title: Gothic Line

text: As a result, most of "Generalfeldmarschall" Albert Kesselring's forces slipped the noose and fell back north fighting delaying actions, notably in late June on the Trasimene Line (running from just south of Ancona on the east coast, past the southern shores of Lake Trasimeno near Perugia and on to the west coast south of Grosseto) and in July on the Arno Line (running from the west coast along the line of the Arno River and into the Apennine Mountains north of Arezzo). This gave time to consolidate the Gothic Line, a deep belt of fortifications extending from south of La Spezia (on the west coast) to the Foglia Valley, through the natural defensive wall of the Apennines (which ran unbroken nearly from coast to coast, deep and with high crests and peaks rising to ), to the Adriatic Sea between Pesaro and Ravenna, on the east coast. The emplacements included numerous concrete-reinforced gun pits and trenches and 2,376 machine-gun nests with interlocking fire, 479 anti-tank, mortar and assault gun positions, of barbed wire and many miles of anti-tank ditches. This last redoubt proved the Germans' determination to continue fighting.


title: Gothic Line

text: Nevertheless, it was fortunate for the Allies that at this stage of the war the Italian partisan forces had become highly effective in disrupting the German preparations in the high mountains. By September 1944, German generals were no longer able to move freely in the area behind their main lines because of partisan activity. "Generalleutnant" Frido von Senger und Etterlin—commanding XIV "Panzer" Corps ("XIV Panzerkorps")—later wrote that he had taken to travelling in a little Volkswagen "(displaying) no general's insignia of rank—no peaked cap, no gold or red flags...". One of his colleagues who ignored this caution—Wilhelm Crisolli (commanding the 20th "Luftwaffe" Field Division)—was caught and killed by partisans as he returned from a conference at corps headquarters.


title: Gothic Line

text: Construction of the defences was also hampered by the deliberately poor quality concrete provided by local Italian mills whilst captured partisans forced into the construction gangs supplemented the natural lethargy of forced labour with clever sabotage. Nevertheless, prior to the Allies' attack, Kesselring had declared himself satisfied with the work done, especially on the Adriatic side where he "...contemplated an assault on the left wing...with a certain confidence".


title: Gothic Line

text: The Italian Front was seen by the Allies to be of secondary importance to the offensives through France, and this was underlined by the withdrawal during the summer of 1944 of seven divisions from the U.S. Fifth Army to take part in the landings in southern France, Operation Dragoon. By 5 August, the strength of the Fifth Army had fallen from 249,000 to 153,000, and they had only 18 divisions to confront the combined German 10th and 14th Armies′ strength of 14 divisions plus four to seven reserve divisions.


title: Gothic Line

text: Nevertheless, Winston Churchill and the British Chiefs of Staff were keen to break through the German defences to open up the route to the northeast through the "Ljubljana Gap" into Austria and Hungary. Whilst this would threaten Germany from the rear, Churchill was more concerned to forestall the Russians advancing into central Europe. The U.S. Chiefs of Staff had strongly opposed this strategy as diluting the Allied focus in France. However, following the Allied successes in France during the summer, the U.S. Chiefs relented, and there was complete agreement amongst the Combined Chiefs of Staff at the Second Quebec Conference on 12 September.


title: Gothic Line

text: The original plan of General Sir Harold Alexander, the Commander-in-Chief (C-in-C) of the Allied Armies in Italy (AAI)—as formulated by his Chief of Staff, Lieutenant-General Sir John Harding—was to storm the Gothic Line in the centre, where most of his forces were already concentrated. It was the shortest route to his objective, the plains of Lombardy, and could be mounted quickly. He mounted a deception operation to convince the Germans that the main blow would come on the Adriatic front.


title: Gothic Line

text: On 4 August, Alexander met Lieutenant-General Leese, the British Eighth Army commander, to find that Leese did not favour the plan. He argued that the Allies had lost their specialist French mountain troops to Operation Dragoon and that the Eighth Army's strength lay in tactics combining infantry, armour and guns which could not be employed in the high mountains of the central Apennines.


title: Gothic Line

text: It has also been suggested that Leese disliked working in league with Clark after the Fifth Army's controversial move on Rome at the end of May and early June and wished for the Eighth Army to win the battle on its own. He suggested a surprise attack along the Adriatic coast. Although Harding did not share Leese's view and Eighth Army planning staff had already rejected the idea of an Adriatic offensive (because it would be difficult to bring the necessary concentration of forces to bear), General Alexander was not prepared to force Leese to adopt a plan which was against his inclination and judgement and Harding was persuaded to change his mind.


title: Gothic Line

text: Operation Olive—as the new offensive was christened—called for Leese's Eighth Army to attack up the Adriatic coast toward Pesaro and Rimini and draw in the German reserves from the centre of the country. Clark's Fifth Army would then attack in the weakened central Apennines north of Florence toward Bologna with British XIII Corps on the right wing of the attack fanning toward the coast to create a pincer with the Eighth Army advance. This meant that as a preparatory move, the bulk of the Eighth Army had to be transferred from the centre of Italy to the Adriatic coast, taking two valuable weeks, while a new intelligence deception plan (Operation Ulster) was commenced to convince Kesselring that the main attack would be in the centre.


title: Gothic Line

text: On the coast, Leese had Polish II Corps with 5th Kresowa Division in the front line and the 3rd Carpathian Division in reserve. To the left of the Poles was Canadian I Corps which had the Canadian 1st Infantry Division (with the British 21st Tank Brigade under command) in the front line and the Canadian 5th Armoured Division in reserve.


title: Gothic Line

text: For the opening phase the corps artillery was strengthened with the addition of the British 4th Infantry Division's artillery. West of the Canadians was British V Corps with the British 46th Infantry Division manning the right of the corps front line and 4th Indian Infantry Division its left. In reserve were the British 56th Infantry and 1st Armoured Divisions and the British 7th Armoured and 25th Tank Brigades.


title: Gothic Line

text: Further to the rear was the British 4th Division, waiting to be called forward to join the corps. The left flank of the Eighth Army front was guarded by British X Corps employing the 10th Indian Infantry Division and two armoured car regiments, 12th and 27th Lancers. Prior to the attack the I Canadian Corps' front was covered by patrolling Polish cavalry units and V Corps by patrolling elements of the Italian Liberation Corps. In army reserve, also waiting to be called forward, was the 2nd New Zealand Division.


title: Gothic Line

text: Facing the Eighth Army was the German 10th Army's LXXVI "Panzer" Corps ("LXXVI Panzerkorps"). Initially, this had only three divisions: 1st Parachute Division facing the Poles, 71st Infantry Division ("71. Infanterie-Division") inland on the parachute division's right and 278th Division ("278. Infanterie-Division") on the Corps right flank in the hills which was in the process of relieving 5th Mountain Division. The 10th Army had a further five divisions in 51st Mountain Corps covering of front line on the right of LXVI "Panzer" Corps and a further two divisions—162nd Infantry Division ("162. (Turkoman) Infanterie-Division") and 98th Infantry Division ("98. Infanterie-Division") (replaced by 29th "Panzer Grenadier" Division ("29. Panzergrenadierdivision") from 25 August)—covering the Adriatic coast behind LXVI Corps. In addition, Kesselring had in his Army Group Reserve the 90th "Panzer" Grenadier Division ("90. Panzergrenadierdivision") and 26th "Panzer" Division ("26. Panzerdivision").


title: Gothic Line

text: The British Eighth Army crossed the Metauro river and launched its attack against the Gothic Line outposts on 25 August. As Polish II Corps, on the coast and I Canadian Corps, on the coastal plain on the Poles' left, advanced towards Pesaro the coastal plain narrowed and it was planned that the Polish Corps, weakened by losses and lack of replacements, would go into Army reserve and the front on the coastal plain would become the responsibility of the Canadian Corps alone. The Germans were taken by surprise, to the extent that both von Vietinghoff, and the parachute division's commander—"Generalmajor " Richard Heidrich—were away on leave.


title: Gothic Line

text: They were in the process of pulling back their forward units to the Green I fortifications of the Gothic Line proper and Kesselring was uncertain whether this was the start of a major offensive or just Eighth Army advancing to occupy vacated ground whilst the main Allied attack would come on the U.S. Fifth Army front towards Bologna. On 27 August, he was still expressing the view that the attack was a diversion and so would not commit reserves to the front. It was not until 28 August—when he saw a captured copy of Leese's order of the day to his army prior to the attack—that Kesselring realised that a major offensive was in progress, and three divisions of reinforcements were ordered from Bologna to the Adriatic front, still needing at least two days to get into position.


title: Gothic Line

text: By 30 August, the Canadian and British Corps had reached the Green I main defensive positions running along the ridges on the far side of the Foglia river. Taking advantage of the Germans' lack of manpower, the Canadians punched through and by 3 September had advanced a further to the Green II line of defences running from the coast near Riccione. The Allies were close to breaking through to Rimini and the Romagna plain. However, LXXVI "Panzer" Corps on the German 10th Army's left wing had withdrawn in good order behind the line of the Conca river. Fierce resistance from the Corps′ 1st Parachute Division—commanded by Heidrich (supported by intense artillery fire from the Coriano ridge in the hills on the Canadians' left)—brought their advance to a halt.


title: Gothic Line

text: Meanwhile, British V Corps was finding progress in the more difficult hill terrain with its poor roads tough going. On 3–4 September, while the Canadians once again attacked along the coastal plain, V Corps made an armoured thrust to dislodge the Coriano Ridge defences and reach the Marano river. This was to open the gate to the plain beyond which could be rapidly exploited by the tanks of British 1st Armoured Division, poised for this purpose. However, after two days of gruesome fighting with heavy losses on both sides, the Allies were obliged to call off their assault and reassess their strategy. Leese decided to outflank the Coriano ridge positions by driving westwards toward Croce and Gemmano to reach the Marano valley which curved behind the Coriano positions to the coast some north of Riccione.


title: Gothic Line

text: The Battle of Gemmano has been nicknamed by some historians as the "Cassino of the Adriatic". After 11 assaults between 4 and 13 September (first by British 56th Division and then British 46th Division), it was the turn of Indian 4th Division who after a heavy bombardment made the 12th attack at 03:00 on 15 September and finally carried and secured the German defensive positions. In the meantime, to the north, on the other side of the Conca valley a similarly bloody engagement was being ground out at Croce. The German 98th Division held their positions with great tenacity, and it took five days of constant fighting, often door to door and hand to hand before the British 56th Division captured Croce.


