The Regimental Day of the 1st Battalion The King's Shropshire Light Infantry, Anzio Day, was chosen to mark the grueling four months battle at Anzio in 1944 before the allied breakout to crush the enemy in Italy.

Anzio and its Surroundings

Anzio, is situated on the west coast of Italy with Rome only a few miles away to the north; it was decided that this small town was the best place to put a fighting force ashore which would outflank the axis powers, and thus break the deadlock that paralysed the Italian front in the latter half of 1943. To this effect a British American force, consisting of a division apiece was landed upon the beaches of Anzio on January 22nd in the early hours of the morning.

The Allied Landings - 22 February 1944

Amongst the first troops ashore was the 1st Bn King's Shropshire Light Infantry.  The landings were carried out so flawlessly and German resistance was so light that British and American units gained their first day's objectives by noon, moving three to four miles inland by nightfall.

Expanding the Beachhead - 01 February 1944

The idea for an amphibious operation near Rome had originated in late October 1943, when it became obvious that the Germans were going to fight for the entire peninsula rather than withdraw to northern Italy. The Allied advance following the Salerno invasion was proving so arduous, due to poor weather, rough terrain, and stiffening resistance, that General Dwight D. Eisenhower pessimistically told the Anglo-American Combined Chiefs of Staff that there would be very hard and bitter fighting before the Allies could hope to reach Rome.  As a result, Allied planners were looking for ways to break out of the costly struggle for each ridge and valley, which was consuming enormous numbers of men and scarce supplies.

The operations at Anzio were to be supported by a general 15th Army Group offensive.  One week before the Anzio assault, the Fifth Army, consisting of the U.S. II Corps, the British 10 Corps, and the French Expeditionary Corps, would launch a massive offensive on the Gustav Line, cross the Garigliano and Rapido Rivers, strike the German Tenth Army under Lt. Gen. Heinrich van Vietinghoff in the area of Cassino, breach the enemy line there, push up the Liri valley, and link up with the forces at Anzio for the drive on Rome.  Meanwhile, Allied, British, and Commonwealth forces of the Eighth Army were ordered to break through on the Adriatic front or at least tie down German forces to prevent their transfer to the Anzio area.

After the landings and an uncertain lull for two days, while corps command hesitated to push forward, thus enabling the enemy to seal off the beach-head, the KSLI found itself involved in heavy fighting as the allies endeavored to extend the front line beyond the beaches.  OKW, Kesselring, and Brig. Gen. Siegfried Westphal, Kesselring's chief of staff, were astonished that the Anzio forces had not exploited their unopposed landing with an immediate thrust into the virtually undefended Alban Hills on 23-24 January.  As Westphal later recounted, "there were no significant German units between Anzio and Rome", and he speculated that an imaginative, bold strike by enterprising forces could easily have penetrated into the interior or sped straight up Highways 6 and 7 to Rome.  Instead, Westphal recalled, the "enemy forces lost time and hesitated".  As the Germans later discovered, General Lucas was neither bold nor imaginative, and he erred repeatedly on the side of caution, to the increasing chagrin of both Alexander and Clark.

"Anzio Harbor Under German Bombardment" by Edward A. Reep.

The Germans had not been idle during the week after the Anzio landing.  The German Armed Forces High Command (OKW) in Berlin was surprised at the location of the landing and the efficiency with which it was carried out.  Although they had considered such an attack probable for some time and had made preliminary plans for meeting it, Kesselring and his local commanders were powerless to repel the invasion immediately because of the lack of adequate reserves.  Nevertheless, German reaction to the Anzio landing was swift and ultimately would prove far more powerful than anything the Allies had anticipated.

Upon receiving word of the landings, Kesselring immediately dispatched elements of the 4th Parachute and Hermann Goering Divisions south from the Rome area, to defend the roads leading north from the Alban Hills.  Within the next twenty-four hours Hitler dispatched other units to Italy from Yugoslavia, France, and Germany to reinforce elements of the 3rd Panzer Grenadier and 71st Infantry Divisions that were already moving into the Anzio area.  By the end of D-day, thousands of German troops were converging on Anzio, despite delays caused by Allied air attacks.

The German counterattack opened with an artillery barrage on 3-4 February, followed by armoured and Infantry assaults which smashed into the partially prepared British 1st Division defences in the Campoleone salient.  The KSLI was in the thick of the fighting when, trapped at the head of an exposed salient in the line, companies desperately held their position before a withdrawal in contact was skillfully performed in the most straightened circumstances, leaving the Shropshire men badly mauled but intact as a fighting force.  Furthermore, it is no small credit to them that during this terrible battle, the carrier platoon succeeded in liberating some three hundred allied prisoners from enemy hands. 

