But this was the sector of Bernard Montgomery, and it took him until September 20 merely to send a Canadian spearhead to Potenza, fifty miles inland from Salerno, a crossroads that opened the way through the mountains to the east coast. A hundred German paratroops blocked Potenza, causing Montgomery to mount a full brigade attack—that is, thirty times the strength of the German detachment—plus a huge air attack that killed 2,000 inhabitants of the town.
There were still virtually no German troops on the east coast, but the British 1st Airborne Division, which had landed at Taranto on September 9, had been able to take little advantage because it lacked arms and transportation. Using the half-dozen jeeps that had come on the warships, plus confiscated Italian vehicles, the paratroops occupied Brindisi and Bari, but that was all.
Even when transport and arms arrived beginning September 14, Montgomery’s methodical, painstaking preparations still held the paras in check. The commander in the east, C. W. Allfrey, now reinforced with two more divisions, took until September 27 to send a small mobile force to occupy Foggia and the airfields there. Montgomery stopped any farther advance, though the only enemy element in front of Allfrey was the 1st Parachute Division with just 1,300 men at Termoli on the Biferno River, thirty miles northwest.
Early on October 3, a British Special Services brigade landed from the sea beyond Termoli, causing the German paratroops to withdraw. But Vietinghoff had already sent the 16th Panzer Division to the east coast, and early on October 5 it drove the British back to the edge of Termoli, then had to withdraw itself when attacked by the British 78th Division, also brought up to Termoli by sea.
The Germans disengaged and withdrew a dozen miles north to the next river line, the Trigno. But their counterattack had so shaken Montgomery that he paused for two weeks to shift his 5th Corps to the coast, moving 13th Corps into the mountainous interior. The 5th Corps did not break the Trigno position until November 3, when the Germans withdrew seventeen miles northward to the Sangro River.
Meanwhile Mark Clark’s 5th Army slowly pushed up the west coast. It took three divisions and an armored brigade of the British 10th Corps a week to force passage over the hill barrier between Salerno and Naples, though the Germans employed only four infantry battalions. The breakthrough came on September 26, when the Germans withdrew, having carried out their mission of holding the line until comrades to the south had been able to pull back.
Because of broken bridges, 10th Corps did not reach Naples, twenty miles away, until October 1. The American 6th Corps came up abreast on the north. Clark had removed Dawley as corps commander because of poor performance and had replaced him with John P. Lucas. Clark’s army sustained nearly 12,000 casualties (7,000 British, 5,000 American) reaching Naples—the penalty paid for choosing too obvious a place of landing.
Rain set in the first week of October, a month earlier than usual, and it was October 12 before the Allies attacked the Volturno River line, twenty miles northwest of Naples. They were held up by German counterstrikes long enough for Vietinghoff’s main forces to withdraw to the next line of defense, fifteen miles northward—the Winter or Gustav line—along the Garigliano and the Rapido rivers, hinging on the Cassino defile, about twenty miles north of the Gulf of Gaeta. Above the town was Monte Cassino, where St. Benedict founded his monastery in 529, the parent house of Western monasticism and a center of arts and learning during the Middle Ages.
Bad weather and German demolitions slowed 5th Army’s attack until November 5. Thereafter, German resistance was so severe that Clark was forced to pull his troops back after ten days. He was not ready to launch the next effort till the first week of December. By mid-November 5th Army had lost 12,000 Americans and 10,000 British.
In Africa and Sicily Anglo-American forces had seen elements of a new kind of close combat that the German army had developed in Russia. But on the boot of Italy they came firmly up against it. The Germans saw in Russia that infantry actions were fought overwhelmingly at close range, 75 yards or less, and introduced the MP38 and MP40 “Schmeisser” machine pistol that fired high-velocity pistol bullets, giving heavy unaimed fire to blanket an area and suppress enemy resistance. The Russians introduced a different sort of weapon that achieved the same effect, the PPSh41 7.62-millimeter submachine gun (burp gun). Supported by fast-firing portable machine guns, the MG-34 and MG-42, the Schmeissers gave Germans mobility and high volume of fire. They never replaced all their standard medium-range bolt-action rifles (the Mauser Kar. 98k) or employed many of the next-generation automatic assault rifles (Sturmgewehr), but Schmeissers and MG-34s and MG-42s gave them high capacity to defend against attacks.
