Roma o morte: author visit, Monte Lungo, May 5, 2004; photos, Italian memorial and museum, Monte Lungo; Wagner, 72 (Alpine uniforms); R. K. Doughty, “The Pink House,” ts, n.d., 141st Inf, Texas MFM; StoC, 276; Wallace, 109; Calculated, 240–44 (vowing to punish); Bowlby, 146 (“corn cut by a scythe”); corr, Don E. Carleton to Hal C. Pattison, Feb. 10, 1965, NARA RG 319, OCMH, 2-3.7 CC3, Salerno to Cassino, box 256 (fastest runners); CM, 291; Thomas E. Hannum, “The 30 Years of Army Experience,” ts, n.d., 91st Armored FA Bn, ASEQ, MHI, 58; corr, Vincenzo Dapino to GK, Dec. 23, 1943, MWC, corr, Citadel, box 3 (“not in a condition”).
trails marked with white tape: Reporting World War II, vol. 2, 8–9; John F. O’Malley, “The Operations of Company I, 143rd Infantry, South of Rome,” 1946, IS; Ernie Pyle, “One Demolished Town After Another,” Dec. 28, 1943, Reporting World War II, vol. 1, 733–34; Pyle, 100 (“Brrrr”); Betsy Wade, ed., Forward Positions: The War Correspondence of Homer Bigart, 34 (wearing packboards); Wagner, 77 (necktie); Lance Bertelsen, “Texans at San Pietro,” Discovery Magazine, University of Texas, vol. 14, no. 2 (1997), http://ftp.cc.utexas.edu/opa/pubs/discovery/disc1997v14n2/disc-sanpietro. html (“husky young men”).
“feel the presence of the enemy”: Margaret Bourke-White, Purple Heart Valley, 42, 147–48 (“lives the longest”); Pyle, 166; Paul Dickson, War Slang, 113+; T. Moffatt Burriss, Strike and Hold, 65 (bunt a baseball); Fifth Army at the Winter Line, 51–52 (white phosphorus); memo, “Phosphorus Burns,” consulting surgeon, AAI, Nov. 8, 1944, NARA RG 331, AFHQ micro, R-235-D; memoir, Edward R. Feagins, ts, n.d., 143rd Inf, Texas MFM, 31; Ross S. Carter, Those Devils in Baggy Pants, 74, 81 (“don’t like this place”).
Raised in the cotton country: Michael S. Sweeney, “Appointment at Hill 1205: Ernie Pyle and Capt. Henry T. Waskow,” 1995, http://www.kwanah.com/txmilmus/36division/archives/waskow/sect1.htm; Michael L. Lanning, “Goodbye to Captain Waskow,” VFW Magazine, May 1981, 19+; Berneta Peeples, “Requiem,” Belton (Tex.) Journal, Dec. 16, 1993, reprint of 1953 article; Bob Tutt, “Young Officer Was Father Figure,” Houston Chronicle, Feb. 6, 1994, 28A.
“I guess I have always appeared”: Henry T. Waskow, “Last Will and Testament,” Temple (Tex.) Daily Telegram, reprinted, Texas MFM.
after almost a week on Sammucro: StoC, 280; Young, “The First Casualty on Monte Sammucro,” 102; Fifth Army at the Winter Line, 51–52; Peeples, “Requiem” (“an awful spot”).
Wearing his trademark knit cap: James Tobin, Ernie Pyle’s War, 133; Lee G. Miller, An Ernie Pyle Album, 90 (“Mr. God”); memoir, James R. Pritchard, 68th Armored FA bn, ts, n.d, ASEQ, MHI, 10 (filling ruts with logs).
“some inert liquid”: Douglas Allanbrook, See Naples, 123; Pyle, 107 (“They slid him”).
after returning to Fifth Army headquarters: Sweeney, “Appointment at Hill 1205.”
