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00:00THE END
00:32Like many a town or village along the coast of Italy, this small fishing town and vacation
00:38spot has an ancient heritage.
01:02Its roots reach back into the worldly glory of the Roman Empire.
01:07It was then, as it is now, a minor port facing out onto the Tyrrhenian Sea.
01:19In ancient times, its name was Antium, and it was not without a degree of dubious distinction.
01:26Nero was born here and Caligula.
01:31There is little today to recall the days of the Roman legions, and very few of the thousands
01:36of Americans who knew it during World War II would recognize its ancient name or its rebuilt,
01:43unscarred face.
01:53Time and peace have had nearly two decades to do their healing work.
02:01There has been peace, and much that has passed has been mercifully lost to memory.
02:19But a great many Americans will never forget this town's modern day name, the name they
02:24knew it by in 1944, Anzio.
03:20In 1943, it was one of our strategic aims to draw as many German forces as possible.
03:42As General Clark was well aware, our objectives were one thing, the achieving of them another.
03:49In late 1943, our lack of progress in the south of Italy was leading to the necessity of a landing
03:54in the enemy's rear at Anzio.
03:56Our problems in Italy had been many.
03:59For example, there was the terrain.
04:02It was ideal for the defending enemy forces, cruelly difficult for Allied troops.
04:11Oh boy, you talk about your bad country.
04:15I mean, they didn't have but two directions over there, up the hill and down the hill.
04:24Here, methods of transport long obsolete became operational necessities.
04:30It was this kind of hostile, perpendicular country which led one Allied officer to comment,
04:35what you need to fight a war over this ground is an army of bulletproof kangaroos.
04:45The kangaroos, to be effective, would have had to be amphibious as well as bulletproof.
04:49For uncrossable rivers and blown bridges were prime facts of life.
04:55Ah, the enemy really knew his job.
04:58When those people blew a bridge, we had to start over from scratch.
05:01Some of our guys stayed wet so long, their skin puckered up like a prune.
05:05We didn't get a lot of help from the weather either, as I remember.
05:15By mid-winter, the Allies' advance toward Rome had bogged down.
05:25Just south of Casino, a stalemate had developed,
05:28and it was the deadlock here at the Gustav Line which germinated the seeds of the Anzio operation.
05:38Naples, mid-January 1944.
05:41The build-up for a landing at Anzio was underway.
05:44This would be an amphibious end run which would put a force on the beach to the enemy's rear
05:49and much too close to Rome for his comfort.
05:52Maybe we could break the Casino deadlock this way.
05:55But from the start, there were serious problems.
05:59It had the looks of a very chancy operation.
06:02For one thing, when all the begging, borrowing, and scrounging were done,
06:06there were only 38 LSTs for the sea lift.
06:08What that meant was the initial landing force was going to have to be dangerously small.
06:13Two divisions.
06:14Two more to come on the second trip.
06:16Sixth Corps, that was us, under General John P. Lucas, drew the honor.
06:21It was a gamble for everybody concerned.
06:23But it had to be taken.
06:27By 21 January 1944, the task force was moving toward Anzio.
06:33The two divisions were well chosen.
06:35The British first infantry had been through Dunkirk.
06:38The American third had fought through Tunisia and Sicily.
06:41But at this point, all was doubt, speculation.
06:49What lay ahead, no man, at whatever level, could know for certain.
07:03By the time it got light on the 22nd, we were already putting people on the beach.
07:08I made the Soleno landing before, and I was all set in my mind for this to be just as
07:12bad.
07:13I kept waiting for them to open up with the heavy stuff.
07:15But it didn't happen.
07:17I didn't get it.
07:18But I sure wasn't complaining.
07:24Unbelievably, the landing was almost completely unopposed.
07:28The enemy's reserve divisions near Rome had been drawn south
07:32by an Allied attack on the casino front designed to do just that.
07:37By an ironic bit of timing, the Germans had called off their 24-hour coast watch
07:41on the very night when the task force was approaching Anzio.
07:45Equally ironic was this.
07:47We had achieved complete surprise.
07:49And we didn't know it.
07:52The only real trouble we got that day was from the air.
08:09They did some damage, but they only had something like 350 planes in the whole area.
08:14We had about 2,000.
08:16So they couldn't do too much.
08:17Still, at the time, it seemed like enough.
08:27Despite harassment from the air, losses were light.
08:30The first day saw 90% of the landing forces ashore.
08:34Immediately, they began consolidating the beachhead against the enemy counterattack, expected at any moment.
