Category: History

The Attack on Port Arthur

The disintegration of the Chinese Empire under Qing Dynasty and the construction of the Trans-Siberian railroad allowed Imperial Russia to coerce the use the warm water Port Arthur on the Manchurian Liaodong Peninsula. The newly expansionist Imperial Japan, fresh from a massive and rapid technological, military, and industrial revolution during the Meiji Restoration, negotiated with Imperial Russia for a free hand in Korea while the Russians occupied Manchuria. The Russians had no respect for the upstart Japanese and even welcomed war with them as a way of reconsolidating Tsar Nicolas II rule. However, Russia was confident the Japanese would not declare war or attack because Russia was vastly superior to the Japanese in every conceivable strategic and tactical category, even 4000 miles away on the Pacific coast.

On the night of 8 February 1904, the Japanese launched a surprise attack on the Russian Pacific Fleet’s base at Port Arthur initiating the Russo Japanese War. Japanese destroyers struck the brightly lit and minimally manned Russian cruisers and battleships in outer harbor with a new weapon, the motorized torpedo. The new torpedoes were unreliable and inaccurate, and only three hit their targets and detonated. Fortunately for the Japanese, they severely damaged the Russian’s two largest battleships and Japanese battleships finished what the small Japanese destroyers started. The remaining Russian ships retreated to Port Arthur’s inner harbor under the protective guns of its landside fortifications. The Battle of Port Arthur relinquished Russian naval superiority in the Pacific to the Japanese. The Japanese invaded Korea the next day, and finally declared war on Russia two days later on 10 February 1904.

The Japanese, with air dropped torpedoes, would repeat the maneuver much more effectively 37 years later at Pearl Harbor.

The Six Days’ Campaign

La Grande Armée was no more. The victors of a hundred battles lay dead in the snows of Russia and fields of Germany. It seemed as if Napoleon had lost his tactical brilliance after the catastrophic meat grinding battlefield losses in 1812 and 1813 against the nations of the Sixth Coalition. By early 1814, Napoleon was forced to fall back on Paris with a 70,000 man shell of his Grande Armée. Four Allied armies numbering more than 600,000 men followed closely behind.

Napoleon was defeated or so the world thought.

Unexpectedly, Napoleon turned to the defense of France with a verve not seen since his campaigns in 1805 and 1806, almost a decade earlier. First, his negotiations with Austria caused significant hesitation in Austria’s Prince Schwarzenburg’s Army of Bohemia (Napoleon’s second wife, Marie Louise, was an Archduchess of Austria and Schwarzenburg’s niece). The second Allied Army, the primarily Swedish and German Northern Army under Napoleon’s former subordinate and now Swedish Crown Prince Jean Bernadotte experienced supply difficulties in the winter weather while slowly moving through the Netherlands. The third Allied Army, the Duke of Wellington’s Peninsular Army, was still crossing the Pyrenees far to the south. With the Austrians, Swedes and British too far away to help, Napoleon turned on Field Marshal Prince von Blücher’s Prussian Army of Silesia on 29 January 1814. Napoleon fixed Blucher in place at the Battles of Brienne and the desperate defense of La Rothiere. He used the respite to gather fresh conscripts and collect garrisons to reinforce his army.
In the freezing weather, with green troops and few supplies, Napoleon struck back.

Using his advantage of interior lines of communication to great effect, Napoleon turned on Blucher on 10 February 1814. Over the next six days Napoleon, with an army of just 30,000, won four major victories over Blucher, at the Battles of Champaubert, Montmirail, Château-Thierry, and Vauchamps. He then crushed Blucher’s Russian and Prussian reinforcements on 17 February at the Battle of Mormans. Schwarzenburg paid for his indecisiveness on the 18th when Napoleon defeated him at the Battle of Montereau. In a period of just 20 days, Napoleon and his marshals with a combined force of just 45,000 won ten separate major battles against 400,000 Allied troops. The Austrians and Prussians streamed back east.

