Line of Fire (33/41) : Monte Cassino "1944"
For educational purposes
During 1944, the Allies tried desperately to break through the German winter defensive line that blocked the advance to Rome.
At the centre of the line was the heavily fortified town of Cassino, which was dominated by a sixth century Benedictine monastery.
This imposing hilltop site became the subject of bitter controversy and a symbol of some of the most savage fighting of World War Two.
During 1944, the Allies tried desperately to break through the German winter defensive line that blocked the advance to Rome.
At the centre of the line was the heavily fortified town of Cassino, which was dominated by a sixth century Benedictine monastery.
This imposing hilltop site became the subject of bitter controversy and a symbol of some of the most savage fighting of World War Two.
Transcript
00:30In January 1944, on either side of Italy, two Allied armies, one British, the other
00:53American, slowly pushed their way northwards from Naples towards Rome.
01:06Finally they came upon Germany's main defensive position to the south of Rome, known as the
01:12Gustav Line.
01:17Anchored on one of the strongest natural defences in Europe, the formidable defences had been
01:22strengthened by months of preparation, and were manned by crack German troops.
01:32For five long months in bitter weather, the Allies attacked the German defences.
01:38Divisions from America, Britain, New Zealand, India, Poland and France saw action in four
01:45savage battles before the German resistance finally broke.
01:52This was Monte Cassino.
02:05The Allied had the blind vision of attacking the front, go up and go up and go up, and
02:13that was just picked off like rabbits.
02:15The sergeant came round, he said, he called out a name, he said, I want you all to go
02:20over in the corner of the field, the priest will hear your last confession.
02:25And I thought, my last confession?
02:28That means to say that my chances of survival is nil.
02:34I feel they should have bypassed Cassino.
02:38They could have gone around it.
02:42That was just split seconds away.
02:46And the whole battle itself was awful.
02:55Monte Cassino is remembered not just because it was one of the fiercest battles in a very
03:00hard-fought war, but also because it provoked sharp disagreements over strategy between
03:06the British and American allies, exposing the great difficulties of coalition warfare.
03:13The campaign also saw the bombing of the great ancient monastery at Monte Cassino, a cultural
03:19and artistic centre, mother church to the Benedictine order, and the inspiration of
03:25monasticism everywhere in Europe.
03:35Disagreements between the allies in part explain why the capture of Monte Cassino proved
03:39to be so difficult.
03:42The Americans really never wanted to be in Italy.
03:45They somehow felt that the British had tricked them, and they thought that they would be
03:51dragged into a campaign that would simply delay what they saw as being far more important,
03:58and that was overlord, the invasion of Normandy, and the opening of a real second front on
04:05the European continent.
04:07Churchill wanted to engage the Germans wherever and whenever he could, and Italy is the place
04:15where Churchill wants to do it.
04:16And the way Churchill wants to do it is the way that will drag the maximum of German resources
04:23away from France, away from northern France, away from the intended invasion of Normandy,
04:30as well as from Joe Stalin out there fighting the Germans on the eastern front.
04:38In Churchill's grand vision for victory, Italy was to be occupied, the Balkans set on fire,
04:44the Greek islands were to be liberated, and Turkey brought into the war.
04:49This Europe was to be penetrated and defeated through what he called its soft underbelly.
05:00American support for an Italian campaign was therefore given grudgingly, and as a consequence
05:06there were never enough American men, supplies and equipment to produce a swift result.
05:13In addition, there was considerable friction between the Allied commanders.
05:18General Mark Clarke, who commanded the American Fifth Army, was young and ambitious, but no
05:24lover of things British.
05:26Sadly, he had a poor relationship with the overall theatre commander, the very British
05:32General, the Honourable Sir Harold Alexander.
05:36I think one of the things we must remember about Clarke is that he wasn't so much anti-British
05:40as pro-Clarke.
05:42Clarke was going to be against anyone, American or British, who stood in his way, because
05:48Clarke was a man of immense personal ambition, and if the British thwarted him in his ambition,
05:56then he was going to be anti-British.
05:57But had it been an American general who was thwarting him, he would have been equally
06:02anti-that general.
06:05On the German side, the commanders were seasoned professionals.
06:09The overall commander in Italy was Field Marshal Albert Kesselring.
