Into Hell Harbor

In three short months, the fishing village of Anzio had become the seventh largest importing harbor in the world. To the Army, this stupendous growth is a sorry sign of a bitter, consuming stalemate. But the Navy could look at Anzio with pride as another great achievement of amphibious operations.

Landing craft of the Navy's amphibious force disgorged their first supply cargoes on the Anzio beachhead last Jan. 22. Five hundred tons a day was then the limit. Built more for shook than endurance, the ugly little vessels were not expected to keep up the supply service for a very long period of time.

But the fury of German resistance ashore upset all expectations. This week many of those same vessels were still shuttling furiously between anchored Liberty ships and the embattled beachhead. Under conditions of sustained hazard and strain seldom paralleled in Navy history, the battered, patched and repatched flotilla, consisting mainly of 100-ft. LCTs, set some eye-opening records.

P: At the peak of activity they were putting some 8,000 tons ashore every 24 hours.

In one stretch of bad weather, when LSTs were forced to stop, the smaller LCTs unloaded a complete armored division in ten and a half hours.

To snarl this constant stream of traffic, the Nazis threw in everything they had. German artillery within range of the beachhead shelled the landing area every day. At sea German E-boats, torpedoes and glider bombs were a constant menace. In the first two weeks, landing craft skippers operating in "Hell Harbor" counted 106 alerts, 33 actual bombing attacks.

Attrition. In spite of Allied air superiority, the amphibious force paid dearly. With little antiaircraft defense and no protective superstructure, the vulnerable LCTs were ripe targets. More than one was lost with all hands because a bit of red-hot shrapnel pierced its cargo of explosives or gasoline.

Almost all the boats still operating are sieved with shrapnel holes. As long as they can stay afloat and move under their own power, they remain. One was blown in half by a bomb, but a remarkable job of salvage had it working again within a few days.

For the crews of the LCTs, this overextended operation has been as dismal as it has been dangerous. Officers and men live in a single compartment above throbbing diesel engines. Their own makeshifts provide the only bathing and refrigerating facilities. Food is served irregularly in steel helmets.

Emancipation. Commander of the flat-bottomed flotilla is 47-year-old, good-humored Lieut. Commander John B. Freese, onetime bond salesman and former public works commissioner of Framingham, Mass. His persistent counsel to harried subordinates: "Don't lose your sense of humor." Some of the printable names adopted for his LCTs: "Hell Harbor Special," "That's All, Brother," "Son of a Beach."

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