Return to Anzio

Foreword

In the early hours of the morning of January 22, 1944, an Allied force of 36,000 men and 3,200 vehicles boarded landing craft and prepared to assault the beach near Anzio, Italy in an operation code-named "Shingle". The plan of battle, the initial numbers of troops and the actions of their leaders were then and still are the subject of much discussion and criticism in military strategy training in many armies.

The battle of Anzio has received little attention from history and films, probably because most military historians consider it a tactical failure. We must never forget the men who landed on the Anzio beach, fought their way out of the beachhead, and ultimately were part of the liberation of Italy. Their bravery and sacrifice were no less than those of the men who landed at any other beachhead including Normandy.

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Sergeant Mike Ryan peeked through the gap in the logs that made up the huge stack of firewood in which he was hiding. It was the third German patrol he'd seen that day and he knew they were probably looking for any attempts by the Allies to move again on Cisterna.

Even though his hiding place was impossible to see from any side of the firewood, Mike quietly eased away from the gap. He held his breath when the patrol stopped, walked up to the neat stack of logs, leaned their rifles against it, and then lit cigarettes.

It was only a few minutes before the woman of the house came out and offered the group a glass of wine. Mike heard their conversation but didn't speak either German or Italian, so he couldn't understand what either the woman or the soldiers said. He did understand what the woman was doing though.

A small flag of the Italian Social Republic was draped from the house eaves at the front door. To the German soldiers, that flag meant the people living in the house still maintained allegiance to Nazi Germany and it meant that German soldiers would be treated as the defenders of the Italian Social Republic from the attacks of the Allies. The woman of the house was careful to do just that at any time any German soldiers passed by her house. Secretly, she and her entire family despised the Germans. It was just safer to pretend otherwise.

After they drank a glass of wine and stubbed out their cigarettes, the soldiers picked up their rifles and walked away. Mike waited a good fifteen minutes and then peeked through the gap in the logs again. All he saw was two cows grazing in the field across the road.

All farmhouses had these woodpiles just outside the back door. They were huge because it took a lot of wood to keep a house warm over the winter. The woodpiles were logs about two feet long and from four inches to eight inches in diameter, and they were stacked three deep for nearly the length of the house and higher than a man's head. The weight alone kept any of the logs from moving.

This particular woodpile had been built with another purpose in mind besides heating the house. It was on the side of the house like all the others, but this one was hollow. In the middle of the length was a small room of sorts about six feet long, three feet wide, and four feet high, long enough Mike could lay down and high enough he could sit up. The top was logs laid across the others and on top of those logs and down the sides was an oiled canvas tarp to keep out the wind and rain. It was through slits in the tarp that Mike could see through the logs.

On the side of the room against the house, there was a small opening into the cellar of the house. That opening was just big enough for a man to squeeze through, and on the inside was covered by a board that appeared to be part of the framing of the house. That board could be removed by releasing some hidden fasteners either in the cellar or from the outside. That opening was how Mike got food during the day and how he was able to go into the cellar to stretch his legs and use a chamberpot once darkness fell.

Mike had been in this woodpile room for two months so far with no relief in sight. Every day, he expected to see US Army troops pushing the Germans back toward Cisterna, but though there was some gunfire and the thud of artillery, the only soldiers he saw through the gap were German.

Mike sat down and cursed to himself like he had every day since the failed attack. The whole goddamned thing had been fucked up from the beginning and it didn't look like that had changed much since his Ranger company had tried to get behind the German line at Cisterna.

It had all started before daylight on the 22nd of January, 1944.

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Mike had peeked over the side of the landing craft that was speeding him and his men toward the beach at Anzio. It looked quiet, but landing zones usually did until the first landing craft was in range of the shore batteries. He didn't say anything to the men around him. He was their leader and was supposed to show confidence in what they were about to do.