06:15Kesselring, an Air Force man, well regarded by his staff, well regarded by his troops,
06:22a lot of forethought, a lot of foresight, and particularly when he realised that the
06:28Allies were going to invade Italy, he'd had the sense to realise that the way to deal
06:34with it was by a slow withdrawal up the leg of Italy.
06:38After him, and in command at Monte Cassino, was an even more remarkable man, Fridolin
06:44von Senger und Etterlin.
06:47Monte Cassino is his battle.
06:50First of all, the defensive preparations are brilliant.
06:54And as the battle develops, he goes forward, he knows what his soldiers need on the ground.
07:03He gives them both the reassurance of a man who knows what he's doing, and the supplies
07:09and the ammunition necessary to fight the battle.
07:13The Gustav Line lay across the two best north-south roads in Italy, connecting Rome with Naples.
07:21A great steep spur led to the coast from the impassable mountains of central Italy.
07:27At the end of this spur, dominating the two valleys below, stood the Benedictine Monastery.
07:33At the foot of Monastery Hill lay the market town of Cassino, through which ran the best
07:39of the two main roads.
07:41Finally, issuing from the mountain pass and swirling past the town to the coast, was the
07:47Rapido River, only sixty feet wide, but ten feet deep and flowing fast at eight miles
07:54an hour.
07:55Mountain, town and river, thereby combined to block any Allied attempt to break into
08:01the wide and flat Liri Valley, the direct route to Rome.
08:14It was a good military place.
08:18High ground always is in a battle.
08:22You can look over the countryside as the advantage.
08:36The Abbey of Monte Cassino, there it stands.
08:39Highway 6, running across the back there, around the base of the hill, and then onwards
08:44and upwards towards Rome.
08:46It had three months in which to prepare the defences, across the waistline of Italy, across
08:52from the Adriatic through to the Gulf of Gaeta, and the key to this whole defensive line was
08:58this building behind.
09:01You couldn't get up the hill without being seen, there's not a lot of vegetation on Monastery
09:08Hill.
09:09There's a lot of open ground around it, making it difficult even to approach the hill without
09:15being seen, but you cannot get up the Liri Valley without going past Monte Cassino.
09:22It was the cork in the bottle on the route to Rome.
09:33The Führer expects the bitterest struggle for every yard, read a German order of the
09:39day, and von Senger's men prepared for exactly that.
09:46The valley in front of Cassino was flooded to make it impossible for tanks.
09:52Mines and barbed wire were laid along the Rapido River.
09:56Mortars and machine guns were posted on the German side.
09:59The town's entire population was expelled.
10:03Its larger buildings were reinforced to become fortresses, while smaller ones were demolished
10:09to clear fields of fire.
10:16On the mountain itself, holes were blasted in the bare rock, and camouflaged, prefabricated
10:29bunkers and pillboxes, with sides and roof of five-inch thick steel plate, were slotted
10:35into position.
10:38Smaller two-man weapon pits were blasted out and lined with concrete.
10:44Machine guns were placed on every slight rise along the ridgelines, in order that their
10:49interlocking fire could sweep the entire area.
10:53Finally, observers in the hills were connected to a fire control plan that could bring down
10:59a deadly barrage of mortar and artillery fire within minutes.
11:06Once when we got to Cassino, we were absolutely trapped there, and you couldn't even have
11:11a hot tea or anything in the daytime, because they saw the slightest bit of smoke, they'd
11:17put a shell down where the smoke was.
11:21You just couldn't move at all, they could look right over your positions, you were constantly
11:27being mortared and shelled, but in retaliation, you had the right to call down the defensive
11:35fire from your side, and all hell was let loose.
11:45Lieutenant General Clark's Fifth Army, which included American, British and French troops,
11:50toiled up to the German Gustav Line on 15th January 1944.
11:56The assault on the position began a mere 48 hours later, an impossibly short time to plan
12:03and prepare for a major attack, and the result was a predictable disaster.
12:09On the extreme left, near the coast, British troops forced a crossing of the river, but
12:14were pinned down and unable to expand their bridgehead.
12:19Worse than this, the American 36th Texas Division in the centre was, in two days and nights,
12:26destroyed as a fighting unit.
12:28Unable to reach the Rapido River, the troops had had to flounder across two miles of swamp
12:34and mud, laced with barbed wire and studded with mines.
12:42Some attacks were made at night, in a rising fog, under heavy artillery and machine gun
12:47fire.
