Publisher's Synopsis
Until the winter of 1944 Anzio was an insignificant Mediterranean port thirty miles south of Rome. It entered into legend as the focus of a dogged Allied amphibious landing whose ultimate goal was the liberation of the Eternal City.;In January 1944, access to Rome was being stoutly defended by the Germans along the Gustav Line and at Monte Cassino, where the Fifth and Eighth Armies could make little headway. Arriving by sea at Anzio, armed with surprise, the Allied forces hoped to cut off the supply lines to these defensive bastions, and thence to move on Rome herself.;This is the full, unadulterated story of that campaign, Operation Shingle - dramatic, moving and definitive. The author pulls no punches in its description of misjudgement and vacillation at the highest levels, and of their tragic consequences at the beachhead; few reputations emerge unscathed - even Churchill's - and Allied triumph, when it ultimately comes, comes all too tarnished.;Lieutenant-Colonel Carlo D'Este retired from the US Army in 1978 to write full-time. His previous books are "Decision in Normandy: the Unwritten Story of Montgomery" and "The Allied Campaign and Bitter Victory: the Battle for Sicily 1943".
