War Stories III

by Oliver North

  Seven days after coming ashore, Lucas was to link up with the remainder of Mark Clark’s reinforced 5th Army—which was to have punched through the Gustav Line and headed north. The entire force was then to make a final push into Rome. It almost worked.

  On 20 January 1944, the U.S. II Corps began its assault on the Gustav Line—with the U.S. 36th Infantry Division attacking to force a crossing of the icy-cold, fast-flowing Rapido River. Two days later, at 0200, after a very brief pre-H-Hour bombardment to preserve surprise, Lucas started landing his VI Corps at Anzio.

  The Germans were completely surprised. The landings—the British on the left and the Americans on the right—were virtually unopposed. By dark on 22 January, Lucas had more than 35,000 men and 3,250 vehicles ashore and moving rapidly inland. Within the next seventy-two hours, the VI Corps had established a beachhead that was more than six miles deep and ten miles wide—but still well short of the Alban hills, the high ground that overlooked the Anzio beaches.

  Then, Lucas learned that far to his south, the 36th Division had been repulsed with horrific losses at the Rapido River. Units of II Corps that were to have been charging north through a gap in the Gustav Line were in fact not able to move even a mile in the direction of Anzio.

  Concerned that the link-up force from the south would not be able to break through the Gustav Line before the Germans counter-attacked his shallow beachhead at Anzio, Lucas ordered a halt to further offensive movement and directed that the units already ashore dig in. Meanwhile, under harassing attacks from the Luftwaffe, he completed his build-up of forces and supplies ashore.

  Kesserling, initially stunned by the audacity of the Allied landing at Anzio, was subsequently surprised that Lucas did not exploit the situation. Noting that the lead elements of the Allied force had not advanced to the Alban hills, he began moving every available German not committed to the immediate defense of the Gustav Line to prepare for a major counter-attack against the Anzio beachhead. Among them there were the Hermann Goring and 4th Parachute Divisions—two of the best in the Wehrmacht.

  By 29 January, Lucas had almost 70,000 troops, 500 artillery pieces, and 250 tanks ashore. Confident that he had landed sufficient troops and supplies to renew his offensive, he ordered the breakout from the beachhead to commence on the night of 30–31 January. The 1st and 3rd Ranger Battalions were to spearhead the attack by infiltrating German lines and seizing a strategic road intersection in the small town of Cisterna. Corporal Raymond Sadoski, a Connecticut Yankee, was among the elite Rangers committed to that operation. Neither he nor his comrades knew that the Germans were preparing a counter-offensive of their own—and would meet them in force.

  CORPORAL RAYMOND T. SADOSKI, US ARMY

  1st Ranger Battalion

  Anzio, Italy

  31 January 1944

  I was in First Ranger Battalion, a BAR gunner. We saw action first in North Africa, and then in Sicily. By the end of operations in Sicily we were guarding Italian POWs near Messina. A lot of them spoke English and one of them said to me, “Hey, how about this—we’re going to the States and you’re going to stay here and fight.” It was kind of crazy.

  On January 22, 1944, we landed at Anzio. Other than the lousy weather—cold and overcast—it was like a walk in the park. We had to cross a lot of open terrain, which I didn’t like at all, ’cause the Germans could see us.

  A few days after the landing the lieutenant and I went to a meeting with our battalion commander. He said that the orders had come down that we weren’t supposed to take any more patrols further inland—that we were to “dig in.”

  We were set up just to the northeast of Anzio port. The Germans had pulled out so fast they had left a 20 mm Italian anti-aircraft gun sitting there. All our guys were horsing around, getting on the gun and the like. One of the communicators from the command post told me, “Go over to that Italian gun and get that phone wire that the Germans left behind, we can use it.”

  Well, instead of walking all the way out to the gun to unhook the wire, I just grabbed the wire and gave it a yank, and the whole damn gun went up in a huge explosion. The Germans had rigged that thing to blow up if anybody broke the wire.

  A few nights later we were moved up to the frontlines—toward the town of Cisterna. After dark, small teams of Rangers were sent out on recon patrols in front of our position. A few hundred meters out in no-man’s land we came to this road and while we were checking for mines and enemy dispositions, a German comes zipping by us on a motorcycle and almost hit one of our guys. The German stopped the bike and started to yell in German, “What’s wrong with you running around like that at night? I almost killed you.”

