HELL IN ITALY

The Allied invasion of Italy in 1943 was envisaged as a swift push on Rome. Yet, as James Holland explains, by the end of the year, the campaign was stymied by German defences far from the capital

- James Holland

"Jerry sending shells over. Deathly chatter of machine-guns. Rumbling of falling buildings.” Major Roy Durnford, padre of the Canadian Seaforth Highlanders, was writing his diary in a church in what remained of Ortona, a small town midway down Italy’s Adriatic coast. Ortona was by then a smashed wreck, as was the countryside immediately to the south. Just a few weeks earlier, this had been a lush region of vineyards and peaceful olive groves. Now it was a hell of churned-up mud, vines and tree stumps punctuated by scores of dead, bloated bodies, shattered buildings, grotesquely torn metal and blackened tank hulks. It was Christmas Day, 1943.

Durnford recorded those observations more than three months after Allied forces had launched their invasion of Italy with landings in Calabria and at Salerno, on the west coast, south-east of Naples. They had confidently expected to be masters of Rome by now, and for the front line to be at least 50 miles north of the capital. Yet even adjusted ambitions had not been met. Two days later, on 27 December, the wreck of Ortona would finally be taken – still some way south of Pescara, the revised year-end target for the British Eighth Army.