Whicker’s War and Journey of a Lifetime

Viewed from the deck of our LST at dawn it seemed a pleasant little fishing port bordered by low-rise blocks and villas along the coast, and some substantial patrician homes amid the pines and sand dunes. It had already been damaged by our supporting fire – and much worse was to come.

Along the coast, neighbouring Nettuno looked older, with wine caves at its heart – soon to be taken over by VI Corps as a secure HQ, with life-saving cellars attached. Caligula had wanted to turn Anzio into the capital of the Roman Empire, and Popes and nobles followed his enthusiasms. The fall of the Roman Empire led to Anzio’s decline for centuries, until the 1700s when Cardinal Antonio Pignatelli, returning by sea from Naples to Rome, sheltered from a storm in Nero’s old port and believed his life had been spared. He promised if he became Pope he would rebuild the place – and was a man of his word.

So Anzio had its ups and downs. Unfortunately, I arrived in time for a major Down. After our landing the port area was shelled and bombed by the Germans, night and day for four months. At least it became famous, once again.

To get here during the night our massive fleet had sailed past the Gustav Line and in the distance, Monte Cassino, which now lay 80 miles behind us. The harbour was suddenly busy with warships. Barrage balloons tethered to the larger craft floated protectively above our armada. Destroyers cut through the fleet, laying thick black smokescreens. Further out to sea big cruisers moved ponderously around in semi-circles, rocking as their thunderous broadsides supported our landing.

Red air raid warning flags flew almost permanently – yet we had some 2,000 aircraft in the theatre, the Luftwaffe only 350. Sometimes the RAF or the USAAF held off the attackers, but usually they got through to drop their bombs and hurtle away, low over the water.

The two Navies staged a useful diversion by bombarding Rome’s seaport, Civitavecchia, 75 miles further north. There they carried-out a fake landing so impressive that Kesselring ordered that all harbour facilities should be demolished immediately.

I went in with the 1st ‘White Triangle’ Division on to Peter Beach, just north of Anzio, a broad sandy expanse between sea and dunes stretching towards Ostia and the enticing target of Rome, a mere 33 miles away. The platoon I was landing with that sunny morning was confident and cheerful. The light return-fire had been spasmodic. They were all businesslike and, like me, beginning to feel they had done it all before and knew their way around a landing beach.

What they did not know, of course, was that during the next months at Anzio their division would lose 100 officers and more than 1,000 other ranks. Another 400 officers and 8,000 men would be casualties, or missing.

After our cheerful landing the division would lose 60 per cent of its officers, 50 per cent of its men, but as the warm water and soft clean sand of Peter Beach splashed up to meet our feet such a terrible future was, fortunately, unthinkable.

The US 3rd Division was landing on X-Ray Beach, south of Nettuno, where resistance was also light: the usual 88mm shells and air raids. Most of our early casualties were from wooden box mines hidden in the sand, which fooled the Royal Engineers’ metal-detectors.

I never lost my horror of mines, nor my admiration for the courage of the REs who went ahead and defused them by the thousand. The thought of sudden death springing up from the sand to grab and remove my vitals was an ever-present nightmare, as was the memory of regimental aid posts trying to cope with men without feet or legs who minutes before had been slogging cheerfully up the beach.

General Eisenhower recalled once telling the Russian Army Commander, Marshal Zhukov, of the intricate and extravagant devices introduced by the allied armies to clear minefields – like those great flails on the front of some British tanks. The jolly little ruler of the Red armies – perhaps the greatest Field Commander of World War II – found all those elaborate precautions time-wasting and unnecessary. The quickest and most effective way of clearing a minefield, the Marshal explained, was to assemble a battalion of infantry and order them to march straight across it.

That cruel order was not a comfortable recollection as we prepared to cover a hundred yards of smooth sand, and then the more threatening dunes. In any AFPU pictures of our troops landing on Peter Beach, I’m the one on tiptoe …

The first Germans we met on landing were the 200 who had been sent to Anzio to rest and recover from the fighting at Cassino. Most of them were asleep when they got a wake-up call from a different enemy. Once again we had achieved surprise. The Germans had expected an attack further north, where our feint went in. They were wrong again.

So were we. After a perfect landing in enemy territory, almost nothing went right. The roads to Rome and the commanding hills were open – but we did not choose to take them.

By the evening Major General John P. Lucas, Commander of VI Corps, had landed 36,000 of us, with 3,200 vehicles. He did not land himself until the next day, when he moved into his command cellar in Nettuno; and there he stayed.

I learned afterwards from Prince Stefano Borghese, whose Palace overlooked Anzio harbour, that the ominous approaching rumble of hundreds of ships’ engines out at sea had been heard long before our devastating support barrage began, but the German Harbourmaster thought it was his supply ships returning from Livorno.

After an hour ashore that invasion day my first courier left to carry back to Naples the exposed film we had shot. Our first mishap came when a bomb blew Sergeant Lambert off the quayside. He landed in the water still clutching his bag of film, but no serious harm was done. Just as in a battle zone when any aircraft landing you can walk away from is a good landing, so any naval episode you can swim away from is quite acceptable, in the circumstances.