Riley Tidwell appeared: ibid.; OH, Riley Tidwell, March 28, 1994, Jane Purtle, Cherokee County Historical Commission, Texas MFM.
“Finally he put the hand down”: Pyle, 107; Lee G. Miller, The Story of Ernie Pyle, 297 (“I’ve lost the touch”).
Mark Clark had proposed using tanks: StoC, 277–79.
This time the attack would be filmed: Marco Pellegrinelli, La Battaglia di S. Pietro di John Huston, 7–10; Bertelsen, “Texans at San Pietro” (“triumphant entry”); Ray Wells, “Battalion Commander,” Fighting 36th Historical Quarterly, spring 1992 (“a large mower”).
loaders with asbestos gloves: John E. Krebs, To Rome and Beyond, 37; “Lessons from the Italian Campaign,” March 10, 1944, NARA RG 407, E 427, 95-USF1-04, box 250, 116; “The Battle for San Pietro,” 1.
The 141st Infantry’s 2nd Battalion: Fifth Army at the Winter Line, 62; Clifford H. Peek, Jr., Five Years, Five Countries, Five Campaigns, 31–32 (“Dead and wounded”); Wagner, 84; Bowlby, 166, 171 (“stupidest assignment”); AAR, 141st Inf, Jan. 11, 1944, Aaron W. Wyatt, Jr., ASEQ, MHI (second attack at six A.M.); corr, Thomas A. Higbie, July 15, 2003, to author (“put that damn rag away”).
Wisps of steam rose: Richard Manton, n.d., 2/141st Inf, 36th ID Assoc, Texas MFM, www.kwanah.com/36Division/pstoc.htm; Calculated, 248; diary, MWC, Dec. 16, 1943, Citadel, box 64, 287 (“What troops”); Texas, 287 (“The losses before the town”).
And then it ended: StoC, 285; Fifth Army at the Winter Line, 67; “The Battle for San Pietro,” 1.
“mound of desolation”: Tom Roe, Anzio Beachhead, 37; Homer Bigart, “San Pietro a Village of the Dead,” New York Herald Tribune, Dec. 20, 1943, in Reporting World War II, vol. 1, 738–45 (“gray hand hanging limply”).
“journey in Dante’s Inferno”: J. Glenn Gray, The Warriors, 59–60; Zambardi, Memorie di Guerra, 13 (140 San Pietrans). The U.S. Army official history estimated that three hundred San Pietrans died. StoC, 285.
A baby’s corpse: Daniel J. Petruzzi, My War Against the Land of My Ancestors, 147; “The Battle of San Pietro,” Combat Report No. 2, 1945, NARA RG 111, film, CR 002 (folding the hands of dead GIs); Samuel Hynes, The Soldiers’ Tale, 3 (“impenetrable silence”).
“where their bedding fell”: Wagner, 89–90; StoC, 285n.
“Ah! Sweet Mystery”: Bourke-White, 118, 126–29, 131.
“We find the country thick”: JPL, 271; StoC, 286 (“a long way off”); Bruce L. Barger, The Texas 36th Division, 144 (“heartbreaking business”).
For John Huston: Peter Maslowski, Armed with Cameras, 75, 88–93; Bertelsen, “Texans at San Pietro” A Pictorial History of the 36th “Texas” Infantry Division, no pagination (“as good a war film”).
“I was right, wasn’t I?”: Lanning, “Goodbye to Captain Waskow,” 19; Sweeney, “Appointment at Hill 1205” Miller, An Ernie Pyle Album, 92 (Pyle’s column).
“A Tank Too Big for the Village Square”
Life in exile: Piers Brendon, Ike: His Life and Times, 115 (three mattresses); memoir, “Italy,” ts, n.d., Kenyon Joyce papers, MHI, 347 (“social purposes”); corr, GSP to Arvin Harrington Brown, Oct. 22, 1943, GSP, LOC MS Div, box 27; PP, 362; diary, Sept. 9, 1943, GSP, LOC MS Div, box 3, folder 3.
