Closing the Ring (85 page)

But the Hermann Goering Division and elements of others, delayed though they were by damaging attacks from the air, got to Valmontone first. The single American division sent by General Clark was stopped short of it and the escape road remained open. That was very unfortunate.

The enemy in the South were in full retreat, and the Allied Air did its utmost to impede movement and break up concentrations. Obstinate rearguards frequently checked our pursuing forces, and their retirement did not degenerate into a rout. The IId United States Corps moved on Priverno, the
French to Ceccano, while the Canadian Corps and British XIIIth Corps advanced up the valley to Frosinone and the Xth Corps up the road to Avezzano. The three American divisions dispatched from the Anzio breach towards Velletri and the Alban Hills, later reinforced by a fourth, the 36th, had met very stiff resistance, and for three days could make no ground. They got ready to renew the attack on Valmontone, which Kesselring had been reinforcing with any troops he could find that were fit to fight. However, a brilliant stroke by the 36th United States Division must have disconcerted him. They had been fighting hard at the southwest corner of the Alban Hills. On the night of May 30, they found that the Germans had left a commanding height unguarded. Their infantry moved forward in close columns, and occupied their key points. Within twenty-four hours the whole 36th Division was firmly established and the last German defence line south of Rome penetrated.

General Alexander to Prime Minister
    30 May 44

Thank you for your telegram.

Our serviceable tank strength is about two thousand.

You will see in my Operation Order that my aim is to destroy German Army in the field.

Except for the use of roads through Rome, battle formations are not to go into the city. Further, I am considering the advisability of only mentioning the capture of Rome in my military communiqué among inhabited localities taken by my armies in their stride from day to day. I shall appreciate your advice in this matter.

You will have heard of fresh enemy divisions which are on their way here. I hope our tap will not be turned off too soon, as it was before, and prevent us from gaining full fruits of our present advantageous position.

Prime Minister to General Alexander
    31 May 44

I entirely agree with your operational intention, and trust you will execute it.

The capture of Rome is a vast, world-wide event, and should not be minimised. I hope that British as well as Americans will enter the city simultaneously. I would not lump it in with other towns
taken on the same day. Nevertheless, as you rightly state, the destruction of the German Army in the field gives us Rome and the rest thrown in.

How lucky it was that we stood up to our United States Chiefs of Staff friends and refused to deny you the full exploitation of this battle! I will support you in obtaining the first priority in everything you need to achieve this glorious victory. I am sure the American Chiefs of Staff would now feel this was a bad moment to pull out of the battle or in any way weaken its force for the sake of other operations of an amphibious character, which may very soon take their place in the van of our ideas.

All good luck.

*  *  * *  *

The success of the 36th United States Division did not bear immediate fruit. The enemy hung on desperately both in the Alban Hills and at Valmontone, although the retreat of most of their army had now been deflected northward towards Avezzano and Arsoli, where they were hunted by the Xth and
XIIIth British Corps and the aircraft of the Tactical Air Force. Unhappily, the mountainous country stopped us from using our great strength in armour, which otherwise could have been employed to much advantage.

On June 2, the IId United States Corps captured Valmontone and drove westward. That night German resistance broke, and next day the VIth United States Corps in the Alban Hills, with the British 1st and 5th Divisions on its left, pressed on towards Rome. The IId American Corps led them by a short head. They found the bridges mostly intact, and at 7.15
P.M
. on June 4 the head of their 88th Division entered the Piazza Venezia, in the heart of the capital.

On June 9, I sent the congratulations of the War Cabinet to all concerned, and also the following personal telegram to Alexander:

Prime Minister to General Alexander
    9 June 44

To these tributes I venture to add my own. We have always been in agreement that the main object was the destruction of the enemy’s armed force. It certainly seems that the position which your armies occupy and the superiority they enjoy in the air and in armour give favourable opportunities by further rapid action of inflicting more heavy losses on Kesselring’s disordered army, so that their retreat to the north may cost them dear.

We shall be glad if you will compliment on our behalf the leaders and the troops of the United States, of Britain, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, India, of France, Poland, and Italy, who have distinguished themselves from one end of the line to the other.

We share your hopes for future success in the relentless pursuit and cutting off of the beaten enemy.

*  *  * *  *

I had kept Stalin fully informed from time to time of the progress of these operations, and on June 5, when other things were also going on, sent him our good tidings.

Prime Minister to Premier Stalin
    5 June 44

You will have been pleased to learn of the Allied entry into Rome. What we have always regarded as more important is the
cutting-off of as many enemy divisions as possible. General Alexander is now ordering strong armoured forces northward on Terni, which should largely complete the cutting-off of all the divisions which were sent by Hitler to fight south of Rome. Although the amphibious landing at Anzio and Nettuno did not immediately fructify as I had hoped when it was planned, it was a correct strategic move, and brought its reward in the end. First, it drew ten divisions from the following places: one from France, one from Hungary, four from Yugoslavia and Istria, one from Denmark, and three from North Italy. Secondly, it brought on a defensive battle for us in which, though we lost about twenty-five thousand men, the Germans were repulsed and much of the fighting strength of their divisions broken, with a loss of about thirty thousand men. Finally, the Anzio landing has made possible the kind of movement for which it was originally planned, only on a far larger scale. General Alexander is concentrating every effort now on entrapping the divisions south of Rome. Several have retreated into the mountains, leaving a great deal of their heavy weapons behind, but we hope for a very good round-up of prisoners and material. As soon as this is over, we shall decide how best to use our armies in Italy to support the main adventure. Poles, British, Free French, and Americans have all broken or beaten in frontal attack the German troops opposite them, and there are various important options which will soon have to be considered.

