The first gray wash: AAR, “Operations in Italy, May 1944,” 142nd Inf Regt, NARA RG 319, OCMH, CA, box 6; James M. Estepp, “I Left My Friend on Mt. Artemisio,” ts, n.d., Texas MFM (tiny figures in field gray).
Behind the column came the bulldozers: Sevareid, 405; Fisher, “A Classic Stratagem,” 5, 14–15; corr, FLW to Gov. Coke Stevenson, July 24, 1946, FLW papers, HIA, box 3; “Engineer History, Fifth Army, Mediterranean Theater,” n.d., MHI, 128 (two-man timber saws); Barger, 189 (“Up, up, up”); Wagner, 171 (“white tracing tape”).
Through the night: Scott, 72; AAR, 143rd Inf Regt, vol. I, June 1944, NARA RG 319, OCMH, CA, box 6 (“crows on a telephone line”).
Kesselring learned that the enemy: Matthews, “Drive to Rome,” 267–71, 274–75, 287, 298 (mounted on bicycles); CtoA, 185; journal, Fourteenth Army, May 31, 1944, 117.
“cork out of a champagne bottle”: Adleman and Walton, 17; OH, Paul D. Adams, 143rd Inf CO, 1975, Irving Monclova and Marlin Lang, SOOHP, MHI; corr, FLW to C. Stevenson, July 24, 1946; Michael B. Anderson, “Personal History,” ts, n.d., Texas MFM (“I measured him”); OH, David W. Sisco, B Co., 142nd Inf, May 1950, NARA RG 319, OCMH, CA, box 5 (filled with cognac).
“state of perturbation”: Sevareid, “On the Standards of the 36th” Texas, 377 (“Most unbecoming”).
Through Thursday afternoon: Fisher, “A Classic Stratagem,” 15–17; memoir, Paul H. Duffey, 141st Inf, ts, n.d., Texas MFM (“didn’t bother me”); CtoA, 200; dispatch, Wick Fowler, Dallas Morning News, n.d., in A Pictorial History of the 36th “Texas” Infantry Division (“The town is yours”).
“torn wide open”: AAR, Schmalz; Molony VI, 276; Wagner, 180 (“Going fine”).
Expulsion of the Barbarians
Cypress trees stood sentinel: Harold L. Bond, Return to Cassino, 182; Sevareid, 408 (dead man’s boots); Gray, 108; O’Rourke, 197 (scratched their initials).
“Over each one of them”: Il Tempo, June 1, 1984, from “The First Special Service Force: Participants in the Liberation of Rome,” ts, n.d., MHI, 3; James O’Neill, “Welcome to Rome,” Yank, June 18, 1944, 10+ (“Is he hurt”).
Clark took nothing for granted: CtoA, 188 (“handsprings”), 192 (369,000 strong); Starr, ed., 254; Howe, 337; msg, A. Gruenther to MWC, June 2, 1944, 2230 hrs, MWC, Citadel, box 63.
“I’m disappointed in the 45th”: G-2/G-3 journal, VI Corps, June 2, 1944, 1840 hrs, NARA RG 319, OCMH, CA, box 6.
With casualties climbing: Most of the damaged tanks were disabled by mines and soon repaired. Molony VI, 272, 277 (“a combined attack”); addendum, “Statistical Data on Italian Campaign,” in corr, E. N. Harmon to GCM, July 15, 1944, GCM Lib, box 70; Matthews, “Drive to Rome,” 411 (“get into the act”); “Clark’s Mother Happy,” NYT, June 5, 1944, 4 (“frazzled out”).
“Rome is now in Allied hands”: diary, MWC, June 2, 1944, Citadel, box 65; Churchill, Closing the Ring, 608; Neillands, 299 (few Tommies could be found); Patrick Howarth, My God, Soldiers, 165 (Polish contingent).
“The attack today”: diary, MWC, June 2, 1944, Citadel, box 65.
Valmontone was found abandoned: Molony VI, 276; journal, 3rd ID, June 2, 1944, 0730 hrs, NARA RG 319, OCMH, CA, box 8; CtoA, 202, 206; Schrijvers, 123 (Italian barbers).
Palestrina, an ancient Etruscan town: Karl Baedeker, Central Italy and Rome, 482–83; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestrina.
That would be his last dispatch: JJT, XIV-14-16; OH, Russell W. Cloer, May 26, 2005, phone interview from Tampa; Russell W. Cloer, “A Short War Story,” ts, 1998, 7th Inf Regt, 3rd ID MHI, ASEQ.
