Tug of War
BY SHELFORD BIDWELL
Gunners at War: A Tactical Study of the Royal Artillery in the Twentieth Century
Swords for Hire: European Mercenaries in Eighteenth-Century India
Modern Warfare: A Study of Men, Weapons and Theories
The Royal Horse Artillery
The Women’s Royal Army Corps
The Chindit War: The Campaign in Burma, 1944
Artillery of the World (Ed.)
World War 3 (Ed.)
BY DOMINICK GRAHAM
Cassino
British Government and American Defence, 1748–56
No Substitute for Peace (With Maurice Tugwell and David Charters)
BIDWELL and GRAHAM
Fire-Power: British Army Weapons and Theories of War, 1904–1945
Tug of War
The battle for Italy, 1943–1945
Dominick Graham
and
Shelford Bidwell
PEN & SWORD MILITARY CLASSICS
The extract from “Rural Raid” by Denton Welch which appears on page 191 is reproduced with
the kind permission of David Highham Associates and is taken from The Terrible Rain: The War
Poets 1939–1945 published by Methuen.
First published in 1986 by Hodder & Stoughton.
Published in 2004, in this format, by
PEN & SWORD MILITARY CLASSICS
an imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Limited
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Copyright © Dominick Graham and Shelford Bidwell, 1986, 2004
ISBN 1 84415 098 4
The right of Dominick Graham and Shelford Bidwell to be identified as
Authors of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We are greatly indebted to our fellow historians and other distinguished persons for help we received when working on this study of the Italian campaign. As they are variously located in Canada, England, France, New Zealand and the United States and we consulted them separately, we consider it appropriate to express our gratitude separately.
Bidwell thanks Lieutenant-General Sir Ian Jacob for an authoritative view of the problems of command and commanders at the highest level; General Sir Frank Simpson and Major-General Eric Sixsmith for answering questions on organisational matters; Major-General Adam Block, Colonel John Mennell, Lieutenant-Colonel P. S. Turner and Michael Glover for their impressions of events at the operational level, together with their perceptions of some commanders and national contingents. He received valuable advice and information from the military historians Correlli Barnett, Carlo D’Este, Nigel Hamilton, the late Ronald Lewin and, in particular, from John Terraine, with whom he has long enjoyed a profitable dialogue. Roy Smith provided useful information concerning air support, and Michael Wasilewsky indicated sources to consult on the Polish Forces. He also consulted W. McAndrew (see under Graham).
To these names must be added those of J. Harding, Historical Branch (Army), Ministry of Defence; Patricia Methven, The Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, King’s College, London; Air Commodore H. A. Probert and Group Captain T. Flanagan, Royal Air Force Historical Section; Roderick Suddaby, the Imperial War Museum, and Richard Tubb, Librarian, the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies, together with the staffs of those establishments.
We are both especially indebted to Lieutenant-Colonel H. R. D. Emery, The French Embassy, London, for his help, and to Monsieur le Général Delmas, Chef de Service Historique for the gift of three volumes on the French participation in the Italian campaign.
Graham thanks Dr Alec Douglas and his staff at the Directorate of History, National Defence Force HQ, Ottawa and in particular Brereton Greenhous and William McAndrew for showing him material concerning their tour of the Gothic Line; Justice Sir John White for recalling events at General Freyberg’s HQ during the Battles of Cassino; the staff of the National Archives in Wellington, New Zealand; Martin Blumenson for conversations concerning Mark Clark and the Italian campaign, and his kindness in allowing him to see his biography of Mark Clark in manuscript; Richard Kohn and the staff at the Office of Air Force History for their kindness; and Richard Sommers at the Archives of the Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania for the trouble he took to find relevant documents. He is immensely grateful to Nick Straker, whose research in the British Cabinet Offices in 1970 laid the foundation for our study of the battles of Salerno, Cassino, Anzio and the Gothic Line. To these names he adds those of the late John Sherman, Robert Tooley, Valerie Graham, Pat Harahan and David Zimmerman for their comments on draft chapters; and of James Parton for providing information about Ira C. Eaker’s part in the operations at Cassino, and also The History of the Mediterranean Air Forces, which he wrote in the spring of 1945.
We wish to emphasise that though we researched separately we are both equally and jointly grateful to all the above.
Ion Trewin, now Editorial Director of our publishers, Hodder & Stoughton, provided encouragement, advice and criticism which has resulted, we hope, in a greatly improved and enlarged text. This was polished by the meticulous editing of Christine Medcalf, who also coordinated the sometimes mutually conflicting views of the co-authors with skill and tact. We thank them both.
Alec Spark drew the maps, adroitly compressing the essential information into a limited space without loss of clarity.
