M. B. Hardy, Jr.

of 1st Armored Division supported one infantry regiment after another, our own 6th Armored Infantry, the Nisei of 1OOth Infantry Battalion and regiments from 34th and 36th Divisions, as they ground slowly forward into the Gustav Line. It was in this operation that Lieutenant Colonel McPheeters earned the Distinguished Service Cross for infiltrating two miles behind enemy lines in order to direct our fire accurately onto a German counter-attacking force. In mid-January 1944, we were pulled out of the line to stage for what proved to be the invasi_g~­ , our fifth voyage; but I again missed the D-day amphibious landing. We had so fewfinding craft that each combat unit was reduced to its minimum strength, especially in vehicles. By no~, Jhe men were calling "The Second-hand Front." I wound up staying back at Naples, in charge of one\,ffiird of the men apd half the vehicles of the battalion. Our returning wounded came to my rear echelon, and when another ,CaptaJ~im Rominger, a Texas A&M grad and outstanding citizen-soldier, arrived to convalesce, I got a I roun~ voyage (numbers five and six) to Anzio to check on my men there. I found them in dugouts a la World War I. In addition, all guns and vehicles were dug-in, as were all hospital tents, ammunition, fuel dumps, etc. Every inch of the beachhead, and well out to sea, was being pounded bycollection the German artillery and the Luftwaffe. I got two more overnight rides on LSTs to Anzio (voyages seven through nine). The second was to stay on as battalion S-2,replacing Vice Captain GeorgeRomeiser, a Purdue gradandanothercrackcitizen-soldier who had been invalided back to Naples. My first job was to set up a jointProject counter-battery section with 91 (coincidence!) Field Regiment of the Royal Artillery, supporting British 5 Division. They had twenty-four 25-pounders, and with our eighteen lOSs and an attached company of tanks and another of three-inch tank destroyers, we controlled the fire of sixty-nine artillery pieces.War German artillery was using roving guns, mostly self-propelled, for continual harassing fires. We burnedat at least a half dozen of them, and silenced many more. 13 Lieutenant Colonel McPheeters was killed by a tree-burst, and our executive officer, Major Loren D. Buttalph, took cornniand. He and I sat for an hour on an observation tower fifty yards inside 5th Division's front line, which was only fifteen yardsVMI from the Krauts. This, to prove to VI Corps Field Artillery headquarters that it was suicidal; we were wrong, and survived the experience-but no one else used that tower. At eleven o'clock on a clear, mild0532. Easter morning, every German cannon fired, bombarding all the locations they had identified as the places our troops met for church services. Miraculously, no one was killed; however, many learned MSto pray harder. The barrage was short, if intense, and most continued their worship. With warmer weather, planning for a break-out began. Despite serious losses of shipping to German air, submarines and artillery, the beachhead had been strongly reinforced. We reconnoitered, laid wire and fully prepared for an attack south along the coast (code-named Leapfrog), or inland to the north (Buffalo). We executed Buffa/o. 14 It was a great success, right from D-day, May 23, 1944. By nightfallArchives. ofD-day plus three, 3rd Division had reached the coastal mountain range, Colli Lazialli; had linked with 1st Armored Division which was reinforced with crack infantry from 34th Division; and was followingVMI us through the Gap between Colli Lazialli and the Alban Hills. Next day, on the inland side of the Gap, dismounted tankers cleared the village of Artena. Downhill ahead of us lay Frosinone on Highway 6, the principal escape route of German Tenth Army as it fled from the Gustav Line. 15 This was a golden opportunity to cut off its retreat. Unaccountably, General Mark Clark pulled both divisions back from our salient, and hurled us into the battle of 45th Division and British 5th Divisio , grinding toward through the damaged, but fiercely resisting, Fourteenth Army and the tangled t rrain on the coastal side of the Alban Hills. We took heavy losses while Tenth Army escaped, but at nightfall on June , e finally reached the southern edge of Rome. I slept, peacefully for once, in the Catacombs. Rome had b declared an open city, and the Germans withdrew through it that night.

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