entry
Jan 10, 2018
Anzio
Annie
The gun, itself, was a K5
(K for Krupp), the main manufacturer
of German artillery in both world
wars. The barrel was 21.5 meters/71
feet long and could swivel.
Anzio Annie had a German nick-name, as
well. German gun crews called her "die
schlanke Bertha" (slender
Bertha), a pun on "die
grosse Bertha" (Big
Bertha) of WWI infamy, also by Krupp.
Bertha was the name of Cannon King
Friedrich Krupp's wife! A hefty hausfrau,
you can bet. There is a whole
page on Krupp
here. Herman must have been
passing through in Civitavecchia and
snapped this photo from his own train
as he passed. Good eye, Herman!
The unusual name of the Church of
the Most Holy Japanese Martyrs, in
ruins in the background, refers to a
group of Catholics who were executed
by crucifixion in 1597, at Nagasaki.
Their martyrdom is significant in
the history of modern Roman
Catholicism. The church was built in
1872 and rebuilt in 1950. It is now
spectacularly adorned with paintings
by Japanese artist Luca Hasegawa. A
website is here.
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Herman labelled this,
"Anzio. German railgun." That was the
common term for this artillery piece in
WWII. Today the term would be "railway
gun" (to avoid confusion with the modern
magnetic rail gun. The Germans had more
than a dozen of these in Europe and two
of them were in Italy near Anzio to
protect against the Allied invasion at
that beachhead. They actually had names:
Robert and Leopold! They were both
termed "Anzio Annie" by the invading
Allies and were an important part of the
tenacious German retreat towards Rome.
The Battle of Anzio (part of the overall
battle for Rome) turned into a 4-month
stalemate (Feb-May '44) witj heavy
casualties on both sides, while these
two behemoths scooted back and forth on
rai lines from Fascati to Ciampino
within easy shelling range of the Anzio
beachhead, firing 15 explosive rounds an
hour before ducking back into one of
many covered railway tunnels, out of
sight. This one has to be one of the
two, but the location is identifiably
the Church of the Most Holy Japanese
Martyrs in Civitavecchia on the coast
100 km (60 miles) north of Anzio. It
must be in June 1944 after Rome was
liberated and the gun was being
dismantled and prepared for shipping.
Parts of it are in museums.
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entry
Jan 11, 2018
Crosses
on a Fence

From the date, 1944, The site
is between Cassino and Rome. Herman's
narrative finishes with the Battle of San
Pietro infine in December
1943 a few miles south of Cassino. From
January 1944 until June the offensive
was directed at overcoming the strong
German Gustav Line, which included the
town of Cassino as well as the famous
abbey. The line was really a series of
three fortified lines, each heavily
defended. The offensive that Herman took
part in then became part of the overall
drive on Rome, including the German
defenses in the Alban hills and at
Anzio. The push started in late January
and it was not until June 4 that the
Allies entered Rome only two days before
the Normandy invasion on the coast of
France.
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Labelled simply "Crosses on a Fence,"
this is another of Herman's photos
"worth a thousand words." I tend to
think that this is a real burial site,
not just a commemorative site, perhaps a
single trench grave for six fallen
comrades, the stones along the front
actually covering the trench. The
markers are skewed as if they were put
up hastily. The names are clearly
visible. The years 1939-1944 mark the
year that WWII started and the year that
it ended for these soldiers. The marker
itself is the standard German military
decoration called the Iron Cross (Eisernes
Kreuz), black with silver or white
trim on all four arms of equal length.
It is still the insignia of the Bundeswehr,
the modern German armed forces.
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entry
Jan 12, 2018
Capodichino
Airport - After & After

There is a complete entry on the
Allied bombings of Naples and
southern Italy at
this link. These two
particular photos are of the airport
at Capodichino, then as now, the
main Naples airport. It was one of
the three main targets of aerial
bombardment of the city, the other
two being the main port and the main
train station. The point of all of
this was to interdict the massive
amount of Axis supplies flowing
through those points on the way to
German armed forces in North Africa.

