ky.
Ft. L Fort Leavenworth, Kans.
Garland Albert N. Garland and Howard McGaw Smyth, Sicily and the Surrender of Italy
GCM Lib George C. Marshall Library, Lexington, Va.
GK Geoffrey Keyes, including diary, author’s possession
GS IV Michael Howard, Grand Strategy, vol. IV
GS V John Ehrman, Grand Strategy, vol. V
GSP George S. Patton, Jr., including papers at the Library of Congress
Hansen draft of Omar Bradley’s A Soldier’s Story, C. B. Hansen, MHI
HCB Harry C. Butcher, including papers
HIA Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University
Hill/O’Neill “Report of Col. William H. Hill and Col. E. J. O’Neill on Conference Held in Marrakech, March 10, 1994, JPL papers, MHI, box 4, 1
HKH Henry Kent Hewitt Papers
Hq headquarters
ID infantry division
IJ Infantry Journal
inf infantry
intel intelligence
Iowa GSM Iowa Gold Star Museum, Fort Dodge, Iowa
IS Infantry School, Fort Benning, Ga.
IWM Imperial War Museum, London
JAG U.S. Army judge advocate general
JCS Joint Chiefs of Staff
JJT John J. Toffey, IV, “A Game for the Young,” author’s possession
JMG James M. Gavin papers
JPL John P. Lucas, including diary, “From Algiers to Anzio,” MHI
LH Basil Henry Liddell Hart
LHC Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, King’s College, London
lib library
LKT Jr. Lucian K. Truscott, Jr.
LOC MS Div Library of Congress Manuscript Division
MAAF Mediterranean Allied Air Forces
MBR Matthew B. Ridgway
MCC Mina Curtiss Collection
MEB Magna E. Bauer
Med Mediterranean
MHI U.S. Army Military History Institute, Carlisle, Pa.
micro microfilm
Molony V C.J.C. Molony et al., The Mediterranean and Middle East, vol. V
Molony VI C.J.C. Molony, The Mediterranean and Middle East, vol. VI, part 1
MP military police
MR Military Review
MRC FDM McCormick Research Center, First Division Museum, Cantigny, Ill.
msg message
mss manuscript
MTOUSA Mediterranean Theater of Operations, United States Army
MWC Mark Wayne Clark, including papers at the Citadel, S.C., Archives and Museum
N Af North Africa
n.d. no date
NARA National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Md.
NATOUSA North African Theater of Operations, United States Army
NHC Naval Historical Center, Washington, D.C.
NSA National Security Agency
NWAf George F. Howe, Northwest Africa: Seizing the Initiative in the West
NWC Lib National War College Library
NYT New York Times
obit obituary
OCMH Office of the Chief of Military History
OCNO Office of the Chief of Naval Operations
OCS Office of the Chief of Staff
OH oral history
OPD Operations Division, War Department
OSS Office of Strategic Services
OW Orlando Ward Papers
Para parachute
pm provost marshal
PMR Paul McD. Robinett papers
PP Martin Blumenson, The Patton Papers, 1940–1945
PP-pres Papers, Pre-presidential
Proceedings U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings
Pyle Ernie Pyle, Brave Men
qm quartermaster
regt regiment
RG record group
RN Royal Navy
ROHA Rutgers University Oral History Archives of World War II
s.p. self-published
SC Signal Corps
SEM Samuel Eliot Morison Office Files
SM Sidney T. Matthews, including papers at MHI
SMH Society for Military History
SOOHP Senior Officer Oral History Program
SOS Services of Supply
SSA Samuel Eliot Morison, Sicily-Salerno-Anzio, vol. IX, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II
SSI working papers for Sicily and the Surrender of Italy, National Archives
SSt Omar N. Bradley, A Soldier’s Story
StoC Martin Blumenson, Salerno to Cassino, USAWWII
td tank destroyer
TdA Terry de la Mesa Allen, including papers
Texas Fred L. Walker, From Texas to Rome
Texas MFM Texas Military Forces Museum, Austin
Three Years Harry C. Butcher, My Three Years with Eisenhower
TR Theodore Roosevelt III Papers
ts typescript
UK NA National Archive, Kew, United Kingdom (formerly Public Record Office)
USAF HRC U.S. Air Force Historical Research Center
USAF U.S. Air Force
USAWWII United States Army in World War II
USMA Arch U.S. Military Academy Archives, West Point
USMC U.S. Marine Corps
USN U.S. Navy
USNA U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, Md.