The Six Days’ Campaign, and the battles in the days before and after, was a masterpiece of tactical maneuver warfare, a tribute to the courage of the French character, and a testament to the inspired leadership that coaxed the new French conscripts to victory over an overwhelming number of Allied veterans. Unfortunately for Napoleon, the problem with relying on interior lines is that it rarely, if ever, leads to the complete destruction of one’s enemy. Napoleon couldn’t finish the job and still cover Paris.

Napoleon’s inability to pursue allowed the Allies to recover by the end of month. When Blucher and Schwarzenberg returned in March, Napoleon was not be able to repeat the brilliance of the Six Days’ Campaign the month before, despite severing the Allies’ supply lines to the east at the beginning of the month. Blucher and Schwarzenburg just ignored the maneuver and drove on the French capital. On 30 March, the Allies triumphantly entered Paris. Napoleon abdicated the French throne five days later after his marshals mutinied, thus ending the War of the Sixth Coalition. He was sent into exile on the Mediterranean island of Elba, where he would spend the rest of his days.

Or so the world thought…

The Day the Music Died

On 5 June 1956, the King was Born when Elvis shocked the world with his wild hip gyrations on the Ed Sullivan Show. The New York Times called him “a bore in a burlesque show”, and The New York Daily News called him “Elvis the Pelvis” but fuck the squares: the girls loved him, and the boys wanted to be him. When the country woke up on the 6th, Doris Day, Bing Crosby and Perry Como were surprised to find out they were no longer the music stars they were when they went to bed. Alan Freed’s Rock and Roll Dance Party went daytime national and a Philadelphia’s small afternoon music show, American Bandstand, got a new teenage host, Dick Clark, and within a month it went national. Small regional acts were soon playing across the country. Elvis, Buddy Holly, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins, Gene Vincent, Jerry Lee Lewis, Eddie Cochrane, Wanda Jackson and a new Vanguard of Cool had unfettered access to the American soul.

For the next 20 glorious months, there was no “White Music” and there was no “Black Music”, there was only Rock and Roll. It and in particular its swing dancing, wild, devil-may-care sub-genre of Rockabilly, dominated the American consciousness.

Unfortunately all good things come to an end. Jerry Lee Lewis was a national pariah after marrying his 13 year old cousin in December 1957. Elvis was drafted in March 1958. Also that year, Alan Freed, and just about every DJ in America, was caught up in the “Payola scandal” of accepting bribes for record plays. Little Richard left the music industry to pursue a life of ministry in 1958, and also that year Gene Vincent was shut down after the IRS forced him to sell everything to pay his taxes. Johnny Cash had a messy divorce from the Sun Music and started recording gospel music. His friend Carl Perkins left soon thereafter.

Not all was lost, in late 1958, four of the biggest names in Rock and Roll toured together across the Midwest. Buddy Holly was a founding member of Rock and Roll and his bespeckled appearance gave heart to millions of teenagers that they too could get laid if they played the guitar. Dion spoke straight to audiences’ needs with “The Wanderer” and “Runaround Sue”. JP Richardson, better known as The Big Bopper, was the face of Rockabilly with his anthem “Chantilly Lace”. And finally Californian Ritchie Valens, whose Spanish language “La Bamba” converted entire demographics to Rock and Roll. Their Winter Dance Party tour played to screaming crowds at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa on 2 February 1959.

The tour was having problems, not musically but logistically. The tour venues were too far apart and the bands were stuck in old buses for far too long, so long that it was affecting their set up times and performances. The weather was freezing and one of the tour buses lacked heat. Several band members were sick. Before the show at the Sun Ballroom, Holly decided to charter a plane for him and his band, the Crickets, to get to their next show at Moorhead, Minnesota. The manager of the ballroom contracted Dwyer Flying Service to fly them to Fargo, North Dakota, a short drive from Moorhead.