The photo on the left (above) was
taken by Herman and pretty much sums
up the situation. He couldn't take
the photo on the right (no
selfies in 1943!) because he is
dangling his legs from the tail
section of what probably used to be
a fine FW (Focke-Wulf) aircraft,
possibly the Fw 190, a versatile
single-seat single-engine fighter
widely used by the Luftwaffe in
all theaters of WWII. (I can't
really tell, though. If you can,
please tell me). Herman is slightly
out of focus, but the plane isn't
doing too well, either. The photo is
probably October '43, right after
the Allies took Naples and the
Germans started to move north.
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entry
Jan 14, 2018
Comparison
& Contrast
Herman
continues to astonish with his
photos. These two --obviously
"twins," of a sort -- look like one
of those Comparison and Contrast
exercises in high school English
classes. The Comparison part is
clear: they are taken from almost
the exact same spot, probably
minutes or maybe just seconds apart.
I don't know which one was first,
but it doesn't matter. I have
displayed "Town Ruins, Man on
Street" first and "View of Hill"
second. Further comparison: the
devastation is total, probably from
aerial bombardment and not artillery
fire, although maybe that doesn't
matter, either. The Contrast part is
also obvious: "Town Ruins, Man on
Street" is about the horrors of war;
the man is in uniform, but it's hard
to tell from which nation. It's
anyone's guess what he's thinking --
maybe something like, "Good God
All-Mighty!". He is standing across
from the ruined and darkened facade,
still standing, of a building that
no longer exists.
Then, assuming that
photo to have been taken first,
Herman waits a short time for a
cloud to move a bit and throw a
shadow on the hill and your mind's
eye is distracted from the
devastation and sees a painting
called "View of Hill" and you see
the romantic medieval castle up
there and it suggests peace and
quiet. Well, it is peace and
quiet, but that's because it's not a
medieval castle but home-town to a
good number of persons maybe a few
weeks earlier. Now we hope, they are
off hiding in some of the many caves
in the surrounding hills.
I don't know of a way to tell
with any certainty the name of that
town. From the other photos in the
same batch that Herman gave me, the
road is probably Route 6 up the
Liri Valley (so-called "Death
Valley" by Allied attackers), but it
could be anywhere along that stretch
from the approaches to Cassino to
some point past the Gustav Line on
the way past Anzio to Rome. A lot of
that road looked like these photos.
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entry
Jan 15, 2018
Faces:
Beautiful, Scary, and Hard-Working

I suppose there is nothing remarkable
about this photo. Herman simply knew a
good shot when he saw one. He called her
Nonna Bella (lovely
grandmother) and she still
certainly is that. Her
black dress indicates that she is a
widow. There is sadness, bemusement, and
patience in her eyes, as if she wants to
say, "Young man, a camera? Really?"
There is no indication of place, but
from other photos in the same
batch, it's a small town or village in
the northern Campania region or southern
Lazio (Latina) taken as the Allies moved
north.
Next - this is the one that scared me.
It still does.

It's labelled "Italy, Norma,'44 -
Little girl on steps."
Norma is a town in Lazio, below
Rome, inland from Anzio.
She's barefoot and filthy. Her eyes
are half-open. Lifeless slits.
"Herman," I said, "is that child...?
"No, she got up. I don't know why
they put her down like that."
The hard
worker
The
photo is marked as "Italy,
Sessa, 1944." Sessa is short for
the town of Sessa Aurinca, a
hill town in the nothern
Campania in the province of
Caserta. They are about to
start up "Death Vally" towards
Cassino.
"Herman, is that really a
donkey?", I asked.
"Do I look like Charles Darwin to
you"
"I mean really Equus africanus
asinus, a domesticated
member of the horse family,
Equidae. Or might it not be a
mule, the offspring of Mr. Donkey
and Miss Horse?"
"It's an ass, like you."