Jean Walter, whose flair as a sub-editor and reader is equal to her accomplishments as a copy-typist of the books of many authors, decrypted an often chaotic typescript to provide a text fit for the publisher.
Our last and warmest expression of thanks is to our wives, who provided the moral and logistic support on which we depended as draft chapters and mutual criticisms winged their way back and forth across the Atlantic.
In conclusion, we state formally that the responsibility for all expressions of opinion advanced by us and for errors of fact is ours alone.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Illustrations
Maps
I–A SOFT TARGET
1
Two Armies in Search of a Battlefield
2
General Eisenhower’s Problems
II–SALERNO
3
The Board and the Pieces
4
Avalanche and Hurricane
5
Von Vietinghoff Shoots his Bolt
6
Salerno – The Postscript
III–INTERLUDE
7
Mines, Mud and Uncertain Trumpets
IV–LOST BATTLES
8
An Odour of Gallipoli
9
The Soldier’s Art
10
Fear, Hope and Failure
11
The Torch is Thrown
&
nbsp; 12
A Hateful Tapestry in the Sky
13
Scarcely any Goal
V–INTERLUDE
14
Look Out, Fighter-Bombers!
VI–AT LAST A PLAN
15
A Man of Ruthless Logic
16
The Battering Ram
17
Tiger Drive
18
The Battle in the Liri Valley
VII – FRANCE WINS THE DIADEM
19
General Juin’s Plan
20
Breaking the Mountain Line
21
Juin Triumphant
22
The Glittering Prize
VIII – THE GOTHIC LINE
23
Operation Olive
24
Clark Agonistes
25
Breakthrough
26
Reflections
Chronology of Principal Events
Sources
Select Bibliography
Chapter Notes
Index of Military Units and Formations
General Index
ILLUSTRATIONS
Harold Alexander1
Albert Kesselring2
Montgomery (No. 13677)3
Clark and Brann4
Alfred Gruenther4
Heinrich von Vietinghoff2
Ernest J. Dawley4
Richard McCreery1
Alexander and Leese1
“John” Harding1
Fred L. Walker4
John W. O’Daniel4
Lucas and Eveleigh4
Lucian K. Truscott4
Gerhard von Mackensen2
Traugott Herr2
Ernst-Guenther Baade2
Richard Heidrich2
Fridolin von Senger und Etterlin1
Geoffrey G. Keyes1
Wladyslaw Anders1
Alphonse Juin1
Bernard Freyberg1
Clark, Alexander and McCreery1
E. L. M. Burns (No. 134178)3
C. Vokes (No. 116030)3
B. T. Hoffmeister (No. 115880)3
Sidney Kirkman1
Charlie Keightley1
Acknowledgements
1. The Imperial War Museum
2. Bundesarchiv
3. Public Archive, Canada
4. United States Historical Archiv
MAPS
German Dispositions – September 1, 1943
Invasion Plans
Salerno – The Initial Assault
Salerno – The German Counter-Attack
The Termoli Landing
Lost Battles
The Anzio Bridgehead
Montecassino
1st Battle of Cassino
2nd Battle of Cassino
3rd Battle of Cassino (1)
3rd Battle of Cassino (2)
Allied German Dispositions – March 31, 1944
The DIADEM Plan
The Eighth Army in the Liri Valley
The CEF – Juin’s Plan
The CEF Offensive
The 6th Corps Drive to Rome
The Gothic Line – Alexander’s Final Plan
The Canadians Break the Gothic Line
The Canadian Advance – September 3–21, 1944
The Fifth Army – Battle of the Passes
Clark’s Plan for the Spring Offensive
McCreery Breaks Through the River Lines
I
A Soft Target
1
TWO ARMIES IN SEARCH OF A BATTLEFIELD
No-one starts a war – or, rather, no-one in his senses should do so – without being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how he intends to conduct it.
Karl von Clausewitz
At 4.30 a.m. on September 3, 1943 the citizens of Reggio Calabria, at the tip of Italy’s toe, were awakened by a thunderous bombardment. Cascades of aerial bombs, hundreds of shells from warships and 400 tons of ammunition fired by field artillery on the western shore of the Straits of Messina fell on the beaches north of the town. Then, as the barrage lifted, three brigades of Canadian and British infantry disembarked from landing craft and waded ashore, to claim the honour of being the first Allied troops to set foot on the soil of Nazi-dominated Europe with the firm intention of staying there. Their passage had neither been molested by the legendary monster Scylla, whose habit it was to snatch seamen from the decks of passing ships and devour them, nor troubled by the whirlpools of Charybdis. Nor was there any interference from a more real danger, the 26th Panzer and the 29th Panzer Grenadier Divisions defending the eastern shore of the narrows. Their commanders, alerted by the preliminary bombardment of their gun positions, and following their orders, prudently had faded away into the mountainous interior of Calabria two days before, leaving their Italian comrades to offer what resistance they could, which was little. A few long-range guns opened fire from far inland, to be rapidly silenced by Allied air attack. The Italians in the coastal defences surrendered with alacrity, even lending willing hands to help unload the landing craft.
