Hi all, just thought I'd mention this as today is also the 75th anniversary of the Liberation of Rome.

My father was in that liberation, he was in the 88th Infantry Division, the division that was the first in Rome (the 1st Special Service Force was the very first allied unit in Rome).

I remember dad talking about that the Italian campaign was the forgotten one of war. And how they were fighting long before D-Day. He never took away from what they did in France, he had a lot of respect for those in France. Just that nobody remembered what they did in Italy.

Anyway, my hats off to all the living WWII Vets regardless of theater!

God Bless you vets!

Greg

gjw, I speak Italian. I lived in Rome for 5 years and know very well that campaign. Anzio was a horror (and I once played a golf tournament down there). I will offer an opinion about Marc Clark though. He was an egotistical A$$. He had the chance to cut off the Germans after the French mountain troops finally breached the Gustav Line West of Monte Casino. But for the first time ever he acted on the Eureka code break information that the Germans were evacuating Rome and decided he'd be the "liberator." He never paid much attention to the signals intelligence before.

The Italian campaign was grinding. I had a friend in charge of the Battle Monuments Commission in charge of the South US cemeteries - Tunis, Anzio, Florence, Marseilles...they are amazing and the missing air-crews at the Anzio graveyard...bomber after bomber which angered in to the Serbian mountains is difficult to see.

I once called an Indian Lt. General I was friends with in New Delhi who had been wounded at Monte Casino... I told him I was sitting in the Monestary and I could see ever gnat below me,....how did he survive?

Argo,Greg,

My father, like both of yours, was a WWII vet who served in the Desert Air Force, 79th Fighter Group, supporting Montgomery and from there Tunsia, Sicily, Anzio, The invasion of Southern France, and occuaption in Austria. I am about finished cataloguing his negatives, and prints, some of which were published in the unit's combat history, before I send to the Air Force museum. I collected some of the stories and recollection of events from the unit's yearly gatherings before he passed hoping to write a ahort piece about the unit. Sadly, there are few around today and an era will pass into history.

We owe they all more than we can ever repay.

John

D-Day photos

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/06/world...section=topNews

Argo, I totally agree about Clark, so did dad and many others at the front.

You mentioned Monte Casino, quick story, A friend of mine was talking to a German Para vet at a Gasthaus and my buddy asked if the German vet saw any action in the war. When the German vet tapped his foot with his cane it made a clank on his metal foot. All the German vet said was "Monte Casino"

John, good luck on your project, sounds like it will be a great benefit to historians.

Best,

Greg

Greg, a sincere thank you for mentioning the Italian campaign. Lady Astor called our Canadian troops there the D-Day Dodgers, who fought with our Allies for a year from Sicily up the boot to Rome two days before D-Day, the US/Canada Devil's Brigade first into the city. I've written on it extensively.

They were the most intense and costly battles ever fought by Canadian soldiers. Allied infantry casualties were greater in Italy than entire Northwest Europe campaign, Italy's natural defences of rivers and mountains crossways the country. My wife's paintings of the Liri campaign are slated for national tour.

We go back frequently to Cassino and Liri battlefields, know the locals who remember it well. The Germans fought magnificently in retreat, their cemetery a mile or so east of Cassino so beautiful its architect must have been a poet.

Less said about Clark the better. The French North Africa corps were the real heroes on the offensive to get into Rome, Poles in a class of their own, usually on right of Canadians throughout the war, Italy and Normandy particularly.

PM if I can help your research. One of Nancy's paintings is B24s bombing Cassino. An honorary member of the Devil's Brigade living at Ceprano near Monte Cassino is a dear friend, knows every inch of their astonishing campaign.
.

The unit in which I enlisted, 1/133rd Infantry, was part of the 34th (Red Bull) Division. They participated in Torch. Their 168th Infantry got mauled pretty badly at Kasserine Pass. The 34th fought its way up the "boot" and was still fighting there when the war in Europe ended. The famous 442d Regimental Combat Team (Go For Broke) of Japanese Americans was attached to the 34th for part of that campaign.