title: Gothic Line

text: With progress slow at Gemmano, Leese decided to renew the attack on Coriano. After a paralyzing bombardment from 700 artillery pieces and bombers, the Canadian 5th Armoured Division and the British 1st Armoured Division launched their attack on the night of 12 September. The Coriano positions were finally taken on 14 September.


title: Gothic Line

text: Once again, the way was open to Rimini. Kesselring's forces had taken heavy losses, and three divisions of reinforcements ordered to the Adriatic front would not be available for at least a day. Now, the weather intervened: torrential rain turned the rivers into torrents and halted air support operations. Once again movement ground to a crawl, and the German defenders had the opportunity to reorganise and reinforce their positions on the Marano river, and the salient to the Lombardy plain closed. Once more, the Eighth Army was confronted by an organised line of defence, the Rimini Line.


title: Gothic Line

text: Meanwhile, with Croce and beyond it Montescudo secured, the left wing of the Eighth Army advanced to the Marano river and the frontier of San Marino. The Germans had occupied neutral San Marino over a week previously to take advantage of the heights on which the city-state stood. By 19 September, the city was isolated and fell to the Allies with relatively little cost. beyond San Marino lay the Marecchia valley running across the Eighth Army line of advance and running to the sea at Rimini.


title: Gothic Line

text: During the night of 19/20 September, Brigadier Richard W. Goodbody, commanding the 2nd Armoured Brigade, ordered (with many doubts) the 2nd Dragoon Guards (Queen's Bays) to attack Pt 153 at 10.50. The German antitank gunners, using the renowned 88mm guns, had a field day. All but three Sherman tanks of the two squadrons that took part in the attack were destroyed. The Bays lost 24 tanks and, more important, 64 highly skilled tank crewmen. Fortunately for the 9th Queen's Royal Lancers, who had been ordered to pass through the Bays, their attack was postponed after strong representations had been made to higher HQ.


title: Gothic Line

text: On the right the I Canadian Corps on 20 September broke the German positions on the Ausa river and into the Lombardy Plain and 3rd Greek Mountain Brigade entered Rimini on the morning of 21 September as the Germans withdrew from their positions on the Rimini Line behind the Ausa to new positions on the Marecchia. However, Kesselring's defence had won him time until the onset of the autumn rains. Progress for the Eighth Army became very slow with mud slides caused by the torrential rain making it difficult to keep roads and tracks open, creating a logistical nightmare. Although they were out of the hills, the plains were waterlogged and the Eighth Army found themselves confronted, as they had the previous autumn, by a succession of swollen rivers running across their line of advance. Once again, the conditions prevented Eighth Army's armour from exploiting the breakthrough, and the infantry of British V Corps and I Canadian Corps (joined by the 2nd New Zealand Division) had to grind their way forward while von Vietinghoff withdrew his forces behind the next river beyond the Marecchia, the Uso, a few miles beyond Rimini. The positions on the Uso were forced on 26 September, and Eighth Army reached the next river, the Fiumicino, on 29 September. Four days of heavy rain forced a halt, and by this time V Corps was fought out and required major reorganization.


title: Gothic Line

text: Since the start of Operation Olive, Eighth Army had suffered 14,000 casualties. As a result, British battalions had to be reduced from four to three rifle companies due to a severe shortage of manpower. Facing the Eighth Army LXXVI "Panzer" Corps had suffered 16,000 casualties. As the Eighth Army paused at the end of September to reorganise Leese was reassigned to command the Allied land forces in South-East Asia and Lieutenant-General Richard L. McCreery was moved from commanding British X Corps to take over the army command.


title: Gothic Line

text: Clark's U.S. Fifth Army comprised three corps: U.S. IV Corps, under Major General Willis D. Crittenberger, on the left formed by the U.S. 1st Armored Division, the 6th South African Armoured Division and two regimental combat teams ("RCT"), one of the U.S. 92nd Infantry Division the other the Brazilian 6th RCT (the first land forces contingent of the Brazilian Expeditionary Force); in the centre was U.S. II Corps, under Major General Geoffrey Keyes, (with the U.S. 34th, 85th, 88th and 91st Infantry Divisions supported by three tank battalions under command); and on the right British XIII Corps, under Lieutenant-General Sidney Kirkman, (composed of the British 1st Infantry and 6th Armoured Divisions, the 8th Indian Infantry Division and the 1st Canadian Armoured Brigade). Like the Eighth Army, the Fifth Army was considered to be strong in armour and short on infantry considering the terrain they were attacking.


title: Gothic Line

text: In the front line facing Clark's forces were five divisions of Joachim Lemelsen's German 14th Army (20th "Luftwaffe" Field Division, 16th SS "Panzer" Grenadier Division (16. "Panzergrenadierdivision"), 65th and 362nd Infantry Divisions and the 4th Parachute Division) and two divisions on the western end of von Vietinghoff's German 10th Army (356th and 715th Infantry Divisions). By the end of the first week in September, the "Luftwaffe" Field Division and the 356th Infantry Division had been moved to the Adriatic front along with (from army reserve) the 29th "Panzer" Grenadier Division and the armoured reserve of 26th "Panzer" Division. The 14th Army was not of the same quality as the 10th Army: it had been badly mauled in the retreat from Anzio and some of its replacements had been hastily and inadequately trained.


title: Gothic Line

text: Clark's plan was for II Corps to strike along the road from Florence to Firenzuola and Imola through the Il Giogo pass to outflank the formidable defences of the Futa pass (on the main Florence–Bologna road) while on their right British XIII Corps would advance through the Gothic Line to cut Route 9 (and therefore Kesselring's lateral communications) at Faenza. The transfer of 356th Infantry Division to the Adriatic weakened the defences around the Il Giogo pass which was already potentially an area of weakness, being on the boundary between 10th and 14th Armies.


title: Gothic Line

text: During the last week in August, U.S. II Corps and British XIII Corps started to move into the mountains to take up positions for the main assault on the main Gothic Line defences. Some fierce resistance was met from outposts but at the end of the first week in September, once reorganisation had taken place following the withdrawal of three divisions to reinforce the pressured Adriatic front, the Germans withdrew to the main Gothic Line defences. After an artillery bombardment, the Fifth Army's main assault began at dusk on 12 September. Keyes tried to flank the II Giogo Pass by attacking both the peaks of Monticello and Monte Altuzzo using the 91st Infantry Division in a bold attempt to bounce the Germans off the positions, but this failed.


title: Gothic Line

text: Progress at the II Giogo Pass was slow, but on II Corps' right British XIII Corps were making better progress. Clark grasped this opportunity to divert part of II Corps reserve (the 337th Infantry Regiment, part of the 85th Infantry Division) to exploit XIII Corps success. Attacking on 17 September, supported by both American and British artillery, the infantry fought their way onto Monte Pratone, some east of the Il Giogo pass and a key position on the Gothic Line. Meanwhile, U.S. II Corps renewed their assault on Monte Altuzzo, dominating the east side of the Il Giogo Pass. The Altuzzo positions fell on the morning of 17 September, after five days of fighting. The capture of Altuzzo and Pratone as well as Monte Verruca between them caused the formidable Futa Pass defences to be outflanked, and Lemelsen was forced to pull back, leaving the pass to be taken after only light fighting on 22 September.


title: Gothic Line

text: On the left, IV Corps had fought their way to the main Gothic Line: notably the U.S. 370th Regimental Combat Team, which pushed the Axis troops on its sector to the north beyond the Highway 12 towards Gallicano; and the Brazilian 6th RCT, which took Massarosa, Camaiore and other small towns on its own way north. By the end of the month, the Brazilian unit had conquered "Monte Prano" and controlled the Serchio valley region without suffering any major casualties. In October, it also took Fornaci with its munitions factory, and Barga; while the 370th received reinforcements from other units (365th and 371st), to ensure the Fifth Army left wing sector at the Ligurian Sea.


title: Gothic Line

text: On Fifth Army's far right wing, on the right of the British XIII Corps front, 8th Indian Infantry Division fighting across trackless ground had captured the heights of Femina Morta and British 6th Armoured Division had taken the San Godenzo Pass on Route 67 to Forlì, both on 18 September.


title: Gothic Line

text: At this stage, with the slow progress on the Adriatic front, Clark decided that Bologna would be too far west along Route 9 to trap the German 10th Army. He decided therefore to make the main II Corps thrust further east towards Imola whilst XIII Corps would continue to push on the right toward Faenza. Although they were through the Gothic Line, Fifth Army—just like the Eighth Army before them—found the terrain beyond and its defenders even more difficult. Between 21 September and 3 October, U.S. 88th Division had fought its way to a standstill on the route to Imola suffering 2,105 men killed and wounded — roughly the same as the whole of the rest of II Corps during the actual breaching of the Gothic Line.


title: Gothic Line

text: The fighting toward Imola had drawn German troops from the defence of Bologna, and Clark decided to switch his main thrust back toward the Bologna axis. U.S. II Corps pushed steadily through the Raticosa Pass and by 2 October, it had reached Monghidoro some from Bologna. However, as it had on the Adriatic coast, the weather had broken and rain and low cloud prevented air support while the roads back to the ever more distant supply dumps near Florence became morasses.


title: Gothic Line

text: On 5 October, U.S. II Corps renewed its offensive along a front straddling Route 65 to Bologna. They were supported on their right flank by British XIII Corps including British 78th Infantry Division, newly returned to Italy after a three-month re-fit in Egypt. Gradual progress was made against stiffening opposition as German 14th Army moved troops from the quieter sector opposite U.S. IV Corps. By 9 October, they were attacking the massive high sheer escarpment behind Livergnano which appeared insuperable. However, the weather cleared on the morning of 10 October to allow artillery and air support to be brought to bear. Nevertheless, it took until the end of 15 October before the escarpment was secured. On the right of U.S. II Corps British XIII Corps was experiencing equally determined fighting on terrain just as difficult.


title: Gothic Line

text: By the second half of October, it was becoming increasingly clear to Alexander that despite the dogged fighting in the waterlogged plain of Romagna and the streaming mountains of the central Apennines, with the autumn well advanced and exhaustion and combat losses increasingly affecting his forces' capabilities, no breakthrough was going to occur before the winter weather returned.


