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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . c h a p t e r f o u r t e e n ........................................................... the roads to rome On Friday, May 5, General Alexander visited General Truscott at his headquarters on the beachhead. For VI Corps’s breakout, General Truscott and his staff had prepared four different plans named for an incongruous assemblage of fauna. Operation Grasshopper called for VI Corps to strike east to make the quickest possible linkup with the main body of the Fifth Army. Operation Buffalo called for an attack to the northeast against Cisterna and then on to Valmontone,1 cutting the German Tenth Army’s escape route on Highway 6. Operation Turtle had VI Corps attacking along the Anzio-Rome road north through Campoleone to cut Highway 7 near Lake Albano. Operation Crawdad proposed an attack parallel to the coast northwest through Ardea and on to Rome by the shortest route.2 The tactical merits of the four plans aside for the moment, the choice seemed clear. Wouldn’t one rather be part of something code-named Buffalo than Grasshopper, Turtle, or Crawdad? As Winston Churchill put it in a memo dated August 8, 1943, Operations in which large numbers of men may lose their lives ought not to be described by code-words which imply a boastful or overconfident sentiment, like ‘‘Triumphant,’’ or, conversely, which are calculated to invest the plan with an air of despondency, such as ‘‘Woebetide’’. . . . They ought not to be names of a frivolous character, such as ‘‘Bunnyhug ’’ . . . or ‘‘Ballyho.’’ After all, the world is wide, and intelligent thought will readily supply an unlimited number of well-sounding names which do not suggest the character of the operation or disparage it in any way and do not enable some widow or mother to say that her son was killed in an operation called ‘‘Bunnyhug’’ or ‘‘Ballyho.’’3 For General Alexander, only Operation Buffalo was likely to achieve the ‘‘worthwhile result’’ of putting large numbers of German troops out of the war permanently. It would do what the Anzio landing was originally supposed to accomplish. General Clark was less sure. He thought the German Tenth Army too smart to be caught in such a trap. As he had demonstrated in planning Shingle, Clark opposed a fixed plan. He wanted his field commanders to retain some measure of flexibility to move as the situation allowed. Besides , General Clark suspected that the British wanted the glory of entering Rome first. Might Alexander be giving the Americans a subordinate role, as he had in Tunisia and Sicily? Clark wanted his Fifth Army to liberate Rome. As he said, ‘‘They more than deserved it.’’ He wanted to lead the first army in fifteen hundred years to capture Rome from the south. And he wanted to do so before the imminent invasion of Normandy pushed everything else off the front pages of the newspapers. Finally, however , Clark agreed that Buffalo would be the way off the beachhead, but he insisted that Truscott should be free to develop other plans as well.4 There was much to do before ‘‘Buffalo’’ could begin. Units had to receive and integrate replacements to reach combat strength. Supplies had to be brought up. There were new fire missions for artillery to plot. And everything had to be done so as to keep the Germans from anticipating the exact when and where of Buffalo. And with the Germans able to shoot at anything that moved on the beachhead, preparations had to occur at night or under smoke screens. It might be the third week of May before everything was ready. In ‘‘The Pines,’’ the Seventh Infantry rested, refitted, and trained. Sunday , May 14, was Mother’s Day, which in Dad’s words ‘‘calls for a real letter to [Mom]—one that trys [sic] to tell you how proud I am of the mother of my kids and trys [sic] also to tell you what a marvelous mother you’ve been to those two grand creatures.’’ From the beachhead he reported nothing ‘‘except a raucous party Friday nite including a football game after the dance featuring live tackling and blocking by many high ranking characters.’’ He hadn’t seen Nancy Gatch, who was still said to be around somewhere, nor Sterling Hill. He did eat supper with his ‘‘swell friend, young Major [Lloyd] Ramsey, who accompanied [him] on the trip to that Rest—‘Ithaca in Italy’ Week.’’ Dad says he played some volleyball, got a beer ration, and is...

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