The Eighth Army trudged into Gessapolina, a hilltop hamlet on Italy's Adriatic flank. War had wrecked the terraced cluster of dwellings, scattered their brick walls, shattered their oaken rafters. Through the debris, toward Allied soldiers gathered at the municipal piazza hurried five Italians. One of them paused to wash his hands in the piazza's muddy fountain. Another cried out:
"Mister officer, mister officer! Look! Two Germans dead!"
Dog Tags, Two. The speaker thrust out a brown German field cap, its peak splashed with blood, its swastika and flying eagle half-covered with mud. "Due Tedeschi morti!" he repeated, then said in English: "We...
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