Word: spezia
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Ligurian coast Lieut. General Lucian K. Truscott's Fifth Army thrust for the old naval-base town of La Spezia. Working a pincers, the 442nd Regiment (Japanese-Americans) and the 473rd Regiment (Negroes) cleared enemy defenses around the famed marble center of Carrara. Italian Partisan units swarmed out of caves and quarries to help the troops capture the village...
...Cassino, had really wrecked the Line. From the foothills above Bologna they were only 80 miles across the plain from Verona and Padua. The German troops retiring from Rimini, on the eastern end of the Gothic Line, and those holding the western end of the Line near La Spezia now had to race northward or be cut off, for Verona and Padua are their only ways...
...Above Naples the Germans might make a stand behind the Volturno River, where the old Romans posted a garrison and Garibaldi beat the Neapolitans. Above Rome, they might run a barricade along the Apennines, from La Spezia on the Ligurian Sea to Rimini on the Adriatic. Above that barrier the land sloped down to the Po Valley, and beyond towered the Alps. Napoleon once had hacked a way across that rampart of nature, via Tarvis and Klagenfurt, toward Vienna. But it was formidable. Rather than a direct road to Germany, Italy might be a flank for other bridgeheads. > Italy leads...
...late afternoon of Wednesday, Sept. 8, a message reached Admiral Bagliria, commander of the Italian battle fleet berthed at La Spezia. The Italian surrender had been announced. Admiral Bagliria knew what to do; his decision had been made for him. Aboard his flagship, the 35,000-ton battleship Roma, he gave an order. At 6:30 p.m. the fleet moved out of La Spezia, turned southward...
...next afternoon the fleet from La Spezia had made its way to a point near the Strait of Bonifacio, which separates Corsica from Sardinia. Overhead hovered an R.A.F. reconnaissance plane; the ships were still outside Allied fighter range. At about 3:30 p.m. the tailgunner saw planes approaching. They were German Junkers...