The Allied trudge up the Italian boot had fallen behind schedule. Skillful, vicious delaying tactics had won time enough for the Germans to build a strong defense line across the peninsula at its narrowest (80 miles) point between Naples and Rome. Against that formidable barricade the British and U.S. armies lunged last week.
It was a bruising fight against terrain as well as pillboxes, snipers' nests, mined roads, concealed mortars' and artillery. The Apennine spine of Italy scatters rough, irregular ribs in all directions. Rain-flooded rivers gouge the land. Perched on heights above the valley-bottom roads, the Germans could give...
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