Battle of Anzio

Background

By the winter of 1943–44 the Allied advance up Italy had stuck fast on the Gustav Line, anchored on Cassino and the Garigliano and Rapido rivers. Field Marshal Kesselring, in command in Italy since 21 November 1943, was holding the mountains against Fifth Army's frontal attacks. Operation Shingle was meant to break the deadlock: an amphibious landing at Anzio and Nettuno, about 30 miles south of Rome and far behind the German right.

Alexander, commanding the Allied armies in Italy, meant the landing force to cut the German supply lines through the Colli Laziali, the Alban Hills, and threaten the German rear. Kesselring would then have to weaken the Gustav Line, and Fifth Army could break through and link up. The orders were less clear than the idea. Clark's Fifth Army order of 12 January told Major General John Lucas's VI Corps "to seize and secure a beachhead in the vicinity of Anzio" and to "advance on Colli Laziali", without saying whether that meant towards the hills or onto them. Clark's operations officer told Lucas that the beachhead was his primary mission, and that he should move on the hills only if conditions allowed, which Clark's staff thought unlikely. Lucas had his own doubts. His diary said the affair had "a strong odor of Gallipoli". Churchill was the plan's most forceful backer, and D'Este blames his meddling for raising expectations the force could not meet.

The beachhead lay on the flat reclaimed land of the Pontine reclamation project, cut by the Mussolini Canal and by stream gullies. The Alban Hills overlooked it from the north. The Anzio–Albano road, the Via Anziate, ran straight up the middle of it.

The armies

VI Corps landed with the US 3rd Infantry Division (Truscott), the British 1st Infantry Division (Penney), whose 24th Guards Brigade and 2nd and 3rd Brigades did much of the early fighting, Colonel Darby's three Ranger battalions, the 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion, the 504th Parachute Infantry, which came in by sea when its airborne drop was cancelled, and Nos. 9 and 43 Commandos. The US 45th Infantry Division and Harmon's 1st Armored Division (less Combat Command B) followed, as did the 1st Special Service Force and, in stages from 3 February, the British 56th Division under Templer. The British 5th Division arrived in March, and the US 34th and 36th Divisions later. By 22 May the beachhead held seven full divisions.

Kesselring's reaction was quick. Mackensen's Fourteenth Army took command on 25 January, with I Parachute Corps (Schlemm) and LXXVI Panzer Corps (Herr). Its divisions included the 3rd Panzer Grenadier, 65th Infantry, 715th Infantry, 114th Light, 4th Parachute, Hermann Göring Panzer, 26th Panzer and 29th Panzer Grenadier, with Tiger and Panther battalions, remote-controlled Goliath demolition vehicles and the untried Infantry Lehr Regiment. By 12 February the Germans had 452 guns against VI Corps' 432, but Allied guns were firing about 20,000 rounds a day and the Allies ruled the air. Heavy German railway guns, the Allies' "Anzio Annie", could shell the whole beachhead.

The battle

The landing, 22–29 January. At 02:00 on 22 January the US 3rd Division landed below Nettuno, the Rangers and the 509th at Anzio harbour, and the British 2nd Brigade with the commandos six miles north-west. The landing was almost unopposed. By midnight 36,000 men and 3,200 vehicles were ashore, for 13 killed. Kesselring was already blocking the roads to the Alban Hills, and Lucas consolidated rather than push inland. On 25 January the 24th Guards Brigade took the Factory, the model town of Aprilia, with 111 prisoners (Aprilia I, 423). A counter-attack by about 20 tanks and a battalion was beaten off on 26 January (The Factory, 424).

The Allied offensive, 30 January – 1 February. On the right, the 1st and 3rd Rangers crept towards Cisterna from 01:30 on 30 January. At dawn the Hermann Göring Division caught them in open fields 800 yards short. Of 767 men, six got back. On the left came Campoleone (425). The Guards attacked at 23:00 on 29 January, and the 3rd Brigade passed through to the high ground short of the Campoleone overpass. On 31 January the Sherwood Foresters and 46th Royal Tanks crossed the railway embankment but were stopped by mines and fortified houses. The result was a salient two miles deep up the Via Anziate, but no breakthrough.

