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Slideshow of Selected Images from Unknown Soldiers

  1. GIs of the 45th Infantry Division in France try on new jackets, oblivious of their dead enemy. What the hell, who’ll be next? (Department of Defense)

  2. Joe Garland: a kid in a big cap (Collection of the author)

  3. Gas chamber No. 2. and other pictures from Camp Croft, South Carolina. Little did we know. (U.S. Army, December 1941)

  4. Second Platoon, Company C, 35th Infantry Battalion, Camp Croft, June 1943. Top row, fourth from left, Garland. Seventh from left, Dunleavy. Fourth row, in front of Garland, Goldfarb, then Furber. Below Dunleavy in the third row, Dave Goss. Standing, Corporals Mazurowski (left) and Magnuson (right). (U.S. Army)

  5. Naples liberated (U.S. Army)

  6. Stewart “Mickey” Smith (right) with Pullman (left) and Nye (Courtesy of William E. Woodhams)

  7. Casualties—and replacements (Department of Defense)

  8. The engineers precariously repair Highway 113 on the north coast, blown up by the methodically retreating Germans. (U.S. Army)

  9. Eboli (Department of Defense)

  10. CHAPTER 5 OPENER: The 157th’s Front November–December 1943 (Map by the author, drawn by Erik Ronnberg)

  11. Venafro, the mountains and the enemy (U.S. Army Signal Corps)

  12. Some “soft belly” (Joint Intelligence Collecting Agency)

  13. Map: Winter Line Terrain (U.S. Army Signal Corps)

  14. Blending with the slope of Mount Lungo, a German “pillbox” looks down on uphill assault. (U.S. Army Signal Corps)

  15. A 157th Infantry Regiment “pack train” picks its way along a rare level trail. (U.S. Army Signal Corps)

  16. Above Venafro mule #1 barely plods along under the burden of an 81–mm mortar while behind him a frustrated ’Bird hauls on balking #2 loaded down with the weapon’s ammo. (U.S. Army)

  17. Stuck in grave–like “foxholes” of piled–up rocks and exposed to wind, cold and driving rain with no cover but their canvas tent shelter halves, the dogfaces of the 157th are somewhat safer from enemy artillery, but not from mortar fire looping down on them from over the mountaintop. (Department of Defense)

  18. Mine detectors sweep the way to the body of a GI killed stepping on an enemy ground mine. (Department of Defense)

  19. MUD (U.S. Army Signal Corps)

  20. Major General John P. Lucas (Department of Defense)

  21. Tent City at the 157th command post, sketched in the author’s notebook November 29. Not pictured, our cave is in the rising slope a few yards to the right. (Author)

  22. A 45th Division artillery or I&R forward observer (FO) has spotted through his field glasses an enemy position on Hill 769, located the hill on his relief map and relayed this information via his field phone and as much as a mile or more of wire (note at lower left) laid by hand back to our 105–mm howitzer battery.( Our portable field radios were especially no damn good in the mountains, and the wire was at best a tenuous link subject to break by enemy shellfire, men, mules, vehicles, etc.) (U.S. Army Signal Corps)

  23. The battery has in turn mapped the target and just zeroed in on it with a trio of white phosphorous smoke shells easily seen by the FO, who calculates and phones how far and in what direction they’re off. Back at our battery, lateral and vertical corrections are made in the aim of the gun or guns, the observer instructs “Fire for effect!” and a cannonade of shellfire hopefully eliminates or cripples the German position. Unfortunately, hand–to–hand fighting was required to take Hill 769. The 105 firing here near Venafro aims skyward at the expense of some accuracy to clear the looming mountaintops up ahead. The 105s were the infantry’s best support. (U.S. Army)

  24. Medics enter what’s left of San Pietro. (Department of Defense)

  25. Bearing our wounded back. Mules carry the dead. The mountains held by the Germans are steep, rocky and virtually impervious to attack. (Department of Defense)

