who was perfectly competent but lacked vision and had been unable to bring about a partnership of minds with Alex.
All this had changed with Harding, who had been a platoon commander at Gallipoli and who had developed a deep and studied understanding of warfare. Together he and Alexander had immediately begun to plan for a large-scale offensive that would shatter the German defences for good. By constant discussion between the two, Harding had drawn up a new appreciation of Allied aims in Italy, in which he had suggested that capturing Rome was not a big enough goal. Instead, German forces in Italy had to be completely destroyed, so much so that only by massive reinforcement would the German southern front avoid complete collapse.
For this to be achieved, Harding and Alexander had recognised that three things had to happen. First, there needed to be a superiority of manpower of at least three to one at the main point of attack. Second, the weather needed to be sufficiently dry to allow the Allies’ great mechanical superiority to play its part; and third, there needed to be enough time to properly rest, refit and retrain those forces exhausted by the bitter winter fighting.
Throughout the spring, the battle plan had been refined and preparations made. Exhausted troops were moved out of the line and to a quieter sector, while new divisions, both American and British, had arrived and made their way towards the front. A major and extremely complicated regrouping had taken place, with army boundaries changing and a number of corps crossing over from Eighth to Fifth Army and vice versa. In this new battle, Alex was going to use both armies, supported by more artillery and aircraft than had ever been used before by the Allies in a single battle.
There were to be three distinct phases in the battle. First, the Allies had to break through and destroy the Gustav Line before Kesselring realised the threat of an amphibious landing further up the coast was nothing more than a deception plan. Second, the Allies had to break the second line of defence, the Hitler or Senger Line as it was variously called.* Finally, once Kesselring was fully occupied trying to hold the main line in the south, and the Allies were surging north towards Rome, a reinforced US-led VI Corps would burst out of the Anzio bridgehead and cut off the retreating German AOK 10. Surrounded, it would then be destroyed.
The date for the launch of the battle, originally April, was moved to May, while from the middle of March, Allied air forces had been carrying out Operation STRANGLE, which aimed to destroy all German lines of communications – roads, bridges, and railways – from Cassino to 150 miles north of Rome.
By the beginning of May 1944, the stage had almost been set. General Alexander had got his three-to-one advantage around Cassino, his guns were primed and ready, and overhead he had complete command of the skies. But only time would tell whether this enormous battle would wash away the disappointments of the winter and bring about the decisive victory that promised the Allied armies in Italy so much.
* The Germans initially labelled it the Führer Line, but then, realising this might have an adverse psychological effect should it be overrun, changed it to the Senger Line. The Allies, however, continued to refer to it as the Hitler Line.
Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
Although the main Allied attack that started on 11 May would be flung against the 20-mile stretch between Cassino and the western coast, there were troops on both sides loosely holding the line all across Italy to the Adriatic. In the centre of the country, for example, in the Abruzzi mountains, were a number of Italian troops of the Royal Army, loyal to Vittorio Emanuele III, now esconsed in Brindisi and the man who had been King of Italy throughout the century, even during the Fascist era. Attached to the British X Corps, the Corpo Italiano di Liberazione – or CIL – found themselves opposite their former ally and on a different side to a number of their fellow countrymen. As such, the Italian civil war was already under way.
Further to the south, in a tented reorganisation camp near Lecce, were a number of artillerymen due shortly to join the reconstituted Nembo Division, CIL. One of the lieutenants of the 2nd Group – or battery – of the 184th Artillery Regiment was twenty-three-year-old Eugenio Corti, a highly experienced and capable officer who was only gradually coming to terms with events since the previous September.
Eugenio had been one of only around 4,000 of an original corps of 30,000 Italian troops to have escaped the Soviet encirclement along the River Don in early 1943. He had reached Nettuno, near Anzio, just a week before the armistice was signed on 8 September 1943, but as an officer, had been living out and therefore had been asleep – and safe – when, at dawn on 9 September, a force of German troops attacked the barracks and rounded up the survivors. Local civilians, already desperately short of food and just about any other conceivable supplies, subsequently looted the barracks. Three days later, any Italian officers still in or around Nettuno were ordered to convene at a small palazzo in town for a ‘clarifying report’ by the Germans. Unlike most of his colleagues, Eugenio had, in Russia, developed a serious distrust of their former ally, and so had tried to dissuade his fellow officers from attending. Few, however, had listened to his entreaties. ‘I saw with my own eyes,’ he wrote, ‘the kind of blindness that strikes men, as they lose even the most ordinary capacity for discernment that could dissuade them from following an already formed opinion.’33 Appalled, Eugenio had only been able to watch as the Germans kicked and shoved the Italian officers into the backs of trucks and drove them away.
Eugenio had managed to dissuade just one of his colleagues, a fellow lieutenant, Antonio Moroni, from handing himself over to the Germans. Having shed their uniforms for civilian clothes, the pair had watched distraught as columns of German troops poured southwards. The initial relief on hearing the news of the armistice had gone. Instead they had wondered whether Italy would soon share the fate of Poland. ‘As soon as they feel sure of themselves,’ Eugenio had suggested to Antonio, ‘they’ll begin the massacres.’34 Both had agreed they could not return home to Lombardy, in the north; but nor would they idly endure German violence and occupation. Antonio suggested heading for Rome. In a large city, he reasoned, it would be easier to remain anonymous until the Allies arrived – and that was bound to be soon. Eugenio, however, said he preferred the high ground and sparsely populated mountains to the south. Here he was certain the mountain people would resist the German occupation. Because he had been right about the Germans earlier, Antonio had agreed to join him in the mountains. Neither, however, had had any idea what to expect, or how their fellow Italians would respond to German occupation.
Eugenio and Antonio had made their way across Allied lines in the middle of October and presented themselves at the garrison of Potenza in central southern Italy straight away. From there, they had been sent to a reorganisation ‘camp’ – a requisitioned school building – near the Adriatic, where remnants of the Italian Army still loyal to the King were supposedly being reconstituted with a view to fighting on the side of the Allies. The reality, however, as Eugenio soon became aware, was that royalist Italian forces were in a desperate state. Most of those trapped in southern Italy at the time of the armistice had been under-trained troops who had never been in action; their discipline was terrible, as was their morale. Equipment was almost non-existent, and Eugenio and his comrades were all too aware that the Allies had little respect or use for them. Rations were also meagre. Some days, Eugenio was given no more than two biscuits on which to survive. Many lacked proper uniforms. ‘Those were very bitter days,’ wrote Eugenio, ‘when it seemed as though we could lose all hope in the fate of Italy.’35
Life