The Germans Pound Anzio

Although the salient was eliminated, the Germans failed to break the Allied line.  The undulating and soggy Albano Road area was just as inhospitable to German armour and Infantry, as it had been to Allied forces the week before.  However, the critical situation the Germans created in the Allied centre convinced Lucas to form a beachhead defence line running from the Moletta River in the north, through the fields of the central sector, to the Mussolini Canal in the south.  He issued orders to all Allied troops that this was the final line of resistance to be held at all costs—the shallow beachhead precluded any further retreat.

The terrain around Anzio

Spurred by the elimination of the Campoleone salient, the Germans continued their counterattack on 16 February, by moving down the Anzio-Albano Road on a four-mile front.  However, the attack was eventually repelled.  Losses were high on both sides.  The Germans could ill afford the loss of the 5,389 men killed, wounded, and missing during their five-day counterattack.  Enemy troop morale plummeted, and many units lost their offensive capability.  The 65th Infantry Division's combat strength had dropped to 673 effectives by 23 February and one regiment, of the 715th Motorized Infantry Division, numbered fewer than 185 men.  Allied casualties numbered some 3,496 killed, wounded, or missing in addition to 1,637 non-battle casualties from trench foot, exposure, and combat exhaustion.  Allied commanders at Anzio often claimed that losses would have been lower if soldiers were periodically rotated away from the lines, but replacements simply were not available.  All 96,401 Allied soldiers were required to hold the 35-mile perimeter against an estimated ten German divisions in the Fourteenth Army, totalling 120,000 men by 12 February.

Digging in at Anzio - The Anzio Ritz

Despite the fact that their drive to eliminate the Anzio beachhead with an attack down the Albano Road had failed, the Germans resumed the offensive on 29 February.  This time their main effort was directed against the U.S. 3d Division holding the Cisterna sector of the Allied beachhead.  The LXXVI Panzer Corps, consisting of the 114th Light Infantry, 362rd Infantry, 26th Panzer, and Hermann Goering Divisions, began a drive to breach the outer beachhead defenses from Carano to Isola Bella, which, if successful, would be exploited by the 29th Panzer Grenadier Division - all the way to Nettuno and Anzio. The Americans, however, had anticipated this move.  General Truscott, who had replaced Lucas as VI Corps commander on 23 February, had reinforced the line with additional artillery.  Furthermore, he made certain that each unit had at least one battalion in reserve, with additional reinforcements available at the corps level.

At midnight, 28 February, German artillery signaled the commencement of the new attack.  But VI Corps and 3rd Division artillery responded in mass, returning twenty shells for each one fired by the Germans, expending 66,000 rounds on 29 February alone.  When the enemy Infantry advanced at dawn at a half-dozen points along the 3d Division front, only one attack made any progress, penetrating 800 yards northeast of Carano before being halted with heavy losses.  The other attacks fared less well amid a hail of American artillery and mortar fire.  Attacking on too broad a front, the Germans lacked the overwhelming strength needed to break through anywhere and by the end of the day they had barely dented the American line.  Over the next several days, the well-entrenched Americans, supported by closely coordinated artillery, armour, and air support, shattered subsequent German attacks.  Even though the 7th and 15th Infantry regiments and the 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion often were hard pressed and suffered heavy losses, between 1 and 4 March at the hands of the 715th and the 16th SS Panzer Grenadier Divisions, all three units held their positions and beat back successive enemy assaults. The Germans continued to seek a breakthrough, but their efforts gradually weakened.  Mackensen realized that the Fourteenth Army had spent itself in a costly and futile offensive after a last German assault failed on 4 March.

The final five-day German counterattack cost 3,500 men killed, wounded and missing, plus thirty tanks destroyed.  It had failed to eliminate the beachhead and the 3rd Division counterattacks quickly reclaimed all previously lost territory.  From then, the Germans went over to the defensive, clearly incapable of mounting any further serious offensive action.

After six weeks of continuous bombing, shelling, and fighting, the men of the VI Corps were as exhausted as their German adversaries.  Following the collapse of the final enemy drive on 4 March, a three-month lull began.  During this time both armies limited their operations to defending the positions they held at the beginning of March, while they conducted limited counterattacks and raids and marked time until the renewal of offensive operations on the southern front.  Although the reinforced Fourteenth Army, totaling 135,698 troops by 15 March, considered another offensive, plans were shelved in early April in favour of conserving troop strength to counter an expected Allied spring offensive.

Also sharing the rigours of Anzio were the men of the 1st and 9th Battalions, King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, who came as part of allied reinforcements to the beleaguered forces prior to the break-out, which was completed on 25th May, four months after the initial landings.