Had a DAV who worked for me as a handyman. He hated Clark with a burning passion. He could tell you names of his friends who died stupidly, going up the boot. Nothing like attacking, uphill, into dug in and sighted in defenses. He remembered every buddy, both where and how they died. A lot of bad memories. Vic carried a flame thrower most of the time. Germans hated them and went to great efforts to kill them.

But even in war, Vic could remember humor. Like his best friend who chipped a lower rear molar and went to a field hospital to see if they could fix or pull it. They had a treadmill operated, belt driven dental drill, that they used to drill out his tooth and put a silver filling in it. No novacane. Doc told him he had a bad tooth on the other side and if he came back the next day he’d fill that one.

That night he volunteered to take ammo and supplies up to the frontlines the next day, leading a pack animal under direct fire much of the way. Told Vic the Germans were only going to kill him once, where Doc could kill him with pain over and over again. He never did go back to get that tooth fixed. Vic was still laughing about it 40 years later.

God bless all those brave men. I’m sure we all knew a Vic even when they tried very hard not to mention the war at all. My mother had a uncle who earned a bronze star and a silver star in less than a month. Never told a soul. Found the metal in a drawer after he passed. I’ve read his citations and shudder to think how he earned them. In the 35 years I knew him before his death he never talked about the war. Not once. Told me all I needed to know about his war. As they use to say he had a hard war.

One very interesting account of the Italian campaign is in the book 'Whicker's War' by Capt. Alan Whicker. He was a British Officer and official war photographer which meant that he was not necessarily 'in the action' but more often than not ahead of it. He was in Rome before Clark entered it photographing the city sights and enjoying a glass of wine when he rolled in. Some of the photos that Whicker took of Clark entering are often seen in history books. It's in his chapter entitled 'Hitler Would Have Hade Him Shot'.

I recall talking with one old Army Officer who was at Monte Casino who said he saw some of his Gurkha soldiers having a private joke and finding something most amusing. Apparently, they had been out and about during the night and come across three German soldiers fast asleep and lying side by side. In their usual stealthy manner they had cut off the heads of the two soldiers on the outside without waking the one in the middle and laughing about his possible reaction when he woke up. Great sense of humour those Gurkhas! Lagopus…..

A memory of the Itlain Campaign by one of my father's contemporaries : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SE5Cgvc3JqU

Dead is dead. Doesn’t make much difference where or when. Great song.




Had a Gurkha and Royal Marine instructor for hand to hand combat training at The Basic School. Both were wickedly funny. I’d see them shooting glances at each other as they watched us train and imagined them thinking how’d these dumbarses ever win a war.


__________________________
Driving trucks on the moon. LCpl Lonny Rhodes
(Route Red to Shir Ghazy)

For those who are interested in the Sicily and Italy campaigns, I'll recommend Rick Atkinson's "The Day of Battle" which is the 2nd book, of three, that chronicles the US Army in North Africa, Italy & Europe during WWII.

And yes Mark Clark was a pompous ass and poor general, he probably would have been sent back to the US if he hadn't been very good friends with Eisenhower.

Atkinson peerless in my opinion. No flies on Douglas Porch's The Path to Victory.

The Gurkhas seemed funny in a different way, a sort of Sunday School mores softening the raw stuff of soldier banter. I was with a Gurkha unit in action during the 1971 India-Pakistan War. I admired their discipline and loyalty to their officers.

What exactly do you mean by "Sunday School mores"?

SRH

Thanks for mentioning the Italian Campaign. Not to take anything away from the troops in Northern Europe, but the guys who fought in Italy had a tough time too.
My father was drafted six days after D-Day and ended up with the 91st Infantry Division in the Apennine mountains shortly after Christmas 1944. He missed a lot of the action, but he still saw enough to last him a lifetime.

Argo, not sure how I missed your reference to "the Eureka code break". I never had anything to do with SIGINT (other than reading the reports when I had the "need to know"), but I've never heard of Eureka relative to WWII SIGINT. Are you referring to the Ultra information derived from breaking the codes the Germans used on their Enigma machines?

At the platoon level, in action and during rest, they were a cut above in general deportment from any soldiers I had seen. There's something we've lost in their mountain culture of tradition, education and common verities.

