Chapter 22
In This Chapter
● Seizing Sicily, 9 July-17 August 1943
● Landing in Italy, 3 September 1943
● Monte Cassino and the Gustav Line, 20 November 1943-18 May 1944
● Fighting at Anzio, 22 January-23 May 1944
● Fighting through the Gothic Line, 30 August-28 October 1944
● Ending the Italian campaign
Even before the Axis surrender in North Africa (see Chapter 21), the Allies were deciding their next move. The Americans wanted to concentrate on building up forces in the United Kingdom in preparation for the invasion of France. The British took the view that this invasion could not take place before the summer of 1944. In the meantime, Churchill argued persuasively, a blow struck into what he called ‘the soft underbelly of Europe’ would shatter the Axis alliance and result in large numbers of German troops being tied down in Italy instead of being available for operations in western Europe when the time came. Churchill’s view prevailed.
In Italy the internal organisation of infantry tank squadrons was changed to provide a balance between armoured protection and fine fire control. Squadrons consisted of a headquarters troop of three Churchill tanks, two three-tank Churchill troops, and two three-tank Sherman troops. This took account of the fact that while the Sherman lacked the thick armour of the slow, heavily protected Churchill, it possessed the better gun control equipment. About 120 Churchills had been re-armed with the superior 75-millimetre guns of Shermans written off in North Africa.
Warming Up for Italy: Sicily
Before the Allies could invade Italy, they had to take Sicily as a stepping stone from North Africa; and before they could take Sicily they had to neutralise the island of Pantelleria, lying between Sicily and Tunisia. A week’s pounding by the Allied air forces convinced the garrison commander that resistance was pointless. The British 1st Division made an unopposed landing on Pantelleria on 11 June 1943. Shortly after, Allied aircraft began operating from Pantelleria and the nearby island of Lampedusa.
The invasion of Sicily proper was under the overall control of three British commanders: 15th Army Group, General Sir Harold Alexander; naval, Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham; and air, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder. The 15th Army Group contained two armies, the Eighth under General Sir Bernard Montgomery, and the US Seventh under Lieutenant General George S. Patton. The invasion was the largest amphibious operation that the Allies had attempted so far.
The landings took place in poor weather on 9/10 July. The Allies met little opposition, as they took the Italians manning the coastal defences by surprise. During the next two days the Americans faced heavy counter-attacks at the port of Gela, but they held their ground with the assistance of naval gunfire. They then broke out of their beachhead and cleared western Sicily of the enemy. Meanwhile, the Eighth Army pushed northwards against increasing opposition and was brought to a halt south of Catania. On the night of 13 July, however, Allied commandos took the bridge at Lentini while paratroops took the bridge at Primasole. Patton’s army now swung eastwards along the north coast of the island. This had the effect of turning the enemy’s right flank. Colonel General Hans Hube, coordinating the Axis defence, now realised that he had to abandon Sicily. During the first two weeks of August, while the American advance continued, the Eighth Army fought its way past Mount Etna. By the time the Allies reached Messina on 17 August, however, the Axis army had carried out a model evacuation, shipping no fewer than 100,000 men, 9800 vehicles, and 50 tanks across the Straits of Messina to the Italian mainland.
The Allies sustained some 16,000 casualties. Axis losses totalled 164,000 killed, wounded, or captured, including 32,000 Germans. Most Italians did not want to fight and were happy to be taken prisoner.
Landing at Salerno
On 24 July 1943 the Italian army staged a coup and overthrew the Italian dictator Mussolini. His successor, Marshal Badoglio, informed Hitler that Italy would continue fighting, but opened clandestine negotiations with the Allies. They concluded a secret armistice on 3 September. On that day two of the Eighth Army’s divisions crossed the Straits of Messina to land in Calabria, on the toe of the Italian boot.
Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, German commander in southern Italy, took measures to delay the Allies’ progress. Known as ‘Smiling Albert’ because of his frequently displayed teeth, he was a very shrewd operator indeed and recognised at once that the landing in Calabria was not the Allies’ principal invasion effort. He expected this to be made in the Gulf of Salerno with the ultimate object of taking Naples, to serve as the Allies’ principal supply port. Kesselring was right. On 8 September the terms of the armistice were published. With the exception of the Italian navy, which sailed for Malta, the Germans promptly and efficiently disarmed and confined the forces of their former ally.
