World Battlefronts: Forgotten Front

It was the old story on the forgotten front in Italy, and one that weary, haggard soldiers had intimately known for over a year—rain, mud, wind, high rivers, all but impassable roads and mountains. And always there were the determined, skillful Germans, fighting with professional craft.

For almost seven weeks now the U.S. Fifth Army had been edging, inch by weary inch, toward Bologna, still eight miles away. Eastward the British Eighth* worked painfully along the Bologna-Rimini highway, was still 39 miles southeast of Bologna. To the unshaven, mud-stained dogface, red-eyed from lack of sleep, gaunt from K and C rations, it looked like another long, hard winter that civilians could not begin to feel in their preoccupation with the fresh glories of Allied arms.

The General Was Frank. Last week Allied Commander in Chief General Sir Harold R. L. G. Alexander conceded that the campaign was stuck. In his first interview in six months, quiet, expert Alexander agreed that the Gothic Line break in September was a failure: the autumn rains had bogged down the drive before the Po Valley was conquered. Said the General:

Allied war aims in Italy were to knock the Italians out of the war and then get the Germans out of Italy. In midstream these aims were changed. Now the purpose is to draw as many German divisions into Italy as possible, hold them there to prevent their use on other fronts. Unfortunately, the Allies have never had enough troops to complete the job (“at no time in the Italian campaign have the Allies had any but slight superiority in numbers”) and the Germans have been clever at getting out of traps. Nevertheless the Germans have lost almost 200,000 men in casualties, now have 28 divisions engaged.

Why did the Germans hang on? Explained General Alexander: 1) for prestige —Italy, a former Ally, is the major territory outside Germany that is still held; 2) for morale—further retreat would affect the home front; 3) for supply—the industries of north Italy are still useful.

From Switzerland came a rumor with direct bearing on the Italian campaign. The report: burly, ex-Airman Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, sparkplug of the wily German defense, had followed in the tire-tracks of the late Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, been “very seriously” wounded by Allied planes which sent his automobile spinning axle over top near Bologna. Berlin said nothing.

*Whose able commander Lieut. General Sir Oliver W. H. Leese was ordered to Burma last week and replaced by Lieut. General Sir Richard L. McCreery, once General Alexander’s chief of staff in North Africa.