May 9, 1944 — Phil writes his mom from Anzio about his first possible promotion
May 9, 2024May 11, 1944 — Every man on Anzio could feel that they were the next to breakout
May 11, 2024For the 30th, the first three weeks of May were devoted to preparation for a giant all-out attack to smash out of the beachhead and carry the Fifth Army to Rome. The new offensive was code-named Operation Buffalo.[1]
The mission called for the VI Corps, now bolstered with 14,000 replacements—up to a fighting strength of 90,000 in seven fully equipped and manned divisions—to break out of the beachhead toward the mountain village of Cisterna, located in a mountain gap and leading down to Highway 6 directly to Rome.
During this time, Phil wrote his mother:
We are out of the front lines now and back in a rest camp where we are training. We have to get the new men that have joined us in the last two months all trained. But we are eating swell and can move around a lot.
During all my spare time around here, I have to spend it studying, writing lectures, and censoring mail, and this platoon of mine sure can write a heck of a lot of mail. But I don’t mind sitting around late at night censoring mail because the sooner I get it out, the sooner it will get to their homes.
As he reviewed his men’s letters to their moms and girlfriends, he missed his mother and Marilyn even more and wrote them two to three times a week. But there was still no mail from Marilyn.[1]
[1] At First Light, pages 102-103.
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