Cassino to the Alps - US Army Center Of Military History

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of the three enemy divisions defending
the pass-the 334th and 362d Infantry
Divisiom (the 4th Parm'hutf Division was
the third)-had taken considerable
losses when contingents of the divisions
had shifted hastily eastward to help
shore up the defenses of the Imola
sector. Thus when the three divisions
making the American main eff()rt-the
34th advancing on Monte Bastione, the
91 st on Monte Oggioli, and the 85th on
Monte Canda---converged on the Radicosa
Pass, General Schlemm, whose I
Parachute Corps controlled the sector,
saw no alternative to withdrawal. Taking
advantage of the fog and rain,
which there as elsewhere enveloped the
front, the Germans broke contact on 28
September and fell back along the axis
of Highway 65 to establish a new line
based on the village of Monghidoro,
three, miles north of the pass,
During the night the 91 st Division
occupied the Radicosa Pass without opposition,
and for the rest of the day, on
the 29th, two regiments pushed about
two miles north of the pass through a
thick fog that reduced visibility to a few
yards, To the flanks the 34th and 85th
Divisions kept pace in their sectors. All
three divisions patrolled, as actively as
the persistent fog would allow, in an
effort to locate the enemy's new line
and determine its strenf{th. 31
31 Fifth Army History, Part VII, pp. 100-102;
Starr, From Salerno to the Alps, pp. 138--40.
CASSINO TO THE ALPS
By the end of September the Fifth
Army's objective of Bologna lay a
tempting twenty-four miles north of the
forward positions of the I I Corps astride
Highway 65, and on a clear day
the British troops atop Monte Battaglia
could see the Po Valley only about ten
miles away. Yet for all the strategic
position of the II Corps, the rest of the
Fifth Army was less well situated. To
the right, the British 13 Corps, after
taking over the Santerno valley sector
from the U.S. 88th Division, held a 17mile
front, wider than at the start of
the offensive and so extended that the
corps' three divisions could make only
limited advances. The same could be
said of General Crittenberger's IV
Corps with a 50-mile front. Already
thinly spread, the corps had been weakened
more when General Clark had
withdrawn part of the 1 st Armored
Division into Army reserve. Although
the IV Corps had been pushing ahead
gradually, so that with the exception of
Task Force 45 along the coast all units
by the end of September had passed
through the Gothic Line, the pace was
too slow to prevent Field Marshal Kesselring
from shifting units from the XIV
Panzer Corps to reinforce more threatened
sectors opposite the U.S. II Corps.
With the approach of winter weather,
the IV Corps in the coming months
could hardly be expected to pick up the
pace.