08:43With his reserve divisions pulled south by the casino attack, the enemy had only ragtag fragments of units at his
08:50disposal, but he moved them up swiftly.
08:57Prisoners taken in the first days were universally smiling and confident once they discovered they were not going to be
09:03mistreated.
09:04They were certain that in a matter of days they would see the Allied landing force pushed into the sea.
09:11The 6th Corps had already faced the swift and professional reaction of the German commander Kesselring at Salerno and expected
09:19no less of him in this new meeting.
09:23He lost no time in eliminating the advantage of surprise which the Allies had unknowingly gained.
09:29At Kesselring's command, General von Mackensen assumed responsibility for Anzio, and by evening of the second day of the landing,
09:37parts of eight divisions were in position and more were moving up.
09:47Beginning at dawn, four days after the first landing, the Allied force set out to push farther inland, enlarging the
09:54beachhead.
09:57The golden moment of surprise was gone. They came against rigid opposition.
10:09It was a foretaste of things to come. In three days of fighting, the perimeter was extended somewhat, but the
10:16cost was high.
10:23A force of 767 American Rangers trying to infiltrate and capture nearby Cisterna was ambushed. Most were taken prisoner.
10:38By now, the other two divisions of the 6th Corps had arrived, but so had the enemy.
10:45It was one of my duties as a medical officer to keep a listing of casualties for Corps headquarters.
10:50By the end of January, we had taken a total of 3,000 casualties.
10:54As a statistic, that's a straightforward figure. The mind may accept it without distress.
11:00The thing that must be remembered is this. The statistic refers to 30 times a hundred human beings hurt or
11:07killed.
11:19The Allied offensive ground to a stop, and the Anzio forces went on the defensive.
11:24Bad weather came. This meant no air cover.
11:28This meant enemy forces building up without hindrance.
11:32A counterattack was inevitable, and we got ready for it.
11:36But barbed wire and mines, so helpful to a force on the defensive, were in somewhat short supply.
11:46The enemy intended now to make another Dunkirk of Anzio.
11:55Swiftly, he shifted forces from northern Italy, southern France, and even the Balkans.
12:00Daily, his fighting machine was growing stronger on the ground, as casualties drew the Allied forces thinner.
12:08By mid-February, the enemy had pushed the Allies back in the center of the grimly-held beachhead, almost to
12:14the last-ditch lines of defense.
12:16The outlook, depending on which side you were looking from, was excitingly bright, or very dark.
12:23Now, once again, an Allied attempt in the south to breach the Gustav line failed.
12:28The men on the ground didn't know that the breakthrough attempt was also intended to ease the pressure on the
12:33Anzio perimeter.
12:34They only knew that enemy guns still looked down their necks from the fortified heights, and that advance became impossible.
12:42With the repulse of the second casino offensive, it became clear.
12:46Anzio was on its own. The crisis was here.
12:49Every resource was marshaled to meet it.
12:52Now came a strange three-month period which no one who was there will forget.
12:57The static war at Anzio, or as some called it, the Sitzkrieg.
13:02By now, everybody was used to living in holes.
13:05Anyway, as used to it as you can get.
13:07When we could, we'd put in the time on improvements.
13:10We used to say we had all the comforts of home, provided you lived in a muddy hole in the
13:14ground back home.
13:19Within the reduced area of the beachhead, there was now no corner which was out of range of enemy artillery.
13:25Like industrious moles, the Anzio forces in the field moved themselves underground.
13:33We struck it lucky. The cosy bit of a cave it was, no digging necessary.
13:38It was already occupied, as you might say, but we got on fine with the former tenants because they were
13:42very quiet.
13:44I wrote them this is not to worry about me, or spending all my spare moments in a ruddy museum.
13:51Still, it went all the crooks to her. There was always work to be done.
13:56There were no rear areas at Anzio. Wherever you were, if you were above ground, you could be reached by
14:02artillery.
14:03That's why you could find a strange pipe sticking about at the driveway of an Italian villa.
14:08A breather pipe. An air vent.
14:11And with the aid of the Corps of Engineers, our headquarters at Anzio went underground.
14:23The main corridor gave you an idea of how big this specialized foxhole was.
14:28It ran just about a quarter of a mile in a straight line.
14:33Branching off from it, all the elements of an operating headquarters.
14:37Everything needed underground.
14:43Railway tunnels, natural caves, all were put to use and glad to get them.
14:48What with bad weather, shellings, and air raids, there was a lot to be said for underground living at Anzio.
14:58Another constant reality of the beachhead was the endless patrolling, probing, raiding.