  26. CHAPTER 6 OPENER: Map:Allied Strategy in Italy January 1944 (Department of Defense)

  27. Bob Winburn, Bob “Dynamite” Thatcher and Griff (Courtesy of Lester Gerencer)

  28. Walter Wolff in German helmet struts his former stuff. (Courtesy of Lester Gerencer)

  29. The Factory at Anzio (Department of Defense)

  30. The grinning Kraut on the left is holding the fearful “burp gun.” (Collection of the author)

  31. The immense “Anzio Express” railroad gun (U.S. Air Forces)

  32. A Brit stands by a butterfly bomb (Department of Defense)

  33. Jerry’s and my dugout drafted in my journal (Author)

  34. Our observation posts just behind the front line offered enemy gunners easy targets ranging from our Sherman tank (nigh useless against the German armor) to. . . (Department of Defense)

  35. . . . a clump of five tempting farm structures already under fire, to a guy peering over a haystack while his buddies loiter in more or less plain view, to a shell hole for catching a glimpse of our enemies until the next round brings what’s left of the building down around our ears. (Department of Defense)

  36. . . . a guy peering over a haystack while his buddies loiter in more or less plain view. (Department of Defense)

  37. . . . a shell hole for catching a glimpse of our enemies until the next round brings what’s left of the building down around our ears. (Department of Defense)

  38. The Abbey (U.S. Army)

  39. Map. Enemy Offensive 16 February – 3 March 1944 (Department of Defense)

  40. The Overpass—underpass to hell (Department of Defense)

  41. The Caves, by combat artist Mitchell Siporin (Department of Defense)

  42. Captain Felix Sparks (Department of Defense)

  43. Heil Hitler (U.S. Army)

  44. Death’s Head (Department of Defense)

  45. A Flying Fortress (B–17) bomber drops a load. Ack–ack (anti–aircraft) bursts up ahead. (U.S. Air Forces)

  46. “Living conditions at the front during the latter part of the Anzio campaign,” wrote the caption writer who clearly wasn’t there, “were much improved as the men protected their fox holes with sandbags, tarpaulins and camouflaged roofs. Fighting was light and living was leisurely, disturbed only by sporadic shelling and bombing.” What bull. (From Anzio Beachhead, 1947. Department of Defense)

  47. What the Germans did to the hospitals of their wounded foes, by design or otherwise. (U.S. Army)

  48. Yeah, history in the making. The walking wounded, stumbling back and tagged for triage. American casualties the first day: 334 killed, 1,513 wounded and 81 missing. (Department of Defense)

  49. Cisterna (U.S. Army)

  50. CHAPTER 9 OPENER: (standing) Mills, Smith, Wolfe, Dibble and Harry Ramge; and (squatting) Nye, Beech and Coleman. Company clerk Ramge had just joined the I&R to see more action. (Courtesy of Dominick M. Trubia)

  51. Wading in from the LCI (Department of Defense)

  52. Merci! Merci! cher Yankee! (U.S. Army)

  53. Bob Richardson, George Ruder and Bob Coleman in Italy just before the southern France invasion. (Courtesy of Dominick M. Trubia)

  54. Clockwise from Griffith at 7, Winburn, Coleman, someone, Joannon and Zapiecki in the heat of the French summer. (Courtesy of Dominick M. Trubia)

  55. Our tanks in support of the 157th go after enemy snipers concealed in the rubble of Aschaffenburg. (Department of Defense)

  56. You asked for it, Nuremburg . . . (Department of Defense)

  57. . . . But pity the old women of two world wars. (Department of Defense)

  58. Morris Rosenwasser (Author photo)

  59. Down the railroad track (Department of Defense)

  60. The last massacre at Dachau. Any one of us might have done it. (U.S. Signal Corps photo by Arland B. Musser)

  61. Prisoners about to beat a guard with a shovel. Bodies against the wall. (U.S. Signal Corps)

  62. Joe (Collection of the author)