The Long March On Rome: The Forgotten War by Charles Whiting lands on the |> SALE <| shelves in my shop.
Guild Publishing, 1987, Hardback in dust wrapper.
Illustrated by way of: Black & White Photographs;
From the cover: In optimistic mood, Churchill called his plan for striking at the heart of the Third Reich through Italy an attack on the soft underbelly of Europe. Later, and more realistically, American General Mark Clark described it as a tough old gut. For as soon as the Allied troops set foot on Italian soil they discovered that it was certainly not going to be roses, roses, all the way, as the Staff Officers who decorated the bars back in Cairo had predicted.
For week after week, month after month, the young Allied infantrymen slogged their way forward against desperate German resistance. Each river line or mountain ridge, captured at appalling cost, seemed to fall to the Allies only to reveal yet another stubbornly held crest or valley beyond. In the end the young and the brave of more than a dozen Allied nations were to die in that grim campaign in which the soldiers bitterly referred to themselves as the Forgotten Army.
But the unforeseen resistance of the Germans, the atrocious weather and the preoccupation of the High and the Mighty with other theatres of war were not the only problems with which the Allied troops were forced to contend. The personality cult so successfully fostered by Montgomery in North Africa, was to affect General Clark equally strongly but with less happy results. As Charles Whiting explains, his thirst for publicity and the inability of General Alexander to keep this undesirable characteristic under control did much to hinder the Allied advance upon Rome.
In the main, however, this is an action-packed account of the war in Italy as seen through the eyes of the ordinary squaddie, the sordid life of bullets, bully-beef and brothels, ending, all too often, in senseless and violent death.
Very Good in Very Good Dust Wrapper. A little rubbing to the edges of the dust wrapper. Text complete, clean and tight.
Black boards with Silver titling to the Spine.
160 pages. Index. Bibliography. 12¼” x 9¼”.
This book will be listed, sooner or later, for £6.50 on my delightful website… (added to my Military Army category.) but get 50% off buying from my blog… below…
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