Activation of new aaa units - Air Defense Artillery

19-1S
heroisms and sufferings of American and
British soldiers on Am.io were the rock of
Allied stubbornness and determination.
The bright promises of the original plan
died stillborn but the labor pains continued
for four full months. Whether the suffering
was essential to making the Nazis understand
that the Allies had no intention of
retreating a single step on the road to
Berlin, we can leave to the historians and
the psychologists. But they ought to be
reminded that the Nazis always imperfectly
understood the degree of Allied determination
and if their incomprehension was to
be penetrated, certainly it took something
like Anzio to do it.
It is difficult to give any other reason for
the. four month's campaign after the original
plans for a link-up with the main Allied
forces failed to materialize. The book
under review has only a few things to say
about the meaning of Anzio, and it is just
as well. The story of the combat men and
the communications zone men and women
hemmed in on the narrow beachhead ought
to be told as it is told here-as a story in
itself, of attack and counterattack, of
desperate defensive lighting.
The great successes of the war ought
not to be allowed to overshadow the actions
that were less than great successes. The
men on Bataan, at Kasserine Pass, on Anzio,
and in the Bulge f0ught no less beavely
than did the men who broke out at St. Lo,
who crossed the Rhine, and who swept clear
the small and large Pacilic islands from
Tarawa to Okinawa without a failure.
The clear, straightfonvard reporting in
Anzio Beachhead is a finer tribute to the
men and women who fought there than
any possible eulogy could be. It ought to
be read by every soldier; indeed it wouldn't
hUrl the American public to read it and
learn something about warfare that the
newspapers did not tell them during the
war-J. B. S.
A SOLDIER'S SAGA. Bv General Sir
Aylmer Haldane. Willi~m Blackwood
and Sons, Edinburgh. 408 Pages; Index;
$5.50.
There seems to be an unwritten law
in England that retired generals and big
g