15:11Mostly we went at night, but sometimes it'd be a daylight raid.
15:15Maybe some enemy people would sneak in and set up observation in some house.
15:19Then a raiding party would go in and take them out.
15:29It was a regular thing. You didn't get used to it, but at least you got where you understood what
15:34you were doing.
15:41If you were lucky, you came back with everybody on their feet.
15:44If there was a good part, that was it, when everybody came back standing up.
15:54There was a funny side to it all, though. These propaganda sheets we used to get were always good for
15:59a chuckle.
16:00I don't know yet what they hoped to accomplish.
16:08As time went on, there were days when it seemed like it was me dad's war all over again.
16:13Frenches, no man's land, and all that.
16:15Quite often in the day, things would be so quiet you could hear small, distant sounds across the field.
16:28Frenches, no man's land.
16:29Mind you, though, night time was something else again.
16:50One night, in the bay, an ammunition ship was it.
16:58It's like a great big fireworks display, but it wasn't good to think of the people who'd been on it.
17:08After our field hospital had been bombed and shelled a few times, we decided to take steps.
17:14We couldn't go entirely underground, so we did the next best thing
17:18and built strong revetments into which the tents could be put.
17:23We nurses helped where we could.
17:25It was a huge job, but it was necessary.
17:28We'd been shelled so often, we came to be called Hell's Half Acre.
17:33In fact, some line soldiers would actually hide small wounds, rather than risk being sent over here.
17:39I'm not making this up. It actually happened.
17:48Strange things happened on occasion.
17:50There was the teenage German lad we found trying to get among the ships with a one-man submarine device.
17:56He seemed much too young to be up on such business.
18:02They sent some men round to where the thing was beached to bring it in.
18:05Funny looking thing.
18:07Really not much more than one torpedo to ride on and another one underneath to shoot.
18:13The ruddy propellers started up when they started to tow it, living up there afternoon all right.
18:19While there were some jolly good sprinters among them lads.
18:27In the end, nothing happened at all. The thing simply stopped again.
18:31Sorry, the presenter was an anti-climax, but do you know what?
18:34It happened in the middle of a time which was very much like that.
18:39As spring approached, Anzio was the scene of massive build-up for the breakout which would have to come.
18:45Despite harassing fire, the unloading of ships went on.
18:48There was a moment when there were so many supplies on the beach that this little Italian fishing port rated
18:54seventh among the great ports of the world.
18:57Now the static war at Anzio was approaching its end.
19:01Commanders were formulating the plans which would break the Anzio forces out and set them on the road to Rome.
19:09As spring came on, there were special classes in the care and use of specialized items of destruction.
19:23Rehearsal for the real thing.
19:29Near Anzio, a group of American commanders gathered to witness a demonstration.
19:33The third division commander, General Iron Michael Daniel, gave a graphic description to General Clark.
19:39As well he might, since it was a device of his own inventing which the officers had come to see.
19:45The old man called it a battle sled, and that was pretty accurate.
19:50All it was, you had a bunch of foxholes, only they were steel, and rigged up for towing behind a
19:55tank.
19:58That way a squad of guys could stay in their holes for cover and move up at the same time.
20:03It was pretty neat.
20:06It never caught on, but in my book, it was a good idea.
20:15In the south, the line's strength had grown.
20:18It was now possible to mount an all-out push against the Gustav Line.
20:23It came pretty early, a feeling that this time we were going to make it.
20:30Don't ask me where we got the idea, because it was still us on the low ground and them on
20:35the high.
20:36The terrain hadn't gotten any better. Their aim hadn't gotten any worse.
20:39Just the same, the feeling was there. This time we were going to make it.
20:57After a week of heavy fighting, it was clear that the forces in the south were in fact breaking through
21:03the unbreakable Gustav Line.
21:05The time for a coordinated breakout from Anzio was here.
21:10May 23rd, 1944. The Anzio breakout begins.
21:15The days of the Sitzkrieg at Anzio are at an end, and the days of the beachhead itself, nearly so.
21:42Let's try again.
21:43The main distance will be projected on places where two sides had planned
21:45all sorts of little surprises for each other.
21:47you had to take it slow and watch your step so it started slow but at least we
21:54were moving at last
22:02now after everything here was the road to Rome
22:27by June 4th 1944 American troops were entering Rome
22:54behind lay an action over which historians could and would widely disagree in years to come
23:00on the battered beachhead our man had learned much and perhaps the enemy had learned something too
23:06he had done his best and his worst against the Americans and British at Anzio and it had not
23:14been enough
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