There are more than 40 million
donkeys in the world today. Until
recently donkeys and mules were
valuable in many military units
and are still important
on farms and in rural civilian
communities in the world
as pack and draft animals. Oh,
the biological
"reciprocal" of a mule, that is
the offspring of Mr. Horse and
Miss Donkey is called a hinny.
This one is carrying some
sort of a basket, possibly for
wood. In the war they were also
used to remove the fallen. There
is picture of that, here.
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entry
Jan 17, 2018
The
Free French & the Moroccans

The terms Free France and Free French
Forces (France Libre and Forces
françaises libres) apply to the
French government-in-exile and
its military forces led by
Charles de Gaulle during the Second
World War. They continued to fight
against the Axis powers as one of the
Allies after the fall of France in
1940. Set up in London in June 1940,
it organized and supported the
Resistance in occupied France as well
as participating in the war against
the Axis in north Africa and Italy by
making use of troops from French
colonial north Africa. The enlisted
men were all colonial North Africans,
while officers and NCOs were French,
such as the gentleman in this photo.
Herman's label on this photo reads
"cassino 44 french 2LT with 2nd
Moroccan division." He is not further
identified.
All sources, including Herman in his oral history
account, praise the valor of
Moroccan troops in overcoming
tenacious German resistance. Herman
and many other sources, however, also
speak of the vicious episodes of
"rape, pillage, and plunder" by
marauding Moroccan soldiers in the
weeks and months after the battle for
Cassino. There is an entry on those
episodes at
this link.
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It's a Wonderful Life
I'm not
being facetious, but this family
looks happy, well-fed and loved.
Herman titled the photo "Group44".
If it's 1944 then it may be after
the Germans pulled out of Rome and
headed north. The war is not over,
but it will in another year. The
photo is not in a village, but looks
like a city or town that you can see
through the rubble in the
background. But if these people
survived the worst war in human
history with their family intact,
there is cause to be happy.
Good looking family. The father in
the back on the right looks like he
has seen war. Just a hunch. The kids
look fine, except for junior in the
middle on the left who may have been
in a fight. His brother, in
the cap and slouching with his hands
in his pockets, is the wise guy in
the family.The two girls below the
mother are lovely. Everyone
looks -- well, not super neat and
spit-shined -- but maybe they're on
the way to, or coming back from --
church. Herman probably saw them and
walked up and said "Golly, what a
lovely family. Do you mind if I take
a picture of you?" That's all it
would take because no one could
resist a sincere pitch like that
from Herman. So Mom has them fall
in, in order of age, poses the girls
up front, tells her husband he
forgot a tie, combs down some loose
hair over here and adjusts a button
over there, and there's your family.
The little squirt, lower left?
--they rib him a lot but love him
dearly. The little girl on the
right?-- delicate. They love her
too. It's gloriously
incongruous. In spite of the bits of
rubble, there is nothing of the pall
of war.
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entry
Feb 4, 2018
victory at Sea
Herman,
always the flair for the dramatic!
Actually, this one is kind of
intriguing. (You can almost hear the
strains of Richard Rodgers' Victory
at Sea playing in the
background!) The title on the shot
is "Vesuvporthole." Gee, thanks.
That's the easy part. It's a bit
trickier trying to pin down the
date. First, this is shot from the
south-east, from a vessel moored
precisely at the port of
Castellammare at the beginning of
the Sorrentine peninsula. Thus, this
must be after the invasion at
Salerno (mid-late Sept. '43)
when the Germans had retreated back
through Naples to string their
defenses on the approaches to
Cassino, but before the Allies had
actually started to off-load men and
personnel into Naples, itself, in
this case probably off-loading into
Castellammare and driving to Naples.
That's what is about to happen from
the looks of the vessel at the very
left of the photo, seen through the
porthole. There are so many cranes
on that ship that it has to be one
of the famous "Liberty ships"
(more on them in a later photo,
below), often used as troop
transports but mostly for handling
cargo and equipment. It occurs to me
I don't know why Herman was on that
ship since he says here
I drove into
Naples—I'll never forget that—by
way of the route from Salerno to
Pompei and Torre Annunziata, all
along the ocean...