title: Gothic Line

text: On the Adriatic front, the British Eighth Army's advance resumed on its left wing through the Apennine foothills toward Forlì on Route 9. On 5 October the 10th Indian Infantry Division—switched from British X Corps to British V Corps—had crossed the Fiumicino river high in the hills and turned the German defensive line on the river forcing the German 10th Army units downstream to pull back towards Bologna. Paradoxically, in one sense, this helped Kesselring because it shortened the front he had to defend and shortened the distance between his two armies, providing him with greater flexibility to switch units between the two fronts. Continuing their push up Route 9, on 21 October British V Corps crossed the Savio river which runs north eastward through Cesena to the Adriatic and by 25 October were closing on the Ronco river, some beyond the Savio, behind which the Germans had withdrawn. By the end of the month, the advance had reached Forlì, halfway between Rimini and Bologna.


title: Gothic Line

text: Cutting the German Armies' lateral communications remained a key objective. Indeed, later Kesselring was to say that if in mid-October the front south of Bologna could not be held, then all the German positions east of Bologna "were automatically gone." Alexander and Clark had decided therefore to make a last push for Bologna before winter gripped the front.


title: Gothic Line

text: On 16 October, the U.S. Fifth Army had gathered itself for one last effort to take Bologna. The Allies were short of artillery ammunition because of a global reduction in Allied ammunition production in anticipation of the final defeat of Germany. The Fifth Army's batteries were rationed to such an extent that the total rounds fired in the last week of October were less than the amount fired during one eight-hour period on 2 October. Nevertheless, U.S. II Corps and British XIII Corps pounded away for the next 11 days. Little progress was made in the centre along the main road to Bologna. On the right, there was better progress, and on 20 October the U.S. 88th Division seized Monte Grande, only from Route 9, and three days later British 78th Division stormed Monte Spaduro. However, the remaining were over difficult terrain and were reinforced by three of the best German divisions in Italy—the 29th Panzergrenadier Division, 90th Panzergrenadier Division and the 1st Parachute Division]—which Kesselring had been able to withdraw from the Romagna as a result of his shortened front. By late October, the Brazilian 6th RCT had pushed the Axis forces through province of Lucca to Barga, where its advance was halted.


title: Gothic Line

text: In early November, the buildup to full strength of the 1st Brazilian Division and some reinforcement of the U.S. 92nd Division had not nearly compensated the U.S. Fifth Army for the formations diverted to France. The situation in the British Eighth Army was even worse: Replacement cadres were being diverted to northern Europe and I Canadian Corps was ordered to prepare to ship to the Netherlands in February of the following year. Also, while they remained held in the mountains, the armies continued to have an over-preponderance of armour relative to infantry.


title: Gothic Line

text: During November and December, Fifth Army concentrated on dislodging the Germans from their well-placed artillery positions which had been key in preventing the Allied advance towards Bologna and the Po Valley. Using small and medium Brazilian and American forces, the U.S. Fifth Army attacked these points one by one but with no positive outcome. By the end of the year, the defence compound formed by the Germans around Monte Castello, ("Lizano in") Belvedere, Della Toraccia, Castelnuovo (di Vergato), Torre di Nerone, La Serra, Soprassasso and Castel D'Aiano had proved extremely resilient.


title: Gothic Line

text: Meanwhile, the British Eighth Army—held on Route 9 at Forlì—continued a subsidiary drive up the Adriatic coast and captured Ravenna on 5 November. In early November, the push up Route 9 resumed, and the river Montone, just beyond Forlì, was crossed on 9 November. However, the going continued to be very tough with the river Cosina, some further along Route 9 being crossed only on 23 November. By 17 December, the river Lamone had been assaulted and Faenza cleared. The German 10th Army established itself on the raised banks of the river Senio (rising at least above the surrounding plain) which ran across the line of the Eighth Army advance just beyond Faenza down to the Adriatic north of Ravenna. With snows falling and winter firmly established, any attempt to cross the Senio was out of the question and the Eighth Army's 1944 campaign came to an end.


title: Gothic Line

text: In late December, in a final flourish to the year's fighting, the Germans used a predominantly Italian force of units from the Italian Monterosa Division to attack the left wing of the U.S. Fifth Army in the Serchio valley in front of Lucca to pin Allied units there which might otherwise have been switched to the central front. Two brigades of the 8th Indian Infantry Division were rapidly switched across the Apennines to reinforce the U.S. 92nd Infantry Division. By the time the reinforcements had arrived, the Axis forces had broken through to capture Barga, but decisive action by the 8th Indian Division's Major-General Dudley Russell halted further advance and the situation was stabilised and Barga recaptured by the New Year.


title: Gothic Line

text: In mid-December Alexander became supreme commander of the Mediterranean Theatre. Clark took his place as commander of the Allied Armies in Italy (re-designated 15th Army Group) and command of U.S. Fifth Army was given to Lucian K. Truscott. In mid-February, as the winter weather improved, Fifth Army resumed its attacks on German artillery positions ("Operation Encore"). This time the IV Corps used two full infantry divisions to accomplish the mission: the Brazilian division, tasked with taking Monte Castello, Soprassasso and Castelnuovo di Vergato; and the newly arrived U.S. 10th Mountain Division, tasked to take Belvedere, Della Torraccia and Castel D'Aiano. Operation Encore began on 18 February and was completed on 5 March, preparatory to the final offensive in Italy.


title: Lawrence Gilliard Jr.

text: Lawrence Gilliard Jr. (born September 22, 1971) is an American actor who has appeared in films, television series, and theatre. He portrayed D'Angelo Barksdale on the HBO drama series "The Wire", a role which earned him critical acclaim. He is also known for his role as Bob Stookey in the AMC horror drama "The Walking Dead". He was in the cast of David Simon's HBO TV series "The Deuce", which premiered in September 2017 and concluded in October 2019. Gilliard Jr. has had roles in movies such as "Straight Out of Brooklyn" (1991), "Next Stop Wonderland" (1998), and "Gangs of New York" (2002).


title: Lawrence Gilliard Jr.

text: Gilliard was born in New York City. He and his family moved to Baltimore, Maryland, when he was seven years old.


title: Lawrence Gilliard Jr.

text: Gilliard played clarinet and studied classical music at Baltimore School for the Arts. Jada Pinkett Smith and Tupac Shakur were classmates of Gilliard's at the Baltimore School of the Arts.


title: Lawrence Gilliard Jr.

text: After attending Juilliard School for three years as a clarinet performance student, Gilliard decided to pursue acting instead of music. He also studied acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, The Acting Studio – New York, and the Stella Adler Conservatory.


title: Lawrence Gilliard Jr.

text: Gilliard made his film debut playing the lead, Dennis Brown, in the 1991 independent film "Straight Out of Brooklyn."


title: Lawrence Gilliard Jr.

text: Gilliard has appeared on numerous television crime dramas such as "Law & Order", "", "The Wire", "New York Undercover", and "". Film roles include a love-struck ghetto teen in "LottoLand" (1995), an earnest college football player in "The Waterboy" (1998), and a member of the Dead Rabbits in "Gangs of New York" (2002).


title: Lawrence Gilliard Jr.

text: Gilliard is also a stage actor. He received positive reviews for his role of Booth in a production of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play "Topdog/Underdog". He joined "The Walking Dead" cast as a regular, playing Bob Stookey.


title: Manstein Plan

text: The Manstein Plan or Case Yellow () also known as Operation Sichelschnitt (, from the English term sickle cut), was the war plan of the German armed forces () during the Battle of France in 1940. The original invasion plan was an awkward compromise devised by General Franz Halder, the chief of staff of (OKH, Army High Command) that satisfied no one. Documents with details of the plan fell into Belgian hands during the Mechelen incident on 10 January 1940 and the plan was revised several times, each giving more emphasis to an attack by Army Group A through the Ardennes, which progressively reduced the offensive by Army Group B through the Low Countries to a diversion.


title: Manstein Plan

text: In the final version of the plan, the main effort of the German invasion was made against the Ardennes, the weakest part of the Allied line, where the defence was left to second-rate French divisions in the Second Army and the Ninth Army, on the assumption that the difficulty of moving masses of men and equipment would give the French plenty of time to send reinforcements if the area was attacked. The Seventh Army, which had been the most powerful part of the French strategic reserve, had been committed to a rush through Belgium to join with the Dutch Army to the north, in the Breda variant of Plan D, the Allied deployment plan.


title: Manstein Plan

text: The Manstein plan has often been called Operation Sichelschnitt, a transliteration of "sickle cut", a catchy expression used after the events by Winston Churchill. After the war, German generals adopted the term, which led to a misunderstanding that this was the official name of the plan or at least of the attack by Army Group A. The German name was N°4, (Campaign Instruction No. 4, Case Yellow) issued on 24 February 1940 and the manoeuvre through the Ardennes had no name.


title: Manstein Plan

text: The Manstein Plan was a counterpart to the French Dyle Plan for the Battle of France. Lieutenant General Erich von Manstein dissented from the 1939 versions of (Case Yellow), a plan for an invasion of France and the Low Countries, devised by Franz Halder. The original N°1, (Campaign Instruction No 1, Case Yellow), was a plan to push the Allied forces back through central Belgium to the Somme river in northern France, with similarities to the 1914 campaign of the First World War. On 10 January 1940, a German aircraft carrying documents with parts of the plan for crashed in Belgium (the Mechelen Incident) prompting another review of the invasion plan. Halder revised to an extent in N°3, and Manstein was able to convince Hitler in a meeting on 17 February, that the should attack through the Ardennes, followed by an advance to the coast.


title: Manstein Plan

text: Manstein, chief of staff of Army Group A, had originally formulated his plan in October 1939 in Koblenz on the instigation of his commander, General Gerd von Rundstedt, who rejected Halder's plan, partly through professional rivalry and part because it could not inflict a decisive victory over France. Manstein first thought to follow annihilation theory (), envisaging a swing from Sedan to the north, rapidly to destroy the Allied armies in a cauldron battle (). When discussing his intentions with (Lieutenant-General) Heinz Guderian, commander of the XIX Panzer Corps, Guderian proposed to avoid the main body of the Allied armies and swiftly advance with the armoured divisions to the English Channel, taking the Allies by surprise and cutting their supply routes from the south. Manstein had many reservations about the proposal, fearing the long open flank to the south that would be created by such a bold advance. Guderian managed to convince him that the danger of a French counter-offensive from the south could be averted by a simultaneous secondary spoiling offensive southwards, in the general direction of Reims.


