Not According to Plan

The Allied trudge up the Italian boot had fallen behind schedule. Skillful, vicious delaying tactics had won time enough for the Germans to build a strong defense line across the peninsula at its narrowest (80 miles) point between Naples and Rome. Against that formidable barricade the British and U.S. armies lunged last week.

It was a bruising fight against terrain as well as pillboxes, snipers' nests, mined roads, concealed mortars' and artillery. The Apennine spine of Italy scatters rough, irregular ribs in all directions. Rain-flooded rivers gouge the land. Perched on heights above the valley-bottom roads, the Germans could give ground slowly and at a stiff price. General Mark Clark's Fifth Army pried them from Mondragone, the western anchor of their line. General Bernard Montgomery's Eighth bit sharply toward Isernia, key to the enemy's center, and Vasto, his east coast anchor.

The Hard Way. The Allied high command had launched its invasion of Italy with the hope of thwarting any major German stand below Rome. But the time table had been disrupted at Salerno. There, by General Sir Harold Alexander's admission (TIME, Nov. 1), the Germans had upset the Fifth Army's plan to sweep across the peninsula, pinch off southern Italy. Other factors had further slowed the Allied advance:

> In the time gained by the Germans had come Italy's autumnal rains, churning up mud and mist in the path of the Allied attack. Soon, in the Apennine uplands, the British and Americans can expect snow and bitter cold.

> The Allied high command realized that air bombardment of Italian communications had failed to paralyze German transports, as it had similarly failed in Sicily. An effective flow of reinforcements and supplies was reaching the enemy front.

> German demolition and mining had reached a new peak of thoroughness. Communications behind the enemy front, left usable by Allied air attack, were being systematically destroyed. A report from Allied headquarters noted that the Nazis in the east had blown up 13 roads and rail bridges, leaving a minimum passage for retreat, along the Adriatic coast to Pescara, 40 miles ahead of the Eighth Army.

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