Overview

The Italian campaign of World War II that in the way the "Forgotten Campaign of WWII" was vital to the whole defeat of Hitler and Nazi Germany, the Korean campaign may be vital to stopping communism. The central action of the film covers the aerial bombardment of the famed monastery "Montecassino," which the Nazis had fortified and used to slow down the Allied march through Italy to France and Germany. Part of the film is told around the exploits of U. S. Army Sergeant James W. Logan, and U. S. Army Captain David Ludlum, a weather-forecasting officer. The long months of the war after the liberation of Rome are passed over, but a lot of footage dealing with the landings at Salerno, and the dreary battles and muddy conditions there---documented elsewhere by famed war-correspondent Ernie Pyle and "Stars and Stripes" cartoonist Bill Mauldin, with his "Wille and Joe" strips.