The 1944 landings at Anzio were intended to bring a speedy end to
the deadlock at Monte Cassino, where the terrain and a fierce
German defence had held up the Allied advance. Instead, troops were
pinned down in a small beachhead, and six months of vicious
close-quarter fighting ensued, until the fall of Cassino. The
author was at Anzio; his novel is dedicated to those who died there
and richly deserves the praise it received on its first
publication. Poignant and harrowing, it describes the experiences
of young men, old before their time, as they live and die in the
utter chaos and brutality of war. The writing is simple, and more
affecting for it, matter-of-fact in its depiction of the mixture of
the horrific, the mundane and the courageous that is the soldier's
lot; fragments of their stories are told to reveal the individuals
behind the official statistics. An unforgettable read. (Kirkus UK)
Italy, 1944 - this is the setting of one of the most convincing and
quietly magnificent stories about man and war that has ever been
written. Here, (distilled from the experiences and observations of
one who fought with them in the British infantry unit) is the mood
of those who fought and died at Anzio. Their task - to seize the
Alban Hills and then Rome forty miles away. Instead, for more than
four months, they sank into the mud of the Anzio plain and fought
for their lives. Nothing has appeared since Erich Maria Remarque's
ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT that can compare with this book's
ability to penetrate the minds of men at war. There are no heroes,
no heroines, no victories. This is a faceless, nameless, fragmented
war. Even national differences - Britain, Italian, German, American
- merge and are forgotten in this larger story of humanity. This
story, in fact, does not need to be Anzio; it could be any
battlefield where man has faced death.
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