“I am sending them home”: memo, MWC to A. Gruenther, June 7, 1944, MWC, Citadel, box 63.
“Perhaps he was kept overseas”: JJT, XV-8-11, 14.
Even before the American thrust: Warlimont, “OKW Activities,” 36.
On June 2, he advised Berlin: Ultra intercepted these dispatches. Ralph Bennett, Ultra and the Mediterranean Strategy, 285–86; Böhmler, 285 (“huge snake”).
Vietinghoff himself was a casualty: CtoA, 199; Blaxland, 131.
Kesselring had earlier proposed: CtoA, 203, 206; Molony VI, 235, 281 (“Führer decision”); Trevelyan, 305 (Elefante).
The sound of gunfire: John Patrick Carroll-Abbing, But for the Grace of God, 106; Jane Scrivener, Inside Rome with the Germans, 197, 187 (“Brighter Berlin”), 193; Lynn H. Nicholas, The Rape of Europa, 239 (white peacocks); Walter L. Medding, “The Road to Rome,” ts, n.d., CEOH, box X-38, 76 (pilfered the silverware).
“Germans streaming through”: diary, Tompkins, 272; Daniel Lang, “Letter from Rome,” New Yorker, June 17, 1944, 65+ (three and four abreast); Scrivener, 195–96 (“Wild-eyed, unshaven”).
And in the Gestapo cells: Kurzman, 356–57.
niggling suburban gunfights: Molony VI, 281; Starr, ed, 263; Burhans, 242.
“Looks as if the Boche”: journal, VI Corps, G-3, June 3, 1944, 1305 hrs, NARA RG 319, OCMH, CA, box 6; Howe, 339; Howze, 113.
“No one is doing any work”: msg, A. Gruenther to MWC, June 3, 1944, 1615 hrs, MWC, Citadel, box 63; intel summary #333, II Corps, June 3, 1944, NARA RG 319, OCMH, CA, box 8 (“a rout”); msg, MWC to corps commanders, June 3, 1944, 1642 hrs, II Corps, G-3 journal, NARA RG 319, OCMH, CA, box 8 (“destroy the enemy”).
Precisely who first crossed: memos, MWC, “Initial Entry into Rome,” Aug. 31 and Nov. 16, 1944, in “Reports on Capture of Rome,” Chester G. Starr papers, HIA, box 1; dispatch, Seymour Korman, Chicago Tribune, June 9, 1944, Robert T. Frederick papers, HIA, box 1; CtoA, 212–16.
Traffic jams and friendly fire: OH, Cairns, Apr. 24, 1950; Howe, 344; Sevareid, 410; Richard Collier, Fighting Words, 157; diary, MWC, June 4, 1944, Citadel, box 65 (Clark left Anzio); Fred Sheehan, Anzio: Epic of Bravery, 210 (“I’m holding off the artillery”).
As he walked with Frederick: Clark later hung the perforated sign on his garden wall. Calculated, 363–64; Maurine Clark, Captain’s Bride, General’s Lady, 114.
“one little gun stopping us”: OH, Cairns, Apr. 24, 1950; GK, June 4, 1944.
By late Sunday the rear guards: journal, VI Corps, G-3/G-2, June 4, 1944, 1215 hrs, NARA RG 319, OCMH, CA, box 6; Howe, 345–46 (chocolate bars); Adleman and Walton, 210 (bombed that too); John J. Roche, “First Squad, First Platoon,” ts, 1983, 351st Inf Regt, 88th ID, ASEQ, MHI, 22 (“too cluttered”); Alton D. Brashear, From Lee to Bari, 238 (S.P.Q.R.).
Howze at twilight led a tank company: Howze, 117; CtoA, 218; Howze, “The Rome Operation,” 19 (“kissed me”); AAR, 351st Inf Regt, June 1944, NARA RG 319, OCMH, CA, box 7 (“Vino offered”); Howe, 346; Roche, “First Squad, First Platoon,” 22; David Hunt, A Don at War, 259; OH, Russell Cloer, 3rd ID, Sept. 11, 2001, ROHA (summary execution); Charles F. Marshall, A Ramble Through My War, 107 (“won’t be hard to be killed”).
Frederick set out for the Tiber: Burhans, 244–45; CtoA, 218-19; dispatch, Korman, June 9, 1944; Register of Graduates, USMA, 1989 ed., 359; Adleman and Walton, 218.
