The Anzio Beachhead

Operation Shingle was meant to break the deadlock in Italy. On January 22, 1944, the U.S. VI Corps landed at Anzio and Nettuno, some thirty-five miles south of Rome, behind the German line at Cassino. The landing surprised everyone. Then the corps dug in on the beach and waited for reinforcements, and the Germans arrived first.

Within a week Kesselring had ringed the beachhead with elements of eight divisions on the high ground. The counterattacks of February came within a few miles of the sea before American and British infantry stopped them in the rain.

The breakout came on May 23, four months and a day after the landing. Men who had come ashore dry in January had spent the winter in holes that filled with water every time it rained.

The composition is pinned to the lower left, two helmets and a wall of mud, and opens out from there across a flat waterlogged plain to a horizon lit by flares and shellbursts. The sky is done in grays and dirty gold, the light of parachute flares rather than dawn. A pool of standing water in the trench doubles the fires above it. Shattered trees mark the middle distance. Nothing in the picture is dry.