Felice Borsato
Ed. Settimo Sigillo - Rome 2009
Pag.288
"History has always dealt with the chronicle of every cycle of events anchored in the memory of the past and destined for future memory; the story actually comes from the news and with this criterion the book you are reading has been created."
Thus, Felice Borsato, author of fifty historical essays, reporter and special correspondent for Il Giornale d'Italia, as well as a journalist in Rai where he dealt with regional information when the third television network was born, introduced his book. And, as a reporter, he tries to describe the facts relating to the third landing of the Allies in Italy, that of Anzio, which took place on January 22 1944. Chronicle and history told by a direct and indirect witness as he was.
"The night on the 22 January 1944 had been caressed by a light breeze, barely perceptible, made of sirocco and libeccio, which allowed many men stuffed with weapons with a load to be hunched, ready to set foot on the ground, to follow the approach to silhouettes of houses and buildings that took shape and progress as they progressed."
It was the beginning of the operation Shingle, strongly desired by Winston Churchill, whose command was entrusted to the American general John Porter Lucas. Ten thousand men landed two hours after midnight on that fateful day. The landing continued undisturbed throughout the night and for the next forty hours, bringing the Anglo-American contingent to seventy thousand units.
Where did the Germans go? Admiral Hans Wilhelm Canaris, who directed the German military intelligence services and who after the failed assassination attempt on Hitler was arrested in July of the 1944 for hanging the 9 April 1945, on 21 January 1944, visiting the headquarters of the group d armed, argued that there was no reason to fear another landing in the immediate future. But a few hours after his departure the landing at Anzio began.
"It is true that Canaris betrayed, giving inaccurate information to the high German commanders on the allies' strategic positions and intentions (he could not fail to be informed) but it is true that the Americans and the English did not know the situation and did not know, approaching the ground, that they would have found no resistance. "
Subsequently the city of Aprilia, founded by Mussolini in the 1936, was destroyed. At 9.45 of February 16 1944, at the behest of the New Zealand general Bernard Freyberg, supported in his decision by an Indian general, Francio Tuker, began the bombing on Cassino. And despite Eisenhower's assurance that "in relation to military needs, all measures had been taken to safeguard the works of art and monuments and the commands of the naval, air and land units had been instructed accordingly and were aware of the paramount importance of avoiding unnecessary damage or avoidable", The Benedictine abbey was destroyed.
"No party in the field, much less any commander who made the history of the Second World War in Lazio anyway, strategically justified Freyberg; not only: no one has acquitted him."
Still bombs on Cassino: at 8.45 of 15 March 775 aircraft dropped 1250 tons in about seven hours. And then the violence south of Cassino and in Ciociaria, where Nepali, Gurkha and Punuabi troops, and Moroccan troops, the Goumiers, sowed terror.
"The Moroccan troops covered themselves with a particular glory, raping women and men even at a very advanced age."The 26 July 2006, in Campodimele, was inaugurated"a stele dedicated to Mary and the others. To the hundreds of women who in mid-May 1944 were tortured, raped, humiliated before helpless relatives, by the Moroccan soldier of the French Expeditionary Corps."
But at the landing there were also many acts of heroism, individual or collective. Countless were the dead, civil and military. And that is why the author, in the video attached to the book, containing images of the time, as well as an interview with the author and some local protagonists of the landing, concludes by recalling, for future reference, that "war must be remembered only to win peace."
Gianlorenzo Capano
