PBA Galleries

Includes Italy map-sheets 160-II SE, 160-II (second edition-coloured), 171-I NE, and 171-I NW. the first map has several hand-written notations of troop locations and movements, other maps with some village and city names traced in darker ink. The "Winter Line" was a series of German military fortifications in Italy, constructed during World War II. The main line of fortification, called the Gustav Line, ran across Italy from just north of where the Garigliano River flows into the Tyrrhenian Sea in the west, through the Apennine Mountains to the mouth of the Sangro River on the Adriatic Sea in the east. The center of the line, where it crossed the main route north to Rome which followed the Liri valley, was anchored around the mountains behind the town of Cassino including Monte Cassino, which had an old abbey sitting atop it and which dominated the entrance to the Liri valley, and Monte Cairo which gave the defenders clear observation of any potential attackers. On the western side of the Apennines there were two subsidiary lines: the Bernhardt Line in front of the main Gustav positions and the Hitler Line some 5 miles to the rear. The Winter line was fortified with gun pits, concrete bunkers, turreted machine-gun emplacements, barbed-wire and minefields. It was the strongest of the German defensive lines south of Rome. About 15 German divisions were employed in the defence. It took the Allies from mid-November 1943 to late May 1944 to fight through all the various elements of the Winter Line. Scarce.