  If we hadn’t been on a reconnaissance patrol, we would have killed him! As it was, we just hit the ground and headed back to our platoon.

  A couple of nights later, on the night of 30–31 January, we were ordered to infiltrate in small groups into the town of Cisterna—and to hold it until the 3rd Infantry Division arrived in the morning. On the way into the town we came across a German checkpoint alongside the road. We crept up on them and found two guards—but one of them was asleep. We killed them both with our knives, but not before one of them—a big guy—tried to kick the hell out of my lieutenant.

  After we killed the guards, we crept into what turned out to be a German mechanized unit’s assembly point. It was a well-camouflaged vehicle staging area for all kinds of tanks, half-tracks, and artillery. As close as these Germans were to our lines, it was pretty clear that they were getting ready for an attack on the beachhead.

  Just before dawn, one of the Ranger infiltration teams further down the road to Cisterna got ambushed and the next thing we knew, the countryside was crawling with Germans. When the shooting started, I was right beside a German revetment packed full of ammunition cases. I heaved a hand grenade into the cache and we took off running—because you don’t want to stick around when you blow up an ammunition dump. They tend to go off in all directions.

  You never heard such an explosion in your life! They must have had some of everything stacked in there. I got hit with an exploded artillery shell casing, but it wasn’t too serious, so I crawled over into a nearby house at the edge of the town and set up the radio. By then the battle was pretty hot—and we were taking a lot of casualties.

  Even though we were outnumbered, we thought we could hold on until the units from the beachhead got to us, but then the Panzer tanks started coming in. A German tank rolled right up to where we were hiding and one of my sergeants jumped up on the tank, opened the turret, and dropped a hand grenade inside it. That was one courageous, tough sergeant.

  By noon it was pretty clear that we were cut off from any help or reinforcements. The Germans had us surrounded, we were almost out of ammunition, and everybody with me was dead or wounded. Col. Bill Darby told us on the radio, “Blow up the radio and then give yourselves up.”

  I used my last grenade to blow up the radio and waited for the Germans to come and kill us. When the Germans got to the house one of their soldiers took my .45-caliber pistol and said, “This is a good gun. Now put your hands on your head and give up.”

  We hated to surrender, but we knew if we didn’t we’d all be dead.

  U.S. Army Ranger Ray Sadoski was captured by the Germans during the battle at Cisterna. During the fight, 767 U.S. Army Rangers had infiltrated behind enemy lines. All but six were killed, MIA, or captured. The next day, German propaganda cameras recorded several dozen of those elite U.S. soldiers being paraded past the coliseum in Rome under the guns of their captors. They would be POWs until the end of the war.

  His breakout repulsed, Lucas once again shifted to defense, while the German 14th Army continued to reinforce around the Anzio beachhead. Further south, efforts to punch a hole in the Gustav Line continued to chew up American and British units. On 11–12 February 1944, the U.S. 34th Division was driven back after a disastrous assault against German 1st Parachute Division positions surrounding the Monte Cassino Abbey.
Two days later, General Alexander ordered the abbey bombed. It was one of the most controversial orders of the war in Europe—and one of the least effective for the Allies.

  On 15 February, more than 400 tons of bombs dropped by 230 B-17s and B-25s turned the ancient Benedictine monastery to rubble. The 1st Parachute Division—which had until now carefully avoided setting foot on the hallowed ground—immediately occupied the hilltop, turning the wreckage into a redoubt. An Allied attack the next day by New Zealanders and Indian troops—on the heights where the monastery stood—met with disaster.

  That same day at Anzio, the German 14th Army, now more than eight divisions strong, charged out of the Alban hills and smashed into the VI Corps lines protecting the beachhead. One the Americans who suddenly found himself in desperate hand-to-hand combat that afternoon was a young U.S. Army infantry captain, Felix Sparks.

  CAPTAIN FELIX SPARKS

  Company E, 2nd Battalion, 157th Infantry,

  45th Infantry Division

  Anzio, Italy

  23 February 1944

  Our first battle was the invasion of Sicily—that was my first time in combat. We made an amphibious landing from large ships and small boats. In our area, we lucked out because Italian soldiers occupied our landing beaches—and they didn’t really want to fight us.

