Desperate Valour

Allied forces came ashore at Anzio on the Italian coast about half a year before the Normandy landings. Commanders hoped the move would bypass the deadlock that had settled over Italy and endanger the German defensive line across southern Europe. Instead, the landing force stalled only a few miles inland, and the Allies found themselves locked in a grinding fight that lasted five months.

Historian Flint Whitlock draws on previously unpublished archival sources and on memoirs from American, British and German veterans to cover both sides of the campaign. The account stays close to the men in waterlogged, freezing foxholes, who endured repeated infantry attacks, air raids and artillery bombardments while trying to hold their positions. Out of that prolonged struggle came a defensive stand that turned a likely defeat into a victory.

The book presents itself as the first full-length study of the Anzio fighting, tracing both the planning and the day-to-day combat that shaped the outcome.