War Stories III (20 page)

The German counter-attack that wiped out Capt. Felix Sparks's rifle company finally succumbed to massive American air, naval gunfire and artillery bombardments. When the Wehrmacht 14th Army finally broke off their assault on 22 February, the Germans had sustained more than 5,300 casualties. Allied killed, wounded, and missing totaled nearly 3,500. The following day, General Lucian Truscott relieved Lucas as commander of VI Corps.

But a change in commanders didn't stop the killing. Over the course of the next two and a half months the Anzio beachhead came to look like a World War I battlefield as the Germans and the Allies probed each other's trench lines and pounded opposing fortifications with air and artillery strikes. The Germans even brought up a giant 280 mm rail-mounted siege gun to blast the Allied beachhead from the safety of the Alban hills. The Americans—living in a warren of stinking, sodden trenches and bunkers—had nicknamed the gun “Anzio Annie” and made wagers on when it would be silenced by an Allied air strike. It never was.

Finally, in mid-May 1944, the American 5th and British 8th Armies launched a concerted effort to breach the Gustav Line and break the siege at Anzio. On 18 May the Polish II Corps succeeded in capturing Monte Cassino in a costly, bloody assault. On 23 May, Truscott's VI Corps broke through the German 14th Army lines at Cisterna northeast of Anzio, and two days later effected a link-up with the lead elements of II Corps, which had charged north on Route 6, past Monte Cassino.

By the morning of 26 May, the twin Allied breakouts—at Anzio and Monte Cassino—had created an opportunity for Clark and the 5th Army to either encircle the bulk of the German 10th and 14th Armies or go for a victory parade in Rome. Ever conscious of the power of the press—and knowing that Overlord would soon consume every inch of newsprint—Clark chose Rome. On 4 June, less than forty-eight hours before the Normandy landings, the 5th Army marched into the city of the Caesars.

As the Americans were rolling past the Coliseum to the Piazza Venezia, Kesselring—the master of strategic withdrawal and defense—was extricating his battered but still capable 10th and 14th Armies to a new set of defensive positions further north. By early August he was firmly entrenched 150
miles north of Rome on the Gothic Line—a continuous set of fortifications that ran from Massa on the west coast to Rimini on the Adriatic. Behind him were the great industrial cities of Italy and the Alpine passes leading to the heartland of the Reich.

For the next eight months the campaign in Italy became a classic stalemate. In August 1944, Clark had to give up seven divisions for Operation Anvil—renamed Dragoon—the invasion of southern France. Throughout the winter of 1944–45, the Allies in Italy refitted and fought the bone-chilling cold as much as they fought the enemy.

In February 1945, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin met at Yalta on the Crimean peninsula to discuss the shape of postwar Europe. In March, the U.S.-British Combined Staff urged a new Italian offensive to hasten the now-inevitable German collapse. Clark, now commanding the Allied 15th Army, was provided with additional air and land forces to break through the Gothic Line, but no sealift for amphibious operations.

By the second week of April 1945, Clark had massed seventeen divisions south of the Gothic Line and set 12 April as the date to commence a new offensive. Among those troops was Bob Dole, a young second lieutenant from Russell, Kansas.