Mediterranean and North Africa · United States and Britain vs Germany
Battle of Anzio
22 January 1944 – 4 June 1944
The Anzio landing behind the Gustav Line met no opposition, but the beachhead was quickly sealed off by Kesselring's reserves. Four months of attrition followed until the breakout coincided with the fall of Cassino.
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Day by day
— Shingle
VI Corps lands at 02:00 either side of Anzio and meets almost nobody: 36,000 men and 3,200 vehicles are ashore by midnight for thirteen dead. Lucas digs in around the port rather than push for the Alban Hills, and Kesselring has eight divisions moving on the beachhead within two days.
— Cisterna
The corps attacks at last towards Cisterna and Campoleone. Two Ranger battalions infiltrating up the Pantano ditch by night are caught in the open a kilometre short of Cisterna: 761 go in, six come back. The British 1st Division pushes a narrow salient to the railway at Campoleone and can go no further.
— Fischfang
Mackensen attacks at 06:30 down the Albano road with six divisions and a personal order from Hitler to lance the abscess. Aprilia and Carroceto were lost a week ago; now the 45th Division is driven back two kilometres a day towards the final beachhead line, the last ridge before the beaches.
— The line holds
The German attack is stopped on the final beachhead line by every gun in the beachhead, naval fire and a thousand aircraft; a counter-attack by the 1st Armored and 45th Division on the 19th took back a kilometre. Mackensen tries once more at Cisterna on 29 February and fails. Lucas is relieved by Truscott on the 22nd, and the beachhead settles into three months of shelling.
— Buffalo
With the Gustav Line broken at Cassino, VI Corps breaks out at 06:30 behind a barrage from 500 guns. The 3rd Division loses 955 men in the day, its heaviest of the war, but the 1st Armored is through the German line by dark and Cisterna falls on the 25th.
— The beachhead joins the front
At 07:30 a patrol of the 36th Engineers from the beachhead meets II Corps reconnaissance coming up the coast road at Borgo Grappa, 125 days after the landing. Cisterna falls the same day. Clark then turns the corps from Valmontone towards Rome, and most of the Tenth Army gets away up the valleys to the east.
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