By Joe Kirwin

There are numerous Gothic Line Offensive stories that are obscure and nearly lost to history but none more so than the more 7,000 South African black soldiers who helped to end Nazi and Italian Fascists tyranny in Italy.

Fighting in Tuscany between American and Brazilian troops in the mountains above the city of Montemurlo, the Black South African troops' role was restricted to menial labor and other service-related duties under the command of the White South African Sixth Armored Division. That's because South African law prevented the Black South African soldiers from carrying a firearm. Instead they could only arm themselves with spears and shields against German machine guns, artillery and mortar fire.

The firearm restrictions were part of the overall racial abuse imposed by white South Africans going back to the early 1900s when they confiscated from blacks most of the arable land in the country. In 1939 when South Africa agreed to join the Allied Alliance and declare war on Germany, Italy and Japan, the controversial decision caused political upheaval - especially among Afrikaans political factions that identified with Nazi Germany.

When the war decision was taken by the White South African government, it realized it had a big problem: a severe shortage of infantry troops. Reluctantly the white South African government realized their only option was to allow Blacks and Coloreds into the Army.

Many Black South Africans agreed to join a special Native Military Corp in the South African army hoping it would lead to civil rights and land reform rewards when WW II ended. Whereas most other soldiers of color who fought and died for democracy on the Gothic Line in Italy - even though they did not have it in their own country - there was a slow and minimal post-war dividends. Ssome, such as U.S. African American troops, eventually gained civil rights in some parts of the United States. In the case of the approximately 60,000 Indian troops, their Gothic Line war service did play a role in helping India gain its independence from the United Kingdom in 1947. Japanese American troops were were compensated for being imprisoned after the Pearl Harbor attack by Japan in 1941.

But it was the opposite for Black South African soldiers when they returned from Italy. Apartheid was codified into South African law in 1948. As a result Blacks were forced onto desolate homelands or township slums. When Nelson Mandela's was released from prison in the early 1990s and led the African National Congress into government, the story of the Black South African soldiers service in WW II in Italy was disregarded. To this day it is still absent from most history book sand museums in South Africa and Italy.

After a four-month search for this podcast I finally found a man who has arguably done more than any over the last 50 years to keep the Black South African WW II soldier story alive. That person is University of Johannesburg Prof. Emeritus Louis Grundling. In the early 1980s he wrote his PhD thesis on the Black South African WW II history including on the Gothic Line and taught it for the next five decades at South Africa's largest academic institution.

Some 80 years later after the end of the Gothic Line Offensive and WW II in Europe, Prof. Grundling said there is still no recognition in the South African education system or in museums about the Black Soldiers' role in WW II, which started in north Africa under British command and then continued in Italy. Grundling said it was only in January of 2025 that recognition was given to Black South African soldiers who fought in WW I.

``Hopefully sometime soon recognition for the WW II Black South African soldiers will come,'' he told me.

The ferocious 4-month battle that took place at Monte Cassino when Allied Forces attempted to break through the mountains between Naples and Rome and drive the German and Italian Fascist forces out of Italy will always be remembered as the bloodiest and most brutal chapter of the 1943-45 WW II Allied campaign in Italy.

Later in 1944, when Allied armies launched the Gothic Line offensive after the liberation of Rome on June 4, the fighting across the northern Apennines is not as steeped in folklore as Monte Cassino but there were a number of epic battles that equaled in intensity if not in length and casualties. The fierce fighting in the mountain-top town of Gemmano overlooking the Adriatic Sea is often referred to as the ``Cassino of the Adriatic'' although some historians insist the battle over the old Roman coastal and port town of Rimini, was even bloodier.

On the western side of the Gothic Line in Tuscany, not far from where the Apennines and Apuane mountains meet, the battle of Monte Castello, Monte Torraccia and Monte Belvedere and nearby Riva Ridge, involving American and Brazilian troops, is sometimes referred to as the ``Cassino of Tuscany''.