On mild afternoons: JPL, 147–48; The Princeton Class of 1942 During World War II, 123 (quail hunting); PP, 367, 391 (language lessons); Ladislas Farago, Patton: Ordeal and Triumph, 364; Charles R. Codman, Drive, 135 (Wellington); George S. Patton, War As I Knew It, 74 (“a disgusting place”); Robert H. Patton, The Pattons, 232 (“too big for the village square”), 262; Robert E. Coffin and Joan N. Coffin, “The Robert Edmonstron Coffin–Joan Nelson Coffin Family Book,” 96 (La Bohème).
Seventh Army was reduced to a shell: PP, 371; msg, W. B. Smith to GSP, Nov. 25, 1943, Walter Bedell Smith papers, DDE Lib, box 27 (signal battalion); diary, Dec. 2, 1943, GSP, LOC MS Div, box 3, folder 4 (“strip the body”); JPL, 147–48; Stanley P. Hirshson, General Patton: A Soldier’s Life, 416 (“dessicated”); OH, Garrison H. Davidson, Nov. 1980, John T. Greenwood, CEOH, 231 (“paper dolls”); corr, GSP to Beatrice, Nov. 7, 1943, Beatrice to GSP, Nov. 1943, GSP, LOC MS Div, box 17, folder 20.
issued wicker baskets: Ivan Dmitri, Flight to Everywhere, 191; “Italy,” Kenyon Joyce papers, 355 (“middle of my forehead”); James H. Doolittle, I Could Never Be So Lucky Again, 363; Clift Andrus, notes on A Soldier’s Story, ts, n.d., MRC-FDM, 1988.32, box 215.
“You need have no fear”: Martin Blumenson, Patton: The Man Behind the Legend, 1885–1945, 213, 215 (“pink medecin”); Kenneth S. Davis, Soldier of Democracy, 439 (“at least sixty reporters”); PP, 359, 361.
He took little interest: Carl J. Friedrich, ed., American Experiences in Military Government in World War II, 120; Robert W. Komer, “Civil Affairs and Military Government in the Mediterranean Theater,” 1954, CMH, 2-3.7 AX, VI, 3–6 (“subsistence level”); PP, 371; Dmitri, 192 (feigned pregnancy); Malcolm S. McLean, “Adventures in Occupied Areas,” ts, 1975, MHI, 56 (Black marketeering).
Shortages plagued the island: “History of the Island Base Section, Sicily,” n.d., CMH, 8-4 FA, 14, 18 (“every possible ruse”); “Monthly Report for August 1943 on the Administr
ation of Sicily,” n.d., AMGOT, 15th Army Group, to H. Alexander, Frank J. McSherry papers, MHI (“Mafia activities”); “Reports of AMGOT Divisions, up to Nov. 1, 1943,” part 3, n.d., Frank J. McSherry papers, MHI (jailed sixteen hundred); Norman Lewis, In Sicily, 56 (revenge killings); diary, Carleton Washburne, Oct. 22, 1943, Mina Curtiss collection, YU (scissored Fascist cant); John Hersey in Reporting World War II, vol. 1, 621; report, W. A. Eddy to W. L. Langer, Aug. 29, 1943, NARA RG 226, E 99, OSS history office, box 39.
The Quaker muckraker: Dennis Showalter, Patton and Rommel, 321; Donald Coe, “Army Releases Patton Story After Denial,” Nov. 23, 1943, Boston Traveler, 1; Richard Collier, Fighting Words, 147; msg, DDE to AGWAR, NARA RG 165, E 422, OPD executive files, Nov. 27, 1943, box 14; Chandler, vol. 3, 1606 (Smith in Algiers made matters worse).
Army regulations: reprinted, Army and Navy Journal, Dec. 4, 1973, 394, Orlando Ward papers, MHI; PP, 377 (fifteen hundred letters); Hirshson, 427 (Gallup poll).