“a complete hysteria”: Howe, 346; Lang, “Letter from Rome,” 65+ (“Weekend!”); Martin Blumenson, Mark Clark, 215–16; Sherman W. Pratt, Autobahn to Berchtesgaden, 403 (“Welcome to the Liberators”); Sheehan, 213; Il Tempo, June 4, 1984, from “The First Special Service Force,” 3 (“Brothers”).
Shortly before dawn, a column: Medding, “The Road to Rome,” 63–71; “History of the Fifth Army Counter Intelligence Corps Detachment,” June 20, 1945, NARA RG 319, OCMH, CA, box 9; Marshall, 107–8, 113 (Artie Shaw record); “Attain by Surprise,” ts, n.d., 30th Assault Unit, and “Inventory of Documents and Equipment Taken from the German Embassy Rome,” June 8–23, 1943, 30th Assault Unit, LHC (“revealed nothing”).
“Got across thirteen bridges”: G-2/G-3 journal, VI Corps, June 5, 1944, 0630 hrs.
“Victory! Not for Mussolini”: Francesco Rossi and Silvano Casaldi, Those Days at Nettuno, 90.
The Allied victory had cost: Molony VI, 284. U.S. estimates of German casualties were somewhat lower; also, total Allied casualties in DIADEM were placed at
40,205. CtoA, 223.
Columns of weary GIs shuffled: Scrivener, 200; Sevareid, 412; Molony VI, 282 (“Allies are in Rome”).
In classical Rome: H. V. Morton, A Traveller in Rome, 60–64; John Julius Norwich, The Middle Sea, 33n; Brigitte Hintzen-Bohlen, Art and Architecture: Rome and the Vatican City, 39; Georgina Masson, The Companion Guide to Rome, 37, 44; Trevelyan, 319.
At 7:30 Clark flew from Nettuno: diary, MWC, June 5, 1944, Citadel, box 65; Adleman and Walton, 226 (“the hell with that”).
Within minutes they were lost: diary, MWC, June 5, 1944, Citadel, box 65; Kurzman, 421.
“Well, gentlemen”: Sevareid, 414; Adleman and Walton, 226; CM, 379.
Then it was off to a luncheon: OH, Theodore J. Conway, 1977, Robert F. Ensslin, SOOHP, MHI, III-14; Vernon A. Walters, Silent Missions, 108; diary, MWC, June 5, 1944, Citadel, box 65 (“the same thing”).
“We waded through crowds”: GK, June 5, 1944.
“You have made the American people”: msg, FDR to MWC, June 6, 1944, MWC, Citadel, box 3; Harold Macmillan, The Blast of War, 415 (“expulsion”); Churchill, 611 (“the great victory”); Blaxland, 133–37 (turning some British officers); Warren F. Kimball, ed., Churchill & Roosevelt: The Complete Correspondence, vol. 3, 163.
Across the capital the celebration: Sheehan, 215; Huebner, 97 (“beautiful girls”); Collier, 157 (“habit of twenty years”); Adleman and Walton, 219; David Cole, Rough Road to Rome, 231 (“had my hair cut”).
Exhausted soldiers wrapped: diary, Tompkins, 272; Wallace, 178 (“slept on the street”); Murphy, 163.
“Every block is interesting”: corr, George Revelle to Evelyn, June 14, 1944, author’s possession; Sevareid, 415; Cundiff, 178 (Priests offered tours); Trevelyan, 322 (“Hold it, Pope”); editorial, “The Fall of Rome,” Life, July 14, 1944, 38 (“changing of the guard”).
“How do you like that?”: Walters, 97.
“Boys, we’re on the back page”: Collier, 157; Sevareid, 418.
On June 6, Alexander: Molony VI, 281; Blaxland, 139 (“If only the country”).
Howitzers barked wheel to wheel: Medding, “The Road to Rome,” 65; memoir, Edward R. Feagins, 143rd Inf Regt, ts, n.d., Texas MFM, 45 (“I often wondered”).
“C’mon, man, c’mon”: Stars and Stripes, June 5, Italy edition, 1; DeFelice, “Carmene’s Wartime Chronicle” (“Drove through Rome”); G-3 journal, II Corps, June 5, 1944, 2015 hrs, NARA RG 319, OCMH, CA, box 8 (“Beyond Rome”).
Olive-drab columns streamed: Bond, 191; Medding, “The Road to Rome,” 65; corr, FKW to H. L. Bond, Sept. 30, 1965; Texas, 387.
Then up they climbed: Morton, 79, 115, 352; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gianicolo; Bond, 199; Samuel Ball Platner, A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome, 274, in http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/Places/Europe/Italy/Lazio/Roma/Rome/_Texts/PLATOP*/Janiculum.html.
