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Posted on 07/24/2005 9:25:51 PM PDT by SAMWolf
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 are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
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The daring seaborne operation was planned as a way of outflanking German strength on Italy's Gustav Line and swiftly capturing Rome, but almost nothing went according to plan.  Heavy German opposition, such as had been encountered five months earlier at Salerno, was expected, but the shore was strangely silent; the only sound was that of Allied ordnance exploding. Everything was going perfectly, a fact that did not keep General Lucas from harboring grave doubts about the chances for success in this, the most daring operation of the Italian campaign. Looking a decade older than his 54 years, Lucas gripped the ship's rail and tried to peer through the blackness, not only at the shoreline but also at the days and weeks immediately ahead. He was not at all sure that this operation would not end in a bloody Allied debacle.  Maj. Gen. John P. Lucas Lucas was an able officer who inspired confidence in subordinates and superiors alike. A West Pointer and World War I battalion commander, he had been Dwight D. Eisenhower's deputy in North Africa and Sicily, and everyone was confident that "Old Luke" could do the job. Old Luke, however, viewed his assignment with private pessimism. A few days before Shingle began, he wrote in his diary, "Unless we can get what we want (in men and materiel), the operation becomes such a desperate undertaking that it should not, in my opinion, be attempted." The entire operation, Lucas fretted in his diary, "had a strong odor of Gallipoli and apparently the same amateur was still on the coach's bench," a reference to Winston Churchill and his enthusiastic support, as First Lord of the Admiralty, of the disastrous Allied attempt to take the Dardanelles in 1915.  Maj. Gen. Lucian K. Truscott With the invasion of France imminent and about to become an "American show" under Eisenhower's command, the Mediterranean had become a "British show." Following Ike's departure on January 8, 1944, to become the Supreme Allied Commander of Operation Overlord, General Sir Henry Maitland Wilson had ascended to the post of Supreme Allied Commander in the Mediterranean. Eisenhower's deputy, Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander, was placed in command of 15th Army Group, which controlled all Allied forces in Italy. Prime Minister Winston Churchill and General Sir Alan Brooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, were now the chief architects of strategy in Italy, and Churchill was particularly keen on capturing Rome swiftly. The Anzio operation had become necessary because the Allied drive up the Italian peninsula had ground to a halt in the autumn of 1943 some 100 miles south of Rome, in front of a series of heavily fortified positions that stretched the width of Italy. Closest to Naples was the Barbara Line, which ran along a ridge between the Volturno and Garigliano rivers and then over the southern Apennine peaks to the Trigno River. This line, in turn, was backed up by the Bernhardt Line, which took advantage of a narrow defile known as the Mignano Gap. Twelve miles farther north was the best known of the lines: the Gustav Line, a series of bunkers, gun emplacements and other fortifications constructed by Organization Todt (started by the late German munitions minister Fritz Todt, it was involved in large building projects). The Gustav Line began just north of where the Garigliano River empties into the Tyrrhenian Sea and ran to the mouth of the Sangro River on the Adriatic side.  Forcing a breach into the Liri Valley, the mouth of which was guarded by the heights of Monte Cassino and Monte Majo, was the main task of General Mark Clark and the Allied Fifth Army. In addition to taking the heights, the Fifth Army would also have to cross the swollen Rapido and Garigliano rivers while under fire. Like a seductive siren, the lure of the Liri Valley was more than Allied planners could ignore. Through this long, flat plain, flanked by towering peaks, stretched Highway 6, the main north-south road to Rome. The Germans, who could also read maps, had fortified nearly every key point in the valley and were ready to make the Allies pay in blood for every inch--should they be so foolish as to try running the gantlet.  Lt. Gen. Mark W. Clark Clark needed to quickly and successfully stage a major offensive operation through some of Italy's most challenging terrain and against entrenched German forces in order for his troops even to be in a position to assist the amphibious force far behind enemy lines. And victories in Italy in 1943 had been anything but quick. In October the British and Americans had made a successful, but costly, crossing of the Volturno River in front of the Barbara Line. The Germans put up token resistance as they carefully withdrew from the Barbara to better positions in the Bernhardt and Gustav lines. The British reached the Garigliano on November 2, but bad weather and German determination stopped the advance.  In November and December 1943, as the Brits had battled their way across the Sangro and Moro rivers to the north, the U.S. Fifth Army ran into formidable German forces dug in along the Bernhardt Line. A month of hard fighting resulted in the Allies' edging closer to the Liri Valley, but it cost the lives of many fine soldiers.
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I am pretty sure that pics 1 and 2 are of the model the more I think about it. Probably took it outside or maybe a blue screen with a fish-eye lens. A lot of work to build that model
If you have a few minutes check out the web page they have a little bit of everything there.
Regards
alfa6 ;>}
"The True Believer," though, is not solely concerned with the rise of Nazi Germany, but with the origination of all mass movements, creative or destructive. And more importantly, it is concerned with the main ingredient of such movements, the frustrated individual. The book probes into the psychology of the frustrated and dissatisfied, those who would eagerly sacrifice themselves for any cause that might give their meaningless lives some sense of significance. The alienated seek to lose themselves in these movements by adopting those fanatical attitudes that are, according to Hoffer, fundamentally "a flight from the self."
Which would segue into Hanoi Jane aka Ho's Ho:
The Holzers present a clear indictment of Fonda for her six broadcasts from Hanoi for our enemy during time of war, and six recorded there for rebroadcast after her departure.
Albuquerque's 50,000-watt blowtorch KKOB 770 AM today had open phones for two hours for all those "veterans who urged me [says Fonda] to do this".
No veteran responded in the affirmative; many veterans called in to denounce the "traitor bitch"--recalling their tours under that shadow.
One recalled a fellow veteran who committed suicide in 1984 due in large part to the "reception we received thanks to her".
Leavenworth would be light karma for the Fondas and Kerrys.
Oh, meant to respond to this earlier. LOL
BTT!!!!!
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