The German counter-attacks, 3–12 February. At 23:00 on 3 February the Germans struck the shoulders of the salient (Campoleone Counterattack, 426). The Irish Guards were cut to one rifle company. The 3rd Brigade withdrew on the night of 4–5 February, after British losses of more than 1,400. At 21:00 on 7 February the 65th Infantry Division attacked from the west and Kampfgruppe Gräser from the east. They took Buonriposo Ridge and left the 2nd North Staffords with 17 officers and 364 men (Carroceto, 427), while the US 157th Infantry held the Moletta flank (Moletta River Defense, 428). The Factory fell on the afternoon of 9 February (Aprilia II, 429), and Carroceto followed on 10 February. With the 1st Division at half strength, the 45th Division took over. Its 179th Infantry got into the Factory at 04:30 on 12 February and was thrown out two hours later (Factory Counterattack, 430).

The great offensive, 16–20 February. At 06:30 on 16 February Mackensen attacked astride the Via Anziate with six divisions. The main blow fell on the 45th Division (Bowling Alley, 431, and its regimental parts, Bowling Alley I–III, 609–611). By 17 February a salient two miles wide had opened. On 18 February the thrust down the "bowling alley" reached the final beachhead line at the first overpass and was stopped hand to hand. On 19 February Harmon's Force H counter-attacked up the same road. To the west the British 167th Brigade was overrun on the Moletta (Moletta River II, 432). The 2nd Battalion, 157th Infantry, cut off in caves, broke out on 23 February with 225 men. CDB90's last engagement, Fioccia (433, 21–24 February), is on the 45th Division's front near La Ficoccia creek. Truscott replaced Lucas. A last German attack on the 3rd Division, on 29 February – 1 March, cost more than 3,500 casualties, and Kesselring called off the offensive.

Stalemate and breakout, March – 5 June. Three months of trench war and shelling followed. At 05:45 on 23 May about 1,500 guns opened Operation Buffalo. Cisterna fell on 25 May, and at 07:31 that day beachhead engineers met II Corps coming up from the south. On 26 May Clark turned the main effort north-west towards Rome, leaving a smaller force to go on to Valmontone. The Caesar Line held until the 36th Division climbed the Colli Laziali on the night of 30–31 May. The Germans withdrew on 2–3 June, and the Americans entered Rome on 4 June.

Aftermath

The US Army counted about 30,000 VI Corps combat casualties between 22 January and 22 May, among them at least 4,400 killed and 6,800 taken prisoner, and a further 37,000 non-battle casualties. It put German losses at 28,000–30,000, plus more than 4,500 prisoners. Totals to June run to about 43,000 Allied and 40,000 German. The British suffered worst: in the first 30 days they lost 27 per cent of their effective strength, against 17 per cent for VI Corps as a whole.

Two judgements are still argued over. The first is Lucas. Churchill said he had hoped to hurl "a wildcat" ashore and got "a stranded whale". Alexander wanted "a thruster like George Patton", and Keegan said his caution "achieved the worst of both worlds". Westphal, Kesselring's chief of staff, said the road to Rome had been open on 22–23 January. Against that, Kesselring judged the landing force too weak, Marshall noted that pushing inland added miles of perimeter, and Caddick-Adams argues that a dash would probably have seen the force crushed, whereas the force Lucas built up stopped the counter-attacks.

The second is Clark's turn on 26 May. Clark called the Valmontone trap a "false premise": Tenth Army had other roads north. Truscott was "dumbfounded" and later wrote that being first in Rome was "a poor compensation". Caddick-Adams calls the decision "highly questionable", and D'Este puts it down to Clark's ambition to be first into Rome. Tenth Army escaped north, and Rome fell two days before Normandy.

Wargaming it

Anzio is a beachhead battle with no room to manoeuvre. The ground is flat, open and wet, cut by stream gullies, the Mussolini Canal and a railway embankment, so the tactical game is about the few roads, the farmhouses and the embankment. The Via Anziate is the axis of everything: the Factory, Carroceto, the Campoleone overpass and, in February, the first overpass on the final beachhead line.

The fights come in good sizes. A company or battalion game at 15 mm or 20 mm suits the Rangers' march on Cisterna, the Guards at the Factory, or the 2nd North Staffords on Buonriposo Ridge. A brigade or division game, at one stand to a company, suits the Campoleone salient or the February offensive on the 45th Division. An operational hex game at battalion level can cover the whole beachhead from 22 January.

The balance is unusual. The Germans have more men and plenty of armour that the mud keeps on the roads. The Allies have air superiority and a gun line that broke attacks on its own. Night attacks (23:00 on 3 February, 21:00 on 7 February) and the weather should matter in the rules.

The what-ifs are the famous ones. Lucas drives for the Alban Hills on 22–23 January: does he cut the roads, or get cut off? The Rangers find Cisterna empty. Clark keeps all of VI Corps on Valmontone on 26 May: is Tenth Army trapped, or does it slip away by other roads?

Maps and pictures