Books: Nine-Day Nightmare

• Share

(2 of 2)

Eventually, the big naval guns in the hay decided the battle, knocking out one German emplacement after another. Heroism in the hills helped. Under heavy fire, an American sergeant maneuvered his antitank gun to the top of a ridge, demolished six tanks in half an hour. A British major given up for lost behind enemy lines reappeared with an enemy halftrack in tow, plus an 88-mm. gun and a dozen prisoners. A fiery British commando lieutenant colonel named Jack Churchill,* waving a sword in one hand, took 30 prisoners singlehanded. When an admiring if puzzled superior asked why the sword, Churchill replied: "In my opinion, any officer who goes into action without a sword is improperly dressed."

The price of victory was high: 7,811 Allied casualties. Worse, the defense at Salerno revitalized the Germans, delighting Hitler and encouraging him to pour more German troops into Italy. What was expected to be a triumphal march north through a beaten Italy became a slogging, tortuous, year-long campaign that repeatedly stalled and finally sputtered to a stop just north of Florence, cost 350,000 Allied lives before it was over.