The historic return of a British army to continental Europe, three years after the ignominy of Dunkirk, was therefore something of an anti-climax. Not that the soldiers in the ranks cared much about that. They had already sampled the fighting qualities of the German infantry in Sicily, and were only too happy to be ashore safely without having to fire a shot. Nor was the commander of the renowned Eighth Army put out at being so thoroughly hoaxed. He was always careful of his soldiers’ lives, and for him it would have been inconceivable to land his troops on a coast defended by artillery without the elementary precaution of first silencing it. It was only a week since the Royal Navy had tested the defences by sailing through the Straits of Messina, every gun blazing, and part of Montgomery’s mission was to open them for the passage of convoys carrying the troops for another assault on the mainland at Salerno.
He had, in fact, an inkling that Italian morale was crumbling and that the Germans might be thinning out, for on August 27 a special forces patrol returned from the farther shore and reported that the civil population was taking to the hills and the Italian soldiers deserting in droves, bringing a willing informant, an Italian railway worker, with them to confirm the story. Five more patrols were sent across the Straits that night with orders to find out how widespread this movement was and report by radio. There followed two days of silence, and it was assumed that all five had been captured before they could even open radio communications. Montgomery decided that he had no other course open but to hold to arrangements for an assault crossing preceded by a bombardment.1
Once ashore the operations proved equally undramatic. There was a little skirmishing, and a sharp fight after a brigade had been sent a short distance up the west coast in landing craft in the hope that it could cut in behind the enemy line of retreat, but the real battle was between the opposing engineers over the problem of marching two mechanised divisions through the gorges and over the crags of the Calabrian mountains. The German engineers had created a web of demolitions along every road from south to north and from coast to coast. Every corniche had been blown down, every junction cratered and every bridge cut. Five days’ toil saw the leading elements of the 13th Corps 100 miles north of Reggio and approaching the narrow neck of land where the “toe” of Italy joins the foot, and the engineers running out of stores and bridging material. On the 8th Montgomery decreed a halt to improve his line of communications and build up stores before resuming his advance.
On the same day a great Allied invasion fleet was approaching the Bay of Salerno, carrying the United States Fifth Army headquarters and Lieutenant-General Mark Wayne Clark, the US 6th and the British 10th Corps for the main assault on the Italian mainland, the objective being the port of Naples. That evening the ships picked up a broadcast from the Allied Forces station in Algiers with the glad news that the Italian Government wished for an armistice and no longer int
ended to continue the war. This was loudly cheered by the troops. Shortly afterwards they received a rude shock when Luftwaffe bombers launched a fierce attack on the fleet, and a yet ruder one in the early hours of the morning, when they were shelled while still in their landing craft, shot up as they came ashore and then attacked, as some terrified units believed, by hundreds of tanks before they pulled themselves together and began to carve out and consolidate a bridgehead. Their leaders were, perhaps, more alarmed than the troops.
On September 10, General Sir Harold Alexander, commander-in-chief over both Clark and Montgomery, having received Montgomery’s signal announcing his halt, urged him to accept all administrative risks and hurry to the aid of the Fifth Army. On the 12th he followed it up by sending his own chief of staff to repeat and emphasise the message. In fact the German high command had long been expecting a major descent on the Italian coast, probably in the region of Naples, and the commander-in-chief of the south, Field-Marshal Albert Kesselring, had already deduced that Salerno was the most likely landing place. On the 9th he ordered that all the German divisions in Calabria should withdraw, leaving only the thinnest of screens to watch the Eighth Army, and he prepared for a battle royal between the invaders and the German Tenth Army, with the object of throwing them back into the placid waters of Salerno Bay.
Marshal Ferdinand Foch once said something to the effect that warfare was not a well-ordered or intellectual affair, but “a dreadful and impassioned drama”. The opening moves of the invasion of Italy were certainly of the stuff of drama: General Montgomery, the victor of Alamein, piqued at being given a minor part and displeased that his advice not to make two landings 200 miles apart separated by difficult country had been ignored, sulked in his caravan. At one stage during the battle for the Salerno bridgehead General Clark prepared to re-embark the US 6th Corps, but the US artillery saved the situation when the German battle-groups were within a couple of miles of HQ Fifth Army. Meanwhile a decisive battle was fought for the control of the air over Salerno Bay between the Luftwaffe and the Allied fighters and the guns of the invasion fleet moored off-shore.
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