Hal Jespersen's Italian Campaign Trip, October 2022

This is a continuation of Hal’s report on his trip to Italy for a tour of the World War II Italian Campaign, hosted by Stephen Ambrose Historical Tours.

This report is broken into four pages.

1. Pre-tour arrival in Italy
2. Sicily Campaign
3. Italian Campaign: Salerno to Sorrento
4. Italian Campaign: Winter Line and Anzio to Rome (this page)

Sunday, October 23 — San Pietro and Cassino

We’re back on the road with a brand new, bigger bus, one that sports a tiny bathroom and an espresso machine! We drove north for almost two hours mostly on autostrade (after we left the peninsula) through Naples to the small town of San Pietro Infine. We crossed the historic Volturno River, but that was announced after it was too late to notice. Marty then talked about advancing from the Volturno Line to the Barbera Line to the Gustav Line. We had a rest stop on the highway and it had an outstanding store and café: food (great panini), groceries, wine, clothes, books, toys. If only I had had the foresight to buy a sandwich there to bypass the delicatessen we ate at for lunch.

We drove through Mignano Pass on old highway 6, but in the first adverse weather of the trip, it was of foggy, so visibility of the surrounding hills—Monte Lungo and Monte Sammucro—was poor. We stopped at an Italian cemetery, Sacrario militare italiano di Montelungo, and had a lengthy discussion of tanks, wartime production, strategic bombing, Italian resistance, and even the proposed invasions of Japan. They had a number of light artillery pieces on display and an M10 Gun Motor Carriage, a Sherman Firefly turret, and a decrepit Sherman, which was unidentified but looked like an M4A2 to me. We oddly saw no graves or monuments from where we stood.

We arrived at the new city of San Pietro Infine and drove up the hill to the site of the wartime village, which dates to 1000 AD, but is now essentially ruins. Some of us climbed numerous rough steps to the church overlooking everything, quite a workout. It’s in the process of restoration. Up top the low clouds had burned off and I was able to get a good photo looking south of Monte Rotundo (left) and Monte Lungo (right). Back down the hill is a small museum, which focuses on the wartime destruction that began December 17, 1943, and describes how the civilians retreated into caves. They show the 1944 John Huston film about San Pietro, which Marty had sent us last night on YouTube as homework for today.

Lunch was nearby at a little deli that specializes in mozzarella and although I had a moderately good broccoli and sausage sandwich, there was a lot of griping in our group. There was a nice gatto visiting who was hungry enough to eat cookies as well as some sausage pieces from my sandwich.

Next we went to the village of Sant'Angelo In Theodice, where there is a Peace Bell near a bridge over the Gari River; GIs called this the Rapido, although that is the name of a tributary that joins east of the town of Cassino. A fierce battle was fought about a half mile north of here in Sant’Angelo where the 36th ID attempted to cross January 20–22, 1944, but called it off after over 1000 casualties. (We couldn’t reach that spot because our bus is too tall to get by an underpass.) At this particular spot the 34th ID feinted an attack. The point of all this was to distract from Operation Shingle, the Anzio landings, which started the same day.

Next was the Commonwealth War Cemetery of Cassino where all the British Commonwealth troops are interred. A lovely spot, perfectly maintained. I found that these headstones are carved more elaborately with more information than those in US cemeteries. Just a few minutes away is the Best Western Hotel Rocco. Driving through this area leave me with the impression that Cassino and its environs are prosperous; this could be because the town was completely obliterated during the campaign. Unfortunately, the hotel is a bit remote from any downtown walking exploration. Dinner in the hotel again, a pasta with mushrooms and peas and a slice of veal roast stuffed with spinach. The house wine, served chilled for some reason, was a decent Montepulciano d’Abruzzo.

Monday, October 24 — Cassino to Nettuno

We boarded the bus in heavy fog. Our first stop is the Polish cemetery. They were one of the fourteen nationalities fighting on the Allied side and were the primary force in the fourth and final, successful battle of Cassino in May 1944 (Operation Diadem). We navigated some serious switchbacks up the mountain and at about 1200 feet we rose above the clouds to bright sunshine, sort of like being in an airplane and seeing the cloud layer below like a field of snow. The cemetery, established in 1959, is beautiful, kept in immaculate condition by the Polish government. We stopped at the large grave of Gen. Anders, the commander of the Polish II Corps, and discussed a number of topics regarding Poland in the war.

The Benedictine Abbey is at 1710 feet. It was built by St Benedict starting in 529 on the site of a Roman temple to Apollo. It was destroyed on four occasions, so I don’t feel as guilty about the fourth, when the USAAF bombed it to rubble on February 15, 1944. We had an excellent tour guide named Jada and she led us through a replica of the St Martin chapel, the St Benedict room, the ancient part that was mostly undamaged, the cloister of benefactors, the super-ornate basilica (decorated in 17th century style). In the latter is a sepulcher in which there are the remains of St Benny (the patron saint of Europe)and his sister, St Scholastica (the patron saint of high school seniors), which survived all four destructions. Jada told me that the German commander evacuated many of the artworks in October before the bombing and that all were later returned. About 90% of the building had to be rebuilt. There’s a gift shop with tchotchkes, wine, and some food. I was expecting indulgences.