“I am not so sure”: corr, GSP to Beatrice, Dec. 4 & 9, 1943, GSP, LOC MS Div, box 17; Calculated, 257; Hirshson, 433 (“family of the deceased”); diary, Dec. 25, 1943, GSP, LOC MS Div, box 3, folder 4 (“live to see him die”); Kay Summersby, Eisenhower Was My Boss, 81 (“always get in trouble”); corr, L. J. McNair to GSP, Nov. 27, 1943, and GSP to L. J. McNair, Dec. 29, 1943, NARA RG 165, E 418, director of plans and operations, box 1229; corr, GSP to D. S. Miller, Sr., Dec. 27, 1943, GSP, LOC MS Div, box 44, folder 1 (“Very few of us”).
“I doubt that I would ever”: msg, DDE to GCM, Sept. 20, 1943, NARA RG 165, E 422, OPD exec files, box 13; PP, 393; D. Clayton James and Anne Sharp Wells, A Time for Giants, 230 (“should always serve”).
Deliverance came: “Log of the President’s Trip to Africa and the Middle East,” Stephen T. Early Papers, FDR Lib, box 37.
“General Patton, you will have an army”: Mark W. Clark, “General Patton,” ts, n.d., subject file, MWC, Citadel, biography folder, box 70, 3; Michael F. Reilly, Reilly of the White House, 188.
burst into sobs: Reilly, 188; William D. Leahy, I Was There, 215–16.
“My destiny is sure”: PP, 391.
A Gangster’s Battle
Eighth Army since invading Calabria: Molony V, 481, 482n, 483n; Battle, 146; Richard Doherty, A Noble Crusade, 173; msg, DDE to CCS, Nov. 4, 1943, SM, MHI, box 2; Fifth Army at the Winter Line, 7; Field Marshal the Viscount Alexander of Tunis, “The Allied Armies in Italy,” n.d., CMH, II-21 (“sufficiently stretched”).
That strategy still seemed plausible: Molony V, 493, 496; StoC, 258–59; B. H. Liddell Hart, The Other Side of the Hill, 343 (“We will now hit them”); Richard Lamb, Montgomery in Europe 1943–45, 56 (“The road to Rome”).
The Bernhardt Line defenses: Doherty, 171; Thomas R. Brooks, The War North of Rome, June 1944–May 1945, 4 (“ridge and furrow country”); “Current Reports from Overseas,” March 11, 1944, War Office, CARL, N-148495 (“average range of vision”); Field Marshal Lord Carver, The Imperial War Museum Book of the War in Italy, 1943–1945, 98–99 (avenue of poplars).
Drenching winter rains: Doherty, 174; Battle, 148; Molony V, 488; Dharm Pal, The Campaign in Italy, 1943–1945, 35 (“malignant river”); Richard S. Malone, A Portrait of War 1939–1943, 201 (“could hear the wounded men”); StoC, 259 (losses in the 78th Division).
“an unprofitable sector”: OH, Howard Kippenberger, Feb. 4 and 12, 1947, SM, MHI; weekly intelligence summary, no. 67, Dec. 4, 1943, AFHQ, G-2, NARA RG 407, E 427, 95-AL1-2.6 (“lost the initiative”); Michael Pearson Cessford, “Hard in the Attack: The Canadian Army in Sicily and Italy, July 1943–June 1944,” Sept. 1996, Ph.D. diss, Carleton University, Ottawa, 215 (strategy of attrition); Molony V, 495–97.
“almost lunar in its desolation”: Farley Mowat, The Regiment, 137, 146; Doherty, 191 (“lay rigid”).
“To preserve sanity”: diary, O. Carpenter, Nov. 11, 1943, IWM, 79/38/1; John Gunther, D Day, 134 (“murder”); Gilbert Allnutt, “A Fusilier Remembers Italy,” ts, 1979, IWM, 80/46/1, 18, 23 (“Move forward”).