After the show, Richardson, who had the flu asked Holly’s bassist, Waylon Jennings, if he could have his seat, and Jennings graciously acquiesced. Valens asked Holly’s guitarist for his seat and they flipped a coin on it. Valens won. Dion was asked if he wanted the last seat on the plane, but the $36 price was exactly what his mother to rent his childhood apartment and he couldn’t “justify the indulgence”.

When Holly learned Jennings wasn’t taking the flight he joked, “Well, I hope your ol’ bus freezes up.” Jennings snarkily responded, “Well, I hope your old plane crashes”.

The comment haunted Waylon Jennings for the rest of his life.

In the snowy weather, the pilot had no stars to observe, no lights on the ground to judge his position and he couldn’t even see the horizon. He flew straight into the ground and the plane cartwheeled across a field in Clear Lake, Iowa. There were no survivors.

The Golden Age of Rock and Roll was over.

The Music died in an Iowa cornfield.

Operation Flintlock: the Invasion of Kwajalein

After the invasion of Tarawa in November, the next step for Adm Nimitz’ Central Pacific Campaign were the Marshall Islands, specifically the Kwajalein Atoll.

On 29 Jan 1944, Nimitz’ Bombardment Group centered around 6 fleet carriers, 6 Escort carriers, and eight battleships shelled, staffed and bombed the islands of the atoll. On the 31st, the US 7th Infantry and 4th Marine Divisions assaulted the islands of Kwajalein and Roi-Namur. The Soldiers and Marines never encountered more than 300 dazed survivors at a time. Within a week, the Kwajalein atoll was secured.

Although there was hard fighting at times, Operation Flintlock was successful because it was characteristic of the changing nature of the war in the Pacific, and the Japanese slowness to adapt. The Japanese fortified the outer ring islands of the atoll, but the Americans broke their code and knew which islands to isolate. Without a challenge from the Japanese Navy (which still had not replaced the losses from the Guadcanal naval battles), the US Navy just sailed around the heavily defended islands and secured the supporting islands. Without a navy to come to their aid, most Japanese were cut off and just left alone by the Americans to starve to death.

Furthermore, the heaviest Japanese defenses were focused on the ocean side of the islands because they believed the Americans did not have the technology to penetrate the lagoon or wherewithal to risk another Betio. They were mistaken. The Americans learned from their mistakes of the last year, and either found solutions or did not repeat them. So if any heavily defended islands had to be attacked, the Allied assaults hit Japanese defenses pointed on the wrong direction. Finally, the pre invasion bombardments were particularly effective. The Japanese weren’t as heavily fortified on the supporting islands. Estimates from both Japanese and American sources say that 50% of the 8000 Japanese defenders on the atoll were killed or wounded before a single soldier or Marine set foot on dry ground.

The Kwajalein and nearby Eniwetok atolls would provide the springboards for the American return to Guam and the Mariana Islands later in the year.

The Battle of Cisterna

After a short buildup, MG Lucas, the commander of all of the troops in the Anzio beachhead, was under great pressure from Gen Mark Clark and Winston Churchill to break out. The Alban Hills, the original objective for Operation Shingle, was out of the question: they were already too strongly defended and would grossly extend his perimeter if he did capture them. So he sent the British 1st Division to seize them anyway just to temporarily get his superiors off his back. However, another possibility, a real one, did exist. He could still cut Highways 6 and 7 to stop supplies heading to the Germans in front of the French and Americans fighting around Cassino by capturing the Italian town of Cisterna. He couldn’t hold it for any length of time, but the town provided a good point to push further inland and cut Route 7. And because it briefed well, there was always the pipe dream that the shock of being temporarily cut off might cause the Germans to withdraw.

The US 3rd Infantry Division was given the job. Leading the attack would be COL William O Darby’s 6615 Ranger Force. Leading the way, the 1st and 3rd Ranger Battalions and the 3rd ID’s Recon Troop were to infiltrate Cisterna the night before to pave the way for the assault.