If he drove "...from Salerno
to Pompei and Torre
Annunziata...all along the
ocean..." he would
have had to turn south at Pompeii
to drive the few miles to the port
of Castellammare and find that
ship with the port hole. Maybe
that's what he did -- anything for
a picture. The other object in the
water you see through the port
hole is not a ship but a small
island named the "The Rocks of
Rovigliano" just off the
coast: sighting over that is what
lets you figure out where Herman's
ship was located. My guess: early
October, 1943. The arduous trek up
towards Cassino was still in the
future.
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Going
Home
added Feb 7,
2018
Since
I mentioned Liberty ships (directly
above), I shall jump forward a bit from
the previous photo (from Oct 1943) to
this one taken by Herman aboard the Felix
Grundy. It is titled "Going Home".
There's no date on the photo but it was
in the same batch of prints as the one
of the troop train (below) that is
labeled Marseilles, December '45. That
struck me as strange since V-E Day was 8
May 1945 and V-J was August 15 ( also
September 2, the date the armistice was
actually signed .) These troops
returning to the U.S. were in a French
port as late as December waiting for a
ship. The Felix Grundy was the
one they got and here they are seen
lounging in luxurious comfort (meaning
they are alive and going home!) on the
passenger deck.
Liberty
Ships
She was a so-called "Liberty ship," one
of the products of an incredible
shipbuilding effort to mass produce as
many vessels as possible to serve as
cargo and troop ships in the European,
Pacific and Asian theaters. The effort
produced 2,710 "Liberty ships"
(affectionately termed "ugly ducklings")
between 1941 and 1945, an unprecedented
example of industrial output. It was
organized by Henry J. Kaiser (1882 –
1967), the American industrialist who
became known as the father of modern
American shipbuilding. He established
the Kaiser Shipyards, which built the
Liberty ships. Afterwards he formed
Kaiser Aluminum and Kaiser Steel.
The ships
were "prefabricated"; that is, they were
identical in design and produced
assembly-line fashion in sections that
were then welded together at 18
different shipyards in the United
States. They were all 134.57 meters /
441 ft 6 long with a beam (width at the
widest point) of 17.3 meters / 56 feet
10.75 feet; they averaged about 11 knots
(18.5 kph / 12.7mph on 2 oil-fired
boilers and a single screw. They had a
range of 20,000 nautical mi (37,000 km;
23,000 mi) They carried stern-mounted
4-in (102 mm) deck guns for use against
surfaced submarines, and a variety of
anti-aircraft guns. As troop ships they
were intended to carry 550 troops but
often carried more. For the homeward
bound leg, maybe you just had to wait
your turn. (Returning 8 million service
members from overseas was quite a task.
The operation to do so was named Operation
Magic Carpet.) It was conventional
to name the ships after illustrious,
deceased Americans. (You could buy a
ship and name it for 2 million dollars.
Felix Grundy (1777 – 1840) was a
congressman and senator from Tennessee
and served as the 13th Attorney General
of the United States. The Felix
Grundy was launched in June of
1943, and decommissioned after the war,
sold to a commercial shipping company
and then scrapped in New Orleans in
1965. Similarly, many of the the ships
became mainstays of commercial fleets
trying to start up again after the war
in places such as Greece and Italy.
Three of the vessels are preserved in
the U.S., two as museum ships.
Meanwhile,
back at the Marseilles train station, we
see the guys pouring out for a smoke
break. The chalk art on the side of the
train doesn't compare to the elaborate
"bomber art" of WWII, but it's fun
trying to decipher: "Home for Xmas? (we
hope)" (Ok, that puts it at early to
mid-December); "Pig Ahoy" (pig ahoy?); I
can't read the caption on the cartoon
except it ends with "Daddy"; and so
forth.
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