RCT components staged through Camp Patrick Henry near Newport News, Virginia. On 17 May, the 517th boarded the former Grace liner Santa Rosa, while the 460th and 596th loaded onto the Panama Canal ship Cristobal. Italy The RCT docked at Naples on 31 May 1944, the troopers filed down gangplanks into waiting railroad cars and were carried to a staging area in the Neapolitan suburb of Bagnoli. En route, Colonel Graves was handed an order directing the RCT to take part in the attack from Valmontone to Rome the next day. The 517th was ready to go, but since crew-served weapons, artillery and vehicles had been loaded separately it would have to be with only rifles. After this was pointed out, the order was cancelled and the RCT moved on to set up camp in "The Crater", the bed of a long-extinct volcano. Gradually weapons and vehicles arrived. On 14 June the outfit struck tents, stowed away extra gear and moved to a beach to wait for LSTs to carry it to Anzio. The following day the convoy stopped off the coast of Anzio and the regimental and battalion commanders and staff went ashore where they were briefed on the enemy situation and informed that the destination was Civitavecchia. The convoy resumed sailing and the following morning the RCT disembarked over the beach unopposed. The RCT was then attached to Major General Fred L. Walker's 36th Infantry Division, which, under Major General Willis D. Crittenberger's IV Corps, was operating on the left of U.S. Fifth Army, under Lieutenant General Mark Clark. A long truck ride and a short foot march on 17 June brought the units south of Grosseto. Colonel Graves was handed an overlay marked with zones, objectives and phase lines. The regiment was to join the division's advance north from Grosseto the next day. On 18 June 1944, in its first day of combat, the regiment suffered 40 to 50 casualties but inflicted several times that number upon the enemy. The next seven days were spent in almost continuous movement. The Germans tried to make an orderly withdrawal while the Americans pressed them hard. For the 460th the period was a continuous, 24-hour-a-day operation. Gun batteries continually leap-frogged each other; usually two batteries were in position while the other two were moving forward. The principle chore of the 596th Engineers was road reconnaissance and mine-sweeping. On 19 June