"Serious handicaps confront our engineer forces. The river shelling and machine gunning from the enemy is terrific. It appears that a respite on the part of the engineers is necessary. If they temporarily return until after the murderous shelling, we are instructed to do so too, since our mission is to defend them only. Yes, we have retired with the engineers to resume the work when the engineers move up again. I know it is grasping more time in order to enable our infantry to make a deeper penetration and consolidate their positions. Heavy enemy mortar fire continues without cessation and at times more intense. Another attempt was made by our engineers to complete their job, but from my liaison reports I think it is "no go". Machine guns of the enemy are too close. Our infantry must have met really tough going. Really tough going! Wounded still stream back, not too many but enough and their comments don't sound too good for our infantry, no how. Yet we have plenty infantry reserves nearby, and I wonder why they have not been committed? This puzzles me no end. Night creeps on and things quiet down, if one can call harassing mortar and heavy gun fire with personnel bursts quieting down. Our midnight reports are the situation is normal. No further infantry has been committed. I still wonder why. Spasmodic reports come in all night of heavy losses on our side over the river but no confirmation of these are in evidence, of course. I am still curious about the non-committing of our huge reserves of infantry. Dawn again. We are O.K., no further losses but many reports of heroic acts come to me about our troops. Their morale is marvelous and the general consensus seems to be "Hell, let's go - what are we waiting for?" Well, now I see the picture - a swell one and beautifully planned with the commitment of the minimum number of men. We hear news that our initial assault caused the Germans to rush several divisions down from their static defense of Rome to sacrifice their troops on this main road to Rome as they believed this to be the real attempted push over that Road to Rome. Our job was to break through, if possible, with a minimum number of troops or to test the strength and depth of the enemy on our immediate front where he commands the most impregnable mountains all before us. This fighting certainly favors the enemy since the country and terrain is tremendously in his favor. Thirdly, to cause him by this front to draw his troops from Rome's south. We understand he did exactly this and rushed two or three divisions down, thereby permitting our forces to land in huge numbers behind them without any opposition and just south of Rome. We are tremendously pleased over the success of our landing force and feel that we, in our humble way down here, made it possible by our feint and holding attach. Our mission then has been successfully accomplished!"
"This will necessitate our enemy to now withdraw his divisions from down here, in fact, certainly his artillery will be rushed back to establish a mountain defense line. That will relieve the pressure on us here and it has strong indication that we will move fast toward Rome from here. I wonder which army will reach the best defensive positions first near the route 6 - we or the enemy. We don't speak in "defense", we attack, always attack. The enemy is on the defensive, not we. However, the enemy has clearer uninterrupted roads to travel, but we may beat them to it with our armored units. The 10th on our left must be celebrating for this invasion puts our armies right behind the enemy on their front - that is a desperate situation for the enemy and a bonanza for the 10th Corps, as the enemy's main line of supply - route 7 (Appian Way) will obviously be severed and commanded by our forces. The enemy must reestablish his lines, withdraw from the 10th Corps immediate front and undoubtedly also from in front of us, in fact, our picture certainly looks very cheerful from here. No one can understand as well as we who did our work well down here what it means to hear this good news. Since our mission has been successful we now have withdrawn our infantry across the river again and reestablished our lines. My unit has been ordered to return to the rest area bivouac and rest. Their spirit is marvelous and, thank God, our losses small."