2. I have just returned from two days at Eisenhower’s Headquarters watching the troops embark [for Normandy]. The difficulties of getting proper weather conditions are very great, especially as we have to consider the fullest employment of the air, naval, and ground forces in relation to tides, waves, fog, and cloud. With great regret General Eisenhower was forced to postpone for one night, but the weather forecast has undergone a most favourable change and tonight we go. We are using five thousand ships, and have available eleven thousand fully mounted aircraft.

From many quarters came messages of warm congratulation. I even got a pat from the Bear.

Marshal Stalin to Prime Minister
    5 June 44

I congratulate you on the great victory of the Allied Anglo-American forces—the taking of Rome. This news has been greeted in the Soviet Union with great satisfaction.

*  *  * *  *

Stalin had cause to be in a good mood, for things were going well with him. The scale of the Russian struggle far exceeded the operations with which my account has hitherto been concerned, and formed of course the foundation upon which the British and American Armies approached the climax of the war. The Russians had given their enemy little time to recover from their severe reverses of the early winter of 1943. In mid-January their attacks on the hundred-and-twenty-mile front from Lake Ilmen to Leningrad had pierced the defences in front of the city. Farther south, by the end of February, the Germans had been driven back to the shores of Lake Peipus. Leningrad was freed once and for all, and the Russians stood on the borders of the Baltic States.

Successful Russian attacks west of Kiev had forced the Germans back towards the old Polish frontier. The whole southern front was aflame and the German line deeply penetrated at many points. One great pocket of surrounded Germans was left behind at Kersun, from which few escaped.

Throughout March the Russians pressed their advantage all along the line and in the air. From Gomel to the Black Sea the invaders were in full retreat, which did not end until they had been thrust across the Dniester, back into Rumania and Poland. Then the spring thaw brought them a short respite. In the Crimea however operations were still possible. After three days’ fighting, the Russians broke through the Perekop Neck on April 11, joined hands with others that had crossed at Kerch, and set about destroying the Seventeenth German Army and regaining Sebastopol.

The situation of Hitler’s armies at the end of May was forlorn. His two hundred divisions on the Eastern Front could not hope to withstand the Russian flood when it was again released. Everywhere he was faced with imminent disaster. Now was the time for him to decide how to regroup his forces, where they should withdraw and where hold. But instead his orders were for them all to stand and fight it out. There was to be no withdrawal, anywhere. The German armies were thus condemned to be broken on all three fronts.

¹
Goums: native Moroccan troops, under French officers and N.C.O.s, highly skilled in mountain warfare. They numbered about 12,000.

18
On the Eve

The King Presides at a Final Conference, May
15___
Plenty of Vehicles for the Expedition___Dinner with General Montgomery, May
19___
Transport for the Leclerc Division___D-Day Tension Grows___I Arrange to Witness the Naval Bombardment Afloat___The King Wishes to Come Too___His Majesty’s Letters to Me of May
31___
A Discussion in the Map Room, June
1___
His Majesty’s Letter of June
2___
A General Comment___The Weather Begins to Cause Anxiety___Mr. Bevin and I Watch Embarkations at Portsmouth and in the Solent___Worse News About the Weather___Field-Marshal Smuts’ Reminiscences___Eisenhower’s Decision at
4.15
a.m. June
4
to Postpone for Twenty-Four Hours___A Letter from the President___My Reply, June
4___
Mr. Eden Arrives with General de Gaulle___His Bristling Mood___Eisenhower’s Final Decision at
4
a.m. on June
5:
the Die Is Cast___The Bad Weather Deceives the Germans___The Armada at Sea___The Supreme Climax of the War.

O
N
M
ONDAY
, M
AY
15, three weeks before D-Day, we held a final conference in London at Montgomery’s Headquarters in St. Paul’s School. The King, Field-Marshal Smuts, the British Chiefs of Staff, the Commanders of the expedition, and many of their principal Staff officers were present. On the stage was a map of the Normandy beaches and the immediate hinterland, set at a slope so that the audience could see it clearly, and so constructed that the high officers explaining the plan of operations could walk about and point out the landmarks.

General Eisenhower opened the proceedings, and the torenoon session closed with an address by His Majesty. I, too, spoke and in the course of my remarks I said, “I am hardening on this operation.” General Eisenhower in his book
¹
has taken this to mean that in the past I had been against the cross-Channel operation, but this is not correct. If the reader will look back to
Chapter 16
, page 590, he will see that I wrote these very words to General Marshall on March 11, and explained that I used them “in the sense of wishing to strike if humanly possible, even if the limiting conditions we laid down are not exactly fulfilled.” Montgomery then took the stage and made an impressive speech.