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In spite of the disaster that befell the Rangers, the 7th and
15th Infantry regiments continued their attacks toward Cisterna,
one soldier recalling that the defenders clung stubbornly to
their entrenched positions while launching locally heavy
counterattacks. Sgt. Truman O. Olson, a light machine gunner
with Company B. 7th Infantry, took part in one sixteen-hour
assault on entrenched enemy positions in which one-third of his
company became casualties. Having seized a toehold, the
survivors dug in while Sergeant Olson and his crew took their
one available machine gun and placed it forward of the line to
bear the brunt of an expected enemy counterattack. Although he
had been firing without respite all day, Olson stuck grimly to
his post throughout the night while his gun crew was killed, one
by one, by accurate and overwhelming enemy fire. Weary from over
twenty-four hours of continuous battle and suffering from an arm
wound, Olson manned his gun alone, meeting the full force of a
200-man enemy dawn assault supported by mortars and machine
guns. After thirty minutes of fighting, Olson was severely
wounded, but he refused evacuation. For an hour and a half after
receiving a second and subsequently fatal wound, he continued to
fire his machine gun, killing at least twenty of the enemy,
wounding many more, and ultimately forcing the attackers to
withdraw. For his actions Sergeant Olson was posthumously
awarded the Medal of Honor.
While some progress was made by 3d Division units in the face of
noticeably stronger enemy resistance, by nightfall on 31 January
the Americans were still one mile from the village, battling
stubbornly forward but unable to break through. On the following
day fighting was equally inconclusive, and by noon it had become
obvious, after three days of costly attacks and counterattacks,
that the Americans could not capture Cisterna, still 1,500 yards
away. Heeding intelligence reports delivered on 2 February,
which indicated the arrival of new German units in the Anzio
area and an imminent enemy counterattack, Truscott, on the
orders of Clark and Lucas, again told his command to dig in.
The other prong of the Allied attack launched by the British 1st
Division and CCA, 1st Armored Division, toward Campoleone and
the Alban Hills initially fared little better. Rain-soaked
terrain, fierce enemy fire, and ubiquitous minefields slowed
CCA's advance, and by nightfall on 30 January the unit was still
struggling to reach its line of departure. The British succeeded
in advancing two miles the first day, but they also failed to
breach the German defenses. General Lucas changed plans for the
second day of the attack and ordered the British to breach the
enemy line along the Albano Road at Campoleone for exploitation
by CCA. During the next two days the Allies reached Campoleone,
penetrated the German main line, and opened a two-mile-wide gap.
But the exhausted Allied troops were unable to exploit their
success, and the drive ground to a halt.
The failure of the Allied breakout attempt, stymied by stiff
resistance, convinced Alexander, Clark, and Lucas that an enemy
counterattack must be in the offing. Reinforcements were rushed
to Anzio, including 1,800 men of the American-Canadian 1st
Special Service Force, elements of the British 56th Division,
and additional antiaircraft and artillery units, raising the
total number of Allied soldiers in the beachhead to 100,000.
Despite these additions, the Fourteenth Army outnumbered the
Allies at Anzio by 4 February. But the German force was a
hodgepodge of rapidly thrown together units. All were critically
short of ammunition, training, qualified leaders, and reserves.
Allied air attacks had disrupted communications, hampered troop
and supply movements, and caused morale problems. From the
outset Mackensen had doubted the available force could eliminate
the Anzio beachhead, but he prepared a forceful counterattack
nonetheless. The 4th Parachute and 65th infantry Divisions of
the I Parachute Corps were to pinch off the Campoleone salient
and recapture the Factory at Aprilia. The same units would then
break through to the sea along the Albano Road. Elsewhere the
LXXVI Panzer Corps, consisting of the 3d Panzer Grenadier, 715th
Motorized Infantry, 71st Infantry, Hermann Goering, and 26th
Panzer Divisions would attack south of Cisterna along the
Mussolini Canal and attempt to breach the Allied perimeter and
advance on Nettuno and Anzio.
The counterattack opened with an artillery barrage on 3-4
February, followed by armored and infantry assaults which
smashed into the partially prepared British 1st Division
defenses in the Campoleone salient. The British held, despite
suffering 1,400 casualties, but their dangerously exposed
position prompted Lucas to order their withdrawal to one mile
north of the Factory and Carroceto on the night of 4-5 February,
a retreat of about 2.5 miles. Although the salient was
eliminated, the Germans failed to break the Allied line or
retake the Factory. The undulating and soggy Albano Road area
was just as inhospitable to German armor and infantry as it had
been to Allied forces the week before. However, the critical
situation the Germans created in the Allied center convinced
Lucas to form a beachhead defense line running from the Moletta
River in the north, through the fields of the central sector, to
the Mussolini Canal in the south. He issued orders to all Allied
troops that this was the final line of resistance to be held at
all costs—the shallow beachhead precluded any further retreat.
The Germans renewed their attacks on 7 February in the weakened
British 1st Division sector and, in two days of bitter fighting,
pushed the British troops from the Factory and Carroceto.
Although battered and exhausted, they managed to maintain a
coherent line and were reinforced on 10 February by the 1st
Armored Regiment, CCA, 1st Armored Division (itself at 50
percent strength), the 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion, the
504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, and the 179th and 157th
regiments of the U.S. 45th Infantry Division. Ordered to
counterattack and retake Aprilia on 11
February, the 179th Infantry and 191st Tank Battalion began a
two-pronged attack seeking to outflank the Germans holding the
Factory. In two days of costly, hand-to-hand fighting, the
Americans failed to retake the lost ground, but inflicted heavy
losses on the enemy. Lucas still expected further attacks in the
weakened central sector and removed the British 1st Division
from the line, replacing it with the British 56th and U.S. 45th
Infantry Divisions. As an added precaution, VI Corps artillery
was strengthened and Allied tactical air attacks were stepped
up.
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