12:48Incredibly, a number of troops managed to get across the fast-flowing river, but they
12:53were immediately pinned down on the other side.
12:57Germans attempted to put up bridges to allow tank support, but these were destroyed almost
13:02at once by German shells.
13:05More men managed to get across during the day and the following night, but with no tank
13:10support and no ammunition resupply, the bridgehead could not be held.
13:16A handful of men got back at the end of the second night of the attack, but more than
13:20half of the attacking troops had been lost.
13:25Well, the Rapido crossings were an attempt to bounce the Gustav Line, to bounce the Germans
13:36out of their defences.
13:38And of course it didn't work, because it was the middle of winter, everything was against
13:44it, it was under observation.
13:47The Germans had been able to build up a very strong position on the Gustav Line, and so
13:55the attempts to cross within the night and establish a big enough bridgehead to secure
14:04the bridges that you needed to take your tanks across, just simply wasn't possible.
14:11Only on the extreme right of the Allied line was there any progress.
14:15Two miles upriver from Casino Town, the American 34th Division forced a crossing of the river,
14:22and after eight days had battered their way to the foot of the mountain that rose from
14:27the valley of the Rapido.
14:30They now had to climb the sheer slopes of the mountain in order to fight their way onto
14:35the ridge that curled leftwards to the monastery and domination of the valleys below.
14:45For a week they struggled on, clearing the steep crags from where German machine gunners
14:51had swept the rocks below them with their deadly fire.
14:59The first sergeant came along and he says, what's going to happen, we're going to have
15:05a rolling barrage starting at three o'clock, and at 3.15 it will rise and you will follow
15:11through.
15:12And that's what happened, so at 3.15 it started to rise, so we followed through, we were walking
15:19along the path, and suddenly we came under small arms fire.
15:27The 34th Division got to within a thousand yards of the monastery, but there they stopped,
15:34an absolutely spent and exhausted force.
15:38Our BAR men rolled over to reload his weapon, and a German hand grenade, a potato masher,
15:45slipped and fell, and he rolled back on top of the grenade, and it went off and severely
15:53wounded him in the stomach.
15:55And he came running back saying, I'm hit, I'm hit, will I die, and I says, no, if you
15:59just relax, take it easy, just relax, lay down, and don't move, don't run around.
16:08The first battle of Monte Cassino had ended after three and a half weeks.
16:12At terrible cost, the 5th Army had punched a small crossing on the left of the line,
16:18fought their way into the mountains on the right, and had been disastrously repulsed
16:23in the centre.
16:24The German line had been tested and had held firm, though some units in the mountains had
16:30suffered huge casualties.
16:32Von Senge und Ethelin was no doubt reasonably content with the situation.
16:44It was now early February 1944, and the pace was hotting up.
16:50Three divisions of the British 8th Army were already being brought across Italy to start
16:54the second battle of Cassino.
16:57Fifty miles to the north, at Anzio, two divisions of the 5th Army were in danger of annihilation.
17:06Frustrated by the slow progress of the Italian campaign, Churchill had insisted on an amphibious
17:12landing at Anzio, which lay behind the German lines.
17:17Churchill's concept is, go around the Gustav Line, a step towards Rome, land on the beach
17:23there, and even if you can't actually land on the beach there and destroy the Germans,
17:30you'll force the Germans to commit troops to attacking that landing.
17:34You'll draw them away from the rest of the Gustav Line, you'll weaken the Gustav Line,
17:38and when the Germans weaken the Gustav Line, that's when you hit them.
17:43The fact was that the disastrous first attack on Cassino had been improvised in such haste
17:50because it had to coincide with the Anzio landing on the 22nd of January.
17:55It was hoped that the Anzio campaign would panic the Germans out of their defences and
18:01into a retreat.
18:03But there was no panic and no retreat.
18:08The Allies had only enough landing craft to put two divisions ashore at Anzio, too weak
18:14a force to be a real threat.
18:19Because they were limited to two divisions, the needs to establish a bridgehead and then
18:25advance and secure more ground was simply beyond the capabilities available.
18:31And here we have the reality of the Italian campaign always taking second place to the
18:38needs of the planning for Overlord and Normandy.
18:44Kesselring quickly saw an opportunity to inflict a bloody reverse on the Allies by driving
18:49them back into the sea, so Cassino had to be attacked again to draw off at least some
18:55of Kesselring's troops.
18:57Anzio had been conceived as a way of helping the Cassino attack.