In the center of Italy where the U.S. Fifth Army launched in mid-September, 1944 its part of the Gothic Line one-two punch, pincer movement to capture Nazi headquarters in Bologna, the struggle to control the strategic heights of Monte Battaglia (715 meters) above the Santerno and Valsenio river valleys is often referred to as the ``Cassino of the North.'' It was fought off and on over the course of several months starting from Sept. 27, 1944 when American 88th ``Blue Devil'' troops, aided by Italian Partisans, waged a week-long struggle.

If you climb to the top of Monte Battaglia today you can understand why it was the site of deadly combat. The commanding view of the Adriatic coastal plain extends all the way to the Po River valley and, Italy's breadbasket, Beyond it is Italy's industrial heartland. Although not in view, the city of Bologna and the Nazi military headquarters, is less than 40 kilometers.

So when the U.S. Army took control of Monte Battaglia in early autumn of 1944 the Gothic Line Offensive was on a roll. But the momentum was short-lived. Torrential rains, frigid weather and stout German resistance - as ordered relentlessly y by Hitler - proved insurmountable. As a result the Allied Forces, including American forces struggling to breakthrough in the mountains southwest of Bologna, called a halt to the offensive in mid December, For three months a battle of attrition similar to WW I warfare ensued. The Gothic Line offensive would not resume in full until March of 1945 when weather, refreshed troops, mechanical innovations, restocked ammo supplies and waning German soldier morale revived momentum.

Valerio Calderoni , 64, and a native of nearby Imola, has spent decades roaming the Santerno River Valley, especially over the last 40 years during his work as a veterinarian and pursuing his passion as an independent historian. For many years, Valerio has heard the local stories about the battle of Monte Battaglia some of which varied when it concerned the role of Italian Partisan freedom fighters and the U.S. Army troops and the relationship between the two. More than 20 years ago, Valerio took it upon himself to do extensive research examining archive records in the United States, Italy and Germany to understand the true story of what happened on Monte Battaglia. In 2014 he published his results in a book titled ``Monte Battaglia 1944: from Myth to History. Valerio explained in this podcast episode his conclusions and ongoing work, which includes forensic recovery of fallen soldiers on Monte Battaglia. Valerio is also a board member of the Gothic Line museum located in Castel del Rio in the Santerno River Valley.

For more infomation contact Joe Kirwin at joekirwin@compuserve.com or tel: 00 32 478 277802

By Joe Kirwin

Soon after the surprise Dec. 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii when Japanese forces destroyed much of the U.S. Navy and Air Force Pacific Ocean presence, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt ordered the arrest of more than 120,000 Japanese Americans living in the United States. They were forced from their homes, farms and businesses and locked up in internment camps in the deserts of the western United States. Yoshio Nakamura and his family were among those that lost everything. They were considered national security threats that could not be trusted.

Two years after the mass incarceration, the U.S. War Department, entering the third year of fighting WW II fronts in the Pacific and in Europe, faced a troop shortage. Suddenly imprisoned Japanese American men 18-years and older who were born in the United States were seen as a solution instead of spies. So the U.S. government allowed the Japanese-Americans men 18 and over to leave the prison camps but only if they agreed to join the U.S. Army and fight the Nazis in Italy or the Japanese in the Pacific. The injustice and hypocrisy was too much for many of the imprisoned Japanese Americans men and they refused . But for others it was an opportunity to prove their allegiance to the United States. Yoshio Nakamura was one of the latter. Even though his family members remained locked up in the desert until the end of the war, he would join the 442nd Japanese American regiment. It would go onto become one of the most decorated U.S. Army units in WW II.

The first Japanese American infantry troops arrived in Italy at Salerno in September of 1943 as part of the 100th Infantry Battalion. They would go on to engage in combat at Monte Cassino and suffered significant casualties and were subsequently referred to as the ``Purple Heart'' battalion. In the summer of 1944 the Nisei 442 Combat team would arrive in Italy north of Rome and were joined by the 100th Infantry Battalion and helped drive the Germans and Italian Fascists up the coast and into mountain-top fortifications on the Gothic Line. The Japanese American troops were then transferred to southern France and helped free territory that would allow American troops join Allied forces that had landed in Normandy. U.S. General Mark Clark, impressed by the Japanese Americans - or Nisei troops as they were known - by their short time in Italy - requested their return for the final Gothic Line thrust in western Tuscany. Their task was to scale the steep, white-marble Tuscan mountains overlooking the sea where German and Italian Fascist troops were hunkered down in artillery bunkers and had used the strategic redoubt to block Allied Forces from moving north up the Mediterranean Coast.