EPILOGUE
More than three weeks passed: JJT, XV-3; Columbus [Ohio] Evening Dispatch, June 26, 1944, 1, A8; Columbus Dispatch, June 3 and 8, 1944.
The news from Rome: Columbus Sunday Dispatch, June 4, 1944, 1, A5, B1, and June 11, B1; Columbus Dispatch, June 6, 1944, 1, A10, B1; Columbus Evening Dispatch, June 7, 1944, 1.
The fatal telegram: JJT, XV-6, 14; author visit, May 7, 2004; “Sicily-Rome American Cemetery and Memorial,” American Battle Monuments Commission booklet, n.d., 3–18.
Here, on Memorial Day in 1945: Bob Fleisher, “Truscott Leads Memorial Day Rites,” Stars and Stripes 2, no. 174, May 31, 1945, 1; Leda M. Silver, “Cartoonist for All Wars,” Retired Officer, Oct. 1992, 42+; Bill Mauldin, The Brass Ring, 272.
The fall of Rome proved: Brooks, 29.
“Morale is irresistibly high”: W.G.F. Jackson, Alexander of Tunis as Military Commander, 295; Thomas R. Brooks, The War North of Rome, 13 (“advance is splendid”).
Kesselring had tried to persuade: Albrecht Kesselring, The Memoirs of Field-Marshal Kesselring, 205; J. Duncan Love, “Artillery Usage in World War II,” Apr. 1959, vol. II, Operations Research Office, Johns Hopkins University, 125 (eight miles a day); directive, A. Kesselring, June 13, 1944, NARA RG 492, MTO G-2, 319, box 354 (“sadistic imaginativeness”); Robert Wagner, The Texas Army, 202 (“Damned shame”).
Alexander’s blithe dismissal: Battle, 255–57; OH, Charles de Gaulle, Jan. 14, 1947, FCP, MHI.
“an overriding priority”: CtoA, 270; Battle, 247, 258; Chester G. Starr, ed., From Salerno to the Alps, 268 (shrunk by more than half); “Beachheads and Mountains,” pamphlet, June 1945, MTO, Theodore J. Conway papers, MHI, box 2 (peaked at 880,000); Viscount Alexander of Tunis, “The Allied Armies in Italy,” n.d., CMH, III-25 (“disastrous”); John North, ed., The Alexander Memoirs, 1940–1945, 41 (“triumphant advance”); Calculated, 369 (“political mistakes”).
If their disappointment was understandable: Molony VI, 274; Battle, 259; George F. Howe, “American Signal Intelligence in Northwest Africa and Western Europe,” U.S. Cryptologic History, Series IV, vol. 1, NARA RG 57, SRH-391, 78 (“neither strong nor quick”); Eduard Mark, Aerial Interdiction in Three Wars, 208–9 (“cloak of darkness”); OH, Willis D. Crittenberger, July 19, 1947, NARA RG 319, OCMH, CA, box 5.
The stress in Fifth Army: OH, GK, Feb. 14, 1950, and Edward J. O’Neill, June 22, 1948, both in NARA RG 319, OCMH, CA, box 5; Robert H. Adleman and George Walton, The Devil’s Brigade, 219 (“infested with lice”); CtoA, 236–37; memos, 1st AD G-4 to ENH, and 1st AD G-1 to ENH, both July 4, 1944, ENH papers, MHI, corr, box 1.
If the past year had been: Iris Origo, War in Val D’Orcia, xiii; Richard Lamb, War in Italy, 1943–1945, 64–66 (ten Italian deaths); “AFHQ History of Special Operations,” July 1945, MTO, NARA RG 407, E 427, 95-Al1-3.0, box 173, 3 (85,000 armed partisans); obit, “Friedrich Engel: Nazi Officer Known as ‘Butcher of Genoa,’” Associated Press, Washington Post, Feb. 14, 2006, B6.
Alexander in late August: Battle, 269, 287; B. H. Liddell Hart, The Other Side of the Hill, 344; Paul A. Cundiff, 45th Infantry CP, 162 (“wished that I were dead”).
“a vast holding operation”: CtoA, 235; H. Essame, “A Controversial Campaign—Italy, 1943–45,” Army Quarterly and Defence Journal, Jan. 1968, 219+ (twenty-nine nations); Andrew Brookes, Air War over Italy, 1943–1945, 155 (thousand cigarettes).
