The Italian fronts were dug in and stabilized. It was a return to trench warfare, with modern modificationsa stalemate that U.S. military professionals once vowed they would never tolerate again. Crack German resistance, plus a shortage of Allied troops, had made a mock of their vow. Life behind the fronts had settled into the jumbled, fantastic pattern of 1917-19.
Anzio: the Pawns. The little town leaned down to the harbor in a frozen cascade of wreckage. German shells still battered it and geysered around busy harbor craft shuttling between ships and shore. Soldiers lived in holes in the ground, making the best...