The allies at Anzio: rare photos of Italian campaign of the second world war

On January 22, 1944, six months after the Allied invasion of Sicily, the American and British troops swarmed ashore at Anzio, about 30 miles south of Rome. The idea of Winston Churchill and dubbed the attack, operation shingle trapped German troops along the Italian coast largely by surprise; But after the initial onslaught, the entrenched Germans. The next four months saw some of the fiercest, most prolonged fighting in the European theatre of the second world war, as the allies - including French along with the British and the Americans and Canadians - fought German troops for control of the region.

Life photographer George Silk, a native of New Zealand who covered the war in the desert of North Africa, through Rome, to the forests of Belgium and in Germany, spent months with allies after they landed at Anzio, a chronicle of what LIFE magazine at a time characterized as a "fruitless, slow and maddening battle". At the end of may the allies finally managed an assault breakout, supported by the artillery and air force; in early June, the Allied troops entered Rome virtually unopposed.

Here, on the 70th anniversary of the start of the battle of Anzio, LIFE.com presents a series of photographs of the silk - many of them never before - published illustrating graphically the tiring stagnation, always accompanied by deadly violence, which define the operation. Approximately 7,000 Allied soldiers died in those four months. Another 36,000 were injured or missing in combat. The Germans suffered 40,000 injured (5,000 dead) while more than 4,000 surrendered and were taken prisoner.

Note: According to typed legends of the Silk for your photos, slides #16 in the gallery above has a soldier, William P. Chirolas, showing "things you don't like men of company m: dextrose, taste terrible, almost invariably pulled away tablets; Barbasol - not like brushless shaving cream, they say it sticks in the razor; Fleetwood cigarettes - typical of cheap cigarettes that come in rations; processed American cheese - becomes very heavy when eaten every day... "

"Men complain," Silk designated, "cheap brands [cigarette] are distributed only to manufacturers who want to keep their trade names goes, and that good brands are taken up by the 'rear Echelon Boys' until they reach the front".

The role fine, used silk used to write their notes and who survives, yellowish and fragile, in the archives of life (see scan below), one can clearly discern that someone - likely a censor at the United States War Department - crossed out those particular observations with a red pencil. After all, the notion of "American boys" complaining bitterly of shabby tobacco, processed cheese and other humiliations in front doesn't fit the image of the office of public affairs at the Department of war wanted to present the people's House.

The more things change...

-Ben Cosgrove is the Editor of LIFE.com

LIFE magazine

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