Word: rapido
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...fertile valley of the Rapido, below Monte Cassino, the seed buried in the spring had germinated and borne fruit. Columns of two-wheeled donkey carts, piled high with long sheaves of grain, wound slowly along the dusty roads to the marketplaces. High above, on a barren hill, the ruins of one of Christendom's most famous and ancient abbeys gleamed chalk white...
...winter of 1943-44, after a bloody mauling at Salerno, the men of the 36th Division went back into the line. A few weeks later, at the Rapido River, the Fifth Army's Lieut. General Mark Clark committed them to one of the bloodiest engagements of the Italian campaign...
Last week, as the 36th Division, built on a skeleton of Texas National Guardsmen, held a reunion in Brownwood, Tex., the men who still remembered the frightful days at the Rapido did what they always promised they would do. They demanded that Congress investigate the "colossal blunder [and] take the necessary steps to correct a military system that will permit an inefficient and inexperienced officer, such as General Mark W. Clark ... to destroy the young manhood of this country." Said one company commander: "I had 184 men . . . 48 hours later I had 17. If that's not mass murder...
Boyish-looking, 24-year-old Aubrey Holland was a medical aid man with the Fifth Army in Italy. During the bloody crossing of the Rapido River, while he was helping the wounded, he was badly hurt himself. The fighting rolled on and Holland lay unattended on the river bank with a shattered arm and leg. He lay there for four days. When medics finally got to him, his feet and one hand were frozen. Doctors amputated both his legs...
...Allied Commander General Sir Harold R. L. G. Alexander might regroup, force the Arno as he did the Rapido. There would still lie ahead the mountains and pillboxes of the Gothic Line...