Walking Tour of Italy's WWII Battlefields: Salerno to Rome Revisited

The first four books in the NOVA 'A Walking Tour of Italy's WWII Battlefields' series cover Frank de Planta tours of the combat action from Salerno to Bologna. As Editor, returning to the Salerno-Rome portion of the tour enabled me to visit historic sites-though largely unmarked-where critical but largely forgotten happened during the liberation of Italy campaign. In all such tours, there is immediate proven history tied to specific locations visited by the tour bus; there are also fringe locations that are mentioned but cannot be visited due to tour logistics. For example, I was shown the start of the Cavendish Road near Caira, Italy, that was built to get behind the monastery on Montecassino. I had been to the other end of the Cavendish Road at its finish but never walked all it from start to finish. It gave me a superb opportunity to appreciate what the soldiers endured. For that reason and because of my curiosity, the October 2021 tour was planned to specifically include walking up the Cavendish Road. This book covers several such places and enables the reader to see several of the lesser-known sites and little-travelled paths of the Italian Campaign. Beyond exploring paths such as the Cavendish Road, there was the critical outmaneuvering of the Germans defending Rome by the 36th Division getting behind the Germans by following an old logging road on Monte Artemisio. Unlike the Cavendish Road, for which there are now markers at the start of the climb, no such markers about the critical role of Monte Artemisio operation were seen on that former logging trail, now a horse, biking and walking trail. Track signs merely guide you to the now derelict Castel d'Ariano at the summit. To that end, walking this route-presented in this book-provided the peak sensation of us history tour addicts-that we were 'rediscovering' history, particularly a path, the use of which by 36th Division, arguably cut off weeks of potential delay to the fall of Rome and saved many lives.