Montgomery kept his swank: Gunther, 129; Malone, 193–95.
“The army commander wants to see you”: L.S.B. Shapiro, They Left the Back Door Open, 44; OH, Francis de Guingand, March 31, 1947, G. A. Harrison, “OCMH WWII Europe Interviews,” MHI (“Sit down”); Stephen Brooks, ed., Montgomery and the Eighth Army, 313 (“go-as-you-please”); J. B. Tomlinson, “Under the Banner of the Battleaxe,” ts, n.d., IWM, 90/29/1, 108 (“And after the war”).
“I must have fine weather”: Nigel Hamilton, Master of the Battlefield, 449; Dick Malone, Missing from the Record, 53 (“You are useless”); Andrew Brookes, Air War over Italy, 1943–1945, 38 (“‘Stop frigging’”); Molony V, 511 (“the unusual gift”).
“a very good First World War general”: Richard H. Kohn, ed., “The Scholarship on World War II,” Journal of Military History, vol. 55, no. 3 (July 1991), 365+.
“untidy and ad hoc”: B. L. Montgomery, “Reflections on the Campaign in Italy, 1943,” Nov. 24, 1943, ts, IWM, micro, reel 4, BLM 48, 1–4.
Canada’s hour had finally come round: Mark Zuehlke, Ortona, 3; Martin Gilbert, The Second World War, 353–54; From Pachino to Ortona, CARL, N-14352; Arthur Bryant, The Turn of the Tide, 596 (feared that the war would end).
a decrepit sandstone castle: Combat Report No. 1, “Liberation of Rome,” 1944, Signal Corps film, NARA RG 111, CR001; Zuehlke, Ortona, 31–32, 37–39; Karl Baedeker, Southern Italy and Sicily, 190 (local landmarks); Daniel G. Dancocks, The D-Day Dodgers: The Canadians in Italy, 1943–1945, 173–76 (ten thousand souls); Steiger, “The Campaign in Southern Italy,” 30 (holes in the harbor mole); “Canadian Street Fighting in Ortona,” June 15, 1944, Military Reports from the United Nations, No. 19, NARA RG 334, NWC Lib, box 184 (easily severed).
The Canadian division commander: http://www.junobeach.org/e/3/can-pep-can-vokesep.htm; Zuehlke, Ortona, 14 (“pompous bully”), 18; Dancocks, 69 (“roughneck”), 191 (the Butcher); Mark Zuehlke, The Liri Valley, 166 (“a man’s fate is written”); Molony V, 504.
A lunge on the left flank: Dancocks, 156, 159 (“raving madhouse”); Mowat, 151 (“stupid bastard”); Zuehlke, Ortona, 124 (“translucent red”), 156, 160; From Pachino to Ortona, 133–34 (“confusing to the enemy”); war diary, Loyal Edmonton Regiment, Dec. 9, 1943, http://www.lermuseum.org/ler/cof/sacrifice/wwii/textwindow/wardiary1.html; “Victoria Cross Is Awarded Major Paul Triquet, Montreal, for Heroic Action in Italy,” March 6, 1944, Hamilton (Canada) Spectator, www.warmuseum.ca.
Beyond the Moro lay a ravine: Cessford, “Hard in the Attack,” 264; Zuehlke, Ortona, 48; Molony V, 504 (“Of eight assaults”); Dancocks, 171 (“You tell Monty”).
“filthy limbo”: Mowat, 161–65.
replaced by the 1st Parachute Division: From Pachino to Ortona, 139; Alexander, “The Allied Armies in Italy,” II-29 (“best German troops”); Zuehlke, Ortona, 161, 201.