Unfortunately, the German main line of resistance was much closer and stronger than the Rangers expected. Clark and Lucas underestimated the German operational ability to quickly mass troops at trouble spots. The rangers and scouts infiltrated right into the assembly areas of two German panzer divisions — the 26th and the powerful Herman Goering Panzer Division.

The two Ranger battalions were immediately cut off, and over the next seven hours, methodically destroyed. Even the best light infantry in the world is no match for an armored force when it’s fixed in an exposed position without heavy equipment.

The 3rd ID and 6615th, spearheaded by the 4th Ranger battalion and the 504th Parchute Infantry Regiment, launched themselves repeatedly at Cisterna to relieve the entrapped Rangers. The fanatic and soon desperate assaults were in vain. Of the 800 Rangers and Troopers trapped in Cisterna, only six returned. What remained of the 6615th was disbanded and the Rangers were sent to the replacement depots as ordinary infantry. COL Darby was ignominiously reassigned to Lucas’ staff.

The Rangers weren’t used again until the invasion of France in June.

Dungeons and Dragons

In 1969 and 1970, friends Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson regularly played a miniature based Napoleonic tabletop wargaming system at the Lake Geneva Wargaming Conference (GenCon). However, their games in those years became smaller and soon revolved around special individual soldiers and their stories. In 1970, they transferred the concept to a medieval setting because Gygax, a Dark Age enthusiast, found the appropriate miniatures. They used the rules from the game “Chainmail”, which Gygax had written with a friend, to resolve individual actions. Together, they developed a generic fantasy wargaming system that focused solely on individuals and their stories instead of armies and groups of soldiers.

In 1971, Arneson added a storytelling role to the referee, a fixture in the contentious world of tabletop wargaming, who was usually a neutral observer and adjudicated disputes. The “Game Master” guided the players on quests and played the monsters. At Gencon that year, Arneson and a few of his friends ran Gygax and a few of his friends through a “six level dungeon” where the big bad at the end was a “troll in magic armor”. Gygax was enamored with the “funhouse” aspect of the game and immediately saw the creative and commercial possibilities. Over the next year Arneson and Gygax developed the rules for their game, which then went by the working title “Blackmoor”, and created a fictional and vaguely Tolkein-esque setting centered on “The Great Kingdom” for use with the system.

In December 1973, they formed Tactical Studies Rules with two other friends to self-publish their new tabletop gaming system because no established gaming company was interested. The first run of the newly named “Dungeons and Dragons” was only 1000 copies that were assembled in Gygax’s garage. On 26 January 1974, Gary Gygax invited everyone over to his house for the first session of Dungeons and Dragons which only became available to the public that day.

The Battle of Isandlwana

On 11 January 1879, a British army under Lord Chelmsford invaded the Zululand after King Cetshwayo refused a humiliating ultimatum from Sir Henry Frere, the High Commissioner of South Africa. Frere was looking for a war because he and Chelmsford assumed the spear and shield wielding warriors were no match for a disciplined modern army equipped with rifles and artillery. Chelmsford attacked, from the recently annexed Boer Republic of Natalia, with three columns of about 16,000 British regulars and troops of the Natal Native Contingent. The Zulus were a warrior culture whose males could not marry until a man “washed his spear (in blood)”, Cetshwayo assembled 24,000 warriors at his main kraal (settlement with a corral for cattle and buffalo) at Ulundi. He launched the Zulu impis (roughly “battlegroups”) at Chelmsford with the guidance, “March slowly, attack at dawn and eat up the red soldiers.”