Now living in southern California, where he was born and raised, 100-year-old Yoshio Nakamura explained why he decided to join the U.S. Army and also recounted in vivid detail a crucial nighttime climb up Monte Folgorito to destroy one of the enemy mortar and artillery bunkers as if it occurred recently instead of 80 years ago. Yoshio also recounted how a half century later the U.S. government apologized for the gross injustice imposed on Japanese Americans during WW II.

For more information contact Joe Kirwin at joekirwin@compuserve.com or 00 32 478 277802

By Joe Kirwin

Over the past decade, author and U.S. Marine veteran Andrew Biggio interviewed more than 30 U.S. Army soldiers who fought on the Gothic Line as part of his research for his best-selling books The Rifle and The Rifle 2. Many were in their late 90s or older. But they had vivid, emotionally distraught recall of what happened from Sept. 1944 to April 1945 in the northern ItaIian Apennine mountains. As he describes in the podcast many of the soldiers had been on the front lines for almost two years - far longer than most other Allied Force troops fighting in other parts of Europe or in the Pacific theater. And as Allied Forces marched across northwest Europe towards Berlin, the Gothic Line U.S. Army troops attacking up heavily fortified mountain-top bunkers knew they were ``bait'' to keep German troops pinned down in Italy as the end neared in the six-year war. Morale was low and the death toll was high. Having survived North Africa, Sicily, Salerno, Anzio and Cassino, the mental and physical exhaustion drove many to either desert or even commit suicide. Upon the war's end and American veterans returned to the U.S. the country feted the heroes of the Normandy beaches, the Battle of the Bulge, Iwo Jima or Guadalcanal. But Gothic Line survivors were belittled by some fellow veterans who knew, like most Americans and Europeans, of the brutality and often futile task of combat on the Italian ``Forgotten Front.''

Biggio's work with U.S. WW II veterans on the Gothic Line in Italy and other theatres stems partly from his own military service. He has done tours in Afghanistan and Iraq and upon returning to civilian life he started projects to help wounded vets rehabilitate and adapt to civilian life. He currently resides in the Boston area and works in law enforcement. He is also the founder of Boston's Wounded Vet Run, which is an annual motorcycle ride honoring and supporting vets. His two books The Rifle and The Rifle 2 are available online or your local bookstore.

For more information contact Joe Kirwin at joekirwin@compuserve.com or at 00 32 478 277802

By Joe Kirwin

When the U.S. Fifth Army launched its part of the Allied Force Gothic Line one-two punch pincer movement to capture Bologna it began with a one of WW II's most daunting tasks: conquer the imposing heights of Monte Altuzzo 50 kilometers north of Florence. After initial success the offensive bogged down and turned into a WW I type of trench warfare because of a snowy, frigid winter in the mountainous terrain. Eighty years on, the Gotica Toscana Museum, located just below Monte Altuzzo in Tuscany, holds annual day-long re-enactments to not only honor the bravery of the American soldiers but also as a way to engage younger generations who know little or nothing about this dark chapter of Italian history. As Andrea Gatti, a former chairman of the Gotica Toscana museum, said: Italian students learn in school about Roman Empire history or the history of the founding of Italy in the 1800s but the WW II story is still taboo for some because of the bloody civil war that raged in Italy when the Gothic Line offensive began. Tens of thousands of civilians were murdered in cold blood by retreating Nazis and Italian Fascists. And because there was never an Italian version of the Nuremberg trials where Nazi war criminals were tried and convicted, suspicion and vengeance still fester within families, communities and politics in Italy.

Gatti also explains why knowing the history of what happened on the Gothic Line in Italy as well as the rest of Europe in WW II is vital to understand and appreciate the value of the European Union, which grew from the ashes of the conflict.