Heavy losses and exhaustion: Christopher Buckley, Road to Rome, 256; Cessford, “Hard in the Attack,” 233 (“You feel nothing”); G.W.L. Nicholson, The Canadians in Italy, 1943–1945, vol. 2, 317 (Errant maps); Dancocks, 171 (“He frittered away everything”), 173; Zuehlke, Ortona, 212–14, 219 (“porridge pot”); Molony V, 503–5.
MORNING GLORY: Cessford, “Hard in the Attack,” 233, 241; Dancocks, 240; Buckley, 256.
“I wish I could see you”: Cessford, “Hard in the Attack,” 233.
first large, pitched urban battle: Molony V, 507.
Ortona had been spared razing: ibid., 509; “Canadian Street Fighting in Ortona” Nicholson, 323; Zuehlke, Ortona, 247; Dancocks, 186 (“butchered deer”); Steiger, “The Campaign in Southern Italy,” 63 (“Everybody was very sad”).
Side streets proved too narrow: Battle, 151–53; “Canadian Street Fighting in Ortona” (shot the tanks in the belly); Molony V, 507; Doherty, 184–85; The Tiger Triumphs, 28–29 (“gangster’s battle”); Zuehlke, Ortona, 278, 289; Nicholson, 328 (“miniature Stalingrad”); Dancocks, 181 (“three more shooting days”).
> Rather than clear buildings conventionally: “Street Fighting,” intelligence report, 5778-44, May 29, 1944, British GHQ, Cairo, CMH, Geog Files, Italy, 370.2, 6–7; “Beehives,” appendix B, “Ortona,” HQ, 1st Canadian Div, Feb. 16, 1944, C. W. Allfrey papers, LHC, 4/8; Mowat, 163.
“The stench here”: Dancocks, 1, 179 (“We could beat you”); Buckley, 260.
Two dozen Edmontons were buried: war diary, Loyal Edmonton Regiment, Dec. 27, 1943, http://www.lermuseum.org/ler/cof/sacrifice/wwii/textwindow/wardiary1.html.
“We do not want to defend”: Steiger, “The Campaign in Southern Italy,” 65.
“There is no town left”: Zuehlke, Ortona, 348.
“This is Ortona”: Dancocks, 186, 189; From Pachino to Ortona (“a fairy tale”).
Alexander’s plan had miscarried: Molony V, 509; Dancocks, 186 (“The familiar world”).
Too Many Gone West
Removing his hat: Lord Moran, Churchill: Taken from the Diaries of Lord Moran, 159; W. H. Thompson, I Was Churchill’s Shadow, 124, 126 (for his sixty-ninth birthday).
“I want to sleep”: Roy Jenkins, Churchill, 719; WSC, Closing the Ring, 420 (flopped sopping); Richard Overy, Why the Allies Won, 268 (“specks of dust”).
At length the mystery: Jerrard Tickell, Ascalon, 14–15, 62–64; Three Years, 457 (“had been pacing”); Churchill, 457 (“end of my tether”).
Ringed by sentries: Gerald Pawle, The War and Colonel Warden, 277–80; Harold Macmillan, War Diaries, 326–27; Moran, 159; Roger Parkinson, A Day’s March Nearer Home, 234 (“much disturbed”); Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. 7, 604 (“It’s pretty bad”); Danchev, 497 (“Hullo, hullo”).
“My master is unwell”: Gilbert, 606, 608 (“bumping all over”); Danchev, 497 (pathologist arrived); Moran, 161.
“He’s very glad I’ve come”: Moran, 161–62; Gilbert, 606 (“war is won”); Thompson, 129–30 (“In what better place”); Macmillan, 326–27 (“very breathless”).
The preceding fortnight: Richard M. Leighton, “OVERLORD Versus the Mediterranean at the Cairo-Tehran Conferences (1943),” Kent Roberts Greenfield, ed., Command Decisions, 189–91; James Leasor, The Clock with Four Hands, 263 (22,000 pounds of meat); Macmillan, 320 (curried prawns); Molony V, 584 (80 bottles).
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