Mike didn't feel confident at all and that wasn't because he didn't trust his men. The 1st Ranger Battalion had made amphibious landings twice before, once in Morocco and once in Sicily. They knew the plan for this landing backwards and forwards. The only voices he heard were the occasional murmured "Hail Mary" as one of his men prayed to live out the day. Mike had fingered the rosary around his neck and said a few "Hail Mary's" of his own.

The plan for Anzio wasn't any different. It was hit the beach, establish a beachhead and then move inland toward designated objectives for each group.

The problem Mike was having with this landing was the enemy. In Morocco, the 1st had been up against the troops of Vichy France. There had been some fighting at the port in Casablanca, but it wasn't as bad as the pre-invasion briefing had predicted. Within a week, the Allies controlled the ports at Casablanca and Algiers.

The landing in Sicily also wasn't much of a battle. The 1st landed against opposition by the Italian Army, but because of the high winds and the lack of naval bombardment prior to the landings, the Italian commander didn't think the Allies would attack and had been taken by surprise. That commander had offered little in the way of a fight before surrendering.

A lot of things had changed after Sicily. Mussolini had been removed as Prime Minister of the Italian government and replaced by Marshal Pietro Badoglio. While Badoglio had kept up the appearance of continuing to cooperate with Germany, in September of 1943, he had signed an armistice between Italy and the Allies. The German Army began replacing the Italian troops who were now fighting with the Allies with German soldiers in order to defend the Axis holdings in Italy.

During the campaigns in North Africa, the Italian Army had been proven to be poor fighters because they were out-manned and out-gunned by the Allies. The German Army had been proven to be just the opposite anywhere the Allies had fought against them. Mike figured the 1st was in for some bloody fighting.

It wasn't just the Germans that bothered Mike either. The landings in Morocco and Sicily were huge with two complete armies landing on the beaches. Anzio would be just several brigades. It would also take longer to deliver the troops from the ships to the beaches because of a shortage of landing craft. Rumor had it that both the troops and landing craft were being held in England in preparation for the Invasion of Europe. Mike felt like the Rangers were being used as a sacrificial holding force to keep the Germans occupied in Italy until the main invasion of Europe began.

The pre-invasion briefing mostly confirmed Mike's suspicions. The plan was to land on the beach at Anzio, secure a beachhead and then drive inland to cut off the highway south. That would pull a lot of German troops from the Gustav Line and allow the Allies in the southern part of Italy to advance toward Rome. It all depended upon a quick, unsuspected landing at Anzio and then a rapid push inland to cut off the Germans from surrounding the beachhead from the mountains.

As the landing craft approached the shore, Mike gave the command, "Lock and Load". He heard the resulting click-clack of rifle bolts sliding cartridges into chambers and of safeties being put into the safe position.

When the ramp fell, Mike stood up, yelled, "Let's go" and ran down the ramp. A few shots rang out as the landing craft lining the beach discharged their cargo of men, but there had been few casualties. A beachhead was quickly established, and Mike was waiting on orders to move inland.

Those orders hadn't come and Mike couldn't figure out why. There seemed to be little opposition. If they had moved off the beach, they could have taken their designated objectives that day or the next at the latest. Instead, the 7th went into defensive positions.

That had proved to be a grave error on somebody's part. Once the German command learned of the landings, they sent all available artillery troops to the mountains that ringed Anzio, and the 1st soon found themselves being blasted by artillery fire. Since they held the high ground, the German gunners had a view of the entire landing area and rained down fire almost continuously. The best Mike and his company could do was keep their heads down and hope they could start moving out.

That also was not to be as easy as planned either. The area around Anzio had once been a saltwater marsh. The Italians had drained it and had pumps running to keep the seawater out so they could use the fertile land for crops. The Germans had quickly shut off the pumps and the dry land once again became a swamp that bogged down both men and machines.

The next fuck-up had been command's decision to send the Rangers to Cisterna. They were to infiltrate Cisterna, defeat the Germans and clear the Conca -- Cisterna road for attacks by the 15th Infantry, the 504th Parachute Infantry and the 7th Infantry. Intelligence said that the main concentration of Germans was north of Cisterna, and that Cisterna had only a few German guard posts.