We headed our preparatory dope sheets: ‘The Liberation of Rome’. Our cautious target was, Rome in ten days. I told my cameramen to hoard film stock for the excitement of bringing freedom to the first Axis capital. As soon as I could get my jeep ashore I started up the Via Anziate heading for Rome, with any luck, and those first triumphant pictures. We were some 60 miles ahead of the German army, which for some reason after all our backs-to-the-wall battles seemed rather hilarious. I resisted the euphoric desire to drive fast through the open countryside, singing.

The flat farmland seemed deserted, yet I could hear sounds of battle … After some miles I was beginning to suspect the Seven Hills of Rome must be just around the corner. Then at a road junction before the River Moletta some Sherman tanks were hull-down behind a fly-over, firing over it. The supporting 1st Battalion of the Loyals had been held up by enemy fire. Snipers’ bullets hissed past as we watched the shelling they had called down on to enemy-held houses.

That was to be the limit of our advance upon Rome. I did not foresee we had walked into a death trap and would be fighting for our lives for eighteen desperate weeks.

The Germans’ reaction had been swift and almost overwhelming. As usual, they were surprised but not panicked, though Hitler – always keen on other people fighting to the death – was taking our assault landing personally. He appreciated the propaganda impact of such an invasion and his reaction would resonate from the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht in Berlin to the beaches of Anzio.

Reserve divisions were rushed-in from around Italy and Yugoslavia, paratroops flown in from France. By midnight Kesselring had assembled 20,000 men around Anzio, with many more on the way. Artillery positions had been established 3,000 feet up in the Alban Hills, dominating beaches and port. This was not going to be another walkover for us – indeed it became one of the most desperate and costly campaigns of World War II, and a near-disaster.

Hitler, braced for the fall of Rome and cataclysmic battles in Russia, knew that for the Allies a bridgehead defeat would be a frightening reminder that the Wehrmacht could still prove invincible. It would show the world that an Allied Second Front could be thrown back into the English Channel. It could force the delay or even the cancellation of D-Day.

He repeated in his Order of the Day that there must be no surrender: ‘Fight with bitter hatred an enemy who conducts a ruthless war of annihilation against the German people …’ He was evidently determined that the Wehrmacht should defend Rome with the fatal obstinacy displayed at Stalingrad. ‘The Führer expects the bitterest struggle for every yard.’ This would threaten the destruction of the Eternal City.

If Hitler was displeased with the battle so far, it was as nothing compared to the carefully suppressed anger of Churchill when the initial success of the combined operation he had encouraged was frittered-away by inexperienced or timid Generals. The isolated Anzio pocket of the US VI Corps was not racing to relieve the Fifth Army at Cassino, as planned, or driving triumphantly up Rome’s Via Veneto, but was itself trapped, besieged and liable to be pushed back into the sea.

It was an ill-planned operation which Churchill had rescued from the official graveyard of discarded military adventures. He had secretly believed the bridgehead might exorcise the ghosts of another disastrous landing: Suvla Bay in Gallipoli, 1915, which cost him his portfolio at the Admiralty. He afterwards admitted, ‘Anzio was my worst moment of the war – and I had most to do with it. I did not want two Suvla Bays in one lifetime.’

That evening we were still held up at the flyover, so I went back to Peter Beach to look for my sergeants. As I arrived, another hit-and-run fighter-bomber came in. Suddenly out at sea the air shuddered and against the darkening sky a sheet of orange flame spread across the horizon. A bomb had hit the destroyer Janus, which exploded and sank in 20 minutes with the loss of 150 men. The flame died quickly, leaving only an angry glare against the night sky.

As one of the attacking aircraft roared away over our heads, Bofors shells hit its tail. Every man on the beach was cheering as it crashed and exploded – but it was poor exchange for a destroyer and so many lives.

We did not know it at the time, but the drive for Rome, the Alban Hills and Cassino had not even been contemplated by our Commander, a grizzled and amiable American known as Corncob Charlie. A bespectacled artilleryman who enjoyed the poetry of Rudyard Kipling, Major General John Lucas was 54 but seemed as old and benevolent as Father Christmas – though less active.

The Germans knew far more than we did about what was happening, because in a major stroke of luck one of their Allied prisoners was found to be carrying a copy of the entire Shingle Plan. This instantly confirmed Kesselring’s conviction that Lucas would not even attempt to cut his supply lines with Cassino.

He had ordered every unit to dig-in and consolidate – when they could have driven unopposed into the surrounding hills and cut Kesselring’s communications to the south. General Mark Clark cancelled the use of the US 504th Parachute Regiment along with the jump by an airborne division on to Rome Airport. The whole operation became stagnant, with commando raids discouraged and all effort concentrated upon defence. Fifty thousand troops were not enough for an attack, it seemed; we had to dig-in and await reinforcements. The Germans, meanwhile, had eighteen divisions south of Rome and were anxious to use them.

Lucas did not think of Rome, he thought of Gallipoli, Tobruk and Dunkirk, of desperate defeat. In the first 48 hours our initial Anzio victory was thrown-away. This is where we needed the fire-eating fast-moving General Patton.