title: Manstein Plan

text: When Manstein first presented his ideas to OKH, he did not mention Guderian and made the attack to the north the main effort, with a few armoured divisions protecting the left flank of the manoeuvre. The changes were included because the original conception was too bold to be acceptable to many generals, who also considered Guderian too radical; Halder and Walther von Brauchitsch rejected the Manstein concept. Reformulating it in a more radical sense did not help. Manstein and Halder were rivals; in 1938 Manstein had been the successor of the chief of staff Ludwig Beck but had been ousted when the latter was disgraced over the Blomberg–Fritsch affair. On 1 September 1938, Halder instead of Manstein had replaced Beck. In late January, Halder got rid of Manstein by having him promoted commander of XXXVIII Corps in east Germany.


title: Manstein Plan

text: In late January, Lieutenant-Colonel Günther Blumentritt and Major Henning von Tresckow, part of Manstein's staff, contacted Lieutenant Colonel Rudolf Schmundt (an old acquaintance of Tresckow) the army attaché of Adolf Hitler, when he was visiting Koblenz, who informed Hitler of the affair on 2 February. Having found the Halder plan unsatisfactory from the start, Hitler ordered a change of strategy on 13 February in accordance with Manstein's thinking, after having heard only a rough outline. Manstein was invited to the Reich Chancellery in Berlin to meet Hitler on 17 February, in the presence of Alfred Jodl and Erwin Rommel. Though Hitler felt an immediate antipathy against Manstein for being arrogant and aloof, he listened silently to his exposition and was impressed by Manstein's thinking. Hitler remarked after Manstein had left, "Certainly an exceptionally clever fellow, with great operational gifts, but I don't trust him".


title: Manstein Plan

text: Manstein took no more part in the planning and returned to eastern Germany. Halder had to revise the plan again, which became N°4, . The new plan conformed to Manstein's thinking in that Army Group A would provide the main thrust of the invasion through the Ardennes in southern Belgium. After crossing the Meuse River between Namur and Sedan, Army Group A would turn north-west towards Amiens, as Army Group B executed a feint attack in the north, to lure the Allied armies forward into Belgium and pin them down.


title: Manstein Plan

text: The revision was a substantial change in emphasis, in which Halder no longer envisaged a simultaneous secondary attack to the west but made it the main effort (). The dash for Abbeville was removed, river crossings were to be forced by infantry and there would be a long period of consolidation by a large number of infantry divisions crossing into the bridgeheads. The armoured divisions would then advance together with the infantry, not in an independent operational penetration. Halder rejected the idea of forestalling the French with a simultaneous attack to the south to occupy the assembly areas that the French would use for a counter-offensive.


title: Manstein Plan

text: Five panzer divisions of advanced through the Ardennes; XIX Panzer Corps with three panzer divisions on the southern flank towards Sedan, against the French Second Army. The XLI Panzer Corps with two panzer divisions on the northern flank, advanced towards Monthermé, against the French Ninth Army (General André Corap). XV Corps moved through the upper Ardennes towards Dinant, with two panzer divisions, as a flank guard against a counter-attack from the north. From 10 to 11 May, XIX Panzer Corps engaged the two cavalry divisions of the Second Army, surprised them with a far larger force than expected and forced them back. The Ninth Army, to the north, had also sent its two cavalry divisions forward, which were withdrawn on 12 May, before they met German troops.


title: Manstein Plan

text: Corap needed the cavalry divisions to reinforce the defences on the Meuse, because some of the Ninth Army infantry had not arrived. The most advanced German units reached the Meuse in the afternoon; local French commanders thought that the German parties were far ahead of the main body and would wait for it before trying to cross the river. From 10 May, Allied bombers had been sent to raid northern Belgium to delay the German advance, while the First Army moved up but attacks on the bridges at Maastricht had been costly failures (the Air Striking Force (AASF) day bombers were reduced to aircraft by 12 May).


title: Manstein Plan

text: Against the plan, Guderian and the other panzer generals disobeyed their orders and quickly advanced to the English Channel. The panzer forces captured Abbeville and then fought the Battle of Boulogne and the Siege of Calais, only temporarily being halted by orders from Hitler on 17, 22 and 24 May. After the halt orders the panzer forces advanced to the North Sea coast and fought the Battle of Dunkirk. The Manstein Plan devastated the Allies, whose armies were cut in two, those in the north being encircled by Army Groups A and B, leading to the surrender of the Belgian Army and Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of the BEF and French forces from Dunkirk. Defeat in the north and the lack of mobile reserves led to the defeat of the remaining French and British forces in and the Armistice of 22 June 1940.


title: Manstein Plan

text: The success of the German invasion surprised everyone; the Germans had hardly dared hope for such a result. Most generals had vehemently opposed the plan as being much too risky; even those supporting it had mainly done so out of desperation because the geostrategic position of Germany seemed so hopeless. Two of the most prominent were Hitler and Halder; Hitler had not liked Halder's original plans and had suggested many alternatives, some of them bearing a resemblance to the Manstein Plan, the closest being a proposal made by him on 25 October 1939. Soon, Nazi propaganda began to claim that the victory was a result of Hitler's military genius; Hitler said,


title: Manstein Plan

text: After the war, Halder claimed he was the main instigator of the German plan, supporting this with the fact that he had begun to consider changing the main axis to Sedan as early as September 1939 and that Manstein's original proposal was too traditional.


title: Manstein Plan

text: The Manstein Plan is often seen as either the result of or the cause of a mid-20th century Revolution in military affairs. In the former hypothesis, expounded by J. F. C. Fuller and Basil Liddell Hart immediately after the events, the Manstein Plan is presented as a result of the evolution of German military thinking since the First World War by Hans von Seeckt and Guderian, adopting the ideas of Fuller or Liddell Hart. If true, an explicit Blitzkrieg doctrine would have been established by 1939 and been the basis of the plan for the Invasion of Poland; the Manstein Plan would have been its most spectacular implementation. Blitzkrieg theory would have been reflected in the organisation and equipment of the army and and would have been radically different from those of France, Britain and the Soviet Union, except for the contributions of individuals like Mikhail Tukhachevsky, Charles de Gaulle, Fuller and Liddell Hart. That the earliest plans by Halder or Manstein and the final plan by Halder did not conform to this doctrine is an anomaly, to be explained by circumstances.


title: Manstein Plan

text: In the latter hypothesis, favoured by Robert A. Doughty and Karl-Heinz Frieser, the Manstein Plan was a return to the principles of 19th century (war of manoeuvre), adapted to modern technology by a sudden and unexpected departure from established German thinking, through the elements provided and executed by Guderian. The influence of Fuller and Liddell Hart in Germany was limited and exaggerated by them after the war; no explicit Blitzkrieg doctrine can be found in pre-war German army records. German tank production had no priority and plans for the German war economy were based on the premise of a long war, not a swift victory. The hypothesis allows for a gradual adoption during the thirties of technologically-advanced military equipment and integration into existing thought, familiar to all the great powers prior to 1940, differences being variations on a theme. The invasion of Poland was not "Blitzkrieg but an annihilation battle fought according to " (annihilation theory). The lack of "Blitzkrieg" elements in the plans for is seen as unremarkable; only after the crossings of the Meuse, the sudden success of the break-out and the insubordination of Guderian and other tank commanders during the rush down the Somme valley, would "Blitzkrieg" have been adopted as an explicit theory, in this view making Operation Barbarossa the first and only "Blitzkrieg" campaign.


title: Manstein Plan

text: Guderian presented the situation in his postwar book "Erinnerungen eines Soldaten" ("Memories of a Soldier" 1950, published in English as "Panzer Leader") according to the second hypothesis, posing as a lone voice against the reactionary German officer corps. In 2006, Adam Tooze wrote that the quick victory in France was not the consequence of a logical strategic synthesis but a "risky improvisation" to cope with strategic dilemmas that Hitler and the German military leaders had been unable to overcome before February 1940. Tooze wrote that the Allies and the Germans had no interest in acknowledging the importance of improvisation and chance in the sensational victory of 1940. The fabrication of a Blitzkrieg Myth was convenient for the Allies to hide the incompetence that had led to their defeat. Rather than resort to technological determinism, German propaganda emphasised the machinery of the German army "and" that of the Allies, juxtaposing it with the heroic individualism of German soldiers, notably in the film "Sieg im Westen" (1941). OKW explained the victory as a consequence of the "...revolutionary dynamic of the Third Reich and its National socialist leadership".


title: Manstein Plan

text: Tooze wrote that a "debunking" of the technological interpretation of the German victory should not lead to the conclusion that it was the genius of Manstein or the superiority of German soldiers that caused the victory. There was no German grand-strategic synthesis; the course of the 1940 campaign depended on the economic mobilisation of 1939 and the geography of western Europe. During the winter of 1939–1940, the quality of German armoured forces was substantially improved. The plan attributed to Manstein was not a revolutionary departure from traditional military thinking but the concentration of superior force at the decisive point, a synthesis of "materialism and military art". The German army committed all its armoured units to the offensive and had it failed, would have had none left to resist an Allied counter-offensive. Casualties were high but the swift end to the campaign made them bearable. The was also fully committed but the Allied air forces held back a substantial reserve, in anticipation of a longer campaign. The gained air superiority but suffered far greater losses than the army. Operations on 10 May cost the and by the end of the month of its aircraft had been written off and badly damaged. The concentration of units in the Ardennes was an extraordinary gamble and had the Allied air forces been able to bomb the columns, the advance could have been reduced to chaos. The "audacious" manoeuvre of Army Group A comprised only about twelve armoured and motorised divisions; most of the rest of the German army invaded on foot, supplied from railheads.


title: Manstein Plan

text: The Channel coast was a natural obstacle, only a few hundred kilometres from the German border and over such a distance, motorised supply from railheads, over the dense west European road network, was possible and the invaders could live off the land, amidst the highly developed agriculture of western Europe, unlike in Poland where it had been much harder to maintain momentum. Tooze concluded that although the German victory of 1940 was not determined by brute force, the did not rewrite the rules of war or succeed because of the ardour of German soldiers and French pacifism. The odds against Germany were not so extreme as to be insurmountable by better planning for an offensive based on the familiar principles of . The German army managed to concentrate a hugely powerful force at the decisive point but took a gamble of great magnitude, that could not be repeated if the attack failed. When the Germans attempted to repeat the success of 1940 against the Soviet Union in 1941, little was left in reserve. The Red Army had a greater margin of numerical superiority, better leadership and more room for manoeuvre; the Napoleonic principle of the concentration of superior force at the decisive point was impossible for the Germans to achieve.


