War in Italy: With the South Africans From Taranto to the Alps

Title: War in Italy: With the South Africans from Taranto to the Alps
Author: Jack Kros
Length: 333 pages, including index

Jack Kros does a terrific jobs with interviews, maps and recollections to tell us of the 6th South African Armored Division, and other South African forces during the Italian Campaign. He starts us with the reason that the division was formed as armored, since it required fewer men, as there weren't enough volunteers to make an infantry division. He then takes us to their landing in Italy and their first fight at Monte Cassino, and how they spent the war mostly under American command. They then go through Rome, two days after it fell, and move north to take Florence.

Kros diverges here to tell us of the exploits of the Engineer Corps in rebuilding demolished railroads and harbors, the women who were nurses and cryptographers, black and "coloured" troops who were stretcher bearers and firemen, and the AIr Force's exploits over Italy and the Balkans, including the Warsaw Uprising airdrops to the Home Army. He then returns us to the campaign on the ground, and final battles leading to the German surrender in Italy. They have a victory parade at Monza, and are repatriated home.

I don't hesitate to recommend this book as a tool to learn about this little-recalled chapter in the victory in Italy.