The British replaced in part their medium-range bolt-action rifle, the Enfield No. 4, with various submachine guns (“Sten guns”) that fired the same 9-millimeter pistol cartridge as the Schmeisser, coupling them with the Bren gun, a reliable light machine gun. The Americans were slower to replace the M1 Garand semiautomatic medium-range rifle. Wherever possible they used the Thompson M1928 submachine gun, firing .45-caliber pistol ammunition, but this weapon was in short supply. Americans made do with their M1s, Browning Automatic Rifles (BARs), and light machine guns. It was late 1944 before they introduced the M3 submachine gun (grease gun) in large numbers to compete with the Schmeisser.
The Germans learned to exploit the weaknesses of Americans under fire for the first time. In such cases Americans had the tendency to freeze or to seek the nearest protection. All too often American infantry merely located and fixed the enemy, and called on artillery to destroy the defenders. Only after much experience in 1943 did American infantry learn that the best way to avoid losses was to keep moving forward and to close in rapidly on the enemy.
Tanks could not be used in the mountainous terrain of Italy in massed attacks as Rommel had done in Africa. In Italy tanks largely reverted to the infantry-support role that the British had envisioned for their Matildas and other “I” tanks at the start of the war. However, American tankers and infantry had little training in this role. Infantry and tanks could not communicate with each other. Infantry could not warn tankers of antitank traps and heavy weapons, and tankers could not alert infantry to enemy positions. Consequently, infantry had a tendency to lag behind tanks, and Americans did not work out the smooth coordination of tanks, infantry, and artillery that the Germans had developed long before in their battle groups or
Similar problems developed in the use of tank destroyers (TDs), essentially 75-millimeter guns on open- topped tank chassis. TDs were designed to break up massed German panzer attacks. The Germans no longer massed tanks, but used them as parts of
Finally, the Allies did a poor job of coordinating air-ground operations. Allied fighter-bomber pilots flying at 200 mph often could not distinguish between friendly and enemy forces on the ground. The pilots could not talk to ground units, and vice versa. This resulted in many cases of Allied aircraft bombing and strafing friendly forces. Consequently, Allied troops often fired on anything that moved in the sky. Only in the spring of 1944 did the U.S. Army Air Force deploy forward air controllers (FACs), using light single-engine liaison aircraft (L-5s) that could direct radio communication to aircraft and air-ground support parties at headquarters of major ground units. It was a bit late: the Germans had employed this system in the campaign in the west in 1940 to direct Stuka attacks on enemy positions.
The idea of restricting Allied efforts to southern Italy had been forgotten. Eisenhower set his sights on Rome in a November 8 directive, and was thinking of driving on up at least to Florence and Livorno (Leghorn).
Because of slow Allied progress up the peninsula, Hitler decided to make a prolonged stand in Italy. He dissolved Rommel’s army group in northern Italy, and gave Kesselring Rommel’s divisions—though he sent four of the best to Russia and replaced them with three depleted divisions that needed to recover.
Kesselring also got the 90th Panzergrenadier Division which Hitler had sent to Sardinia. It had withdrawn to Corsica when the Italians surrendered, then to Livorno. Kesselring rushed it to the east coast to help check Montgomery’s belated offensive, which finally developed on November 28.
Montgomery had been reinforced by the 2nd New Zealand Division, giving him five divisions and two armored brigades for the Sangro offensive. Meanwhile the Germans had formed 76th Panzer Corps to oppose 8th Army. This corps had received 65th Infantry Division, a raw and ill-equipped force of mixed nationalities, replacing 16th Panzer Division, being sent to Russia. Otherwise, the corps had only remnants of 1st Parachute Division and 26th Panzer Division, which was still en route to the Adriatic coast.
Montgomery intended to smash the Sangro line, drive to Pescara, get astride the highway to Rome, and