During the planning for Shingle, General Lucas had confessed to his diary his nervousness about the Anzio operation, ‘This whole affair has a strong odour of Gallipoli, and apparently the same amateur (Churchill) is still on the coach’s bench.’ When he risked voicing that opinion to the Allied Naval Commander-in-Chief Mediterranean, Admiral Sir John Cunningham, he got a sharp sailor’s reaction: ‘If that’s how you feel you’d better resign.’ He did not.

Even Lucas’s Commander, General Mark Clark, had warned him ‘not to stick his neck out’ the way he had (he said) at Salerno. He was telling Lucas to fight the battle as he saw fit, but it is incredible that such a cautious and unenterprising General should have been chosen to lead a daring operation demanding dash and drive. However, this advice may have been influenced by Clark’s determination to liberate Rome himself. He did not want some bemused subordinate arriving there first, after a lucky punch.

We had achieved surprise with our landing, so half the battle was won; but then the slow Allied exploitation and the intensity of the German reaction instantly recreated the equilibrium, and the attacking British and Americans fell back into the submissive posture of a besieged garrison.

The Germans were amazed we made no move; surely it was unthinkable that we should do nothing? With such cooperation they had little difficulty in containing us. Their reaction to our invasion became almost overwhelming: within days seven divisions had been rushed in to surround us, including Panzers with Tiger tanks.

British commanders were seething with frustration at their enforced inaction. Up in the front line I found Guardsmen brewing-up and their officers playing bridge, while awaiting orders. They should have been racing for Rome.

In Cairo, General Sir Henry Maitland Wilson (‘Jumbo’) who had just succeeded General Eisenhower as Allied Commander Mediterranean, made it clear to the Press – and to Kesselring – that he was going to defend, not attack. ‘If the Germans run true to style, as they always do’ he announced 48 hours after our landing, ‘they will counter-attack our beachhead.’ Thus he advertised our passive intentions to the enemy.

So all was not going well at Anzio. We had launched a major landing led by only two divisions, plus Commandos and US Rangers. At Salerno, with no surprise and no numerical dominance, we only just escaped being flung back into the sea, defeated. Clutching desperately at a landing beach an attacker initially needs total dominance, as General Montgomery well knew.

When Churchill first showed him the plan for Overlord, the Second Front in Normandy which he was to command when he left Italy, Montgomery’s immediate reaction was, ‘This will not do. I must have more in the initial punch.’ D-Day in Normandy was to be in four months’ time, and Churchill admitted, ‘After considerable argument a whole set of arrangements was made in consequence of his opinion, which proved right.’

Montgomery’s knowledge of the price we paid in Italy saved thousands of lives in Normandy. To escape such a stalemate the invasion planners could now demand greater strength for Overlord. They had learned the expensive lessons of Anzio.

From D + 1 even I could tell that if we were fortunate enough to hold on to our beachhead, we faced a long and desperate battle – so I requisitioned a large house overlooking the harbour. It was a substantial three-storey lump of a place and – I noted approvingly – strongly built. It stood high over the seashore in front of the coast road. The front line was only seven miles away. At a push we could drive – or swim – out of trouble.

From its wide terrace we would get excellent pictures of our shipping being shelled and bombed – and doubtless, sunk. It was an ideal place for a billet and tripod position – but on the other hand it was at the heart of the German artillery’s target area … I’d worry about that tomorrow.

From their observation posts in the Alban Hills enemy gunners could watch every inch of the beachhead, and look deep into our private lives. No man could move without being seen. Little wonder Corncob Charlie rarely left his HQ down in the caves of Nettuno.

In our barren seaside villa we too slept in the cellars until deciding that shells were preferable to rats, and moving back to the ground floor. Our rats were all fat and overconfident – and at a battlefront you knew exactly what they had been eating. Even upstairs I awoke one night to find an enormous rat staring at me across my feet. It was wondering what to do. I knew what to do. I reached for my bedside .38 and – hoping to miss my big toes – shot it.

That awoke the remainder of the unit who thought the Germans had landed. They were about to shoot-back through my door, just to be on the safe side …

Calm restored, Geoffrey Keating and I considered the drill, should the Germans ever come to call. We’d seen some tattered clothes in the garden shed and decided to wear these and head north for Rome, rather than attempt to get back to the Eighth Army through the German lines.

Major Keating, my CO, was a most unusual man. A devout Catholic and bon viveur, he had an extremely high threshold of pain, which could be disconcerting. He just did not seem to notice when violence or death was approaching. He had arrived in Egypt to run Montgomery’s Army Film Unit and, indifferent to General Rommel and the Afrika Korps, began cheerfully swanning around the desert as though gate-crashing other Units’ parties, blithely unconcerned about any battles going on around him. This of course meant he was never injured and survived to win an excellent Military Cross.

He never touched drink – though it might have sustained such a perilous lifestyle. One afternoon after the war Susie, a mutual friend, rang me at BBC Television Centre to say they had just got married … This was another surprise. I had a table at Prunier’s that evening so invited them along, if they had no plans.