Chapter 5
“Those were four of the most trying, most terrible, and most exasperating months in the history of modern warfare.”
On 22 January 1944, VI Corps executed Operation Shingle—an amphibious flanking movement around the German Gustav Line—and landed at Anzio, a mere thirty-five miles southwest of Rome. Landing craft bearing the assault wave headed toward the shoreline at 0200 hours. The invading forces achieved almost complete surprise, and only a few coastal artillery and antiaircraft guns offered a brief and futile resistance.1 Harassment raids by the Luftwaffe began about 0815.2
A few men from the 701st Tank Destroyer Battalion, including platoon commander Lt John Hudson, who was there almost by accident after checking himself out of a hospital to stay with his outfit, splashed ashore with a naval forward observer team. As the naval officer and two sailors established radio communications with warships offshore and directed supporting fire,3 the 601st landed in force to support the doughs of the 3d Infantry Division and therewith participated in its third D-day assault. The tank destroyers rolled four miles inland against no opposition by the evening of the first day.
Recon Company elements from the 601st drove unmolested to within seventeen miles of Rome before turning back.4 Tank destroyer reconnaissance companies had received new vehicles before the Anzio landings; the M8 Greyhound armored cars had replaced the M5 light tanks.5 The six-wheeled M8 had a crew of four, sported armor as thick as 5/8 inches on its hull front, and carried a 37mm gun and coaxial .30-caliber machine gun in a fully rotating, open-topped turret.6 The vehicle was capable of speeds up to 55 miles per hour. A utility armored car on the same chassis—the M20—also joined the TD battalions in place of some halftracks.
The British 1st Infantry Division landed to the left and also made easy progress inland; engineers and the Navy had the port of Anzio open by mid-afternoon. By midnight, VI Corps had thirty-six thousand men and thirty- two hundred vehicles ashore. It had lost only thirteen men killed and ninety-seven wounded.7
Discussion of a possible end run had ebbed and flowed from the time Eisenhower had first raised the possibility as German resistance solidified after the Salerno landings. Several strategic considerations were in play. The first was pressure from the Joint Chiefs on Eisenhower to release landing craft on schedule for the invasion of France. The second was an Allied assessment that even in the best case, available transport would support only a small expeditionary force. Alexander identified Anzio as the landing site as early as 8 November, but commanders viewed the entire enterprise as contingent upon making sufficient progress up the peninsula to guarantee a rapid link-up with the landing force. The virtual stalemate in the Winter Position persuaded Clark to recommend scrubbing the operation on 18 December.8
By December, Eisenhower had received the nod to take command of the invasion of northwestern Europe, and General Sir Henry Maitland Wilson had been named to take command of a combined Mediterranean and Middle Eastern Theater. The British were now unquestionably the senior partners in Italy, and Churchill wanted to pursue the Anzio option. On Christmas day, Churchill obtained Eisenhower’s backing.9
The U.S. VI Corps would make the assault. The corps commander, MajGen John Lucas, would have the American 3d and British 1st Infantry divisions, the American Ranger Force of three battalions, a British special service brigade with two commando battalions, and an American parachute infantry regiment and an additional parachute battalion. A week before the landings, Clark promised Lucas elements of the 45th Infantry and 1st Armored divisions, with more to come if needed.10
Lucas wanted more time, but the deadline for surrendering landing craft for Operation Overlord permitted no delay. Preparations were rushed. Sixth Corps did not fully extricate itself from the line until 3 January 1944, and then the final landing rehearsal, on 19 January, was a fiasco. Lucas recorded that he feared he was in for another Battle of Little Big Horn and noted on another occasion, “[T]he whole affair has a strong odor of Gallipoli.”11
Beginning on 12 January, Fifth Army had launched a furious attack against German positions along the Rapido and Garigliano rivers in the hope of drawing enemy units in striking distance from Anzio away to the south. On 17 January, British 10 Corps crossed the mouth of the Garigliano, but a subsequent assault crossing by the British 46th and American 36th Infantry divisions were repulsed.
Despite some progress, the offensive failed to crack the defenses. Nevertheless, the battle drew the 29th and 90th Panzergrenadier divisions away from Rome. The Eternal City lay defenseless.
Major General Lucas viewed his job as establishing and defending a beachhead at Anzio, not kicking open the door to Rome. He judged his initial assault force to be too weak to risk penetrating the Alban Hills that dominated the landing site from a dozen miles inland, although by doing so he could have cut the main highway— and supply route—from Rome to the Gustav Line.12 Lucas’s decision decided the terms under which the battle at Anzio would be fought.
The day after the landing, M10s from 2d Platoon, B/601st Tank Destroyer Battalion, engaged and destroyed a German tank as well as a machine-gun crew that had set up in one of the sturdy stone houses.13 Their appearance suggested the enemy was beginning to react to the landings. Indeed, Generalfeldmarschall Kesselring and the German High Command in Berlin had quickly ordered the lead elements of twelve divisions and a corps headquarters into motion to contain the beachhead.
Sixth Corps spent the next several days slightly expanding and consolidating its holdings. By the third day, the Allies controlled a flat strip along the coast seven miles deep and sixteen miles wide. The left flank was anchored on the Moletta River and the right on the Mussolini Canal. A pine forest covered the center of the lodgement.
On 25 January, the British advanced up the Albano road toward Rome and captured the fascist model town of Aprilia, which the Allies dubbed “the Factory.” The American 3d Infantry Division, however, encountered serious resistance as the doughs tried to advance toward Cisterna, a town in the Alban Hills. The lead elements of the 45th Infantry and 1st Armored divisions began landing that day. The arriving GIs soon shared Lucas’s earlier misgivings regarding Operation Shingle. Informed that the Anzio operation would cut off the German forces defending Cassino, the men quipped, “Yeah, we’ve got ‘em surrounded now.” The history of the 157th Infantry Regiment recorded, “Anzio breathed disaster, and each man felt it.”14
Rain, hail, and sleet began falling the next day while the 894th Tank Destroyer Battalion landed and deployed to support the British—who fielded only towed AT guns—the Rangers, and the 1st Armored Division.15
Lucas kept VI Corps sitting virtually still as he awaited the arrival of more troops. The Germans, however, were furiously active and threw units into the defensive line as they arrived.16 Indeed, on 27 January, the tank killers of the 601st were ordered to provide close support to the doughs of the embattled 3d Infantry Division. They encountered a tough defensive line that exploited stone houses, ruins, and the natural cover offered by canals, stream beds, and draws as positions for strongpoints. Gunners dueled with German antitank guns at ranges of one thousand to seventeen hundred yards and knocked out three. The M10s of 3d Platoon, Company B, engaged a tank at only three hundred yards and destroyed it by firing 3-inch shells through two walls of the house behind which it was lurking.17
Lucas decided on 29 January that he was ready to break out, and he ordered an attack for the next day. The British 1st and American 3d Infantry divisions (the latter supported by the Rangers and the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment) were to continue along their axes of advance. The 1st Armored Division’s CCA (CCB was still in
