From Salerno to Anzio

With the subjugation of Sicily and other major islands, and not without dissenting opinions, it was decided that the penetration of the Italian mainland should be the next target. It was the logical sequence to the conquest of North Africa and Sicily and a prelude to the Normandy invasion in 1944. Salerno, with its 20-mile stretch of beach, excellent sea approaches minus dangerous shoals, and acceptable underwater gradients permitting ships to come close to land located 168 miles from Rome, was selected as the landing site in the hope of surprising the defending forces.1 The September 3, 1943, invasion day opened with a deceptively promising dawn that offered a marvelously bright day, a lovely climate, and a calm sea, but the enemy was not to be surprised and what lay ahead would be some of bloodiest fighting of the entire war. The direct Allied goal in this offensive was to remove Italy from the war and thereby significantly weaken Axis influence in the region—a task easier said than done. Thus the combined Allied military forces under British General Harold Alexander and American General Mark Clark were destined to slug it out arduously side by side and shoulder to shoulder as they fought tenacious Axis forces headed by General Albert Kesselring, one of Germany’s most skilled, decorated, and popular commanders. As the American Fifth Army and the British Eighth Army began their agonizingly slow ascent in the Italian peninsula from September 1943 through May 1945, they asked for and were aided by various branches of the OSS. This was in itself a noteworthy departure from prior practices wherein both in North Africa and in Italy the Army generally discounted the role of commando-type units or specially trained detachments. Although under the general supervision of the Army’s G-3 Division, commando-type deployment increasingly was left to the OSS and its British counterpart, the SOE. The Americans tended to be dominant in North Africa, while the British enjoyed greater influence in the eastern Mediterranean.