On 9 September the Eighth Army’s 1st Airborne Division landed at the Italian naval base of Taranto in the Gulf of the same name. The same day the Allied Fifth Army, commanded by Lieutenant General Mark W. Clark, landed in the Gulf of Salerno. The British X Corps, under the command of Lieutenant General Sir Richard McCreery, landed north of the Sele river. British commandos and their American equivalent, the Rangers, took the hills on the northern arm of the bay.
The Allies seriously underestimated the speed and strength of the German reaction. General Heinrich von Vietinghof, commanding the German Tenth Army, had four panzer and two panzergrenadier (armoured infantry) divisions at his disposal. From the high ground inland, the Germans saw exactly what was happening. They quickly sealed off the beachhead and subjected the Allies to heavy shelling and counter-attacks. One senior officer commented that the situation reminded him of Gallipoli (see Chapter 19). Despite naval gunfire support and complete air superiority, at times the Fifth Army seemed at danger of being driven into the sea. At one period the Allies seriously considered evacuation. Alexander, however, rushed reinforcements into the beachhead and the crisis passed.
With the approach of Montgomery’s Eighth Army from the south, Vietinghof began to break contact and conduct a skilful withdrawal to the north. On 22 September the 78th Division landed at Bari on the east coast. The 1st Airborne Division established links with it and the main body of the Eighth Army, creating a front from coast to coast across the Italian peninsula. Clark finally broke out of the Salerno beachhead, taking Naples on 1 October. By then, however, the Germans had established a new defensive front along the line of the Volturno river.
The Allies sustained about 15,000 casualties in the Salerno beachhead in the period 9-18 September. The Germans sustained approximately 10,000.
Monte Cassino and the Gustav Line
Few landscapes in the world are as suited to defence as that of Italy. From the central spine of the Apennines, ridges extend down to the east and west coasts, while in the valleys between run rivers that can become torrents in winter. Having taken one ridge, an attacker is confronted with another, and another beyond that, and so on. This was not country in which to employ armoured divisions in their usual role; instead, their tanks were used as supplementary artillery, firing from reverse slopes to obtain extra range. Inevitably, the terrain made it an infantryman’s war, and this meant that when major offensives took place, the crews of Churchill tanks, responsible for infantry support, were employed day after day and received little rest. The Churchill proved that it had no equals when it came to climbing hills.
The Fifth Army took two months of hard fighting to fight its way over the Volturno river. Kesseling used this time to create a fortified zone 16 kilometres (10 miles) deep, known as the Gustav Line. This ran from the mouth of the Garigliano river on the west coast, along its tributary, the Rapido, then over the Apennines to reach the east coast north of the Sangro valley. Near the western end of the line the Liri valley provided an obvious route to Rome, but was dominated by the towering Monte Cassino, crowned with its famous Benedictine monastery. In December, Montgomery left Italy for Britain to prepare for the cross-Channel invasion of France (see Chapter 23). Command of the Eighth Army passed to General Sir Oliver Leese.
From January 1944 onwards both the Fifth and Eighth Armies became involved in attempts to storm Monte Cassino and break through to Rome.
The first Allied attempt lasted from 17 January until 12 February and involved the British, the Americans, and the French. Most of the gains they made they then lost to vigorous counter-attacks. Unjustified suspicions that the enemy was using the monastery led to the controversial decision to subject it to heavy bombing on 15 February. The Germans promptly dug in among the ruins, from which they were almost impossible to eject. Immediately after the bombing, Indian troops made limited gains north of Monastery Hill and New Zealand forces captured Cassino railway station, only to lose it again on 18 February. On 18 March, following a heavy air and artillery bombardment of the town, the New Zealanders recaptured the station and took the castle after three days of heavy fighting against the German 1st Parachute Division.