title: Manstein Plan

text: In the 2014 edition of "Breaking Point", Doughty described how in a 1956 publication, Fuller wrote that the Battle of Sedan was an "attack by paralyzation" that he had devised in 1918 and incorporated into Plan 1919. Doughty wrote that although the Germans hoped for a quick victory, there is little evidence to support Fuller and that if the military theory later labelled "Blitzkrieg" was influential in the German officer corps, only those like Manstein and Guderian had fully accepted it. The disagreement between Kleist and Guderian that led Guderian to resign on 17 May, showed the apprehensions of the German high command about the speed of movement and vulnerability of the XIX Panzer Corps. Doughty suggested that the development of the Manstein Plan showed that the force sent through the Ardennes was intended to follow a familiar strategy of intended to encircle and annihilate the Allied armies in (cauldron battles). Twentieth-century weapons were different but the methods were little changed from those of Ulm (1805), Sedan (1870) and Tannenberg (1914). When German forces broke through on 16 May, they did not attack French headquarters but advanced westwards in the manner of a cavalry raid.


title: Manstein Plan

text: Doughty wrote that Fuller had called the advanced forces of the German army an armoured battering-ram, covered by fighters and dive-bombers acting as flying field artillery, to break through a continuous front at several points. The XIX, XLI and XV panzer corps had operated as the leading force through the Ardennes but the most effective Allied resistance to the south and south-west of Sedan was reduced by the combined operations of infantry, tanks and artillery, a fact overlooked for long after 1940. bombers had not acted as flying artillery and their main effect occurred on 13 May, when bombing collapsed the morale of the French 55th Division. Air attacks helped the ground forces to advance but destroyed few tanks and bunkers, most of which were taken by the skill and determination of German infantry, sometimes helped by anti-tank guns, accompanying guns and a few tanks. Fuller's writing was in the vein of much of the early reports of the Battle of France but since then new studies had added nuance, dwelling on the complications and chaos of the military operations. The Manstein Plan led to much more than a simple tank rush through the Ardennes and the fields of northern France; the toughness and training of the German infantry should be recognised, along with the efforts of the engineers and artillery, which got the XIX Panzer Corps across the Meuse.


title: Manstein Plan

text: Doughty also wrote that the success of the German army could not adequately be explained without reference to French mistakes. French strategy was unusually vulnerable to an attack through the Ardennes; operationally, French commanders failed adequately to react to the breakthrough of massed panzer forces. Tactically, the Germans were often able to overcome French defences that usually were inadequate. French military intelligence failed to predict the main German attack, expecting it in central Belgium as late as 13 May. Military intelligence had made the elementary mistake of noting information that fitted with their assumptions of German intentions and paid insufficient attention to German capability or information suggesting that they were not conforming to expectations. Doughty wrote that the French failure was caused by an inadequate military system and that this had much to do with the success of the German invasion. The French had prepared to fight a methodical battle based on massed firepower, against an opponent that emphasised surprise and speed. French training for a centralised and slow-moving battle left the army incapable of hasty counter-attacks or bold moves. The French army lost the initiative, was overrun at important points and then deep German penetrations made the disruption of French command arrangements worse.


title: Makoto Hasebe

text: After graduating from Fujieda Higashi High School in 2002, he joined Urawa Reds. He became a regular of their first team in the 2003 season. He played mainly as defensive midfielder with Keita Suzuki. In 2004, he was honoured with the J.League Cup New Hero Award and selected as a member of J.League team of the year. He was also the Urawa Fans' Player of the Year that season. The Reds won the championship in the 2006 J1 League for the first time in the club history and the first Asian title of the 2007 AFC Champions League.


title: Makoto Hasebe

text: It was reported in October 2007 that Italian Serie A side A.C. Siena was keen to sign Hasebe the following January.


title: Makoto Hasebe

text: However, he signed for Bundesliga side Wolfsburg becoming the first Japanese player ever to play for the Wolves. In 2009, he became the second Japanese player to win the Bundesliga title.


title: Makoto Hasebe

text: On 17 September 2011, Hasebe played in goal for the final nine minutes of an away match against 1899 Hoffenheim. Wolfsburg lost the match 3–1, with Hasebe conceding Hoffenheim's third goal on 85 minutes. On 3 December 2011, he played his 100th Bundesliga match against 1. FSV Mainz 05.


title: Makoto Hasebe

text: Hasebe moved to Bundesliga team Eintracht Frankfurt for the 2014––15 season, where he was an instant starter, missing just one competitive match in his first season. In the 2015–16 season, he was also a midfielder for Frankfurt, who only managed to stay in the relegation play-off against Hasebe's former club Nuremberg. Under Frankfurt's new coach Niko Kovač, the Japanese player was called up for the first time at centre-back at the end of October 2016 as a central link in a five-man backline and played in this position from then on. He played in the final of the DFB-Pokal that season, which was lost 2–1 to Borussia Dortmund, although Hasebe's season had already ended in March 2017 due to knee surgery.


title: Makoto Hasebe

text: In the 2017–18 season, he finished eighth in the Bundesliga with Eintracht and also played in the DFB-Pokal final with them again. There, in May 2018, the team won its first title in 30 years after a 3–1 victory over FC Bayern Munich and qualified for the group stage of the Europa League as a result. In the latter competition, he played full time in all 14 of his team's matches the following season and, after victories over Shakhtar Donetsk, Inter Milan and Benfica Lisbon, they advanced to the semi-finals against Chelsea FC, to whom they were defeated on penalties.


title: Makoto Hasebe

text: Due to his strong performances during the season, he was rated "International Class" by kicker sports magazine in both the winter of 2018–19 and summer of 2019, and was included in the end-of-season team by the Association of Contract Footballers. With his 309th appearance on 6 June 2020 against 1. FSV Mainz 05, Hasebe became the record Asian player in the Bundesliga.


title: Makoto Hasebe

text: At the start of the 2020–21 season, the Japanese player was the oldest player in the Bundesliga at the age of 36. Following the end of David Abraham's professional career in January 2021, a permanent new team captain was not appointed, but Hasebe has led Eintracht onto the field as captain for most of the time since. On 18 February 2022, Hasebe signed a contract extension till 2027. His original contract was due to expire this summer. He will spend one more year as a player before taking on a coaching role in the summer of 2023. On 18 May 2022, Hasebe won UEFA Europa League title, coming on as a substitute in the final against Rangers F.C.


title: Makoto Hasebe

text: Hasebe made his debut for the Japan senior national team under manager Zico on 11 February 2006, in a friendly match against the USA at AT&T Park in San Francisco. Although he played three matches under Zico, He was not selected for the 2006 World Cup.


title: Makoto Hasebe

text: After 2006 World Cup, Hasebe was capped for Japan under new manager Ivica Osim soon. Although he played three matches under Osim in 2006, he could not play at all in 2007. Osim suffered a stroke in November 2007 and Takeshi Okada became a new manager in December. In May 2008, Hasebe played for Japan against Ivory Coast for the first time in one and a half a year. After that, he became a regular player and played many matches as defensive midfielder with Yasuhito Endo.


title: Makoto Hasebe

text: Hasebe was the onfield captain in the 2010 FIFA World Cup, as Yoshikatsu Kawaguchi was the reserve third string goalkeeper, and was captain in the 2011 AFC Asian Cup. He captained the team for three World Cup campaigns, until he announced his international retirement after Japan lost 3–2 against Belgium in the Round of 16 of 2018 FIFA World Cup. At the 2010 World Cup, Hasebe played all four matches and Japan qualified to the knockout stage.


title: Makoto Hasebe

text: After the 2010 World Cup, Hasebe also served as a captain under new manager Alberto Zaccheroni. In 2011, Japan won the champions in 2011 Asian Cup. He played all six matches and scored a goal against Syria. From late 2013, Hasebe played as defensive midfielder with Hotaru Yamaguchi instead of Endo. In 2014, he played three matches in the 2014 World Cup. However, Japan was eliminated in the group stage.


title: Makoto Hasebe

text: In 2015, Hasebe played in the 2015 Asian Cup. Although he played full-time in all four matches, Japan was eliminated in the quarter-finals. Due to injuries, he could hardly play in 2017. In 2018, he was in the 2018 World Cup squad. He played all four matches as defensive midfielder with Gaku Shibasaki and Japan qualified to the knockout stage. After the World Cup, he retired from Japan national team. He played 114 games and scored two goals for Japan until 2018.


title: Archive.today

text: archive.today (or archive.is) is a web archiving site, founded in 2012, that saves snapshots on demand, and has support for JavaScript-heavy sites such as Google Maps and progressive web apps such as Twitter. archive.today records two snapshots: one replicates the original webpage including any functional live links; the other is a screenshot of the page.


title: Archive.today

text: archive.today can capture individual pages in response to explicit user requests. Since its beginning, archive.today has supported crawling pages with URLs containing the now-deprecated hash-bang fragment ().


title: Archive.today

text: archive.today records only text and images, excluding XML, RTF, spreadsheet (xls or ods) and other non-static content. However, videos for certain sites, like Twitter, are saved. It keeps track of the history of snapshots saved, requesting confirmation before adding a new snapshot of an already saved page.


title: Archive.today

text: Pages are captured at a browser width of 1,024 pixels. CSS is converted to inline CSS, removing responsive web design and selectors such as codice_1 and codice_2. Content generated using JavaScript during the crawling process appears in a frozen state.


title: Archive.today

text: When text is selected, a JavaScript applet generates a URL fragment seen in the browser's address bar that automatically highlights that portion of the text when visited again.


title: Archive.today

text: Web pages cannot be duplicated from archive.today to web.archive.org as second-level backup, as archive.today places an exclusion for Wayback Machine and does not save its snapshots in WARC format. The reverse—from web.archive.org to archive.today—is possible, but the copy usually takes more time than a direct capture. Some web sites get deleted from Internet Archive's listings retroactively or blocked from being saved due to their robots.txt file, but archive.today does not use this.


title: Archive.today

text: The research toolbar enables advanced keywords operators, using as the wildcard character. A couple of quotation marks address the search to an exact sequence of keywords present in the title or in the body of the webpage, whereas the "insite" operator restricts it to a specific Internet domain.