19:01Now Cassino had to save Anzio.
19:08So there would be another hasty attack on Cassino, but this time it would be by Commonwealth
19:14troops.
19:16The New Zealand Division and the 4th Indian Division were both crack forces.
19:21Indeed, Rommel himself rated the New Zealanders as among the best troops he ever fought.
19:28The 4th Indian Division too was highly thought of, being composed of long-service, highly
19:33professional Sikhs and Gurkhas, as well as a brigade of English troops.
19:39Commanding both divisions was General Bernard Freyberg, decorated three times in the First
19:45World War, and wounded so often that, during dinner parties, Churchill often asked him
19:50to take his shirt off to show his guests his many scars.
19:55Everyone in New Freyberg agreed that he was one of the bravest men they'd ever met.
20:00But there's a question mark hanging over Freyberg's competence.
20:05Some say that he reached his level of competence at divisional command and shouldn't have actually
20:09gone any higher.
20:11I think Freyberg's problem is that, in Cassino, nobody but nobody was going to be able to
20:17make it work.
20:19And Freyberg did better than most generals could have under the circumstances.
20:26Freyberg's plan for this second attack was simple.
20:29The New Zealand Division were to assault the railway station to the south of Cassino town,
20:34which would enable Allied armour to get around the town and into the Leary Valley, the route
20:40to Rome.
20:45Meanwhile in the mountains, the Indian Division would continue the attack from where the Americans
20:50had stalled, and press on along a narrow ridge to take the monastery.
20:57This plan put the ancient monastery squarely in the line of fire.
21:11Although it was right in the centre of the German line, the Germans always insisted that
21:16they had not fortified the monastery, nor put any troops into it.
21:20The Germans also, very publicly, removed the monastery's treasures and evacuated all its
21:26monks apart from the aged abbot and half a dozen companions.
21:36Freyberg was now faced with a tough decision.
21:39The Germans certainly had gun pits placed right up to the monastery walls, and few were
21:44inclined to trust their assurances that there were no guns within the walls themselves.
21:52There was a lot of discussion as to whether it was right to bomb the monastery.
22:00We knew they were in it, although they said they weren't.
22:03But if they weren't in it, they were just outside it, with their OPs, observation posts.
22:11I wouldn't say there were Germans there.
22:13I don't say they were using it as a gun position.
22:19I'm sure they used it as an observation, because really you could see all over the valley.
22:30Freyberg was concerned that it would be a tactical liability.
22:34A lot of Americans were concerned that it was a tactical liability.
22:39They believed that it was just chock full of German soldiers and German guns.
22:45Why not blow it up?
22:47Why take the risk?
22:48Why send boys home to New Zealand in boxes, or bury them in Italy, just because you don't
22:55want to blow up a building?
22:58The New Zealand commanders were not prepared to lose men on the strength that the Germans
23:02may not be in the monastery.
23:05And so a decision was made to bomb the monastery.
23:09There were snipers on top of the monastery.
23:13After they bombed the monastery, then they went in, of course.
23:16But not before?
23:17No.
23:19No.
23:24142 flying fortresses and 112 medium bombers dropped 576 tonnes of bombs on Monte Cassino.
23:33The walls remained mostly intact, but the interior courtyards, church and monastic buildings
23:40were totally destroyed.
23:48When the monastery was bombed, the troops cheered and cheered and cheered, because they
24:17hated this overwhelming presence above them, like an avenging angel.
24:37I don't think they had no need to bomb the damn thing.
24:43It hasn't served any purpose what it actually helped.
24:47As soon as that went off, they were in.
24:53The abbot and his companions survived the attack and gave the Germans a statement confirming
24:58that there had been no troops in the building when it was bombed.
25:07In view of the immense controversy caused by the bombing, it was ironic that it gave
25:12no benefit at all to the troops it was most designed to help.
25:17Once the monastery was bombed, instead of making the attack go in right away, it sort
25:23of faded a bit for a few hours before the attack went in.
25:27In that time, it gave the Germans time to get their machine guns set up and they created
25:33Abbott amongst the advancing troops.
25:38After the bombing of the monastery, the 4th Regiment went into that, because it was the
25:44biggest fortress you can imagine.
25:50The Indians, newly arrived on the mountain, occupied half of the long, narrow, boomerang-shaped
25:55ridge that led on to Monastery Hill.
