World War II: Anzio Operation

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In a few minutes, landing craft would advance to the beaches and discharge their human cargo into an unknown situation. Six miles north of Anzio, the British would land with the 1st Division and the 9th and 43rd Commando battalions of the 2nd Special Service Brigade. The port of Anzio, in the center of the assault area, was assigned to Colonel William O. Darby’s three Ranger battalions, along with the 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion and the 83rd Chemical Battalion. Four miles to the east of the Anzio point, where the coast abruptly turns eastward, Maj. Gen. Lucian Truscott’s 3rd Infantry Division would hit the beaches and, it was hoped, drive inland.

Heavy German opposition, such as had been encountered five months earlier at Salerno, was expected, but the shore was strangely silent; the only sound was that of Allied ordnance exploding. Everything was going perfectly, a fact that did not keep General Lucas from harboring grave doubts about the chances for success in this, the most daring operation of the Italian campaign.

Looking a decade older than his 54 years, Lucas gripped the ship’s rail and tried to peer through the blackness, not only at the shoreline but also at the days and weeks immediately ahead. He was not at all sure that this operation would not end in a bloody Allied debacle.

Lucas was an able officer who inspired confidence in subordinates and superiors alike. A West Pointer and World War I battalion commander, he had been Dwight D. Eisenhower’s deputy in North Africa and Sicily, and everyone was confident that ‘Old Luke’ could do the job.

Old Luke, however, viewed his assignment with private pessimism. A few days before Shingle began, he wrote in his diary, ‘Unless we can get what we want (in men and materiel), the operation becomes such a desperate undertaking that it should not, in my opinion, be attempted.’ The entire operation, Lucas fretted in his diary, ‘had a strong odor of Gallipoli and apparently the same amateur was still on the coach’s bench,’ a reference to Winston Churchill and his enthusiastic support, as First Lord of the Admiralty, of the disastrous Allied attempt to take the Dardanelles in 1915.

With the invasion of France imminent and about to become an ‘American show’ under Eisenhower’s command, the Mediterranean had become a ‘British show.’ Following Ike’s departure on January 8, 1944, to become the Supreme Allied Commander of Operation Overlord, General Sir Henry Maitland Wilson had ascended to the post of Supreme Allied Commander in the Mediterranean. Eisenhower’s deputy, Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander, was placed in command of 15th Army Group, which controlled all Allied forces in Italy. Prime Minister Winston Churchill and General Sir Alan Brooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, were now the chief architects of strategy in Italy, and Churchill was particularly keen on capturing Rome swiftly.

The Anzio operation had become necessary because the Allied drive up the Italian peninsula had ground to a halt in the autumn of 1943 some 100 miles south of Rome, in front of a series of heavily fortified positions that stretched the width of Italy. Closest to Naples was the Barbara Line, which ran along a ridge between the Volturno and Garigliano rivers and then over the southern Apennine peaks to the Trigno River. This line, in turn, was backed up by the Bernhardt Line, which took advantage of a narrow defile known as the Mignano Gap. Twelve miles farther north was the best known of the lines: the Gustav Line, a series of bunkers, gun emplacements and other fortifications constructed by Organization Todt (started by the late German munitions minister Fritz Todt, it was involved in large building projects). The Gustav Line began just north of where the Garigliano River empties into the Tyrrhenian Sea and ran to the mouth of the Sangro River on the Adriatic side.

Forcing a breach into the Liri Valley, the mouth of which was guarded by the heights of Monte Cassino and Monte Majo, was the main task of General Mark Clark and the Allied Fifth Army. In addition to taking the heights, the Fifth Army would also have to cross the swollen Rapido and Garigliano rivers while under fire.

Tags: 20th - 21st Century, Historical Conflicts, World War II

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