Italian campaign

Inch Chemical Mortar Crew in Action during the Italian campaign. 

Inch Mortar in World War II, pt. II, The Italian Campaign, p. 53 This is a detailed study of chemical mortar operations in Italy. 

Mount Pantano was the scene of the heaviest action in the sector of the other VI Corps division, the 34th. Fighting seesawed among the four knobs of the mountaintop for days, supported on the American side by the effective fire of a company and a half of the 3d Chemical Battalion. During a 2-day period at the end of November the mortar crews used so much ammunition, over 1,300 rounds, that fire was temporarily suspended. This was one of the few cases of such curtailment in the Italian campaign. ... 

While the Italian campaign was in progress the War Department drew up still another TOE based upon the recommendations received from battle-experienced CWS officers. The salient feature of this revision was the elimination of one weapons company, a move which placed the battalion on the triangular basis characteristic of the infantry division. The new organization became effective in September 1944, and two months later the 84th and lOoth Battalions reorganized accordingly. ... 

The fighting in Italy had altered mortar commanders views as to the desirability of the -ton truck. Too much had been expected of these vehicles. The i%-ton trucks were still needed to haul ammunition from army supply points to the mortar battalion dumps and on to company dumps. Earlier thoughts on transportation had been conditioned by the experience of the fast-moving Sicilian campaign operations in Italy, characterized by slow movements and static situations, brought about the change. Opnl History of Cml Bns and the 4.2-inch Mortar in World War II, p. II, Italian Campaign, p. io . 

Reduction of capacity of the CWS RTC from 5,000 to 1,500 ASF trainees was announced in August 1943 in a blanket action which affected all ASF training centers. Within this limit, the monthly reception rate of the Camp Sibert center was established at 300 white and no Negro trainees. This figure was computed to provide replacements for estimated normal attrition and battle losses, without distinction between combat and service chemical units. It proved somewhat low in view of the increased requirements for replacements which developed in early 1944 as a result of the Italian campaign. In March 1944 the ASF raised the CWS RTC capacity to 2,750 trainees with a monthly input of 500. ... 

For the decisive impact of British tanks on the the Italian army, see Lucio Ceva, The North African campaign, 1940-43 , in Gooch (ed.). Decisive Campaigns, pp. 84-104, at p. 87. 

Chemical warfare was beginning to resurface all over the world in the few years before World War II. The Italians dropped mustard gas from planes during their campaign in Abyssinia (now Ethiopia) in 1937 and the Japanese reportedly used mustard gas against the Chinese. The fear of chemical warfare in the imminent war resulted in exhaustive civil defense programs in Britain with the distribution of 30 million gas masks (useless of course in the face of a nerve agent attack). 

The majority of the investigations were carried out in the Weddell Sea, the Weddell/Scotia confluence and the Indian sector of the Southern Ocean (125, 127, 129, 132, 135). Very few data are available on trace metal distribution in the Ross Sea area early measurements on Cu distribution in surface waters between New Zealand and the Ross Sea were reported by Boyle and Edmond and more recently some investigations were carried out by Martin et ah, also during the oceanographic campaigns as a part of the Italian National Programme of Researches in Antarctica (PNRA) (35, 57, 69, 124, 130, 131, 133, 134, 136, 137). 

The Italian Commission for Nuclear and Alternative Energy (ENEA) has developed a process [126] to treat high nitrate salt solutions emanating from CANDU and MTR reactors and also the US Elk River nuclear fuels reprocessing campaigns. This uses pelletised chabazitc (Union Carbide/Dow IE-95, IE-96) from the Bowie, Arizona deposit to lake up Cs radioisotopes. Robinson et al. [125] also used similar materials to treat various low level wastewaters arising from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tennessee. 

States army in 1856. Its utility as a weapon is very questionable. It is lielieved that this form of bayonet was first introduced in the French service among the Chasseurs de Vincennes, who used it in Algiers, in the Ci imean campaign of 1864-55, and tire Italian war of 1859. 

Returning to the point he had made about the continuity of Arab efforts against the Jews, he cited the Arab resistance to Italian forces in Libya, where, he said, the Italians with 150,000 troops could not stamp out Arab resistance to their rule. He had taken part in this campaign as a cavalry officer, and is proud of his military background. I could not help but feel that his military expectations in Palestine were largely, and understandably, colored by his Libyan experience. 

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