The Zulu army was unlike other indigenous force the British had encountered in Africa. For all of its history to that time, Africa had more land than people. People were the resource that enabled the expansion of a kingdom, not land as in the Western mind. As a consequence, warfare between nations was a relatively bloodless affair focused on attacking at range with thrown weapons (because it was safer) and capturing prisoners (for slave labor). In the early 19th Century, Shaka Zulu instituted reforms that changed the nature of Zulu warfare from protecting the force to the destruction of its enemies, which was much more in line with how European armies fought and much more effective (Land was relatively scarce in Europe compared to Africa. In general, European warfare focused on winning the battle at any cost because the loser couldn’t just move somewhere else). Shaka Zulu’s reforms centered on annihilating the enemy army through close quarters combat, with warriors armed with a short stabbing spear and hide shield. The spear, called an “iklwa” for the sound it made when a warrior pulled it from a dead opponents chest, was horrifying and brutally effective against ranged warriors not used to melee combat. The Zulu braves would weather the one or two volleys of thrown weapons to quickly close with and destroy their enemies. The preferred tactic was called “the horns of the beast”. The impi was divided into four groups: the chest, two horns, and loins. The chest, or center of the line, engaged the enemy, while the horns on its left and right would encircle the force occupied by the chest. The loins, or reserve, administered the coup d’grace, chased down routed enemies, or reacted to unexpected developments. Individual warriors used roughly the same tactics: one would fix an enemy to his front while a trusted comrade would kill from the side. Shaka Zulu revolutionized indigenous warfare in southern Africa and quickly carved out a large empire from his stunned neighbors, whose fertile lands the Zulu nation occupied.

On 18 January 1879, Shaka’s half nephew Cetshwayo was determined to attack and destroy Chelmsford’s columns in detail. He dispatched 4000 braves to fix Chelmsford’s southern column and prevent it from reinforcing his main body in the middle. On 20 January, Chelmsford’s 7800 men encamped in the shadow of a large “sphinx shaped” mountain named Isandlwana. No defensive preparations were made because the British arrogantly assumed that rifle and cannon firepower alone could hold the ground against the charging Zulus. On the 21st, the Zulu commander, Prince Ntshingwayo kaMahole Khoza, encamped in Ngwbeni Valley about ten miles away.

All throughout the 21st, the British skirmished with Zulu reconnaissance and screening parties. On the morning of the 22nd Chelmsford dispatched two battalions of the NNC to push through the screen and find Ntshingwayo’s army. Chelmsford was worried that the Zulus would refuse battle and not that he was walking into a trap. Ntshingwayo wanted to rest his warriors and only planned to attack Chelmsford on the 23rd but the two NNC battalions stumbled upon his army and forced his hand. The young Zulu warriors finally had their chance to close with enemy and attacked. Ntshingwayo used the chance encounter to draw Chelmsford away from his camp at Isandlwana, which he would destroy. Once cut off from their supplies, the Zulu army would surround and annihilate the British main body which would then have only the food, water and ammunition they carried with them. Chelmsford took the bait.

Once he received reports of the Zulu army at Ngwbeni, Chelmsofrd divided his force and took over half of his infantry and most of his artillery to reinforce the two advance guard NNC battalions, exactly what Ntshingwayo wanted him to do. Once Chelmsford was committed to Ngwbeni, the Zulu horn and loin formations rapidly moved around the powerful British force and fell upon the British camp at Isandlwana. Chelmsford was outmaneuvered and didn’t even know it.


Brevet Lt-Col Henry Pulliene commanded the defense of the camp which consisted of 3companies of his battalion, the 1st Bn of the 24th Foot, one company of the second battalion, four companies of the NNC, two cannon, and about 100 other Natal carbineers (there’s a great word I don’t get use very often), mounted troops, police, and border guards. Later that morning he was reinforced by Bvt Col Anthony Durnford and five troops Natal Native Horse and two more companies of NNC. All told, there were about 2000 British and Natal troops and civilians at Isandlwana when Ntshingwayo’s 12,000 arrived just after noon on the 22nd.

4000 warriors appeared to the north, and Pulleine and Durnford assumed they were part of a “horn” formation intent on attacking Chelmsford’s rear at Ngwebeni. They were technically right that it was a horn formation but tactically wrong because it was Ntshingwayo’s chest formation to fix the defenders at Isandlwana. The fatal beauty of the Zulu tactics was their simplicity: they were understood by all warriors to the youngest brave who used a form of “the horns of the beast” in their individual combat of fixing an opponent so a comrade could strike the killing blow from the side. Ntshingwayo’s impi formed new horn, chest, and loin formations on the move from Ngwebeni like the instinctive battle drill it was.

