Word: arno
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Even though Pisa and Florence were monuments of European culture they were astride a military line, and that line the Germans were bent on holding if they could. Through both cities the Arno flowed between masonry banks, making it a perfect tank trap and barrier to infantry. The Allies held the south bank, the Germans the north. So the war in Italy became a peculiar kind of delicate slugging match among the museums, with world-famous art in no man's land...
With British Guards and South Africans, the New Zealanders reached the southern gates of Florence, sent patrols into the old city to the southern bank of the Arno. They found every evidence that the Germans would make a fight for it despite their declaration that Florence was an open city...
...Sadistic . . . Wanton." Allied headquarters roundly denounced the Germans for wrecking five of the six bridges across the Arno, called the "wanton destruction" another example of "Field Marshal Albert Kesselring's order to his troops to carry out demolitions with sadistic imagination." The enemy "has seen fit to use it [Florence] for his military traffic. . . . His paratroops are posted along the northern bank of the Arno within city limits. ... It is clear that the enemy intends to oppose the crossing of the Arno on both sides of the city, which remains in no man's land...
...just as carefully, but less patiently, avoiding Pisa, but patience was running out (see ART). Yanks of General Mark Clark's Fifth Army were already in the southern part of the town divided by the Arno River. Bowing toward them was the famous eight-story tower and clear in Allied glasses were the figures of German spotters using it for observation...
...tower that "leans like a lily in the wind . . . strange as the horn of a unicorn," and north of Lieut. General Sir Oliver Leese's Eighth Army there was still Florence, repository of Renaissance art, which the Germans had declared an open city. When they were captured, the Arno would cease to be a barrier. General Sir Harold R.L.G. Alexander would be ready to regroup his forces, and the ultimate thrust would get under...