For more information contact Joe Kirwin at joekirwin@compuserve.com or 00 32 478277802

By Joe Kirwin

More than 60,000 Indian troops served in the Allied Force armies that fought and died to free Italy from German and Italian Fascist tyranny even though the soldiers from India did not have democracy in their homeland. Serving as volunteers under British command in the Adriatic sector of the Gothic Line offensive, Hindus, Moslems, Sikhs, Gurkhas and others fought side by side - primarily as fierce mountain fighters. They covered the flank of British soldiers on their right coming up the hills over looking the Adriatic Sea and American Fifth Army on their left, who began a campaign a few weeks after the British Eighth Army attack, up the center of Italy as part of a one-two punch, pincer movement to capture Bologna.

There are more than 5000 Hindu, Moslem, Gurkhas, Sikhs and other ethnic Indian soldiers buried or cremated in three Commonwealth grave cemeteries in and around the Gothic Line. Fifteen years ago Dhruv Ratti moved to Italy to work as a chemical engineer for an Italian company. He, like almost all other Indians of his generation, were never taught in school about the approximately 2.5 million Indian soldiers who volunteered to fight in WW II under British command, including the 60,000 who faced combat in Italy. Living near the Adriatic Sea, Ratti was told about a war cemetery near his house. He visited only to discover Indian soldier tombstones, some of whom came from villages near his home town and who had fought and died on the Gothic Line offensive - a battle that claimed more lives of his countrymen than any other in WW II. The emotion triggered by that visit launched Ratti on a two-fold mission that continues to this day: gain recognition in Italy for those Indian soldiers in the same way that American, Canadian, British, Australian and other Western nation troops are honored - a quest that he has yet to fulfill. That mission parallels an effort to counter anti-immigrant scapegoating by Italian and other European politicians as well as the general public who do not appreciate the fact that the "freedom they enjoy has been nourished by Indian blood.'''

The second goal of his mission is to bring awareness to more than 1 billion people on the Indian subcontinent whose forebears fought in Italy and in other parts of WW II.

In 2021 Ratti made important headway on the latter goal when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Italy. Ratti presented him with a display, including cemetery photographs, detailing Indian soldier sacrifice in Italy - a story that has been ignored in Indian history because it happened before the country gained independence from Britain in 1947. With Modi's encouragement, Ratti continues to work on various film and documentary projects in order to inform younger Indian generations of their ancestors WW II history.

Ratti has also worked tirelessly to get the British Commonwealth Grave Cemetery Commission to rectify Indian tombstone language errors in Italy as well as sacrilegious flaws listing Muslim soldiers at cremation sites.

In addition in this podcast episode, Ratti also tells the story of how there were also Indians, some motivated by their quest for independence from Britain, who fought on the Axis side in WW II. And how both the Indians who fought with the British in WW II and those that were part of the Indian Nationalist Army that formed during WW II, helped accelerate India's successful drive for independence from Britain.

For more information contact Joe Kirwin (joekirwin@compuserve.com) or on whatsapp at 00 32 478 277802

By Joe Kirwin

After U.S. Fifth Army General Mark Clark deviated from an Allied Force plan in early June 1944 to trap retreating Germans in central Italy and instead moved his troops to liberate Rome, the controversial decision outraged British commanders, especially Lt. General Oliver Leese. As a result, Leese rejected the original Gothic Line offensive plan for a joint American-British attack up the center of Italy in the Apennine mountains to liberate Bologna from Nazi and Italian Fascist occupation.

Instead, Leese launched one of the most complex and dangerous logistical exercises in WW II by moving at night in August 1944 approximately 100,000 British Eighth Army troops - an amount equal to those in the D-Day landing in Normandy. The convoy traveled from central Italy across a primitive, hilly road network to the Adriatic coastal plain. The coalition of soldiers under Leese's command included troops from India, Scotland, Poland, Greece, Palestine, New Zealand and Canada.

On Aug. 28, 1944, they launched the first wave of the Gothic Line offensive, which was part of a one-two punch, pincer movement instead of the original full-frontal, central Italy thrust. The U.S.-led Fifth Army, commanded by Clark, would launch two weeks later the second part of the one-two punch plan up the Giogo Pass north of Florence.