A lull followed, during which the Allies prepared for a major offensive. During the night of 11/12 May, 2000 guns pounded the German positions. The Polish isolated Monastery Hill, while British, French, and US troops crossed the Rapido to the west of the town and entered the Liri valley, to the complete surprise of the Germans, whose defences the Allies overran despite the enemy’s hard fighting. By the morning of 18 May, the Allies had finally cleared the town of Cassino of Germans and the Polish flag was flying above the ruins of the monastery. During the four months of fighting the Germans sustained approximately 60,000 casualties while the Allies lost 115,000.
The Anzio Beachhead
On 22 January 1944 the US VI Corps, under the command of Major General John P. Lucas, landed at Anzio, 50 kilometres (30 miles) south of Rome. The intention was to outflank the Gustav Line and break the apparent impasse at Cassino by threatening the German rear. An important element of the plan was an early advance inland to secure the Alban Hills, which dominated the main road between Rome and Cassino. The effect of this would be to trap a major part of General Eberhard von Mackensen’s Fourteenth Army as it attempted to withdraw.
Things did not work out this way, and the reason lay with Lucas, who was cautious, easy going and benign at a time when speed and aggression were most in demand. He just didn’t do speed. Before the operation began he told his divisional commanders that rather than go for the Alban Hills, he preferred to consolidate a defensive perimeter. That should have disqualified him for the job immediately but it didn’t, and he got his preference.
On 29 January the Allies began to advance out of the beachhead. On 3/4 February and again from 7-10 February the Germans mounted ferocious counter-attacks against the British in the Carroceto area. These resulted in some of the most desperate fighting of the entire war and the Allies held their positions with difficulty. At the time of the landings four German divisions were in the area. This figure rapidly grew to nine. With General Alexander’s approval, Lieutenant General Clark began to pour reinforcements into Anzio. As the German artillery had the entire beachhead within range, it could hardly avoid hitting something or someone every time it fired. On 23 February, Major General Lucian K. Truscott replaced Lucas. Nevertheless, Anzio continued to be one of the most unpleasant places on earth.
The Germans could contain the Anzio beachhead or hold the Gustav Line, but they couldn’t do both. When the Gustav Line gave way in May, they pinned their hopes for a successful withdrawal on a lay-back position called the Hitler Line. The most important sector of this lay between Pontecorvo and Aquina in the Liri Valley, where months of work had gone into the defences.
At 5.45 a.m. on 23 May the Allies attacked the Hitler Line. After an extremely hard battle, shortly after 4 p.m. the enemy ceased their fanatical resistance and slipped away. The cost to the attackers was high, in both casualties and tanks. In the North Irish Horse alone, 25 tanks had been lost, while 34 officers and men had been killed and 36 wounded. On the same day that the Hitler Line was broken, VI Corps broke out of the Anzio beachhead. It soon established contact with the US II Corps coming up from the south, but elsewhere its actions caused controversy. Clark thought that he deserved to be famous, and capturing Rome would do just that for him. Alexander’s plan required VI Corps to thrust eastwards through the gap between the Alban Hills and the Colli Lepini to Valmontone on Route 6. This would achieve the isolation and destruction of several German divisions pulling back from the broken Hitler
Line. Clark, however, merely sent his 3rd Division, the Special Service Force, and part of 1st Armored Division in the direction of Valmontone. He wheeled the rest of VI Corps across the Alban Hills, where they encountered little resistance. Then he commenced his drive on Rome. Over at Valmontone, Mackensen deployed adequate forces to fend off attacks from the weak American units deployed against him.
Clark entered Rome on 4 June. His arrival caused a stir for a couple of days, then the Allies landed in Normandy and it was quickly forgotten (see Chapter 23). The irony was that if he had followed Alexander’s orders to the letter, history would have put him down as one of the war’s most capable generals, and he would still have been able to enter Rome. Anzio, therefore, did not achieve what had been expected of it, but it did tie down enemy divisions that could have been used in France, and in the end it did help to produce a victory of sorts. Between 22 January and 23 May the Allies sustained approximately 40,000 casualties in beachhead fighting, while the Germans sustained approximately 35,000.
Fighting through the Gothic Line
Beyond Rome, the Germans had carried out such extensive demolition on all the routes leading north that a pursuit in the conventional sense was impossible. Bridges, viaducts, culverts, embankments, and retaining walls were all blown, slowing the pace of the advance to a crawl. During this period the most effective piece of equipment in the Allies’ advance guard was the bulldozer.
