On the 28th January 1944, German Field Marshal Albert Kesselring ordered a counterattack against the Allied beachhead at Anzio, Italy.

On the 28th January 1944, German Field Marshal Albert Kesselring ordered a counterattack against the Allied beachhead at Anzio, Italy.

Operation ‘Shingle’ was launched on 22 January 1944, four days after a new US Fifth Army attack on the Garigliano and Rapido rivers near Cassino.

British 1st Infantry Division under Major General Ronald Penney, supported by 46th Royal Tank Regiment and commandos of 2nd Special Service Brigade, landed north of Anzio.

The US 3rd Infantry Division under Major General Lucian Truscott, supported by a tank battalion, three battalions of Rangers and an Airborne battalion, landed south of the port.

Tactical surprise had been achieved and the landings were virtually unopposed. A handful of Luftwaffe aircraft got through the Allied fighter umbrella to strafe the ships, but the Allies lost only 13 men killed and 97 wounded. Anzio itself had been abandoned by the Germans and its civilian population moved out.

Many German units had been deployed further south to counter US Fifth Army’s attack on the Garigliano. By the end of the day 36,000 troops and 3,200 vehicles had been delivered ashore.

A US reconnaissance jeep patrol found the way open to Rome, and a bolder commander might well have taken advantage. But Lucas threw away the initiative, choosing instead to dig in and await the Germans.

Marshal Albert Kesselring was in overall command of German forces in Italy and a contingency plan for such a landing was already in place.

He redeployed the Fourteenth Army from its bases near Rome, and summoned reinforcements from northern Italy, France and Germany.

He requested as many troops as could be spared from the Tenth Army defending the Gustav Line. By 25 January elements of five divisions - 40,000 German troops - under the command of General Eberhard von Mackensen had surrounded the Allied beachhead.

Kesselring was encouraged by the Allies’ unwillingness to immediately strike out from Anzio. Lucas was more concerned with building up his forces in the beachhead, which was about seven miles deep. Only on 25 January did he attempt to penetrate the German defences.

The British pushed up the road to Albano and took the village of Aprilia, subsequently nicknamed ‘the Factory’ because of its substantial buildings and towers.

It would be the scene of fierce fighting in the weeks ahead. The Americans probed towards Cisterna but were halted in the face of stiff resistance.

Lucas’s lack of drive in these first days was to become the cause of subsequent controversy. Churchill famously commented that ‘I had hoped we were hurling a wild cat onto the shore, but all we got was a stranded whale’. But American caution may not have been misplaced.

The Garigliano-Rapido offensive had by now run out of steam and there would be no support from that quarter. Lucas believed that any forces that reached the Alban Hills from Anzio would be on their own, pose little threat to the Germans and more than likely be destroyed.

On 7 February General Mackensen launched a major counterattack against this narrow salient. The defensive positions of British 1st Division were first bombarded by German artillery and then infiltrated by infantry. After suffering 1,400 casualties, General Penney was forced to withdraw his troops.

The Germans pushed on along the Via Anziate and bitter fighting continued around Aprilia, with American troops from the 45th Infantry Division reinforcing the shattered British.