I'm John Bachelors, the author James Holland, his new book The Savage Storm is the

story of the storming of Italy beginning in September of

1943 the presumption was that the Italians leaving the war

the Germans will leave Italy presumption the Italians will come over and fight with us. The Germans

will leave Italy. However, we want to make certain that the Germans do not leave Italy right away, withdraw to the north of Rome, and we'll take

the south of Rome. Rome becomes important to them.

James, I think we need to mention the mission here.

Eisenhower's overall commander, the American forces, and the British forces, and the Canadians, and the French, and the New Zealanders, the allies.

However, Ike needs to choose a battle commander, a battle captain for

Operation Avalanche. He chooses a man named Mark Wayne Clark, who is not operations. He's planning. He's like Eisenhower. He's not like patent.

Why did he choose Clark to lead the avalanche?

Well, Clark, I mean, like a lot of Americans, hardly any of the American commanders have seen combat because, you know, they've been to the war in December 1941.

They haven't got into action until on the ground

until November 1942 with the invasion of Northwest Africa. And so there's been limited opportunities

for American commanders in the Western sphere of the war to have

combat experience.

Clark is an incredibly experienced commander.

He has seen action, but not since 1918 in the First World War in France.

He's extremely competent, he's extremely clever. He's ambitious, quite ruthless at

times but he is a man of proven courage, forthrightness, imperturbability, and sureness of decision-making.

So he's, you know, of the crop of American commanders.

You know, he's earned his right to high command as much as anyone and as a planner and

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