DECEMBER 3, 1943
MONTE LA DIFENSA, ITALY
3:00 A.M.
The Allies attack the soft underbelly.
And it isn’t soft at all.
Six hundred commandos of the First Special Service Force climb hand over hand up a towering limestone cliff one hundred miles south of Rome. Winter has come early. Faces are blackened by shoe polish. The orders are clear: Speak only in whispers. Better not to speak at all.
And don’t look down.
Each American and Canadian on this wall tonight has prepared himself for death or capture, burning all personal letters and wearing no identification but dog tags. Rifles, heavy packs laden with ammunition and grenades, twelve-inch V-42 combat daggers sheathed to each hip, combat boots instead of climbing shoes.
The Forcemen are “lumberjacks, forest rangers, hunters, Northwoodsmen, game wardens, prospectors, and explorers,” in the words of Lieutenant Colonel Robert Frederick’s original recruiting poster. Many of the volunteers were already in the military, given the choice between joining this new unit or spending the war in a stockade. One year training in the Montana wilderness has molded this American and Canadian band into an elite fighting force capable of waging war in the most extreme conditions.
Frederick is a thirty-six-year-old West Point graduate who spent the early part of the war as a glorified clerk with a reputation for extreme personal fitness. No one was more surprised than the colonel when General Dwight Eisenhower ordered him away from desk duty to build an irregular fighting force. In typically nonchalant fashion, the lean, dogmatic Frederick made his first parachute jump in slippers.* And while his small stature and meticulous attention to detail make the colonel a different breed from the roughnecks he recruited to the Forcemen, their devotion is complete.
In time, even Winston Churchill will praise Frederick’s greatness.
But first there is the matter of capturing this peak known as Monte la Difensa.
Spread out across the rock face directly below the German position, fingers numb and muscles exhausted, these “special forces” scramble upward in absolute silence.
Winston Churchill’s “soft underbelly” theory appears correct.
But only for a short while.
The Allies are not fighting the Italian army, as Churchill so dearly hoped after the British routed them in Egypt. Italy is effectively out of the war, having ousted the Fascist regime of Benito Mussolini in July. But the German army has filled that void, rushing troops to the Italian Peninsula. The fighting is a bloodbath.
Operation Baytown, as the September 3, 1943, Allied invasion of Italy is known, saw British troops face token resistance as they crossed the Strait of Messina from the newly conquered Sicily to the Italian mainland. Led by General Sir Bernard Law Montgomery, hero of El Alamein, the British Eighth Army made landfall and sped north, virtually unopposed.
Six days later, the U.S. Fifth Army landed three hundred miles north at the port of Salerno. Theirs was a far more daunting German welcome. The Fifth was almost thrown back into the sea. But after two weeks of intense fighting, and substantial help from Montgomery’s advancing British Army, the Americans finally moved northward up the Italian boot.
The Fifth Army is led by General Mark Clark. At forty-seven, the rangy, trim Clark is America’s youngest two-star general. There is no love lost between Clark and his compatriot, the renegade genius Patton, the victor on Sicily. Patton is a patriot who would never root for Clark to fail here in Italy. It would be enough satisfaction if Clark were to get bogged down in a stalemate. Yet there is a definite rivalry between the two. Patton believes Clark lacks the stomach great generals need to dominate the battlefield, a notion Clark is trying very hard to prove wrong.
Few men can match Patton for daring, but Clark is every bit Patton’s equal in vainglorious self-promotion. Photographers are allowed to take Clark’s picture only from the left, which he considers his best side.
Clark’s German opponent is the brilliant Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, commander of the Tenth Army. At fifty-seven, this career soldier has commanded forces in Poland, France, Russia, and the Battle of Britain. He is one of the most popular generals on either side, nicknamed “Uncle Albert” by his troops and praised for wily tactical genius by his Allied opponents.
Superior manpower and supplies favor General Clark and the Allies. Yet Kesselring has terrain and the elements on his side. Realizing Germany lacks the resources to wage war the length of the Italian Peninsula, Adolf Hitler originally ordered a complete withdrawal from all but the upper regions of the country. The Führer decreed that the Wehrmacht would draw their defensive line north of Rome.
Kesselring disagreed. He argued that the mountainous terrain south of the Italian capital is perfect for waging a defensive war. The field marshal promised Hitler that a small number of German troops could effectively tie up a much larger Allied force for at least nine months. Kesselring is not often wrong, a tactician every bit the equal of fellow field marshal Erwin Rommel.
Hitler relented.
Kesselring’s confidence is based on simple fact: the Italian Peninsula is just 150 miles wide, narrow enough for a savvy commander to establish defensive positions across its width. The Barbara Line is the name given to the first of Kesselring’s strongpoints. The steep terrain offers no place for tank warfare. Allied transportation and troop movement must go through the low valleys. By placing artillery atop mountain summits, Kesselring also controls the bottomland in between. Every Allied movement is met with devastating bombardment.
But the Barbara Line can only hold so long.
This is also a part of Kesselring’s strategy.
Just when the Barbara Line is sure to crumble, Kesselring orders his men to fall back to a second series of peaks. The soldiers become construction workers, wielding crowbars, sledgehammers, and explosives to carve fortifications and caves out of solid rock to form a string of independent and interlocking fortresses across the Italian mountaintops.
This new position is known as the Winter Line.
And Monte la Difensa is the vital link in this chain of peaks.
Yet winter is coming. Severe rains are turning rural dirt roads into quagmires. Muddy rivers rage, impassable. Nonetheless, beginning on November 5, American troops attack Monte la Difensa as British troops struggle up the fortified slopes of a parallel peak nearby named Monte Camino.
Allied failure is total. Kesselring has placed the 15th Panzergrenadier Division atop Monte la Difensa. Once known as the 15th Panzer Division, these hardened soldiers were part of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s vaunted Afrika Korps. For twelve days the 15th Panzergrenadier Division slaughter the Fifth Army. Allied corpses line the muddy forest paths of Monte la Difensa, each man a victim of Kesselring’s brilliant strategy.
But Monte la Difensa must be taken. It is the “gateway to Rome” for Allied war planners, blocking any advance toward the Italian capital. Capturing the Eternal City will not imply that the Allies have conquered all of Italy, but the symbolic significance of occupying the capital city of an Axis power cannot be understated.
In the minds of many, particularly British prime minister Winston Churchill, Rome is the ideal location to enjoy Christmas dinner.
On November 22, 1943, a desperate General Clark orders the highly trained yet untried First Special Service Force to capture la Difensa. On paper, conquest looks impossible. The Germans are too entrenched, too sophisticated, and too ready, weapons zeroed in on the thin network of trails that constitute the only obvious path to the summit. Lethal cross fire awaits any army foolish enough to enter that killing zone.
Which is why the Forcemen now climb the opposite side of the mountain.