The Allies at Anzio: Rare Photos From WWII’s Italian Campaign, 22 January 1944 (1 Viewer)

[BLReed]

http://life.time.com/

On January 22, 1944, six months after the Allied invasion of Sicily, American and British troops swarmed ashore at Anzio, roughly 30 miles south of Rome. The brainchild of Winston Churchill and dubbed Operation Shingle, the attack caught German troops stationed along the Italian coast largely by surprise; but after the initial onslaught, the Germans dug in. The next four months saw some of the fiercest, most prolonged fighting in World War II’s European Theater, as the Allies — including Canadians and French alongside the British and Americans — battled German troops for control of the region.

LIFE photographer George Silk, a New Zealand native who covered the war from the North African desert, through Rome, up to Belgian’s forests and into Germany itself, spent months with the Allies after they landed at Anzio, chronicling what LIFE magazine at one point characterized as a “slow, maddening, fruitless battle.” In late May, the Allies finally managed a breakout assault, supported by artillery and air power; in early June, Allied troops entered Rome virtually unopposed.

Here, on the 70th anniversary of the start of the Battle of Anzio, LIFE.com presents a series of Silk’s photographs — many of them never published before — that graphically illustrate the grueling stalemate, accompanied always by lethal violence, that defined the operation. Roughly 7,000 Allied troops were killed in those four months. Another 36,000 were wounded or missing in action. The Germans suffered 40,000 casualties (5,000 killed) while more than 4,000 surrendered and were taken prisoner.