25:59Their attack on the monastery, barely a thousand yards away, was supposed to start from a rocky
26:04hillock on the ridge named Point 593.
26:09But this was still in German hands when the bombing took place, and there it remained.
26:14For three nights in succession, English and Indian troops tried to creep along the narrow
26:19ridge and storm Point 593 to get at the monastery.
26:24They tried first at company strength, then battalion, and then with three battalions.
26:31It was the same result each time.
26:33The attacks were beaten back with huge losses.
26:39The mountain assault simply had to be given up, for each night half the attackers had
26:44been killed or wounded.
26:46Sufficient numbers could never be concentrated on the long, narrow ridge to capture it.
26:56Freyberg's other attack, however, in the valley against the railway station, came agonisingly
27:01close to success.
27:04Made at night by two companies of the New Zealand division, they gained a foothold during
27:08the heavy fighting.
27:10But daylight brought a determined counterattack by German tanks and infantry that left the
27:16New Zealanders with no option but to retreat.
27:20More than half their number were killed or wounded during the attack.
27:28Freyberg decides to cancel the battle, to close it down, at that point where some commentators
27:33have said that the New Zealanders had actually almost succeeded in taking Cassino.
27:40Now he was actually right to close down the battle at this point, because even if he succeeded
27:44in holding onto the railway station, what good was it going to do?
27:49No matter what you do in the railway station, no matter what you do in the surrounding buildings,
27:53look up the hill.
27:55Look up the hill, because up the hill, Monastery Hill, there are the Germans.
27:59The Germans can look down and they can drop mortar bombs on you, call in artillery on
28:03you, shoot at you with machine guns, anything they want.
28:06Because whatever you do at the railway station, Monastery Hill is still looming over you.
28:13Meanwhile, Germans launched their heaviest attack yet on Anzio.
28:21Somehow, the Allies held their position, but they knew full well that Germans would
28:25attack again, and therefore the pressure on Cassino could not be relaxed.
28:33But pressure where?
28:35Mountain, river and valley floor had been tried without success.
28:42There was one last possibility.
28:46A two-pronged attack from the north, one prong into the town, and the other just above
28:51it along the lower slopes of Monastery Hill, that would find enough dry ground to permit
28:56tank support for the infantry.
28:59A successful attack here would allow both monastery and town to be cleared, and the
29:04600 Allied tanks to burst into the Liri Valley, and on to Anzio and Rome.
29:11To support the attacking battalions, a new tactic was planned.
29:15The town of Cassino and its defenders were to be attacked from the air by hundreds of
29:20heavy bombers.
29:27Heavy bombers were needed to support the infantry, because they had nothing else that was big
29:32enough to do the job.
29:34But of course that created problems in itself, because the British and the Americans weren't
29:40that good at cooperation between air and ground, and they had never experimented using
29:51strategic bombers, heavy bombers, in support of ground operations.
30:02The Germans had made their preparations too.
30:05Artillery, machine guns and dug-in tanks laced the lower slopes of Monastery Hill, and the
30:11strong stone houses of the town, reinforced with concrete and steel, concealed tanks and
30:18automatic weapons.
30:21Significantly, the weary German troops were replaced by the elite Hermann Göring Parachute
30:28Division, its seven battalions renewing hostilities with the same troops it had expelled from
30:34Crete three years earlier.
30:44The weather then took a hand.
30:47At least three fine days in succession were required for the ground to dry out and for
30:52the bombers to hit their targets.
30:57But it rained continuously for three weeks, during which time the troops had to remain
31:03in position, lest the weather should change.
31:15Finally, on the 15th of March, the weather cleared, and Operation Bradman began.
31:22Five hundred bombers arrived in relays to drop more than a thousand tonnes of bombs
31:26on the small town of Cassino.
31:30The way they bombed it, they didn't, let's say if that's the mountain going this way,
31:35they didn't come head-on with the bomb, they went along the valley as they unloaded it.
31:41And that's never been known that a front line were bombed like that with bombers.
32:00Two files of New Zealanders, preceded by tanks, began moving southwards into the town,
32:18and a third climbed onto the lower slopes of Monastery Hill to dig the Germans out of
32:24Castle Hill, an important rise on the ridge half-way between the town and the monastery.
32:35They did the Germans actually a favour by turning that village into smithereens, because
32:40when the tanks came and all the Germans, they couldn't go anywhere near it, because there
32:45was took there, that's it.
