Harry's Place Arts

Though it desperately needs a editor, ‘Fatal Decision’ by D’Este demonstrates the fallacy of the ‘Soft Underbelly’ malarky

Interesting post KB, thanks. Rather a poignant moment on DID I thought; Healy’s remark that he always cried during that last verse.

And here’s another of Henderson’s songs about the Italian Campaign, “The 51st Highland Division’s Farewell to Sicily” (also known as “The Banks of Sicily”), sung by the great Dick Gaughan:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spwAj15Rjjc

The Italian Campaign was truly the forgotten front of WWII in Europe, especially after D-Day when all attention was transferred to Normandy and the subsequent campaign through Western Europe. Churchill calling Italy, “the soft underbelly of Europe” was was an extreme misjudgement. Have to wonder if he had ever looked at any sort of topographic map of Italy. Guess Churchill still wanted to vindicate his WWI decision about the Galliopi fiasco by making the Mediterrean the site of the major Western allied land campaign of the War; instead of Western Europe which Churchill feared would be a bloody debacle repeat of the Somme and Ypres.
Ironically then that Italy would be the scene of battles, most notably at Monte Cassino, that most resembled the bloody stalemates of the Western Front in the Great War. Also that at Salerno, the Germans came the closest that they would ever would to driving an Allied invasion force back into the sea: While at Anzio, the Germans succeded in containing the Allied invasion force to a confined beachead just like at Galliopi.
The low morale and bitterness of the Italian Front after D-Day is brillantly reflected in the song “D-Day Dodgers”. Thank you for reprinting that and the excert from E.P. Thompson’s fine essay.

One interesting sidelight is that Italy was where the Allies sent their non-white, Colonial and Commonwealth troops to fight in Europe. The US had the black 92nd Infantry Division and the 332nd Fighter Group of the Tuskegee Airman, also the legendary Japanese-American 442nd Regimental Combat Team (R.C.T.) Britain had three Divisions of Indian soldiers, as well as the 2nd New Zealand Division and the 6th South African Armored Division. Until they left in July 1944 to participate in the invasion of Southern France, the French had several divisions of Arab and African troops as well as a division drawn primarily from the French settlers in Algeria, the pied-noirs. Finally in late 1944-45, there was a Brazilian Division serving as part of the US Fifth Army in Italy. This was the only land force from a Latin American country to fight in WWII.

Two famous American politicians, former Senator and 1996 Republican Presidential Nominee Robert Dole of Kansas and long-time US Senator Daniel Inouye of Haiwaii both served as juinor infantry officers in Italy and both severly wounded. Sen. Dole spent several years in veterans hopitals being treated for wounds that threatened to confine him to a wheel chair. Sen. Inouye had an arm severed by a German rifle genade while trying to get within genade throwing distance of a German machine gun nest that had his platoon pinned down. For pulling his grenade out of his dead arm and throwing it in a sucessful effort to knock out the machine gun position, Sen. Inouye recieved America’s 2nd highest medal, the Distinguished Service Cross.

The concluding paragraph of “Cassino to the Alps”(1977)* by Ernest F. Fisher:
“When the Germans laid down their arms, the longest sustained Allied campaign of World War II came to an end. A total of 570 days had passed from the landings in Italy on 9 September 1943 to the capitulation on 2 May 1945. Each day had seemed an eternity, as many a veteran of the campaign on both sides had testified. Almost always at a foot-slogger’s pace – ( have to shut down will conclude later. )

Speaking in defence of Viscountess Astor for possibly the only time in my life, but there’s no real evidence she made any remark about soldiers in Italy being “D-Day Dodgers”. More likely it was something someone else said, and got transferred to Nancy Astor because she was known for shouting her mouth off like that.

You might want to check Paul Addison’s excellent “The Road to 1945″ (Jonathan Cape, 1975), long since out of print but available in many libraries, at page 133. The Astor family had long had trouble due to claims about the “Cliveden Set”, and a highly damaging interview in Picture Post in 1941 purported to show Lord Astor behaving greedily when the country was going through serious hardship. He denied the claims and the editor apologized.

(Concluding, hope this time it posts)
“Almost always at a foot-slogger’s pace – a pace rendered all the more interminable by the infrequent exhilaration of pursuit – and seemingly always approaching precipitous heights controlled by a well-concealed enemy, Allied troops, under a broiling sun or in numbing cold, had slowly pushed ahead. Nowhere on the far-flung battlefronts could the end have brought more relief than to those who fought the prolonged fight in a cruel, bitter campaign that all too often seemed to be going nowhere.”

Note: I apologize for forgetting to mention in my first comment, the very gallant II Free Polish Corps that took Monte Cassino in May 1944 and which forught magnificently throughout the Italian campaign. There were also several brigades of Italian troops, the Corps of Liberation, along with thousands of Italian partisans, that fought on the Allied side. Finally there was a brigade of Jewish troops from Palestine that fought in Italy in 44-45.

