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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . c h a p t e r t w e l v e ........................................................... anzio: the can-dos When the Fifth Army halted on November 15, it had struggled for two months to gain some eighty miles of Italy. Ahead lay the Liri Valley, the gateway to Rome. But between the Fifth Army and the Liri Valley were three formidable German defensive lines. An end run around these defenses seemed like a good idea, provided it could be brought off without interfering logistically or strategically with the cross-channel invasion of France, now less than six months away. Urged on by Churchill, the High Command ordered Operation Shingle, the Anzio landings, to begin on January 22. General Clark had doubts. He felt that ‘‘a pistol was being held at his head’’ because with inadequate landing craft and those available for only two days after the landing, and with no resupply or reinforcement after the landings, he was being asked to ‘‘land two divisions at a point where the juncture with the balance of Fifth Army was impossible for a long period, thereby leaving the two divisions in question out on a limb for a very long time.’’1 A few days later, his resolve had stiffened. ‘‘I am trying to find ways to do it, not ways in which we cannot do it. I am convinced that we are going to do it, and that it is going to be a success.’’2 From the outset, the Third Division had been designated as the American unit in the amphibious assault. It had had more experience in amphibious landings than any other division in the theater. Indeed, so experienced had one old soldier become that with his tongue thrust deep into his cheek he warned another to be especially careful on his third, seventh, and thirteenth landings.3 As more landing craft became available, though, General Alexander added a British division because casualties would probably be high and should not fall to one nation’s troops.4 The two divisions would form a corps under the command of General John Lucas. The wording of the orders given to General Lucas is important. General Alexander’s order was for Lucas’s corps ‘‘to cut the enemy’s main communications in the Colli Laziali area southeast of Rome, and to threaten the rear of XIV German Corps.’’5 But as General Clark sent these orders on to General Lucas, they sounded more simple and direct. Lucas was ‘‘to seize and secure a beachhead in the vicinity of Anzio’’ and to ‘‘advance on Colli Laziali,’’ about twenty miles inland. If the Anzio landing force pushed quickly off the beaches and succeeded in taking the high ground commanding Highways 6 and 7, the main German escape routes from the south, they would have carried out Alexander’s orders. But Clark’s orders didn’t specify that Lucas was to take the Colli Laziali—only that, after securing the beachhead, he was to advance ‘‘on’’ them. The preposition was deliberately ambiguous. As General Brann, General Clark’s G-3, explained to General Lucas, the primary goal of Lucas’s corps was to get and hold the beachhead. It would be up to Lucas to decide how and when to execute the part of his orders about the Colli Laziali.6 General Lucas, too, had his doubts about Operation Shingle. ‘‘I am running this thing on a shoestring, and a thin little shoestring at that, he wrote. ‘‘Unless we can get what we want, the operation becomes such a desperate undertaking that it should not, in my opinion, be attempted.’’ At a meeting on January 9, Alexander had massaged Lucas by telling him, ‘‘We have every confidence in you. That’s why we picked you.’’ Lucas, however , said he ‘‘felt like a lamb being led to slaughter but thought I was entitled to one bleat so I registered a protest against the target date as it gave too little time for rehearsal.’’7 Of the coming operation, Patton had said to Lucas, ‘‘John, there is no one in the Army I hate to see killed as much as you, but you can’t get out of this alive. Of course, you might be badly wounded. No one ever blames a wounded general.’’ And General Clark, apparently reaffirming his operational order, offered this advice to Lucas: ‘‘Don’t stick your neck out, Johnny. I did at Salerno and got into trouble.’’ To Lucas as he prepared to...

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