Pulleine made the same mistake Chelmsford did by advancing towards the chest of Zulu army and separating his troops from the camp.

Initially, British firepower did prevent the charging Zulus from overwhelming the disciplined Englishmen and Welshmen of the 24th Foot (The 24th Foot was a Warwickshire regiment but had a disproportionate amount of Welsh enlistees and wouldn’t be known as the “South Wales Borderers” until 1881) and the Boer, Basuto and Mponso of the NNC. Equipped with the quick firing Martini-Henry breech loading rifle, the British troops could fire 16-20 rounds a minute if necessary. The ibutho (a Zulu regiment based not on tribe but age) of Ntshingwayo’s chest formations took horrendous casualties until his horn formations made their way around Pulleine’s line. The left horn routed Durnford’s cavalry on the British right which had run low on ammunition and as cavalry couldn’t hold ground as well as infantry. The right horn made its way around the Isandlwana mountain and fell upon the camp from the rear. Pulleine attempted to extend his line to block the flanking attacks but the Zulus just continued father around.

After Durnford’s defeat, Pulleine deliberately withdrew back towards the camp but by then the damage was already done. The maneuver forward expanded the distance that supply runners had to travel to resupply the line with ammunition. Furthermore, myopic supply officers reportedly were under orders to save the ammunition for Chelmsford column and required the runners to sign forms before they could open the crates, which were screwed shut. Despite these self-inflicted difficulties, adequate ammunition made it to most of the line, except Durnford’s men who were the farthest from the camp and had fought the longest.

For a long hour, Pulleine’s soldiers fought the Zulu warriors with volley, rifle butt and bayonet. But when attacked from all sides the line eventually broke as companies formed squares, and individual soldiers fought in small groups and even back to back. The encirclement wasn’t complete and several hundred of Pulleine’s troops and civilians escaped back across the Buffalo River at a ford now known as “Fugitive’s Drift.” But not many escaped and fought to death when ammunition ran out. What remained of the line was 150 man square whose bodies were found the next day. Zulu accounts placed great emphasis on soldiers who defended their flags, including a big Irishman who held Pulleine’s tent where Union Jack flew, and two lieutenants who fled with the battalion colours but were killed at Fugitive’s Drift. The final soldier to die was a young Welshman who held the mouth a cave at the base Isandlwana with his bayonet until he was shot by a musket wielding Zulu.

At 2:30 pm a solar eclipse occurred, and a British officer with Chelmsford’s column reported that firing from Isandlwana ceased after that. Pulleine and Durnford repeatedly informed Chelmsford of the increasingly desperate fighting at Isandlwana, but Chelmsford refused to come to their aid. He assumed he was still engaged with the elusive Zulu main body and even recalled troops that started towards the camp at their own accord. When informed of the Zulu victory, the stunned Chelmsfod muttered, “But I left a thousand men to guard the camp…”

1300 British and Natal troops were killed, including Durnford and Pulleine. The Battle of Isandlwana was worst defeat ever experienced by a colonial army against indigenous forces and coming only 2 ½ Years after Custer’s Last Stand increased the effect. However, the Battle of Isandlwana was pyric victory for the Zulu nation. Ntshingwayo lost almost 3000 warriors killed and another 2000 or so wounded of his original 12,000. And unlike the vast British Empire, there were no more Zulu warriors to recruit, the entire nation was mobilized.

After the battle was finished, the four thousand warriors of Ntshingwayo’s loin formation were upset that they did not get to participate in the battle. Their commander, Prince Dabulamanzi kaMpande, set his sights on the small British Force at “kwaJimu”. “KwaJimu” was the Zulu name for “Jim’s land”, named for the Irish merchant James Rorke who had a small trading post and mission at the ford over the Buffalo River. Rorke’s Drift was twenty miles away and Dabulamanzi meant for his warriors to wash their spears in its defenders.