title: Archive.today

text: Removing advertisements, popups or expanding links from archived pages is possible by asking the owner to do it on his blog.


title: Archive.today

text: While saving a dynamic list, archive.today searchbox shows only a result that links the previous and the following section of the list (e.g. 20 links for page). The other web pages saved are filtered, and sometimes may be found by one of their occurrences.


title: Archive.today

text: The search feature is backed by Google CustomSearch. If it delivers no results, archive.today attempts to utilize Yandex Search.


title: Archive.today

text: While saving a page, a list of URLs for individual page elements and their content sizes, HTTP statuses and MIME types is shown. This list can only be viewed during the crawling process.


title: Archive.today

text: One can download archived pages as a ZIP file, except pages archived when archive.today changed their browser engine from PhantomJS to Chromium.


title: Archive.today

text: archive.today was founded in 2012. The site originally branded itself as archive.today, but in May 2015, changed the primary mirror to archive.is.


title: Archive.today

text: In March 2019, the site was blocked for six months by several Australian internet providers in the aftermath of the Christchurch mosque shootings in an attempt to limit distribution of the footage of the attack. It has since been unblocked.


title: Archive.today

text: According to GreatFire.org, archive.today has been blocked in China archive.li archive.fo as well as archive.ph


title: Archive.today

text: On 21 July 2015, the operators blocked access to the service from all Finnish IP addresses, stating on Twitter that they did this in order to avoid escalating a dispute they allegedly had with the Finnish government. It has since been unblocked.


title: Archive.today

text: , it has not been possible to reach the site when using Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 DNS service. Cloudflare staff have stated that the problem is on the end of archive.today, as its authoritative nameservers return invalid records when queried from within Cloudflare's network because archive.today returns invalid data to DNS requests coming via Cloudflare's DNS servers. archive.today's reasoning for this is the fact Cloudflare does not send EDNS Client Subnet information in its DNS requests.


title: Dragon Quest VII

text: Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past is a 2000 Japanese role-playing video game developed by Heartbeat and ArtePiazza, and published by Enix for the PlayStation. It was released in North America in 2001 under the title Dragon Warrior VII. The game received a remake on the Nintendo 3DS in Japan in 2013, released in English under the title "Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past" in 2016. A version of the game for Android and iOS was released in Japan in 2015.


title: Dragon Quest VII

text: "Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past" is the seventh installment of the popular "Dragon Quest" series of role playing games, and is the successor to 1995's "" for the Super Famicom. An immediate success upon release, "Dragon Warrior VII"'s sales totalled 4.06 million by April 6, 2001, making it the best-selling PlayStation game in Japan, and is an Ultimate Hits title. It was the first main series "Dragon Quest" title to be released outside Japan since the release of "" in North America in 1992, the last "Dragon Quest" title to be released in North America with the "Dragon Warrior" name, and the last "Dragon Quest" game outside of Japan to be published by Enix, before merging with Squaresoft in 2003 to form Square Enix. The game was produced by Yuji Horii, who has presided over the "Dragon Quest" series since its inception. Artwork and character designs were once again provided by Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama, the artist responsible for all previous "Dragon Quest" games.


title: Dragon Quest VII

text: The game follows the Hero and his friends as they discover secrets about the mysterious islands surrounding their home of Estard. Through some ancient ruins, they are transported to the pasts of various islands and must defeat evil in each new location. Game mechanics are largely unchanged from previous games in the series, although an extensive Class system allows players to customize their characters.


title: Dragon Quest VII

text: "Dragon Quest VII" is best known for its huge size. Without completing the game's side quests, a single game of "Dragon Quest VII" can take a hundred hours or more. In terms of gameplay, not much has changed from previous installments; battles are still fought in a turn-based mode from a first person perspective. Although non-battle sequences are rendered in 3D, battles themselves are still portrayed two dimensionally. The ability to talk with the party characters in and outside of battles was added to this game. They offer advice about battle strategies and plot points, or simply comment on how they feel at a given moment. There are four ways and means of locomotion: walking (striding), sailing a boat, flying a magic carpet, or using an object known as the skystone. Each of these can move across different terrain; however, some are more limited than others.


title: Dragon Quest VII

text: The main flow of the game is different from the other "Dragon Quest" games; instead of exploring one large world, the party goes to separate continents by placing stone shards into their appropriate pedestals in Estard Fane. Once all of the missing shards are located and placed for a particular pedestal, the party is transported to the trapped location in the past. After solving whatever problems plague the location, the party then travels back to Estard, the beginning island. From there, they can travel via boat, carpet, or skystone to the modern version of the location they just saved. These saved lands appear on the main map, although the originals (from the past) can be revisited through the ruins.


title: Dragon Quest VII

text: Like most of the other "Dragon Quest" games, this game has several mini-games to participate in. The Immigrant Town, similar to the one in "", lets the player recruit people from various towns. They then live in the town, which changes depending on the type of people living there (e.g. several merchants will bring more stores to the town). A prominent feature in most "Dragon Quest" games is the casino. Poker, slot machines, and luck panel can all be played in "Dragon Quest VII". The Ranking Association allows the player to compete for the highest stats, like the Beauty Competition from "". The player can also catch monsters, although they are only displayed in the Monster Park, unlike in "", where monsters fought in the party. Blueprints are found to add new environments to the park.


title: Dragon Quest VII

text: "Dragon Quest VII" uses a class system for learning abilities, similar to that of "". Some available classes include Warrior, Fighter, Cleric, Mage, Bard, Dancer, Jester, Thief, Idol, Pirate, Ranger, Gladiator, Paladin, Summoner, God Hand ("Champion" in the localized 3DS version), and Hero, some of which are unlocked by mastering other classes. The game also includes monster classes, which can be unlocked by using the appropriate monster heart or mastering pre-requisite monster classes.


title: Dragon Quest VII

text: Characters generally stop learning character specific spells and skills around experience level 15; however, around this time in the game, players will reach Dharma Island, where they can give their characters certain classes. Each non-monster class belongs to one of three tiers (Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced), while monster classes have more tiers. Characters gain levels in classes by fighting a certain number of battles, as opposed to gaining experience points. Characters learn different spells and skills when they reach another class level and their stats are affected by what class they are. Once a character reaches the 8th and final level of a class, it is considered "mastered", if a character masters certain classes, higher tier classes will become available to them. For example, if a character masters the Mage and Cleric classes, which are both Basic, then the Intermediate class Sage will be available to them. If that character was to then master the Teen Idol class, the Advanced Summoner class would open up.


title: Dragon Quest VII

text: The story begins when the father of the protagonist brings home a map fragment from a fishing trip; this map suggests to the protagonist and his friend that the world had, at some point in its past, many continents, though now there is only the small island of . The two of them find a way to travel back to the past, when the continents still existed. The continents are facing serious problems that threaten their existence; the protagonist and his growing party work to resolve the problems, and when they do, the continents reappear in the present. When all the continents are finally restored, the party confronts the Demon Lord Orgodemir, who long ago defeated God (The Almighty in the 3DS English translation) and is responsible for the continents' disappearance. After his initial defeat, Orgodemir returns in the present and poses as God to trick humanity into worshiping him, then seals the continents away again. The party summons the Four Elemental Spirits to expose Orgodemir, then travels to the Dark Palace where they defeat Orgodemir in a final showdown.


title: Dragon Quest VII

text: "Dragon Quest VII" was designed by series creator Yuji Horii and directed by Manabu Yamana. Shintaro Majima signed on as art director, while series veterans Akira Toriyama and Koichi Sugiyama designed the characters and composed the music respectively. The game was officially announced in 1996 and originally planned for the Nintendo 64DD. On January 15, 1997, it was announced that development had been moved to the PlayStation. By the next day, both stock in Sony and Enix rose significantly in Japan. In turn, the move to the PlayStation was described as a "semi-crisis situation" for Nintendo of Japan, with Japanese stock analysts and industry observers losing faith in the long-term viability of the Nintendo 64 line. Enix cited the larger potential market and lower cost of manufacturing CDs as the reasons for the change of platform. By 2000, "Dragon Quest VII" was predicted to be so successful in Japan that it would "create a 50 billion yen effect on the Japanese economy", said research firm DIHS. "Dragon Quest VII" would go on to be released on August 26, 2000 and sold 4.06 million games in Japan alone, becoming one of the highest selling games of all time.


title: Dragon Quest VII

text: The game was delayed numerous times before its actual release. Work on the game was extended because the development staff wanted to perfect the game due to high expectations from the fans and because the team only consisted of about 35 people. Before its release, it was ranked as the most wanted game in Japan and Square, knowing about "Dragon Quest VII's" release, moved "Final Fantasy IX" to come out on a later date. Horii stated in an interview that the team focused more on puzzle solving than the game's story. Being the first game in the series to include 3D graphics, the team was also initially reluctant to include CG movies and cinematics due to letters written to Enix by fans fearing that doing so would change the overall feeling of the series.


title: Dragon Quest VII

text: The English language localization of "Dragon Warrior VII" began directly after the game's Japanese release. Enix of America was tasked with translating over 70,000 pages of text via 20 translators and 5 copy editors. No effort was made to edit or censor the context of the Japanese script. Weeks prior to the game's US release, Enix released new information about the game's different mechanics on their website weekly to introduce players to the game. Paul Handelman, president of Enix America, commented on the game that "All the talk this month about new systems with the latest technological wizardry doesn't diminish the fact that at the end of the day, compelling game play is what it's all about, and Dragon Warrior VII provides just that." "Dragon Warrior VII" was released in the US on November 1, 2001 and was the last game in the series to have "Warrior" in its title instead of "Quest". In 2003, Square Enix registered the "Dragon Quest" trademark in the US, with the intent to retire the "Dragon Warrior" name. Soon after the game's release, developer Heartbeat went on hiatus. Justin Lucas, product manager of Enix America, commented on the hiatus, saying that the developer merely "worked their tails off on Dragon Warrior 7 and Dragon Warrior 4. They decided to take a sabbatical for a while and rest up", noting that it had nothing to do with the game's US sales.


title: Dragon Quest VII

text: The back of the "Dragon Warrior VII" manual in North America contained an advertisement for "", an enhanced remake for the PlayStation of a Nintendo game of the same name. The localization was later cancelled, due to Heartbeat's closure.


