Out of the Storm

A wild storm lashed across Italy, driving before it torrents of blinding rain. Winds of gale force tore up trees, whipped dirt roads and open fields into bogs and mud-wallows. Through it all, soldiers fought, toe to toe, steel to steel.

For the German troops below Rome the ill wind was a blessing, completely canceling out superior Allied air power, offering a priceless opportunity to crack the beleaguered Fifth Army beachhead on Cape Anzio.

They threw heavy, sudden attacks around the rim of the beachhead, probing for a soft spot, using tanks and assault guns as mobile artillery. Where they found the going reasonably good they poured on the pressure ruthlessly. From the beachhead, N.Y. Herald Tribune Correspondent Homer Bigart radioed:

"Only by lavish expenditures of infantry has the enemy been able to gain ground. The fierce butchery of the last four days has been severe on two German units. Some companies have been reduced to a mere handful of men." U.S. and British troops took their losses, too. The survivors' reward was that they were holding the line.

Hand to Hand. Heavy German attacks developed at five or six points around the curved Allied position. As the storm raged at its height, the heaviest thrust was aimed near Aprilia, in the north. Allied artillery laid down a heavy barrage, then British troops went back to the attack in hand-to-hand fighting. By night they had gained a little ground.

By week's end the German attack slackened a little. Mud and weariness had taken their toll. Troops who had battered at each other almost without pause for two weeks got a breathing spell. The greatest assault yet had been beaten off. But no man in the beachhead doubted for a moment that there would be more.

In London Prime Minister Winston Churchill announced that he had received reassuring reports from the top Allied commanders, General Sir Henry Maitland Wilson and General Sir Harold R. L. G. Alexander. Both were confident that "the great battle now proceeding for the capture of Rome will be won." Said Churchill:

"In the bridgehead itself the Allies have a very strong army and superiority in both artillery and tanks. Although spells of bad weather interrupt from time to time the deliveries of supplies, the amount landed . . . substantially exceeds the schedule prescribed. ... All battles are anxious as they approach the climax, but there is no justification for pessimism... ."

Inch by Inch. Throughout the week the spectacular fighting around the beachhead almost obscured the main Italian battlefront, 53 miles to the east and south, where Fifth Army troops were grinding away at German strong points in and around Cassino. There too, howling storms of rain, sleet and snow gave the Germans an advantage. U.S. troops were battering their way into Cassino, house by house, but the Nazis still controlled at least two-thirds of the town, and were fighting back from the cellars even as tanks pounded the houses down around their ears.

So long as that battle was stalemated, no decisive result could be reached at Anzio (except for the dire possibility of a German victory). From the first, the beachhead landing had been planned not as an independent thrust at Rome (the available force--six divisions--was not adequate for such a task) but as a bold flanking attack calculated to make the Germans pull back hastily from their positions along the so-called Gustav Line.

Presumably Alexander, Wilson and their generals had planned soundly enough, but there had also been some sound and speedy counterplanning by Nazi Field Marshal Kesselring, who held firm at Cassino and hustled in reserves from northern Italy, France and the Balkans to ring the beach.

But that, too, was an indirect gain for the Allies. The German who fights at Anzio is not available for Russia or for western France. And for Germany, at this stage of the war, the soldier who dies at Anzio cannot be replaced.

This week the weary men at Anzio got fresh encouragement. Lieut. General Mark Wayne Clark, U.S. Commander of the Fifth, sent his troops a message of commendation, told them that heavy reinforcements were reaching the beachhead, predicted that the two forces would meet for "a victorious march into Rome." Best of all, the weather broke. Allied air power went back into the battle.

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