Chapter 39: Jan 1944 Allies Land at Anzio in Italy

“[Democracy] is the line that forms on the right. It is the don’t in don’t shove. It is the hole in the stuffed shirt through which the sawdust slowly trickles; it is the dent in the high hat. Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time. It is the feeling of privacy in the voting booths, the feeling of communion in the libraries, the feeling of vitality everywhere. Democracy is a letter to the editor. Democracy is the score at the beginning of the ninth. It is an idea which hasn’t been disproved yet, a song the words of which have not gone bad. It’s the mustard on the hot dog and the cream in the rationed coffee. Democracy is a request from a War Board, in the middle of a morning in the middle of a war, wanting to know what democracy is.”

― E.B. White

The amphibious landing at Anzio in January of 1944 could be considered a dress rehearsal for the later more famous landing at Normandy six months later in that year.

From the bottom of the totem pole, the teenaged privates could tell right away that there was a lot more planning necessary to face up to the Nazi war machine. Of course, the whole idea of amphibious landing operations was the purview of the Navy and the Marine Corps and not the Army. The coordination required for an amphibious operation was something the Army was never comfortable with and had never really done any serious training in like the United States Marine Corps now operating with five fully staffed divisions.

The mistakes made in Anzio fortunately were not repeated on the beaches of Normandy and that was on the plus side of the lessons learned ledger.

The German high command had correctly read the intelligence tea leaves to prepare them for the upcoming allied invasion at Anzio and unfortunately for the allies, they seemed to always be one step ahead of the Americans at every turn.

The drawdowns of the American regular army forces in the years prior to World War Two in the 1930s had weakened their senior noncommissioned officer ranks to a skeleton crew of First World War survivors that were stretched too thin to compete with the highly trained German Wehrmacht. The Army was not flexible enough to produce the killing machines of Marine Corps raw recruits all trained under the harshest of environments and filled with the motivation to destroy a hated Asian enemy that had attacked without warning in Honolulu, Hawaii on a day that would live forever in infamy.

Strangely, it was a battle that lasted from January to the beginning of June, 1944. Only days later, the Normandy landings took place across the English channel and the forces that had been stalemated at the Anzio beaches by stiff German resistance joined up with the other allied elements from southern Italy and they marched into Rome unopposed.

It was rather obvious that the Americans had underestimated the quality of the Wehrmacht troops that opposed them and had to pay for their lack of competent leadership. The decision of the Nazi forces to retreat to bolster their defenses against the Normandy invasion was the only option left to Hitler with his troops on the Eastern Front faced with sure capture and defeat.

One of the faults of the Anzio landing was that it never reached its potential due to inadequate staffing. Then again, one of the reasons for the landing was to weaken the German resistance further south against the advancing American troops. It was successful in that regard and the Americans were matched fairly evenly with the Germans with a slight edge in total numbers. The opposite sides were both about 150K and their losses were also similar with about 30% on both sides.

Despite the fact that the Anzio landing was fraught with tactical chaos due to inadequate training in amphibious operations, it was in the scheme of things a strategic success and eventually resulted in the liberation of the entire Italian boot.

I listened to the news reports on the radio and wondered why there was little mention of the situation in Russian where the German Wehrmacht was being slowly ground into the mud of Mother Russia like fertilizer for the coming harvest. Of course, the tic in the Fuhrer’s eye was more noticeable these days and there were no more jokes about Churchill coming from the propaganda bureau in Berlin because there was little to be amused about from the dispatches from the front in the ever-tightening noose around the Nazi bunkers in the capitol city.

The underground was planning sabotage on the docks under the cover of a wage dispute that was just an excuse or rather a diversion from the reality of fifth column activities sponsored by Whitehall. I thought it was in the wrong place at the wrong time but my advantage of looking back from the future was pooh-poohed by the powers that held sway in the local resistance and they were not in the least bit impressed with the views from the strange fellow from Marseilles with my odd outlooks on how to conduct a clandestine war against the Third Reich.

My frustration at being ridiculed for my thoughts had only served to make me a bit lacking in my usual caution when I attempted to walk the short distance to the dock warehouse and I found that I had walked right into a Nazi ambush with absolutely no opportunity to escape by using my quick tongue to talk my way out of the situation.

The French styled “paddy wagon” was windowless and reeked of the vomit of countless detainees scooped up to be sent to the basements of the Gestapo downtown. I had been so wise to advise others to avoid just that scenario but was unable to extricate myself from the same situation due to my sheer carelessness.