title: Dragon Quest VII

text: On October 30, 2012 Square Enix announced that they were remaking "Dragon Quest VII" exclusively for the Nintendo 3DS and that it would be released in Japan in February 2013. Later that day, Square Enix confirmed that the release date would be February 7, 2013 for Japan. Similarly to "Dragon Quest IX", the game features visible enemy encounters instead of random encounters, unique backgrounds and enemies that have individual attack characteristics. The remake was originally not intended for a release outside of Japan, in part due to the sheer cost and time needed to localize the game's substantial content. After numerous letters from core "Dragon Quest" fans in France, as well as Square Enix and Nintendo executives, the decision was made to release the 3DS port worldwide. In the November 2015 Nintendo Direct, it was shown that "Dragon Quest VII" would be coming outside Japan in 2016, with the new subtitle "Fragments of the Forgotten Past". The international release of the 3DS remake contained a completely retranslated script which followed the localization style of games since Square Enix's release of "Dragon Quest VIII" in 2005, including numerous name and terminology changes for characters from the original "Dragon Warrior VII" release. The Western release also replaced the orchestral score from the Japanese release with the synthesized MIDI soundtrack that had been used in the Japan-only iOS and Android versions of the game, released in 2015.


title: Dragon Quest VII

text: As with nearly every "Dragon Quest" game, Koichi Sugiyama composed the musical score. As was done for "Dragon Quest VI", the original sound version was bundled with the symphonic suite in a two-disc set called "Dragon Quest VII: Eden no Senshitachi Symphonic Suite + OST". The entire first disc and the opening track of the second disc consists of the symphonic suite, while the rest of the second disc is the original sound version. The "Symphonic Suite" was released alone on Super Audio CD later that year, and re-released in 2009. A disc titled "Dragon Quest VII: Eden no Senshitachi on Piano" was also released, and contained 27 piano-arranged tracks. The "Symphonic Suite" was later re-recorded in 2006 along with the rest of the music from the series. An original soundtrack for the 3DS remake was released on March 19, 2014, and features the original recordings by the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra from the remake.


title: Dragon Quest VII

text: The manga adaptation of "Dragon Quest VII" was published by Enix's "Monthly Gangan" in Japan. It was illustrated by Kamui Fujiwara, who also worked on another franchise-related manga, "". Fourteen volumes were released between 2001 and 2006, though the series is currently on hiatus. In this adaptation, the hero is given the name "Arus". The manga follows the game story while adding in new characters and more detailed relationships, as the original hero was silent and a personality needed to be added for the comic version.


title: Dragon Quest VII

text: "Dragon Warrior VII" received both commercial and critical success in Japan. units were sold within 17 days of the game's release; the game established itself for having the largest annual shipment of any independently sold game for the original PlayStation. It was the best-selling PlayStation game of 2000 in the region, having sold more than copies by November. Shipments of "Dragon Quest VII" reached four million copies on January 5, 2001, and the game became the sixth best-seller video game of all platforms in Japan at that time. Worldwide, shipments of the game have surpassed 4.1 million units as of March 2003. "Dragon Warrior VII" won the grand prize in Digital (Interactive) Art Division at the 4th Japan Media Arts Festival in 2000, where the game was praised for being "...engaging without depending on a high degree of realism..." and "...well refined and artfully executed." The game also won four awards from the 5th Japan Entertainment Software Awards by the Computer Entertainment Supplier's Association (CESA), including Best Prize, Scenario Prize, Sales Prize, and Popularity Prize. In 2006, the readers of "Famitsu" magazine voted "Dragon Warrior VII" the 9th best video game of all time.


title: Dragon Quest VII

text: Sales of the North American version of "Dragon Warrior VII" reached almost 200,000 copies according to The Magic Box, which was not nearly as stellar as its Japanese counterpart. Enix of America still expressed their satisfaction with the sales figures. "Dragon Warrior VII" met with mostly positive reviews from North American critics. IGN noted that all "100+ hours" of the game are enjoyable despite the dated visuals and clunky presentation. GameZone.com praised the game's concept and nostalgia factor and cited it as "what role-playing games were meant to be." They also noted the game's high difficulty, which, instead of making the game frustrating, they say, "make it that much more of an accomplishment when you complete a quest." IGN described the game's class system as "one of the best class systems seen outside a strategy RPG."


title: Dragon Quest VII

text: Other critics were not as pleased with "Dragon Warrior VII". GameShark.com described the first two hours of the game as "some of the most boring hours you will ever play in a video game." XenGamers.com also pointed out that in order to play the game, the player needs "the patience of a rock". "Game Informer" even went as far as to say that "four million Japanese can be wrong", referring to the game's immense popularity in Japan. Because of the game's delay in being developed, its release was after the PlayStation 2's release, which created some negative feedback, particularly about the game's graphics. IGN commented on this, calling the game "a game that makes only a bare minimum of concessions to advancing technology, but more than makes up for this with its deep gameplay, massive quest, and sheer variety." GameSpot called the graphics "not good" and warned readers that if the "most rewarding things" they "got out of Final Fantasy VII were the full-motion video interludes, you definitely won't be wowed by anything you see in Dragon Warrior VII."


title: Dragon Quest VII

text: Eric Bratcher reviewed the PlayStation version of the game for "Next Generation", rating it four stars out of five, and stated that "The harder-core you are, the more you'll love this definitely old-school RPG, but graphics hounds and those with short attention spans can sit this one out."


title: Dragon Quest VII

text: Sales of the Nintendo 3DS remake exceeded 800,000 copies the first week in Japan. As of March 17, 2013, the remake has sold 1,174,077 copies. Famitsu rated the remake a 35/40, praising the new orchestrated score as well as the improved graphics, intro and first dungeon.


title: Upsilon

text: Upsilon (, ; uppercase Υ, lowercase υ; "ýpsilon" ) or ypsilon is the 20th letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, has a value of 400. It is derived from the Phoenician waw .


title: Upsilon

text: The name of the letter was originally just "υ" ("y;" also called "hy", hence "hyoid", meaning "shaped like the letter υ"), but the name changed to "υ ψιλόν" "u psilon" 'simple u' to distinguish it from οι, which had come to have the same pronunciation.


title: Upsilon

text: In early Attic Greek (6th century BCE), it was pronounced (a close back rounded vowel like the English "long o͞o"). In Classical Greek, it was pronounced (a close front rounded vowel), at least until 1030. In Modern Greek, it is pronounced ; in the digraphs and , as or ; and in the digraph as . In ancient Greek, it occurred in both long and short versions, but Modern Greek does not have a length distinction.


title: Upsilon

text: As an initial letter in Classical Greek, it always carried the rough breathing (equivalent to "h") as reflected in the many Greek-derived English words, such as those that begin with "hyper-" and "hypo-". This rough breathing was derived from an older pronunciation that used a sibilant instead; this sibilant was not lost in Latin, giving rise to such cognates as "super-" (for "hyper-") and "sub-" (for "hypo-").


title: Upsilon

text: Upsilon participated as the second element in falling diphthongs, which have subsequently developed in various ways.


title: Upsilon

text: The usage of Y in Latin dates back to the first century BC. It was used to transcribe loanwords from Greek, so it was not a native sound of Latin and was usually pronounced or . The latter pronunciation was the most common in the Classical period and was used mostly by uneducated people. The Roman Emperor Claudius proposed introducing a new letter into the Latin alphabet to transcribe the so-called "sonus medius" (a short vowel before labial consonants), but in inscriptions, the new letter was sometimes used for Greek upsilon instead.


title: Upsilon

text: Four letters of the Latin alphabet arose from it: and U , Y and, much later, V and W. In the Cyrillic script, the letters U (У, у) and izhitsa (Ѵ, ѵ) arose from it.


title: Upsilon

text: In some languages, including German and Portuguese, the name "upsilon" ("Ypsilon" in German, "ípsilon" in Portuguese) is used to refer to the Latin letter Y as well as the Greek letter. In some other languages, the (Latin) Y is referred to as a "Greek I" ("i griega" in Spanish, "i grec" in French), also noting its Greek origin.


title: Upsilon

text: Upsilon is known as Pythagoras' letter, or the Samian letter, because Pythagoras used it as an emblem of the path of virtue or vice. As the Roman writer Persius wrote in "Satire III":


title: Upsilon

text: These characters are used only as mathematical symbols. Stylized Greek text should be encoded using the normal Greek letters, with markup and formatting to indicate text style.


title: United States Cavalry

text: The United States Cavalry, or U.S. Cavalry, was the designation of the mounted force of the United States Army by an act of Congress on 3 August 1861. This act converted the U.S. Army's two regiments of dragoons, one regiment of mounted riflemen, and two regiments of cavalry into one branch of service. The cavalry branch transitioned to the Armored Forces with tanks in 1940, but the term "cavalry", e.g. "armored cavalry", remains in use in the U.S. Army for mounted (ground and aviation) reconnaissance, surveillance, and target acquisition (RSTA) units based on their parent Combat Arms Regimental System (CARS) regiment. "Cavalry" is also used in the name of the 1st Cavalry Division for heraldic/lineage/historical purposes. Some combined arms battalions (i.e., consisting of a combination of tank and mechanized infantry companies) are designated as "armor" formations, while others are designated as "infantry" organizations. These "branch" designations are again, heraldic/lineage/historical titles derived from the CARS regiments to which the battalions are assigned.


title: United States Cavalry

text: The Mexican-American War (1846–1848) "had resulted in adding a vast territory to our national domain, and the government was bound, in the interests of civilization, to open this immense area to settlement...the country between the Missouri River and California... was occupied by powerful and warlike tribes of Indians." To protect new settlers moving into and living in the new territories, soldiers had to patrol it, but the size of the army had remained fixed. In 1855, at the request of General Winfield Scott Congress added the 1st and 2nd Cavalry regiments to the U.S. Army.


title: United States Cavalry

text: Congress originally created the 1st U.S. Dragoons in 1833. The 2nd U.S. Dragoons, and the U.S. Mounted Riflemen followed in 1836 and 1846 respectively. Prior to "1833 mounted troops were raised (in 1808 and 1812) as emergencies presented themselves and were disbanded as soon as these had passed." The newly designated forces were often influenced after American cavalry units employed during the American Revolutionary War. The traditions of the U.S. Cavalry originated with the horse-mounted force which played an important role in extending United States governance into the Western United States, especially after the American Civil War (1861–1865), with the need to cover vast ranges of territory between scattered isolated forts and outposts of the minimal resources given to the stretched thin U.S. Army.