We ate lunch at a small pizza-slice place in Cassino called Mamma Mia, which was excellent, the best lunch so far. Some of us stopped at another shop for gelato. The bus took us a couple of miles north to the village of Caira for another German military cemetery, this one laid out more conventionally with graves on a hill, although they were all three bodies per marker. There are 20,027 men interred here. We met a couple of German soldiers who were volunteering to conduct periodic maintenance. I didn’t tell them, but the Polish cemetery is much more elegant and better maintained.

I regret to say that we spent almost no time in the Cassino area discussing in detail any of the four significant battles that occurred here. Now that we’ve seen at least some of the terrain, we’ll need to go back to our history books to understand what happened.

We drove northwest on the autostrada, enjoying views of the massive Monte Cairo, which positively dwarfs Monte Cassino. After 90 minutes or so we were near the coast and entered the Pontine Marshes, crossing the Mussolini Canal and the Astura River. The US landing beaches for Operation Shingle were just to our left, but we can’t access them because the Italian Army has the entire area reserved as a base and firing ranges. Marty talked about the 504th PIR of the 82nd Airborne, which dropped in this area on January 22, 1944, and protected the right flank of the beachhead. They stayed through the big breakout in May, but that delay meant they could not drop as planned on D-Day.

Our hotel is in Nettuno, next door to Anzio, the Astura Palace Hotel. Dinner is hosted at a seafood restaurant nearby, Cacciatori. It was a multi course affair with mostly small plates. Quite good.

I was intrigued by excessive bird noise in the main square and took a little video of the sparrows swarming around:

Tuesday, October 25 — Anzio and Nettuno

We assembled a bit later today and went on a walking expedition from the hotel. We visited the site of John Lucas’s VI Corps headquarters, 13 Via Romano, the building over the basement HQ. Just a plaque on a modern store, where we got a brief overview of the landings and Lucas’s reluctance—for eight days—to repeat the problems of VI Corps in Salerno and move too quickly inland. Although the landings were essentially unopposed, in those eight days the Germans were able to amass eight divisions to surround the beachhead. Then to the Forte Sangallo, where there is a very modest museum of the Allied Landings, Museo dello Sbarco Alleato.

We bussed to the Yellow Beach of the X-Ray sector, where Darby’s Ranger Task Force came ashore. Marty described the landings, but we soon flew off on tangents about prostitution, penicillin shortages, homosexuality, the first, unexpurgated edition of the Patton diaries, and the execution of German general Anton Dostler. There was a solar eclipse underway as we stood there, but cloud cover hid the details from us; it never got very dark.

We had lunch on our own in Anzio and three of us selected a beachfront Portuguese seafood restaurant. I had a risotto with scampi, which was pretty good. We then drove around Anzio to the northwest to see the British sector of beaches called Peter. Marty spent some time describing the effects of the German 11-inch railroad gun, Anzio Annie. We didn’t leave the bus.

Our final stop of the day was the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery and Memorial in Nettuno. We were met by the local director of the American Battle Monuments Commission, Melanie, and our guide Luca. The grounds and facilities are immaculate and the markers (marble crosses or Stars of David) are cleaned twice a week. There was a good video about the campaigns in Sicily and up to Rome (north of Rome is handled by the Florence cemetery), highlighting some of the men and women killed, now buried here. There are 7,861 graves and 3,095 names in the memorial hall for those missing. Many of the dead were relocated back to the States based on family preferences. Although everything was very moving, the highlight for me was at the far end of the property where a building held that memorial hall as well as a giant map room. The memorial hall has a large ceiling artwork that depicts the sky—stars, planets, and constellation symbols—exactly as they were at 2 am, January 22, 1944, the start of the Anzio landings.

It was a short ride to the hotel, but it was interrupted by a flat tire on our bus. Our driver found a Gomme store nearby and got a new one installed pretty quickly. Dinner tonight is on our own; I enticed a group of six to a nearby pizzeria, which was very casual but really good, with another Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, and then we capped the evening with large portions of gelato.

Wednesday, October 26 — Anzio to Rome

We drove north toward Cisterna, crossed the west branch of the Mussolini Canal, and stopped at the Isola Farm. Here an infiltration operation on January 30 by Darby’s Rangers came up at dawn against prepared positions and failed to the tune of 311 killed and 450 captured. This failure did not encourage Lucas to be more aggressive. The scene is marked by two concrete columns with numerous bullet wounds. This stop included the most complete tactical discussion we’ve had in the entire trip.