“Many men will never know”: Annette Tapert, ed., Lines of Battle, 135; John Muirhead, Those Who Fall, 20.
The 608-day campaign: Battle, 317; Eugenio Corti, The Last Soldiers of the King, ix; CtoA, 545 (equivalent to 40 percent); “Beachheads and Mountains” (three-quarters of a million); “Tools of War,” Dec. 1946, Peninsular Base Section, MHI; Starr, ed., 451–52; Operations in Sicily and Italy, USMA Dept. of Military Art and Engineering, 1947, 97. Another statistical summary lists as many as 29,560 American dead and missing in Italy. John Ellis, World War II: A Statistical Survey, 255. See also “U.S. Army Battle Casualties in Italy,” n.d., CMH, Geog files, Italy, 704, which lists 30,050 U.S. dead, but without giving methodological detail.
German casualties in Italy: G. A. Shepperd, The Italian Campaign, 1943–45, 391; CtoA, 545; Corti, ix; Starr, ed., 451-52 (212,000 prisoners); “Age Distribution of Dead in the German Ground Forces,” OSS, Research and Analysis Branch, Apr. 3, 1945, NARA RG 334, NWC Lib, box 888.
The Pontine Marshes: “Richiesta di soccorsi per la popolazione di Anzio e Nettuno,” Nov. 18, 1944, provided by Silvano Casaldi, curator, Museum of the Allied Landings, via Andrew Carroll; Donna Martha Budani, “Women, War, and Text: Orsognese Women’s Experience in a Sector of the Italian Front in World War II,” 1997, Ph.D. diss, American University, 24, 28 (half million mines); “The Battle for San Pietro,” AB, no. 18 (1977), 1+; Maurizio Zambardi, War Memories, trans. Monia Cozzolino, 72 (disarm live shells).
Sant’Angelo refugees: Donato D’Epiro, S. Angelo in Theodice, 181–83.
“The men that war does not kill”: Vernon A. Walters, Silent Missions, 114; Lem Vannatta, “Summer of ’43,” 1988, Texas MFM (“scared for 23 months”); J. Glenn Gray, The Warriors, 175 (“so
oted”); OH, Louis Bednar, Sept. 17, 2002, VHP (“smell of anything dead”).
“Any estimate of the value”: Battle, 317; Jackson, 291 (“severely mauled”); Walter Warlimont, Inside Hitler’s Headquarters, 1939–1945, 416 (“sucked into the vortex”); WSC, Triumph and Tragedy, 531 (“The principal task”).
“There is little doubt that Alexander”: Douglas Porch, The Path to Victory, xii; Trumbull Higgins, “The Anglo-American Historians’ War in the Mediterranean, 1942–1945,” Military Affairs, Oct. 1970, 84+ (“never really knew”).
Others would be even harsher: Porch, xi (“cul-de-sac”); John Ellis, Brute Force, table 35 (22 German divisions); Liddell Hart, 373; Higgins, “The Anglo-American Historians’ War,” 84; David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 596 (“war of attrition”).
“bound to their fixed plans”: OH, Albert Kesselring, Sept. 18, 1945, R.H. Brock and O.J. Hale, SEM, NHC, box 47; A. Kesselring, “Concluding Remarks on the Mediterranean Campaign,” 1948, FMS, #C-014, MHI, 25 (“tied down in Italy”); Kesselring, Memoirs, 206 (“utterly failed”).
“to advance is to conquer”: S.L.A. Marshall, Men Against Fire, 194; S. W. Roskill, The War at Sea, 1939–1945, 327 (eleven German U-boats); Russell F. Weigley, The American Way of War, 356–57; Kent Roberts Greenfield, American Strategy in World War II, 114; “Air Power in the Mediterranean,” Feb. 1945, MAAF, historical section, MHI, 11–12; Bernard C. Nalty et al., With Courage, 234; Porch, 668–69.
“Events generate their own momentum”: Martin Blumenson, “Sicily and Italy: Why and What For?,” MR, Feb. 1966, 61; Richard M. Leighton, “Overlord Revisited: An Interpretation of the American Strategy in the European War, 1942–1944,” American Historical Review, 919+ (overwhelmed by the American hordes); SSA, 382.
“Our war of attrition”: William D. Hassett, Off the Record with F.D.R., 192.
Certainly lessons learned in Sicily: A. Kesselring, “German Strategy During the Italian Campaign,” FMS, #B-270, MHI, 37; Lida Mayo, The Ordnance Department: On Beachhead and Battlefront, 216–17.