In due course, the Allies did close up to the next line of enemy defences, known as the Gothic Line. This was a zone 16 kilometres (10 miles) deep running from the Magra valley to the Foglia valley and a point on the Adriatic between Pesaro and Cattolica.
The defence works were similar to those in the Gustav and Hitler Lines (see earlier in this chapter), although more of them existed. Terrain factors made things even more difficult for an attacker: A turbulent history had resulted in many of the larger villages and country towns being built on hilltops and walled for their own defence. Not only were they difficult to capture, they dominated the roads in their immediate vicinity and made ideal artillery observation posts. Again, the agricultural step-terraces that are so much a feature of the Italian landscape inhibited cross-country movement, while the vineyards, with their narrow fields of vision between the lines of vines, provided ideal cover for ambush parties or panzerfaust (anti-tank) teams.
The operations required to break through the Gothic Line began on 30 August and ended on 28 October. The Allied intention was to maintain steady pressure on the central sectors of the line, while achieving a breakthrough in the east with the object of unleashing armoured formations into the Po valley. Every day, scores of small actions took place designed to wrest one feature or another from the enemy. The Germans bitterly contested every one, notably the Gemmano and Coriano Ridges, and gave ground very slowly. Total casualties are uncertain, but were heavy. By 21 September the Eighth Army had lost 14,000 men killed, wounded, or missing. At the beginning of October the Fifth Army calculated that on average each of its divisions was losing 550 men daily. On 25 September the German Tenth Army recorded that only 10 of its 92 infantry battalions possessed more than 400 men, while of the rest 38 had fewer than 200 men each.
Heavy autumn rain put an end to the fighting. The chance to release the armoured divisions into better tank country had passed, but the Allies were in an excellent strategic position from which to mount a successful offensive in the spring of 1945.
Assaulting the Po
After D Day, the press at home had been giving British troops in Italy less coverage than they deserved. ‘We are the D Day dodgers/Out in sunny Italy’ went their ditty. The problem was that in editorial eyes the small gains they were making daily were not as newsworthy as what was taking place in western Europe. They need not have worried, for in a few months they would be making headlines again. Winter saw changes on both sides of the line. In March 1945 Kesselring left Italy to take command in western Germany. His place was taken by Vietinghof, who sensibly wanted to withdraw across the Po. Hitler, by now completely divorced from reason, forbade any such plan. Among the Allies, Alexander became theatre commander, Clark took over as 15th Army Group Commander, and Truscott became commander of the Fifth Army.
Opposite the Eighth Army, the enemy front line ran along the flood banks of the river Senio. On 9 April 1945 the last offensive of the war in Italy began with Crocodile flame-throwing tanks projecting their flames across the river to land on the far bank. The 2nd New Zealand and 4th Indian Divisions then crossed in assault boats. After heavy fighting they won enough ground for the engineers to put across bridges that enabled the armour to cross. During the next 48 hours the enemy fought back hard, but eventually the advance reached the
Argenta Gap, the last major obstacle before the Po valley, situated between Lake Comacchio and the marshes of the Massa Lombarda, with the town of Argenta lying in its centre. On 11 April, Allied troops and commandos went across the lake in tracked landing vehicles to carry out assault landings in the enemy’s rear. Simultaneously, other troops fought their way up the Gap, capturing Argenta and Consandolo. Resistance collapsed and the 6th Armoured Division, fighting together in its proper role for the first time since Tunisia, passed through to exploit towards and beyond the Po. The Eighth Army’s pursuit of the broken German armies took it through Verona, Padua, Venice, and across the Piave. On 29 April Vietinghof agreed to an unconditional surrender that became effective on 2 May.
That wasn’t quite the end of the campaign in Italy. Marshal Tito’s communist partisans, having chased the Germans out of Yugoslavia, developed grand ideas about territorial expansion. They wanted Trieste, but the New Zealanders told them quite firmly that they couldn’t have it. When 6th Armoured Division reached Austrian territory, they found that Tito’s men had already arrived and were staking claims. The Yugoslavs were told to push off, but they argued. The Allies then told Tito’s men that things would get very nasty indeed if they didn’t leave, so they did. And that was that.