*”Cassino to the Alps” is the fourth and last volume of the “Mediterranean Theater of Operations” series of “the United States Army in World War II” histories published by the US Army’s Center of Military History.

I love this song.http://www.hi5song.com

Good post, but it’s ‘Healey’ not ‘Healy’.

I have nothing to add to David All’s comments, although it should be added that Nancy Astor denied ever describing Allied troops in Italy as ‘D’Day Dodgers’ (if this is true, then it was not the last time that a politician was associated with a compromising slogan or quote that was not his or hers – as Denis ‘We will squeeze the rich until the pips squeak’ Healey can testify).

The comment – apocryphal or not – did also inspire the cartoonist ‘Jon’, the creator of the ‘Two Types’. This was the British equivalent of Bill Maudlin’s two GIs, ‘Willie and Joe’, and were two frightfully pukka officers. One of the cartoons shows the two ruperts sitting in a Jeep with ‘Sicily’, ‘Salerno’ and ‘Anzio’ emblazened on its body-work, the caption being ‘When she said we were ‘D’Day Dodgers’, which D’Day did she mean, old man?’

I can’t find that particular drawing online, but this is a flavour of Jon’s work:

http://www.desertrats.org.btinternet.co.uk/images/Artefacts/TwoTypesinItaly01.jpg

Truscott’s and O’Connor’s 3rd division, I believe, still hold the divisional record for Medals of Honour, whilst fighting from Algeria to Austria

Good post, but it’s ‘Healey’ not ‘Healy’.

Yelp! Have corrected.

David All, Inouye’s DSC was upgraded to the Medal of Honor.

Ewan MacColl sang the song regularly in public and on at least one album (name slips my mind, but I’ve got it somewhere, and what I think is his own song ‘Browned off’ is on the album too. ) .

It’s not often mentioned f(or a variety of reasons) but the Polish Free Army had Jews in it. One of them is my father’s first cousin.

‘It’s not often mentioned f(or a variety of reasons) but the Polish Free Army had Jews in it’.

One of the reasons being the fact that Soviet propagandists (and their Western apologists) sought to smear the London government as Fascists, and the presence of Jewish soldiers in the Free Polish Forces (as well as in the AK) was an inconvenient truth for the Stalinists.

“Napoleon once said that the only way to invade Italy was from the top. The Allies did not heed his warning and paid dearly for every inch of ground. Battles compared in their sheer intensity and horror with those of World War One. At Anzio alone the Allies suffered 135,000 casualties and Monte Cassino, over 54,000. In Tunisia, another 45,000 casualties. 20 Victoria Crosses were awarded during the Italy Campaign – 5 at Cassino alone!”

“Guess Churchill still wanted to vindicate his WWI decision about the Galliopi fiasco by making the Mediterranean the site of the major Western allied land campaign of the War; instead of Western Europe which Churchill feared would be a bloody debacle repeat of the Somme and Ypres.” – David All.

When Kesselring surrendered his ‘Italian front’ (by then straddling the border with Austria) he had a million men fighting as a single command, with ammunition, planes, tanks and petrol. These forces were denied any chance to lend support to neither the main western campaign nor the eastern front.

Churchill sought to knock Italy out of the war and this was achieved, but incompetently by his generals. The Mediterranean was thus freed of those Axis forces that had rendered it well nigh impassable to the Allies for three years.

Mark Clark was an infamously vain man among many. C-in-C Alexander was a mild man who never gave orders as such; but, even if he had made his plans clear it is unlikely Clark would have either understood or accepted them. He had every opportunity to move rapidly inland and snap the supply lines which sustained the German forces in the south (see ‘Naples 1944′ by Norman Lewis). He chose not to do so, later claiming he did not possess the force required, but chose inactivity and was rewarded with a counter attack which was most determined and severe; I knew quite well a man who survived it at the expense of his nerves. Only after much sacrifice were these attacks repulsed. At this, Clark swung north (away from the German line of retreat) and entered Rome intent on a replay of Caesar’s triumphant return after the Gallic wars. Meanwhile Kesselring, having only narrowly avoiding being trapped, executed one of the greatest fighting retreats in history, not bad for a man who began as an officer in the Luftwaffe.

Gallipoli is perhaps the least understood though best known military catastrophe after Khe Sahn. But, as much as I personally may be immune to the Churchill myth, it was a catastrophe not of Churchill’s making. One who was there described Gallipoli as the “only imaginative idea of the entire war”. He was Major Clement Attlee.

Note: Tunisia is in north Africa, not Italy. Have I misunderstood?

“Napoleon once said that the only way to invade Italy was from the top. The Allies did not heed his warning and paid dearly for every inch of ground. Battles compared in their sheer intensity and horror with those of World War One. At Anzio alone the Allies suffered 135,000 casualties and Monte Cassino, over 54,000. In Tunisia, another 45,000 casualties. 20 Victoria Crosses were awarded during the Italy Campaign – 5 at Cassino alone!”

