UNKNOWN SOLDIERS: Reliving WWII in Europe

Grenadiers poised to smash down the highway upon the 45th behind Hitler’s elite Lehr Regiment.

At one-thirty in the morning of the suspected counterattack General Patton had a phone call from London that General Eisenhower wanted to see him at once. Driving through the night, he was there by 10:45. Alexander had concluded that Lucas and his staff weren’t up to the crisis [This portion of the page contains copyrighted material and is available in the print edition, but is not available online.]²²

Chomping at the bit, Patton donned his new battle jacket and ordered a brace of planes warmed up at the London airport to take him to Italy. But he foresaw trouble with Clark and his Fifth Army HQ [This portion of the page contains copyrighted material and is available in the print edition, but is not available online.]²³

By next morning Eisenhower had changed his mind and decided to replace Lucas with Truscott of the Third Division. [This portion of the page contains copyrighted material and is available in the print edition, but is not available online.]²⁴

Blow it out yer ass, General.

To the haunting skirls of the Scots units’ bagpipes that night of the fifteenth, we Thunderbirds of the 45th and on our left the Black Cats of the British 56th, which had just been brought up from the Winter Line, moved up to relieve their exhausted First Division, down to one-third strength.

For the second time the 36th Engineers traded foxholes with us. Our Second Battalion took over Limey holes square in the face of the anticipated enemy attack down the Via Anziate, the Rome–Anzio highway, with G Company on the left, E actually straddling the blacktop, and F in reserve in the gap between. Battalion headquarters, Medics and 158th Artillery communications moved into a labyrinth of caves in a shale bluff behind G Company, cavernous enough for vehicles and safe from shellfire and bombs.

Two miles south, the Via Anziate was crossed by an east–west road over an overpass, “flyover” to the Brits. Here our Third Battalion set up a second line of defense behind concertina barbed wire already rolled across the highway by the relieved Tommies. First Battalion was in reserve on its right at the edge of the Padiglione Woods, then the 179th, 180th, the Third Division, the 504th Paratroopers and First Special Service Force at the coast. The depleted British First and our First Armored Division were put in reserve.

Presumably the 157th was planted so squarely in the way of the expected Panzer tanks as a reward for stopping them at Salerno. Losses were already heavy. The Third Battalion commander, Major Boyd, had been killed, and Colonel Church was in hospital with pneumonia. The interim command of the Regiment was in the hands of his executive officer, Lt. Colonel Chester James, a big, beefy, beer-drinking National Guardsman.

Our forward regimental CP was set up inside the northern edge of the rather scrubby Padiglione Woods, half a mile or so southwest of the Overpass. That afternoon Les Gerencer drove Lieutenant Pullman over to the British First Division CP for maps of their