"Italy, early December 1943. It had been raining since mid-September. Rivers in the area were running high, bridges were swept away, and road surfaces were mostly gone. And, of course, it was cold.
The German Winter Line had held out despite attack after attack by Lieutenant General Mark Clark's Fifth Army. Regardless of any progress made, no advance beyond the Mignano Gap to Cassino was achieved. This Gap was flanked by the Camino hill mass including mountains such as la Difensa, la Remetanea, Rotondo, and Lungo.
On 22 November, Fifth Army had announced Operation Raincoat, "the plan to breach the mountain passes." One of the units in this plan was new to the Italian theater, having previously served in the invasion of Kiska in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska. It was assigned to the U.S. 36th Infantry Division as the spearhead of the operation. This unit was the First Special Service Force.
The Force was created as a result of an idea by a British scientist named Geoffrey Pyke. In the summer of 1940, Pyke advocated for a low-silhouetted, tracked, propeller driven sled designated the Weasel, which would be used by airborne troops in a counter-invasion of Norway. The idea, nicknamed Project Plough, caught the attention of Winston Churchill and was sent to the U.S. Army for review. Ground tests conducted by the 87th Mountain Infantry Regiment at Fort Lewis, Washington, proved very negative, although much of this was caused by a lack of snow that essentially resulted in the tests being inconclusive. Retests in the Sierra Nevada range and on Mount Rainier again produced similar failed results particularly in the Weasel's capacity to transit a 20% grade…."
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Armand
has been watching some documentaries lately set in the Western Desert, and was inspired to create this...