At 01:30 on the morning of January 31st, almost eight hundred men of the 1st and 3rd Ranger battalions had started up the Mussolini Canal from the beachhead toward Cisterna. Along the way, they had encountered and successfully avoided contact with several German outposts and patrols, but the stealth required to do that had cost them time. As day broke, the column was still about three miles from Cisterna, and the terrain they had to cross was relatively flat and open farmland.

Mike figured the Germans had somehow discovered the Ranger column because they let the Rangers get out of the canal and spread out over the fields before they attacked with infantry and Panzer tanks. With only light weapons, the Rangers were no match for infantry and tanks. The result was a complete failure of the operation.

Mike and his men had been on the western end of the open area, and when the attack began, he and his men had taken what cover they could find. For most, that was nothing except the open ground. Mike was luckier. He had dived behind a mound of stones that had been piled up at the edge of the field. From there, he had a relatively safe vantage point from which to watch what happened.

Some of the Rangers were killed or wounded as soon as the attack started and many were overrun and were taken prisoner. Those prisoners were lined up in front of the Panzers and marched through the field. All the while, the Germans used the PA systems on the tanks to tell the rest of the Rangers to either surrender or be killed.

The Rangers had fought bravely, but they had only the ammunition they could carry on their backs. When that ran out, they dropped their weapons and stood up with their hands raised. Mike didn't criticize any of them for surrendering. They'd done all they could and the alternative was certain death.

Mike hadn't surrendered once he ran out of ammunition for his rifle because he was still well hidden and also had an escape route through some trees that bordered the field. He had waited until the Germans were busy herding the rest of the Rangers together and then slipped back into those trees. He didn't know where he was going, but he knew there was a second wave of Rangers and infantry scheduled to start for Cisterna as soon as the Rangers had taken the town. He was sure that when the attack started, some radio operator would have informed headquarters that the Rangers had been caught in an ambush and needed some help. All he had to do was avoid being captured until the second wave reached the battlefield. To this end, he had started darting from cover to cover away from the open fields.

To the south and west were more open fields and to the east were the Germans, so Mike was heading north. He soon ran out of trees, but there didn't appear to be any Germans in the area so he relaxed enough he didn't see the woman until she was ten feet from him. When he did see her, he drew his 1911 pistol from the holster and pointed it at her.

The woman was young, maybe between eighteen and twenty, he thought, and she was wearing a heavy coat against the cold. She raised her hands and shook her head when Mike had pointed his pistol at her, then smiled and waved for him to follow her.

Mike figured the woman was one of two things. That area of Italy was one of the remaining strongholds for Mussolini's Italian Social Republic, so the woman could have been one of them. Following her would mean he'd be handed over to the Germans.

The other option was that the woman was part of one of the Italian resistance groups known to be in the area. He wasn't sure how those groups felt about Americans, but he knew they hated the Germans. If she was a partisan, following her might get him back to the safety of Allied lines.

The plan Mike quickly formulated was to go with the woman and if he saw her walking toward any German soldiers to kill her and as many of the Germans as he could. If she was a partisan, he'd have to wait and see what happened. Either way, he'd either go down fighting or at least have a chance of reaching the Allied lines again.

The woman led him to a barn and motioned for him to go inside. Mike did because he didn't have much of a choice. When they were inside, the woman pointed to a ladder and motioned for him to climb up. When Mike started up the ladder, the woman left and closed the door to the barn behind her.

Mike positioned himself so he could see the ladder and also look out of a crack between the siding boards of the barn. He could see a little of the house from there, but nothing happened until dark. It was then he heard the barn door open.

Mike pulled the pistol from his holster and quietly crept to the ladder. When he looked down, there was the same young woman with a lantern. She waved at him to come down, and once he was on the ground, she led him to the house.

Mike had assumed she spoke Italian and was surprised after she led him down the stairs to the cellar and then said in English with a pretty strong Italian accent, "You are safe here. I will bring you food and water."

