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Achtung, Achtung.

Hey there buddy. Welcome to We Have Faces for making you talk USA with me, Almarie,

James Holland and John McManus. Let's get straight to it. Salano, that's our subject today.

James, you've been itching to talk about this with John. So I might sit back and go do my

usual thing and gosh, have interesting. The next 45 minutes. That's like a good job.

It's a great job. I'm happy and it suits me down to the ground. I can do it. Put it that way.

So Salano is Operation Avalanche and that's it's launched on the 9th of September 1943 and this is this is in a way

eight farmers has crossed the straits of Macina a week earlier. The announcement of Italy's surrender

justice has been made over the previous day. And the whole point is that this landing is much higher

up the leg of Italy. So A-Farmies crossed the straits of Macina. It's been in the toe. It's taken to

Ranto. Then A-Farmies spreading northwards, A to try and join up when the forces of the American,

Anglo-American forces, although it's a US-FIF Army land at Salano, but also just sort of sweep up from the south.

Anyone who's ever been to Italy will know that that's no easy task whatsoever because of the rose,

because of the landscape, because of the mountains, all the rest of it. And the lack of general lack of infrastructure compared to a lot of other places.

But Salano is just south of Naples. And if you look at the map, you kind of think that's the southern Italy and it is in terminology

it's southern Italy, but in terms of kind of the geography of it, it's about a third of the way up. And it's quite a long way. You know, from the toe of Macina,

from Regio across the straits of Macina, all the way up to Salano, Naples. I mean, you know, it's kind of 200 miles or something.

I mean, it's like a seriously big journey, which I know is nothing, you know, if you're driving across Kansas or Texas or something.

But it is by European standards. That's, that's, and it is by the in terms of an army trying to join another army in very treacherous terrain.

So suddenly Avalanche looks like a really, really big gamble. And the problem is shipping because the demands on global shipping by this time are absolutely enormous.

And you can see that the Allied High Command, the Joint Chiefs of Staff have just got themselves in a bit of a bind because they've got these huge forces in the Mediterranean.

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