Word: capua
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Frontal Assault. One hour after midnight the Battle of the Volturno began. From the river's south bank, on both sides of Capua, the Fifth's artillery laid down the heaviest barrage of the Italian campaign. In thinner volume the German guns spoke back. A bright moon silvered the darkness. Under it, shellfire flashed red, tracers brushed glowing orbits, mortars chopped the river into a watery hell...
...bloodiest fighting surged through Capua itself. Just before the Allied zero hour, the Germans thrust a column across the Volturno into the old town. Momentarily the Fifth staggered. Then Allied troops counterattacked. The Germans quickly turned, splashed back across the river. Northeast of Capua, General Clark's Yanks seized a clump of scrubby brown hills dominating the surrounding valley...
...muddy, determined Fifth inched forward, mopped up the hard knots of resistance. One day it trudged into steepled Capua, where Hannibal and his Carthaginians had wintered after slaughtering the Romans at Cannae. There Mark Clark's men stood in a strategic bend of the Volturno River. Across 200 yards of rushing water lay the German line. By week's end the Fifth had moved up to the Volturno on both sides of Capua, along a front stretching 40 miles inland from the Tyrrhenian Sea. Patrols nudged across the stream, engaged the enemy in sharp skirmishes...