32:48Then the infantry had to take over, and of course that were one-to-one, that were easier
32:52than fighting tanks, you see.
32:56No tank could penetrate the chaos, and the advance slowed as troops struggled to clear
33:02away for them.
33:04They were further hampered by Germans who opened fire from the rubble, although half
33:09of the 360 parachute men in the town were already dead.
33:14But that night, the Germans sent in reinforcements, concentrating their resistance around and
33:19inside two large hotels, the Continental and the Roses, which were at the southern
33:25end of the town.
33:30As the fighting in the town became a stalemate, so did the battle for the slopes of Monastery
33:35Hill.
33:42Castle Hill was taken as Gurkhas and Punjabi troops in the action once more held on for
33:47a week with virtually no food or water, and the Germans lost an entire battalion trying
33:53to retake it.
33:56I know to my right, one group, they were approached by the Germans and they lent them some stretchers
34:03and the Germans used them to cart their dead away, and then returned the stretchers with
34:08a letter of thanks.
34:14After five days and nights of continuous fighting, the Allied troops were depleted and exhausted.
34:20Now, Freyberg knew that 2nd New Zealand Division simply could not advance any further.
34:28He had reports from his brigade commanders, he said that it's spent, it's exhausted.
34:34And when Freyberg was asked why he was cancelling the attack, he replied with a single word
34:40Passchendaele.
34:41He was not going to repeat the mistakes of the First World War, of reinforcing failure.
34:48Though he hated giving best once again to the parachute troops, Freyberg decided to
34:53consolidate his gains and not to risk further heavy losses on more attacks.
34:58As it was, neither the Indian Division nor the New Zealanders would ever be quite the
35:03same force again.
35:12The end of the Third Battle of Cassino on 24th March brought a relatively calm period
35:18of six weeks.
35:25With the Anzio beachhead now secure, General Alexander, the commander of the invasion,
35:31was at last free to plan an attack carefully and thoroughly, at a time and place of his
35:36own choosing.
35:38He intended not merely a breakthrough at Cassino, but a battle to encircle and destroy all the
35:44German forces in Italy.
35:46The Eighth Army was travelling up the east coast of Italy, and then the American Fifth
35:54Army, with a lot of British divisions in it and French, had made attacks on Cassino,
36:01which had failed.
36:02So General Alexander and General Lise concocted a plan of bringing secretly the Eighth Army
36:08across from the east to the west.
36:13Alexander then planned an attack along the entire length of the German line, from the
36:17coast to the mountains.
36:20There were to be no more desperate attacks along narrow corridors of a thousand yards
36:25or less.
36:26The Germans would have to repel a coordinated assault along twenty miles of front.
36:33When his sixteen divisions had broken through and were pursuing the Germans up the Liri
36:38Valley to Rome, Alexander intended the Anzio force, now built up to six divisions, to break
36:45out and block their retreat.
36:48But south of Rome, between the hammer of the Cassino force and the anvil of the Anzio troops,
36:54the German Tenth and Fourteenth Armies would be annihilated.
37:00It is a strategy that looks Russian in the meticulous preparation, in the attack on a
37:08broad front in order to disperse the enemy, followed by a massive concentration on a narrow
37:14sector of front in order to break through the enemy.
37:18Alexander took a lot of time.
37:20This was not going to be another hasty little operation.
37:26The key to the success of the plan was secrecy and deception.
37:31Nine whole divisions were moved across Italy without the Germans noticing.
37:36When two Polish divisions were moved into the line, they were given English signalers
37:40for their radios, lest German eavesdroppers should hear their distinctive accents.
37:48In addition, an elaborate cover plan was laid on to convince the Germans that the Allied
37:53spring attack would involve another amphibious assault, this time to the north of Rome.
38:05It all went, in the phrase of the time, like a marble clock.
38:09So complete was the surprise that von Senger was actually on leave when the blow fell.
38:18On the 11th of May, in the evening, when it was just breaking dark, there was no shelling
38:25going on.
38:26It was eerie, no artillery, it was quiet as a mouse.
38:32And we kept saying, despite the man in the foxhole, we kept saying, there's something
38:36coming, there's something going on.
38:39H.R. was at 11 o'clock, 2300 hours in the evening.
38:43And the BBC was going to send a signal out so that all these 1,100 guns on our front
38:50and the rest on the American front could open up at exactly that time.
