his fellow commanders, whether Alexander or Leese, or the British corps commanders attached to his Fifth Army, had considerably more battlefield experience than he and he suspected that they looked down on him because of this. There is no evidence that anyone regarded this as a defect at all, but it niggled him considerably and made him far too quick to see the decisions of Alexander and others as an attempt to undermine him, his authority, and to belittle the efforts of his Fifth Army.
Just six days earlier, on 5 May, this paranoia had come to the fore when Alexander made a visit to the Anzio bridgehead, from where the US-led VI Corps was to make its break-out once the southern front had been sufficiently broken in the forthcoming battle. There, Alexander had spoken with Major-General Lucian Truscott, the VI Corps commander. After hearing Truscott’s plans, Alexander suggested he should be concentrating on only one course of action, namely to spearhead north-eastwards towards Cisterna, Cori and Valmontone, as had been previously agreed with Clark and all concerned. Truscott then informed Clark of this conversation. Outraged, Clark rang Alexander’s headquarters and demanded to speak with the British commander. ‘I told Alexander,’ Clark wrote in his diary, ‘that I resented deeply his issuing any instructions to my subordinates.’ Alexander, by now used to Clark’s occasional fits of over-sensitiveness, assured him he had not intended to undermine his authority in any way, and that he had merely made the point lightly in the course of his conversation with Truscott, gently reminding Clark that he was only telling Truscott what had already been agreed. It seemed to be what the American wanted to hear. ‘This is a small matter,’ Clark noted later, his honour sated and his feathers smoothed once more, ‘but it is well that I let him know now, as I have in the past, that he will deal directly with me and never with a subordinate.’4
However, on the eve of battle – 11 May – that day of days, Clark was playing the part of army commander perfectly. It is typical of him that he should have chosen that morning to address the men of the 36th Texas Division – the men who blamed him above all for the Bloody Rapido – looking them in the eye and stirring them for the battle to come, a battle in which yet more of them would lose their lives.
News that the offensive would at last begin that night was given out to men along the line throughout the day, in the form of thin paper fliers. In the case of those in Eighth Army, one was from General Alexander and the other from General Leese. Then, in the afternoon, battalion commanders gathered their officers around them and gave them a general as well as a more specific brief. The 19th Indian Brigade, for example, part of 8th Indian Division, had a key role that opening night of the battle. ‘Tonight,’ the Brigade Commander, Major Parker, told his officers, ‘we’re attacking the Gustav Line across the River Rapido here. We’ll have the Poles and 4th Division on our right and French troops on our left. The Fifth Army are making a push at the same time. This is the first blow of the Second Front. It will be closely followed by the invasion of Western Europe and a general attack by the Russians in the south-east.’
The attack, Major Parker continued, would begin with a massive barrage at 11 p.m. using just under 1,700 guns – almost double what had been used at the Battle of Alamein in November 1942. To begin with, the fire would be counter-battery, that is, falling behind the German forward positions in an effort to hit the enemy’s own artillery. Then it would be directed against targets on the front. After this opening barrage, the infantry would begin their attack. In their own sector along the Liri Valley, the division would make their assault alongside the 4th Division, crossing the River Garigliano under cover of continued artillery fire, while the Poles assaulted Cassino and the Goums and part of the French Expeditionary Force attacked the Aurunci Mountains on their left, ‘with instructions to cut off the heads of every German they meet’. Furthest to the south, along the Minturno Ridge that runs to the sea, the US II Corps would attack with the new boys, the 85th and 88th Infantry Divisions.
The task of 19th Infantry Brigade was twofold. The Indian battalions were to get themselves across the river, whilst the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders were to invade what was known as the ‘Liri Appendix’, a narrow finger of land between where the Garigliano turned sharply and ran parallel to the River Liri before actually joining it. From the moment the barrage began, the Appendix would be covered by machine-gun fire to keep the Germans’ heads down. ‘So if you hear close machine-gun fire,’ the Brigade Major told them, ‘you’ll know it’ll be our fellows pumping lead into this Appendix.’ The barrage would not finish until 4 a.m., and would then be followed by wave after wave of Allied bombers and fighter planes – ‘as many as we’ll want’.
Having given his brief outline, Major Parker paused, folded away his map, then smiled dryly at his men. ‘We hope,’ he told them, ‘this will do the trick.’5
Although any infantry heading into battle obviously faced extreme danger, amongst those men most at risk were the junior officers. American Lieutenant Bob Wiggans was a platoon commander with Company D of the 1st Battalion, 338th Infantry Regiment – part of the 85th ‘Custer’ Division.* The 85th had reached Italy less than seven weeks before, sailing into Naples under the smoke and pall of the still-erupting Mount Vesuvius, and had only been sent up to the front in the middle of April. The entire division, along with the also newly arrived 88th Division, were the first American all-draftee divisions to go into combat. Bearing the brunt of the Americans’ initial assault in the coming battle, their performance would be the first proper test of the US Army’s wartime training and replacement system – a system that had been set up in some part by General Mark Clark.
A twenty-six-year-old farmer from upstate New York, Bob Wiggans had undergone reserve officer infantry training whilst at Cornell University – an activity that was compulsory for all male students – and so when he was given his draft notice just a couple of weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, he was immediately sent to Camp Shelby in Mississippi to join the cadre that would help form and train the brand-new 85th Infantry Division.
Bob regarded 7 December 1941 as one of the saddest days of his life. The war would not only take him away from the farm he had bought less than a year before, but also from Dot, his wife of five months. Leaving home was a terrible wrench, but he believed that the United States was doing the right thing, and that Nazism had to be defeated.
In the two years in which Bob had served with the 85th, it had grown from nothing to a fully-formed and trained combat division. However, the division showed its inexperience during its first few days on the Cassino front, when it took over positions from the British in the rubble and remains of the town of Minturno, the most westerly point of the front line. Most of the 85th’s men found the whole experience of being on the battlefield and close to the enemy and of coming under shellfire deeply unsettling. Bob had been called out one night offering to help 3rd Platoon who were convinced there were Germans crawling around in the rubble above them. It turned out the ‘enemy’ were just rats scurrying about. Bob had found that hurtling through the ruined town in his jeep, distributing mail, ammunition and supplies, was enough to get his heart racing. ‘These night missions were harrowing enough with the interdictory artillery fire,’ he noted, ‘but the awful smell of decaying flesh from under the rubble made it infinitely worse.’6
That the ‘Custermen’ were a little jumpy is no wonder: all the draftees, officers and enlisted men were entirely new to war, with no battlefield experience to draw upon. And like the Poles and so many of the assaulting troops, their first battle would be one of the biggest their countries had ever taken part in.*
That afternoon, back in his caravan at Fifth Army headquarters, General Clark dictated a message of best wishes to his fellow army commander, General Sir Oliver Leese – happy, on this occasion, to observe inter-army protocol. The British commander promptly replied in kind.
