Douglas Orgill (1922–1984)

The Allied offensive in Italy in the autumn of 1944 plunged the British Eighth Army and th e United States Fìfth Army into some of the fìercest fighting of the war. Against them were ranged two great German armies, the Tenth and the Fourteenth, which put up a struggle unsurpassed in German military history.
The scene of the fighting was the Gothic Line, a chain of defenses that stretched across Italy, through the mountains of the Northern Apennines, from the Mediterranean to the Adriatic. Along this line were names on the map that men who fought in Italy will never forget the ridge of Gemmano, scattered with the dead of two British divisions, Croce and San Savino; the towering escarpment of Livergnano, where Mark Clark's American infantry clung and crawled and died in the rain and mist.
Why did the campaign fail? Douglas Orgill, who commanded a troop of Sherman tanks in Italy, finds several reasons. Most obvious was the division in Allied strategic thinking, caused by American distrust of Britain .
Through the pages of this book move the men who had to try to solve these problems Churchill arguing with Roosevelt; the talI, reassuring figure of Leese; Mark Clark, restless, able, ambitious, the charming Alexander, a natural leader in the British mold; Kesselring, smiling , anxious, indomitable; and Hitler, still physically shaken by the July bomb plot, swinging from reasoned strategie judgment to fìts of despondency and rage.
Douglas Orgill has written a lucid and gripping account that brings out the full drama of the struggle.
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Nell'autunno del 1944 l'ottava armata britannica e la quinta armata degli Stati Uniti erano occupate in una delle più feroci battaglie della Seconda Guerra Mondiale sulla linea Gotica: una linea difensiva che attraversava gli Appennini settentrionali, dal Mediterraneo all'Adriatico. Douglas Orgill, che era al comando di una truppa di carri armati Sherman in Italia, cerca di trovare la ragione del fallimento di questa battaglia che causò la morte di due divisioni britanniche, una delle quali fu sicuramente la divisione degli Alleati sulla strategia da adottare.
L'autore attraverso queste pagine fornisce uno lucido resoconto del dramma della battaglia.… (altro)