U.S. troops and supplies loaded aboard landing craft for drive to Rome.

U.S. troops and supplies loaded aboard landing craft for drive to Rome. American soldiers, trucks, ambulances, other vehicles and ammunition are close-packed on an LST (landing ship-tank) vessel being loaded at an Allied port in the Mediterranean war theater for a 100-mile voyage to the Anzio beachhead area on the west coast of Italy. Approximately 16,000 troops and thousands of guns and vehicles were transported by ship and truck to reinforce units of the Allied Fifth Army who struck out from Anzio positions on May 23, 1944, to join the main body of Fifth Army forces for the drive on the Italian capital of Rome. At Anzio, as later during the Allied landing operations in France, Allied men and equipment were unloaded on beaches unharassed by German air attack.