The Rifle and The Rifle 2 author Andrew Biggio describes heroism, desperation, desertion of Gothic Line soldiers used as ``bait'' to pin down German troops in Italy as Allied Forces marched on Berlin

WW II Gothic Line ghosts haunt modern day Italy, Europe · May 30, 2025 · 22m

By Joe Kirwin

Over the past decade, author and U.S. Marine veteran Andrew Biggio interviewed more than 30 U.S. Army soldiers who fought on the Gothic Line as part of his research for his best-selling books The Rifle and The Rifle 2. Many were in their late 90s or older. But they had vivid, emotionally distraught recall of what happened from Sept. 1944 to April 1945 in the northern ItaIian Apennine mountains. As he describes in the podcast many of the soldiers had been on the front lines for almost two years - far longer than most other Allied Force troops fighting in other parts of Europe or…