  We lost a few men who drowned when their landing craft capsized, because the weight of their equipment took them to the bottom. Each rifleman carried two extra bandoliers of ammunition swung around his shoulders, gas masks, grenades, three days of rations—all told about forty pounds of weight not counting their rifles.

  My rifle company landed with 192 men and we took very few casualties until we got to Palermo in July. That’s where I was wounded in the abdomen by shrapnel and was sent back to hospital in North Africa.

  The company went on without me to Italy for the landing at Salerno. Meanwhile, I recovered enough to where I could get up and walk around and was shipped to a convalescent hospital. After about a month there they classified me as Class B duty, which meant that I couldn’t go back into combat.

  But I didn’t want to spend the rest of the war sitting on my duff in North Africa. So, in November, I went out to the airfield where I knew they wouldn’t ask any questions and caught a ride on a B-17 to Naples. From there, I made my way up to the front line, where I rejoined my company. When I got there, they were stalemated at the Gustav Line.

  In December my company made a couple of assaults, trying to penetrate the enemy lines. But we couldn’t make it across the valley in our sector because the Germans were dug in on the high ground and decimated our troops every time we attacked.

  I was always amazed at the how the American solider responded in combat because it was a terrible, dirty business. The weather was awful. When you’re outside in December, and only have a foxhole to sleep in, and it fills up with water all the time—it’s miserable and depressing. But our soldiers learned very fast how to adapt.

  I loved the rifle company because that’s where the action was. We were the ones who went first in any attack. But it always amazed me—why do men do that? Every attack we made, my men knew some of their buddies would be wounded or killed. Yet, when I gave the word, they moved forward without hesitation. They were very good, brave men and I was very proud of them.

  In January, our whole division was pulled off the line and loaded up on amphibious ships for the Anzio landing. It was supposed to be an end-run around the Gustav Line that would catch the Germans by surprise and get behind them so we could press on to Rome.

  The landing went perfectly. We just walked ashore and nobody fired at shot at us. But within a couple of days, the Germans brought in troops from Northern Italy, Austria, and the Balkans. Before we knew it, they had us outnumbered and surrounded with our backs to the water. When the Germans counter-attacked on February 16, my battalion, which was on the Anzio-Rome highway, was pretty well cut to pieces by those reinforced German units.

  My rifle company was straddling the road and I had four machine guns with each platoon. I also had two tank destroyers with me from Division. The tank destroyers had three-inch guns and when the first three German Panzer tanks came over the hill without any infantry in support, those tank destroyers just blew them apart at about 200 yards range.

  But later in the afternoon when the German tanks came again, they came with infantry. So, they got my tank destroyers—pretty quick—they went up in flames. Within an hour they effectively overran the units on either side of my company—killing a lot of my men. So, I got on the radio and called for artillery fire on top of our position because we were in foxholes and the Germans were in the open. Well, I don’t have to tell you—against troops in the open, artillery is devastating.

  That night, with Germans moving in front of us, on both flanks and to our rear, I got a radio message asking if I could hold out. I said, “I think I can if I had some tanks.” The CP said they’d send me a platoon of tanks during the night. When they arrived there were only two tanks, but the next morning there were enough of us alive that with the tanks we were at least forcing the Germans to avoid our little position.

  By the morning of the third day, I had twenty-six men left. We dug in on a small hilltop more or less on line with one of the other two rifle companies that were left. But I had an artillery radio, so I could direct artillery fire all the time. The two tanks got called back around noon so we just dug our holes a little deeper, redistributed ammunition, and hung on. The Germans, for all practical purposes, ignored us.

  We stayed up there for six days—cut off from anyone else except by radio. Almost all of our battalion had been wiped out and we finally got the word that a British battalion was going to try to relieve us. Just getting up to us, the British battalion lost almost half their men. A British major told me to wait until dark and then move back down toward the beachhead and make contact with friendly lines.

  We sure tried. We broke up into two squad-sized units and started moving back toward the beach but the Germans woke up to the fact that Americans were moving through their lines and they started firing on us. We dove into a ditch, crawled through the German positions, and reached our lines at daylight.

  Of the dozen men following me, only one sergeant made it. We were the only two members of my entire company of 192 men to make it back without being killed or captured. Our battalion had well over 50 percent casualties; in my company, we had 99 percent casualties; and the British battalion that came to relieve us was overrun.

  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 breako
uts—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.