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Operation Winter Storm (Gothic Line) (view source)
Revision as of 01:15, September 8, 2016
, 01:15, September 8, 2016→Operation Wintergewitter
In the early hours of 26 December, a company of American soldiers from the 92nd US Infantry Division and Italian Communist Partisans in Sommocolonia (a village of 200 inhabitants) found themselves pinned down by heavy softening up fire from Axis mortars fire. 29-year-old Lieutenant John R Fox, an artillery officer, reported the streets of Sommocolonia filled with soldiers from the Austrian 4th Gebirgsjäger (Mountain) Battalion. The elite Austrian soldiers expected little resistance as many Black American troops had been reported in the area. However, much fierce resistance was encountered in Sommocolonia.
In the early hours of 26 December, a company of American soldiers from the 92nd US Infantry Division and Italian Communist Partisans in Sommocolonia (a village of 200 inhabitants) found themselves pinned down by heavy softening up fire from Axis mortars fire. 29-year-old Lieutenant John R Fox, an artillery officer, reported the streets of Sommocolonia filled with soldiers from the Austrian 4th Gebirgsjäger (Mountain) Battalion. The elite Austrian soldiers expected little resistance as many Black American troops had been reported in the area. However, much fierce resistance was encountered in Sommocolonia.
By 9 in the morning, house-to-house combat taking place in the streets Sommocolonia. The American soldiers and Communist Partisans, soon realized that they could, at best, only slow down the Axis offensive.
Orders to retreat were radioed from US headquarters in Barga, but by that time, two thirds of the American and Communist defenders were dead or wounded. With the American and Italian wounded dragged inside, the Austrians started burning houses in Sommocolonia.