USNAd “U.S. Naval Administration in World War II”
USNI OHD U.S. Naval Institute, Oral History Department, Annapolis, Md.
UTEP University of Texas at El Paso
UT-K University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Center for the Study of War and Society
VHP Veterans’ History Project, National Folklife Center, Library of Congress
WD War Department
WP Washington Post
WSC Winston S. Churchill
WTF Western Task Force
WWII World War II
XO executive officer
YU Yale University Library, Manuscripts and Archives
EPIGRAPH
Virgil, The Aeneid, trans. Robert Fagles (New York: Viking, 2006), book 7 lines 747–51.
PROLOGUE
She could be heard: NYT, Cunard Line advertising supplement, Apr. 2004, ZM1; David Williams, Liners in Battledress, 114 (Western Approaches); Harold Larson, “Troop Transports in WWII,” ts, March 1945, CMH, 4-13.1 AA12, 21–22.
She slid: corr, Lovetta Kramer, exec. dir, RMS Queen Mary Foundation and Archive, Long Beach, Calif., to author, Aug. 16, 2004; corr, Lorna Williams, Special Collections and Archives, University of Liverpool, to author, Aug. 2004; William J. Duncan, RMS Queen Mary: Queen of the Queens, 78–79, 106 (New York warehouse); Steve Harding, Gray Ghost, 49 (WW #21 W); admin memo, Offices of the War Cabinet, May 3, 1943, UK NA, PREM 4/72/2 (Scottish cages); John Mason Brown, To All Hands, 203 (“barbarities”); Louis E. Keefer, Italian Prisoners of War in America, 35, 41; “Enemy POW Camps in the USA in World War II,” CMH, Historical Resources Branch, Nov. 5, 1942, 2 (272,000); “Office of the Provost M
But it was on the upper decks: Danchev, 402 (Officers crowded); “Notes for Mr. Aubrey Morgan,” May 13, 1943, UK NA, PREM 4/72/2 (suite number 105).
To mislead potential spies: Duncan, 117–18 (Wilhelmina); Winston S. Churchill, The Hinge of Fate, 783; Alexander S. Cochran, Jr., “Spectre of Defeat: Anglo-American Planning for the Invasion of Italy in 1943,” Ph.D. diss, U of Kansas, 296 (wheelchair ramps); John Kennedy, The Business of War, 293 (“well and fat and pink”).
Like the Queen Mary: Harold Evans, “Roy Jenkins’ ‘Churchill: His Finest Hour,’” NYT Book Review, Nov. 11, 2001, 1 (“largest human being”); Charles Richardson, From Churchill’s Secret Circle to the BBC, 189 (trombone); Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms, Whitehall, London (one of the eight); Arthur Bryant, The Turn of the Tide, 587 (scented handkerchief); admin memo, War Cabinet, May 3, 1943 (ten-pound tip and Mumm’s Cordon Rouge); Paul Fussell, Wartime, 183 (“gangster clergyman”).
“We are all worms”: Churchill Museum; Martin Gilbert, Winston Churchill’s War Leadership, 14 (to be awakened), 74 (“pester, nag”); Danchev, 451 (“temperamental like a film star”); Merle Miller, Ike the Soldier, 512 (“He shouts me down”).
“In great things”: Kennedy, 315; Winston S. Churchill, Closing the Ring, 658, 685, 660, 662 (small things); Martin Gilbert, Winston Churchill’s War Leadership, 19 (“There is no defeat”).
Sea voyages always reinvigorated: Richardson, 187 (“Master”); Gilbert, 10 (silent Remington); Churchill Museum (Johnnie Walker); W. Averell Harriman and Elie Abel, Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin, 204–5 (“I won’t be captured”), 207 (“splitting infinitives”); Lord Moran, Churchill: Taken from the Diaries of Lord Moran, 101 (“all hunched up”); W. H. Thompson, I Was Churchill’s Shadow, 114–15 (discussing seamanship); admin memo, War Cabinet, May 3, 1943 (watching films); NYT, May 12, 1943, 24 (Radio Berlin); Churchill, Closing the Ring, 91 (“Who in war”).