“Guess Churchill still wanted to vindicate his WWI decision about the Galliopi fiasco by making the Mediterranean the site of the major Western allied land campaign of the War; instead of Western Europe which Churchill feared would be a bloody debacle repeat of the Somme and Ypres.” – David All.

When Kesselring surrendered his ‘Italian front’ (by then straddling the border with Austria) he had a million men fighting as a single command, with ammunition, planes, tanks and petrol. These forces were denied any chance to lend support to neither the main western campaign nor the eastern front.

Churchill sought to knock Italy out of the war and this was achieved, but incompetently by his generals. The Mediterranean was thus freed of those Axis forces that had rendered it well nigh impassable to the Allies for three years.

Mark Clark was an infamously vain man among many. C-in-C Alexander was a mild man who never gave orders as such; but, even if he had made his plans clear it is unlikely Clark would have either understood or accepted them. He had every opportunity to move rapidly inland and snap the supply lines which sustained the German forces in the south (see ‘Naples 1944′ by Norman Lewis). He chose not to do so, later claiming he did not possess the force required, but chose inactivity and was rewarded with a counter attack which was most determined and severe; I knew quite well a man who survived it at the expense of his nerves. Only after much sacrifice were these attacks repulsed. At this, Clark swung north (away from the German line of retreat) and entered Rome intent on a replay of Caesar’s triumphant return after the Gallic wars. Meanwhile Kesselring, having only narrowly avoiding being trapped, executed one of the greatest fighting retreats in history, not bad for a man who began as an officer in the Luftwaffe.

Gallipoli is perhaps the least understood though best known military catastrophe after Khe Sahn. But, as much as I personally may be immune to the Churchill myth, it was a catastrophe not of Churchill’s making. One who was there described Gallipoli as the “only imaginative idea of the entire war”. He was Major Clement Attlee.

Note: Tunisia is in north Africa, not Italy. Have I misunderstood?

Thank you for good information

D Day Dodgers

http://mudcat.org/@displaysong.cfm?SongID=6150

Will take you to the full text !

A Non

We need a new kind of D-day !
It is a tragedy, that Obama, Carter and Co., after an international and american increase of antizionist worldconspiracy “thinking” — in core a big success of the islamists — substitutes G.W. Bush’s not consequente or superficial strategy with one based on historical and moral Big Lie, – so to hear while his Cairo speach; in ex-osman district “palestine” antisemite pogromes and continuous murder assaults started in 1919/21 !

The consequence now is, that US authorities try to force ISRAEL for acknowledgement of the islam BLOOD-& GROUND-right, the same antirepublican “right” what destroyed Tschecheslovacia 1938. And what its next result must be increase of desintegration of arab inhabitants against the proper “settlements”, – 1st Jerusalem and then ISRAEL !
- Western republics and democracies for “blood & ground right”, that must be beaten down !

On this pictures here nearby with islamic Hail Hitler salutations you can see a proofe of one side of european and american “taboos” or secrets and not recepiered facts. – With the consequence of being mentally and political worried and not armed, in fight to protect republicanian democracy and as condition, to have the right strategy to fight totalitarians, terrorists and spec. islamists expansionism sucessfully, – of what very often their transreligious and transational common link is the same as in Hiltler’s “figth time”: The believe and propaganda of “freemasons-jewish” worldconspiracy; the reason because I call it WCFT, Worldconspiracy Fanatisize Tool,- a tool what was also used by KGB operations and russian propaganda, what stepped into the footsteps formed by SS- bigmufti al-Hussaini together with ODESSA leader Johann van Leer, Hitler’s official biographist, leading academic antisemite propagandist and islam specialist, who converts in Cairo …

One of the very good describing of the WCFT history of effects, because based on the france-russian developed “conspiracy warning” called “protocols of elders of zion”, is the Hassada Ben-Itto book “The protocols …, anatomy of a falsification” (my translation)

For more information see aval31.free.fr , photospalestine.free.fr , TellTheCildrenTheTruth.com ; w.The Big Lie and the Media War against ISRAEL ; ..” , BLACKBOOK of KGB II. , w.What the WEST needs to know , and if possibly on english WARUM AUSCHWITZ ? ( Why Auschwitz ?) by Gunnar Heinsohn and JIHAD AND JEWSHATE from Matthias Kuentzel.de, – also several about the special relationships of Germany to the “Land of the Aryans” = Iran !

So W E have to develope a new international system against antisemite rage, fanatism and jihad, for backing the troops and their homeland’s consciousness of the West or for expl. Japan and so complement the police’s and military’s activities, and help the peoples democratic debate, instaed of tendencally paranoid total truth(ers).

One aim should be to spread the film “Protocols of Zion” from NYC’s Marc Levin !
- Please write me. I am german and not a member of any authority or party. And test the links and written basic knowledge.
dubax@ich.ms