We had to drive 12 miles back into town to retrieve a forgotten iPad at the hotel, but just as we arrived, it turned out the iPad wasn’t lost at all—the owner’s Apple “Find My” app updated very slowly. So we drove back north, this time to the city of Velletri for lunch. So we have completely bypassed the German counterattacks in February, although we got to hear one sentence about them after lunch. The lunch choices were the McDonald’s near the train station or walk up the hill to the main town square and find something. Six of us did the latter and we eventually found a pizzeria. The pies were Roman style and about 14 inches in diameter, so the meal was slow and a lot of calories were left on the table. We finally limped back to the bus, 30 minutes late.

Back on the bus, Marty described Operations Diadem (final push against the Gustav Line) and Buffalo (breakout from the Anzio beachhead) at a very high level. We drove up the slope of Colli Laziale (the Alban Hills) and through the extinct volcano caldera. Our destination is the Ardeatine Caves, just south of central Rome, the site of a mass killing of 352 civilians on March 24, 1944, by German troops in a ten-for-one reprisal for the Via Rasella attack in central Rome against the SS Police Regiment Bozen the previous day. The caves are actually part of an extensive system of catacombs, most of which are inaccessible. The Germans attempted to escape responsibility by collapsing the caves with the dead bodies, but they were excavated and moved to a large mausoleum next to the entrance.

It was a relatively short ride on the 4 miles to the Hotel Forum—near the Roman Forum, of course—our home for two nights. This was the first hotel on the trip in which the air conditioning worked well (or at all). There was a kerfuffle when a shady looking character boarded our bus as we were unloading the luggage, but our stalwart driver Camilo dragged him off and roughed him up a bit before Antonella got him to stand down. Our group farewell dinner was in a restaurant called Il Salotto Del Colosseo. We had Prosecco, appetizers, rigatoni carbonara, some dish with thinly sliced strips of beef and hard cheese, and a very dense cake for dessert. The wine was an interesting one from Nettuno, Cesanese del Piglia.

Thursday, October 27 — Rome

Our final full day in Italy started with breakfast in the hotel’s rooftop restaurant, with a lovely view of the Roman forum. We embarked on a long walking tour led by a local woman named Sofia. She gave us radio receivers so we could hear her, which would have otherwise been almost impossible in the noisy tourist areas. We walked through the Roman Forum and saw the Capitoline and Palatine Hills, the temple of the vestal virgins, and quite a few other ruins that I had trouble keeping track of. Outside, we passed by the giant Vittorino Memorial to King Victor Emanuel II, which Sofia described as wedding cake architecture and the “most useless memorial in Rome.” We also passed by the famous balcony where Mussolini used to address crowds.

We toured through the Jewish Quarter, which is currently trendy, with lots of sidewalk cafes. We found a café and I had my final pizza in Italy, a Roman-style Contadina. Much smaller (but more expensive) than yesterday’s. Antonella treated us to some Pizza Ebraica, a fruitcake called a Jewish pizza. Sofia told us some stories of the Italian Shoah in this neighborhood and we saw small brass markers embedded in the cobblestones in front of houses naming Jews who were hauled off for execution. The infamous raid of October 16, 1943, sealed off the ghetto and 1,023 Jews were sent to Auschwitz; 16 survived.

We took the long walk to the Colosseum and toured through. Very, very crowded. Sofia told us about the construction, the games, the reality of gladiator combat, the emperors and common folks who attended for free. By this time it was getting past mid-afternoon on a rather warm day, so everyone was getting pretty tired, and most of us returned to the hotel. I had dinner with friends at a sidewalk ristorante with a nice Caprese salad and pasta cacia e pepe.

Friday, October 28 — Return Home

Ambrose provided a shuttle service from the hotel in two different waves, mine leaving at 6:45 with a minivan for three. Quite a few of our comrades extended their stays in the Eternal City, so there was not a big bus needed. My flight started on SwissAir to Zurich, transferring to United Airlines for a direct San Francisco flight, arriving at 4:30 pm. Fiumicino is actually a nicer airport than San Francisco’s, immaculately clean with lots of inexpensive food options. They even have a huge Eataly, which I find ironic to see in Italy. Security is fast and much more technologically advanced, too. The Zurich airport disappointed me, just like Frankfurt, because there were no sausage options.

After I returned I received a few emails from participants who indicated they tested positive for Covid after returning home. I felt fine the entire trip until I got on the plane, when I started dry coughing, and it turned into a head cold the next couple of days. I tested myself and I am Covid negative.

In summary, I had an great time on my trip, interacting with expert staff and lots of friendly and interesting folks. The hotels were good and the food mostly excellent. I was a bit disappointed that there was not more concentrated military content in some parts of the tour, but I guess Ambrose tries to compromise between hardcore war students and those leaning toward the cultural experiences in the regions we visited. We covered many miles, so it wasn’t possible to follow every infantryman and tank over a year of combat.