Here were elite infantry doing their job with quiet assurance, knowing their world reputation as top of their craft, without any of the hubristic, bad language and dirty talk that seems part of our culture at all ranks.

They spoke or understood English. They were like you and I as Baptist country boys at age 10 before pollution crept in. 1971 was at worst of the other war where soldiers fragged their leaders by the hundreds in Vietnam.

With the Gurkhas, I felt humble in the company of better men.

Real choir boys when they aren’t lopping off heads and laughing about it.


___________________________
Last Date (with your head)
https://youtu.be/GuniPtPWmCs

As our military, their job is to kill. I haven't heard a word from the thousands I've interviewed that they took any pleasure from it.

Must have been nervous, laughing in the graveyard kinda mirth, not the funny Boy I wish I could have seen the look on his face! laughter.


____________________________
Some folks need killin’. Would never go as far to say I enjoy it but don’t reckon it bothers me much neither.

Almost without exception, the lasting impression of survivors of combat at sea, land and air from Canada and the British Commonwealth, United States, Soviet Union, Germany, France and Italy I've talked to is "the waste, the waste."

Best writing on this comes from the American writer, soldier, educator Paul Fussell, whom I interviewed several times, and whom Wikipedia refers as exposing the gap between myth and reality of war, "refusing to disguise or elevate it."

Guess we have to give props to the Gurkhas for not wasting the opportunity for a good laugh over a double beheading.


_________________________
You’re not wrong, you’re just an arsehole. The Dude

One more try, King? What are "Sunday School mores", IYO?

SRH

someone once said that war is man's ultimate stupidity...

who said dat?

I went to a liberal university in Macon, Ga back in the '60's, which oddly enough was supported by the Georgia Baptist Convention. "Sunday School Religion" was one of their favorite put-downs...Geo

It is exceedingly difficult for liberals to not cast aspersions at the Holy Scriptures, those who try to live a Godly life, and the name of Jesus, the Christ. It is to be expected, and will be so until the end of the age. That said, it is also the duty of believers to call attention to it when it happens, IMO.

I'm just trying to determine whether that's what Kingsley is doing here, or if there is another meaning I do not see. I need to hear it from the horse's mouth.

SRH

You asked "exactly" what I meant by the term, Stan. I showed the difference of bearing and manners of the Gurkhas from ours, what one usually does to expand on an original tell.

The Sunday School mores where I grew up---customs essential for our church---were how to serve God by being good according to the Gospels (although I don't remember adultery as part of it).

Coming to Geo's point, it was confusing for everyone because of fierce warring between reform and hardshell Baptists, and the parson's wife, a kleptomaniac, stealing from neighbour's clotheslines.

I survived by leaving Sunday School around 12, by then knowing about adultery and the Ten Commandments as a great guide, even with little slips about adultery before marriage.

It didn't seem as bad as the southern Christian college president who told me, on camera, blacks must obey their masters, citing St. Paul's letter to Esphesians. We never heard that in our Sunday School.

Your answer(s) are confusing, King. You do not write in a way that is easy for me to understand. If that is an admission of a lack of discernment, take a picture of me. My question was totally disregarding Gurkhas and their values, and was completely meant to attempt to understand your thoughts. Not sure I do yet, but I'll let this dog lie.

Thanks for a reply, even if it is hard for me to understand.

SRH

Thanks, Stan.I was trying to explain how those hardened infantrymen of another religion seemed to embody the innocence and qualities I admired from what I was taught to be a Christian in Sunday School. My spiritual life is to follow and strengthen Jesus's injunction to love.

The Gurkhas have been fighting with the British Army now for just over 200 years. During the Falklands War the Argentinians were well dug in in a commanding position on a hilltop. It was only necessary to let the information leak out that the Gurkhas were going to attack at dawn. When they got there the place was completely deserted. Such is the Gurkha reputation that the Argies weren't willing to tackle them even from well dug in fortifications. 'Aayo Gurkhali'. Read some of their deeds that won Victoria Crosses; https://www.thekhukurihouse.com/gurkha-vcs Lagopus…..

Probably could have played scary Halloween music all night and the Argies would have booked.


___________________________
Aloha Snackbar!
(as the JDAMS rain down)