The woman had put the lantern on a table at one side of the cellar and then left. Just to be safe, Mike kept his pistol drawn and ready. She could have been summoning some nearby German soldiers.

The woman returned a few minutes later with a bowl, spoon, glass, and a pitcher of water. She put these on the table and then said, "Eat." While he ate, she explained his situation.

"I am Renita Ficoccia. My mother is Francesca and my father is Vincenzo. We did not like Mussolini but it was not good to say anything against him here because he had many followers in Cisterna. We hate the Germans. They think they are better than Italians. The Germans allow us to stay on our farm because we do not interfere with their plans and because we hang the flag of the Socialist Republic from our house and we are friendly to the German soldiers who pass by. We do those things so they do not suspect us of being part of la Resistenza. If they knew, they would kill us all and burn our house and barn.

"My father had waited since the Americans and British captured Sicily for the day the Americans would come and kill all the Germans. He wanted to be ready to help when that day came, so he built a hiding place in the woodpile outside the house to store the rifle and ammunition he had been given by la Resistenza.

"He had been watching the Germans and when he saw them moving many soldiers into Cisterna, he wanted to warn the Americans, but he had no way to do it. When we heard the fighting at Cisterna, he was hoping the Americans were winning and I went to see for him.

"What I saw was the Americans were surrounded and many were being taken prisoner. I was walking back to tell my father when I found you, and I decided to take you home with me. The hiding place is big enough for a man and I knew my father would not want you to be captured or killed.

"During the day, you must stay in the hiding place because the Germans have searched our house and barn before. At night, you will sleep here in the cellar. It is not very warm, but it will be warmer than outside."

When Mike had finished eating, she showed him a chamberpot under the table.

"Use this before you go into the woodpile. I will take care of it."

Renita had been right about it being cool in the cellar. Mike had slept, but fitfully. He was already awake when Renita came down the stairs to the cellar with a lantern. She showed him the hidden latches that held the board over the entrance and then opened it.

"I will bring you food in a while. Do not open the door from the outside no matter what you hear. I will open it when it is safe for you to come into the cellar."

At first, Renita would bring his morning meal and stay while he ate, then open the door to the woodpile. Once Mike was inside, she would close the door and leave. Through the gaps in the logs, he would see her during the day doing the things he supposed most Italian woman did.

Sometimes that was hanging clothing to dry in the sunny breeze that was pretty common. Through a different gap, he would see her going to the barn with a bucket and then coming back half an hour later. He figured she was milking at least one of the cows he'd seen in stalls when Renita had put him there.

He'd also see her mother and father once in a while. He'd thought her father had probably been inducted into the Italian Army, but once he saw him, he understood why he hadn't. Vincenzo walked with a pronounced limp. When he'd asked Renita about that, she just shrugged.

"My father was injured in the last war, fighting the Germans."

Renita's mother, Francesca, was an older version of Renita with the same long, black hair and the figure of a mature woman instead the slender curves Renita had. Mike figured when Francesca was in her twenties, she'd have attracted men in droves. Even now, in what Mike figured were her late forties, Francesca was a beautiful and very sensuous woman.

After the first month, Renita seemed to want to talk while Mike ate. She was reluctant to talk about herself or her family, but she had many questions about the US, which she called just America.

"Where do you live in America?"

"What did you do before the war?"

"Do you have a big family?"

The last question she'd asked was if he was married. Mike had grinned.

"No, I never found the right girl before I was drafted. After that, I've been kinda busy."

As February rolled into March and March became April, Renita began to open up more. She said she was twenty and had lived almost all her life on this farm. She had two brothers who had been inducted into the Italian Army, but had deserted during training and hidden out in the mountains around Anzio. When Bodoglio had signed the armistice with the Allies, then had promptly joined the Esercito Cobelligerante Italiano, the Italian army now fighting alongside the Allies. She had had a boyfriend but he'd been taken to the Italian Army before they could marry and had been killed in Tunisia.