Operation Shingle: the Allied Landings at Anzio and Nettuno

On 22 January 1944, British and American troops of MG John Lucas’ VI Corps landed on a 15 mile stretch of beach between the Italian resort towns of Anzio and Nettuno, 30 miles from Rome and 30 miles behind the Gustav Line and Monte Cassino. VI Corps’ objectives were the Alban Hills along Highway 7 and the town of Cisterna along Highway 6. Their capture would cut off the German defenders to the south. However, priority for the all-important LSTs (Landing Ship, Tank. The ship that would unload supplies and reinforcements after the assault waves cleared the beaches) was to Operation Overlord, the invasion of France from England. Winston Churchill, whose pet project Shingle was, had to threaten American naval logisticians to release the bare minimum of 88 LSTs for the invasion. They were enough to land Lucas’ force, but not enough to reinforce it promptly and keep an expanding beachhead supplied.


When Lucas asked his friend George Patton to look over the plan, Patton solemnly said, “John, there is nobody in the U.S. Army I would less like to see killed than you, but you can’t get out of this alive. Of course, you might get wounded and nobody ever blames a wounded general”.


Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your view, MG Lucas did not immediately advance to secure the objectives. He only had two divisions in his assault force, the British 1st and US 3rd, and several attachments: the US 6615 Ranger Force, the US 509th Parachute BN (landing from the sea) and the British Commando BDE. Lucas’ invasion force was not strong enough to secure the beachhead from German counterattack while simultaneously securing his objectives 20 miles away. The battlefield calculus simply did not allow both options. He would be lambasted to this day (probably by some of you reading this) for his decision to build up the beachhead to defeat the inevitable and crushing German counterattack.


Clark admitted later that his only hope for the understrength end run up the Italian boot was to shock the Germans into pulling off of the Gustav Line. This was not an unreasonable assumption, even if it was an inaccurate one. In several previous instances during the campaign, the Germans withdrew from prepared positions after an amphibious end run by the Allies. However, the competent and unflappable German commander in Italy, Field Marshal Albert “Smiling Al” Kesselring, made it clear he was not going to give up the stout and well-fortified Gustav Line. The Gustav Line took advantage of the only terrain south of Rome that allowed Kesselring the opportunity to block the Allied advance up the peninsula and prevent the capture of the Eternal City. At the Gates of Monte Cassino was where Kesselring planned to stop the Allied advance up the Italian boot.


The Germans were taken completely by surprise by Operation Shingle and there was no resistance to the initial landings. Nonetheless, Kesselring sprang into action. Within an hour of the initial report, reconnaissance units from two German divisions were enroute to the area, and within six hours their divisions’ main bodies were on the move. Kesselring then fell back upon one of the Wehrmachts’ greatest strengths: to operationally move formations from other fronts to troubled areas, which was well honed from fighting on the Russian front. Within two days eight more divisions from as far away as France and the Balkans were converging on the small Anzio beachhead. In five days, there were thirteen German divisions committed to crushing Lucas’ exposed and already overextended beachhead.

The First Battle of Monte Cassino: the 36th Division Assaults Across the Rapido River

After sundown on 20 January 1944, the US 36th “Arrowhead” Infantry Division from the Texas and Oklahoma Army National Guard, began their movement to the shore of the Rapido River, intending to cross near the Italian town of San Angelo. Both the 143rd and 141st ran into German minefields, and mortar and machine gun fire from across the river slammed into the exposed troops. Mass confusion reigned in the darkness and the Americans had not even reached the near riverbank.

Nonetheless, the 141st and 143rd Regts pushed on all night and by mid-morning established shallow toeholds on the far shore of the narrow but swift and deep Rapido River. But in the daylight, no reinforcements could cross or even get near the near shore: the Germans on Monte Cassino could see every movement for miles and those on the hills above San Angelo could engage anyone even attempting to approach the riverbanks. The Americans’ Italian nemesis, the veteran German 15th Panzergrenadier Division counterattacked and eliminated the toeholds by midafternoon.

