Rome Fell on D-Day Minus 2, June 4

The Allies took the Eternal City of Rome June 4--two days before D-day. In a sight that became common across Europe, excited citizens cheered as troops marched through the streets.

Capt. John M. Hennessy Jr. wrote his sister that an emaciated woman ran over to him, holding out a battered can of Vienna sausage. “This is the only thing of value that I have,” she told him. “I’ve been saving it to give to the first Allied troops that I saw.”

Hennessy wrote his sister, Doris Winkler of Burbank: “I started to cry because those people were so hungry, in rags and tatters. She must have been tempted to eat it a hundred times.”

Slightly more than a month later, Hennessy was dead, killed in battle at the Arno River, where the German troops had retreated. The nearby city of Florence, 160 miles north of Rome, did not fall to the Allies until Aug. 13.