title: United States Cavalry

text: Significant numbers of horse mounted units participated in later foreign conflicts in the Spanish–American War of 1898, and in the Western Front battlefields of Europe in World War I (1917–1918), although numbers and roles declined.


title: United States Cavalry

text: Immediately preceding World War II (1941–1945), the U.S. Cavalry began transitioning to a mechanized, mounted force. During the Second World War, the Army's cavalry units operated as horse-mounted, mechanized, or dismounted forces (infantry). The last horse-mounted cavalry charge by a U.S. Cavalry unit took place on the Bataan Peninsula, in the Philippines in early 1942. The 26th Cavalry Regiment of the allied Philippine Scouts executed the charge against Imperial Japanese Army forces near the village of Morong on 16 January 1942.


title: United States Cavalry

text: "In March 1942 the War Department eliminated the office of Chief of Cavalry...and the horse cavalry was effectively abolished." The cavalry name was absorbed into the Armor branch as part of the Army Reorganization Act of 1950. The Vietnam War saw the introduction of helicopters and operations as a helicopter-borne force with the designation of Air Cavalry, while mechanized cavalry received the designation of Armored Cavalry.


title: United States Cavalry

text: Today, cavalry designations and traditions continue with regiments of both armor and aviation units that perform the cavalry mission. The 1st Cavalry Division is the only active division in the United States Army with a cavalry designation. The division maintains a detachment of horse-mounted cavalry for ceremonial purposes.


title: United States Cavalry

text: The United States Cavalry in various forms from 1775 to 1942, was historically a horse-mounted cavalry force that played a significant role in a number of chapters of US history to the present day. These include the American Revolutionary War, and every major subsequent war in which the United States was involved. Washington personally witnessed the effect of a small force of the 17th Light Dragoons had on his troops, panicking his militia infantry at the Battle of White Plains. Appreciating the ability of the 5th Regiment of Connecticut Light Horse Militia, under Major Elisha Sheldon, to gather intelligence during the subsequent retreat of Continental forces into New Jersey, he asked the Continental Congress for a light cavalry force in the Continental army. In late 1776, Congress authorized Washington to establish a mounted force of 3,000 men.


title: United States Cavalry

text: On 12 December 1776, Congress converted Elisha Sheldon's militia regiment into the Regiment of Light Dragoons. In March 1777, Washington established the Corps of Continental Light Dragoons consisting of four regiments of 280 men, each organized in six troops. Many problems faced the light dragoon regiments, including the inability of recruiting to bring the units to authorized strength, shortage of suitable cavalry weapons and horses, and lack of uniformity among troopers in dress and discipline. Congress appointed the Hungarian revolutionary and professional soldier Michael Kovats and the Polish Casimir Pulaski to train them as an offensive strike force during winter quarters of 1777–78 at Trenton, New Jersey.


title: United States Cavalry

text: Pulaski's efforts led to friction with the American officers, resulting in his resignation, but Congress authorized Pulaski to form his own independent corps in 1778. Pulaski's Legion consisted of dragoons, riflemen, grenadiers, and infantry. Another independent corps of dragoons joined Pulaski's in the Continental Line during 1778 when a former captain in Bland's Horse, "Light Horse Harry" Lee, formed Lee's Corps of Partisan Light Dragoons, which specialized in raiding and harassing supply lines. Colonel Charles Armand Tuffin, marquis de la Rouërie ("Col. Armand"), a French nobleman, raised a third corps of infantry in Boston, called the Free and Independent Chasseurs, which later added a troop of dragoons, becoming Armand's Legion. Although a reorganization in 1778 authorized expansion of the four regiments to 415 men each, forage difficulties, expiration of enlistments, desertions, and other problems made this impossible, and no regiment ever carried more than 200 men on its rolls, and they averaged 120 to 180 men between 1778 and 1780.


title: United States Cavalry

text: In 1779, Washington ordered the 2nd and 4th Continental Light Dragoons equipped temporarily as infantry, and deployed the 1st and 3rd Continental Light Dragoons and Pulaski's Legion to the South to join local militia cavalry and to ensure the area remained American during an unexpected counter-offensive. Battle engagements in South Carolina largely seriously attrited the 1st and 3rd Regiments in the spring of 1780, who amalgamated into a single unit. Following the capture of Charleston, South Carolina on 12 May 1780, the remnants tried to regroup and reconstitute in Virginia and North Carolina. In August 1780, Armand's Legion was with General Gates at the disastrous Battle of Camden.


title: United States Cavalry

text: The most significant engagement of the war involving Continental light dragoons was the Battle of Cowpens in January 1781. Southern theater commander General Nathanael Greene reorganized part of Lee's Legion and elements of the amalgamated 1st and 3rd Light Dragoons in Charlotte and dispatched them on a series of raids against Loyalist forces in western Carolina. The dragoons joined the "flying corps" commanded by General Daniel Morgan at the Battle of Cowpens, securing a crucial victory for the American forces in the early stages of the war. Later, the 3rd Legionary Corps participated in Greene's maneuvers across North Carolina and fought well against Cornwallis's army at Guilford Courthouse.


title: United States Cavalry

text: In January 1781, the practice of the dragoons employing both mounted and dismounted troops resulted in their official reconfiguration as Legionary Corps, the mounted dragoons supported by dismounted dragoons armed as infantry, an organization that persisted until the war's end. In 1783, the Continental Army was discharged and the dragoons were released.


title: United States Cavalry

text: The first cavalry unit formed by the Congress of the United States of America (along with three new regular infantry regiments) was a squadron of light dragoons commanded by Major Michael Rudolph on 5 March 1792. Its four troops were assigned to each of the four sublegions of Legion of the United States, by September 1792. In 1796, the number of troops was reduced to only two, which were almagamated in 1798 with six newly raised troops to the Regiment of Regiment of Light Dragoons. This mounted force was short lived as well and saw its end in 1800. The oldest two "veterans" troops were retained until June 1802. Hence no regular mounted soldiers existed for the next six years.


title: United States Cavalry

text: In 1798, during the Quasi-War with France, Congress established a three-year "Provisional Army" of 10,000 men, consisting of twelve regiments of infantry and six troops of light dragoons. By March 1799 Congress created an "Eventual Army" of 30,000 men, including three regiments of cavalry. Both "armies" existed only on paper, but equipment for 3,000 men and horses was procured and stored.


title: United States Cavalry

text: The Congressional act of 12 April 1808 authorized a standing regiment of light dragoons consisting of eight troops. As war loomed, Congress authorized another regiment of light dragoons on 11 January 1812. These regiments were respectively known afterwards as the First and Second United States Dragoons.


title: United States Cavalry

text: In 1813, Secretary of War John Armstrong, Jr. granted Colonel Richard Mentor Johnson permission to raise two battalions of volunteer cavalry. Johnson recruited 1,200 men, divided into 14 companies.


title: United States Cavalry

text: Congress combined the First and Second United States Dragoons into one Regiment of Light Dragoons on 30 March 1814. This was a cost-cutting measure; it was cheaper and easier to maintain one unit at full strength than two organizations that could not maintain a full complement of riders. The signing of the Treaty of Ghent at the end of the year ended the war. The regiment was disbanded on 3 March 1815, with the explanation that cavalry forces were too expensive to maintain as part of a standing army. The retained officers and men were folded into the Corps of Artillery by 15 June 1815, all others were discharged.


title: United States Cavalry

text: The "plains cavalry" played an important role in extending American hegemony into western North America by forcefully subduing and displacing Native Americans from their lands during the western Indian Wars, thereby making way for colonists of primarily European descent. In 1832, Congress formed the Battalion of Mounted Rangers to protect settlers along the east bank of the Mississippi River and to keep the Santa Fe trail open. The battalion comprised volunteers organized into six companies of 100 men. To correct what was perceived as a lack of discipline, organization and reliability, Congress formed the United States Regiment of Dragoons as a regular force in 1833, consisting of 10 companies (designated A through K) with a total of 750 men. The Regiment fought against the Seminole nation in 1835, when Chief Osceola led warriors from his tribe in the Second Seminole War in protest to the Treaty of Payne's Landing. For a year, the established units had difficulty containing the Indians. Congress responded by establishing the 2nd United States Regiment of Dragoons in 1836.


title: United States Cavalry

text: The First Dragoons served in the Mexican War, and Charles A. May's squadron of the Second Dragoons helped decide the Battle of Resaca de la Palma.


title: United States Cavalry

text: Shortly before the outbreak of the Civil War, the Army's dragoon regiments were designated as "Cavalry", losing their previous distinctions. The change was an unpopular one and the former dragoons retained their orange braided blue jackets until they wore out and had to be replaced with cavalry yellow. The 1st United States Cavalry fought in virtually every campaign in the north during the American Civil War.


title: United States Cavalry

text: The U.S. Cavalry played a prominent role in the American Indian Wars, particularly in the American Old West. Particularly notable were the 7th Cavalry, associated with General George Armstrong Custer and the Battle of the Little Bighorn, and the 9th and 10th Cavalry, the Buffalo Soldiers. Infantry units, called by the Indians "walkaheaps", were also involved and in some cases were the main force deployed. Infantry, when mounted, were called "mounted infantry"; they lacked training and skill in horsemanship and cavalry tactics.


title: United States Cavalry

text: Several Cavalry regiments served in Cuba, the 1st, 2d, 3rd Cavalry Regiments along with the African-American 9th and 10th Cavalry and also the 1st US Volunteer Cavalry, the Rough Riders. Of all the cavalry regiments, only the 3rd went to Cuba with their normal complement of horses. For the rest, only the officers' horses went as there was not enough room on the ship to bring all the horses to Cuba, and those that were not used by the officers were used to pull equipment. Likewise, all of the cavalry units except the mounted 3rd Cavalry were organized into two brigades that made up the Cavalry Division led by former Confederate cavalryman, General Joseph Wheeler. Wheeler's Cavalry Division was part of the other 2 infantry divisions and independent brigade that made up the V Corps headed by General Shafter. Several other cavalry regiments from the West Coast were sent to Puerto Rico and the Philippines. Units of Wheeler's Cavalry Division fought at both the Battle of Las Guasimas on 24 June 1898 and the Battle of San Juan Heights on 1 July 1898.