The 36th’s commander MG Fred Walker had previously told Clark that the river crossing was in the “worst possible spot”. He would know, as a battalion commander in the First World War, he slaughtered Germans trying to cross the Marne in a similar situation. Nonetheless, he decided to try again that evening. The regiments again succeeded in placing toeholds on the far shore by dawn, but the Germans again destroyed them by the end of the day. The German report for the action was only one sentence long, “Strong enemy assault detachments which have crossed the river are annihilated.”

MG Walker refused to continue the assaults, even though Clark ordered him to do so.

The failed assaults cost the 36th 2200 additional casualties effectively neutralizing the unit, with only one weak regiment, the 142nd, left to hold the line.

After the war there would be Congressional hearings as to if or why, “West Pointers deliberately threw away the lives of National Guardsmen.”

The First Battle of Monte Cassino

On 17 January 1944, the British X Corps crossed the Garigliano River as part of Gen. Mark Clark’s US 5th Army offensive to seize Monte Cassino and crack the German Gustav Line across Italy. Clark didn’t expect the offensive to succeed which included not only the British but also American and French corps further north along the Rapido River. Privately, he said the best he could hope for was to pull German reserves away from the impending landings up the Italian coast at Anzio and Nettuno. The stated objective of the British X Corps’ dangerous river assault was to seize high ground that overlooked the US II Corps’ future river crossing at San Angelo. The British X Corps was initially successful and held a tenuous bridgehead over the Garigliano.

On 19 January 1944, the British 46th Division assaulted across the Gargliano River near its junction with the Liri River in support of the rest of the British X Corps. But the operation failed and even if it succeeded, it wasn’t enough to secure the lodgment. The British commander requested more troops, but Clark refused: the only available troops were the nearby US troops earmarked for the Rapido River crossing on the 20th, and Clark refused to alter the plan. Instead of crossing the river and securing and expanding the British bridgehead, the US II Corps was condemned to its own suicidal river crossing just a bit farther north. After three brutal days successfully defending against incessant German counterattacks in the rainy and cold Italian winter, German reserves from Rome finally forced the exhausted and overwhelmed British X Corps back across the river.

Although the British river assault was successful in pulling German reserves south away from the Anzio/Nettuno landings, the US II Corps paid heavily Clark’s decision and for the British failure to secure the high ground which could observe their crossing sites. Just to the north of the British fighting to secure their bridgehead, the US II Corps, consisting of the US 45th and 36th Divisions, finished their three day rest and reorganization from the grueling six week fight during Operation Raincoat.

During the battle through the Bernhardt Line, the US II Corps took 60% casualties, and nearly 80% in the line units. Replacements arrived just in time on the 19th to participate in the 36th’s rehearsals and final preparations for their assault across the Rapido River, scheduled for the next day. Farther north, the US 34th Division and French Expeditionary Corps were preparing for their own assault across the Rapido on 22 January, the same day as Operation Shingle, the landings at Anzio and Nettuno 35 miles behind the front.

On 19 January 1944, the assault elements of Shingle, the VI Corps, which consisted the British Commando Brigade and 1st (UK) Division, and the US 3rd Infantry Division and the Ranger Force, conducted a rehearsal in the vicinity of Naples. The rehearsal was a disaster. MG John Lucas, the VI Corps commander and each of his division commanders recommended the invasion be delayed in order to conduct more training. Clark and PM Winston Churchill denied the request: the invasion craft were needed as soon as possible in England for Operation Overlord, the invasion of France scheduled for May, and there could be no delays in the Mediterranean. Operation Shingle had to happen in the third week of January at the latest or it wouldn’t happen at all.

Clark hoped the river assaults and the landings behind the German defenses would convince the Germans they were outmaneuvered and abandon the Gustav Line.