Author Mike Sommerville's father was part of the Sherwood Foresters infantry regiment of the British Eighth Army. Sommerville, a military historian, described how ``The Sherwood Boys'' - as his book is titled - had been transferred out of Italy to Palestine in February 1944 to rest and retrain before returning to Italy for the Gothic Line offensive.

However, like much of the Allied Force campaign in Italy that started in 1943 with a landing in Sicily, little went to plan. The British-led army suffered significant casualties from the start of the offensive and was often bogged down because of rain-swollen rivers and mud. In September, fierce fighting claimed the lives of more than 80,000 German and Allied soldiers. Low morale problems soon became an issue, especially after the British troops learned politicians and the tabloid press in the U.K. had labeled them as ``D-Day dodgers '' vacationing on the Adriatic Sea. The desertion rate multiplied as soldiers went AWOL to avoid being killed or injured when it had become clear the war was nearing an end. Ultimately, the British-led offensive ground to a halt in December 1944 on the Senio River because of limited and exhausted troops, low ammunition, poor weather as well as relentless German resistance made it impossible to achieve the planned Christmas-time victory celebration. As a result, they would spend nearly three months hunkered down on the fringe of a no-man's land by the Senio amidst constant artillery exchanges with German troops on other side of the river bank. Three and a half months later, the British Eighth Army under Leese's command would renew the offensive in April. The American-led Fifth Army, which also stalled for months, broke through from the west. After three weeks the German forces agreed to surrender at the end of April despite Hitler's order to fight to the death.

For more information contact Joe Kirwin at joekirwin@compuserve.com or on whatsapp 00 32 478277802

By Joe Kirwin

When U.S. President Donald Trump took office in January of 2025 one of the first things his newly confirmed Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth did was ban books in the Pentagon and Armed Forces academies and other libraries and schools that tell the story of institutional racism faced by segregated African American soldiers during WW II and when they returned to the United States. When American art teacher Solace Wales and her husband bought in the early 1970s a small house in the mountain-top village of Sommocolonia in Italy, she had no idea about the U.S. military institutional racism faced by U.S. black soldiers that fought on the Gothic Line in and around that part of Tuscany. But after a decade of spending summers in the small village the stories of what happened in 1944-45 set her off on a journey with notebook, tape recorder and pen in hand. She thus began a 30-year research journey including extensive interviews with many U.S. black veterans that served on the Gothic Line in Tuscany. Her story tells of black soldier bravery and as well as the treatment by white racist military commanders from the segregated U.S. south determined to prove their supremacist views that black soldiers were inferior. In 2020 Wales, now based in northern California outside San Francisco, published Braided in Fire: Black GIs, Tuscan Villagers and Italian Partisans on the Gothic Line 1944. Besides detailing the story of how Lieutenant John Fox gave his own life in Sommocolonia to save his fellow soldiers, the story also gives a compelling account of how local villagers - many whom were her neighbors - navigated the treachery of the Nazi and Italian Fascist occupation, roving bands of local bandits, Italian Partisan freedom fighters and their relationship with undercover American secret agents as well as the Allied Force Gothic Line armies. The latter included the U.S. 92nd Infantry Division Buffalo Soldiers, who were the first African American infantry soldiers to face combat in WW II, and an elite African American artillery battalion. Both were deployed in the second half of 1944 when the U.S. Army, desperate for replacement soldiers, finally allowed the African American infantry to enter the battlefield. Among the latter was Fox, who called in artillery fire he knew would end his life but would allow his fellow soldiers to escape a surprise Christmas-time German counter-offensive. In the podcast interview Wales tells how the white commander of Fox's battalion knew about the German counter offensive but did not inform the under-manned black troops stationed over Christmas in Sommocolonia. It took more than 50 years for Fox to posthumously receive the U.S. Medal of Honor when former U.S. President Bill Clinton awarded it to his widowed wife at the White House. Present that day were other African American veteran Medal of Honor recipients who also had been denied bravery recognition because of a racist narrative that lingered for decades in the U.S. military after WW II. Also present was Solace Wales and she recounts that emotional day in Washington, D.C.

For more information contact Joe KIrwin at joekirwin@compuserve.com or on whatsapp at 00 32 478277802