The Germans stopped the pumps and opened the dikes, refilling the marsh with brackish water. They were being advised by the German malariologists Erich Martini and Ernst Rodenwaldt that the return of the salt water would encourage the return of "Anopheles labranchiae", which thrives in salty environments. The water would also destroy agriculture, removing the essential supplies of food and fresh water from the vicinity, an act that had minimal military effect, but devastated the population. Although it is true that the bog impeded the movement of heavy equipment, the Germans did not flood the marsh for that reason; the equipment under the heavy shelling from some of the largest artillery pieces the Germans had was going nowhere, anyway. The flooding was an act of biological warfare and was opposed by former Italian colleagues of the Germans in malariology, but someone on Kesselring's staff - unknown to this day - issued the order. The allies and the Germans equally, therefore, found themselves fighting in a mosquito-infested bog. The new homes were being used as refuges for infantry and cover for tanks. Ernie Pyle relates:"On these little farms of the Pontine marshes Mussolini built hundreds of ... stone farmhouses ... Now and then I saw a farmer plowing while German shells landed right in his field. We tried to evacuate people ... But some of them simply refused to leave their homes. Sometimes the Germans would pick out one of the farmhouses, figuring we had a command post in it, I suppose, and blow it to smithereens. Then, and only then, did some Italian families move out ... on any side road we couldn't drive five minutes without seeing the skeleton of a cow or a horse." The Battle of Anzio left the marsh in state of devastation; nearly everything Mussolini had accomplished was reversed. The cities were in ruins, the houses blown up, the marshes full of brackish water, the channels filled in, the plain depopulated, the mosquitos flourishing, and malaria on the rise. The major structures for water control survived, and in a few years, the Agro Pontino was restored. In 1947, the province of Littoria, created by Mussolini, was renamed to Latina. The last of the malaria was conquered in the 1950s, with the aid of DDT. Today, a duct system runs through the dried-out area. Wheat, fruit, and wine grapes are cultivated in the Pontine region.