Crossing the Rapido: A Tragedy of World War II

The failure of the 36th Texas National Guard Division's attempted crossing of Italy's Rapido River in January 1944 remains one of the black spots of America's WWII effort. The division's numbers already decimated from earlier battles on mountainous terrain, the dead replaced by rookies, and with the river at its most impassable, Gen. Mark Clark still ordered the division to cross. “The survivors never forgave him,” writes Schultz. Nearly half the troops were killed, wounded, captured, or disappeared trying to cross the river. The 36th's members had enough influence to compel a postwar congressional investigation, but the controversies over the disaster continue. Schultz, a psychologist who also writes solid military history, depends more on interviews and memoirs than maps and documents to convey stories of individual courage and fear. He presents the Rapido crossing as part of an experience that changed lives utterly. A rifleman had to use another man as a decoy to draw German fire, someone he had known for years back in Texas. This book is a grim reminder that the way back for men left wounded in both mind and body was no less cruel than the way forward, across the Rapido. 40 illus.; 6 maps. (May 7)