38:57The whole front line tour, as you could see, that was going towards Naples, just in the
39:03hills.
39:04It just appeared as if somebody was switching all the lights on.
39:162,000 pieces of artillery opened up and they bombarded it and kept on and on and on and
39:22on.
39:23And that's when the push started.
39:25On the extreme left, next to the sea, two American divisions were repulsed.
39:42Inland, a little further, however, two French divisions began breaking into the mass of
39:47the Orinci Mountains.
39:50In the Rapido Valley, scene of the disastrous first battle, British and Indian troops forced
39:56their way across the river.
39:58The Germans there received another unpleasant surprise, as two British tanks followed the
40:03infantry, each carrying a section of a bridge on its turret.
40:07They drove straight into the river and stopped.
40:11Engineers then joined the sections together, and the first tanks rumbled quickly over to
40:16extend the bridgehead.
40:21On the extreme right, the Poles found the mountain defences as difficult to overcome
40:26as before, and their first night's attack brought no gain.
40:31But with two divisions, they could now attack the German strongpoints on the adjacent ridges,
40:36whose crossfire had crippled the Indian division's earlier attacks.
40:41They began making progress, but it was the French attack in the left centre through the
40:46supposedly impassable Orinci Mountains and toward the Liri Valley which began to unhinge
40:52the German line.
40:55Already under pressure in the centre from the British crossing of the Rapido, the Germans
40:59fell back six miles to their next line of defence.
41:04Ironically, the monastery was eventually taken without a fight.
41:09We got the order to move out, to retreat on the 17th during the night, which we did.
41:17We went up the mountain of the monastery, and that's where I got wounded on top.
41:22And then I crawled into the first aid post, into the monastery.
41:26When the 18th came, when daylight broke, I remember one lad shouting, he said the Tommies
41:30are coming.
41:31Of course they're all, all Allied's had the same type of uniform, with the flat helmet
41:36type of thing.
41:38And when it all turned out to be when they came in the platoon, it was a Polish platoon.
41:44We fought our way half up the valley and we stopped, and we consolidated our positions.
41:51And that morning we looked up and everybody was saying, look, look, look, and on top of
41:55the monastery flew a red and white flag, which was the Polish flag.
42:02We looked up and down the mountainside come the Germans with a white flag to surrender.
42:08And that was the fall of the monastery.
42:18I've written down here, the 18th, a great day for the Eighth Army, 4th British Division
42:23entered Cassino.
42:24It was a big day for the Poles, and their flag and the Union Jack flew together over
42:30the monastery.
42:31In the afternoon, General Oliver, that's General Eason, and I drove into Cassino.
42:34The town is a complete shell at a distance, rather like a strange drawing of a fairy tale
42:40town.
42:41The monastery, a huge ruin, towers over the town.
42:44It was a big day for the Germans.
43:00Several days of hard combat saw the last German line broken, and the Allies at last began
43:06to fight their way up the Liri Valley, delayed by German mines, booby traps and rearguards,
43:12and their own traffic jams.
43:22The euphoria at breaking the Cassino line, however, was short-lived.
43:27It was replaced by disappointment, frustration and anger.
43:32There were two reasons.
43:34Firstly, although the six divisions at Anzio broke out of the German ring as planned, and
43:39began fighting their way eastwards to cut off the German retreat from Cassino, Lieutenant
43:45General Clark suddenly ordered a substantial part of the force northwards.
43:51The small force remaining was inadequate to bottle up the retreating Germans, who swept
43:56into and out of Rome, and on to positions a hundred miles further north.
44:15Why did Clark order this extraordinary change of direction?
44:20He claimed afterwards that he had to engage strong German forces on his left flank that
44:25threatened his supply lines to the beach.
44:29Others have expressed a different view, pointing out that Clark had spoken frequently of Rome
44:34as the great prize.
44:37Because of the distrust between the Americans and the British, Clark always believed that
44:44Alexander would not let him be the man to take Rome.
44:49Mark Clark saw himself as a 20th century Napoleon.
44:53He thought Rome, and being the first to Rome, was just reward for what his army had endured
45:03in the winter of 1944.
45:09Whatever the truth, Clark had his moment of glory as he led American troops into Rome
45:14on the 4th of June, 1944.
45:18But 48 hours later, his Roman triumph was overshadowed by the invasion of Normandy and
45:24the opening of the long-awaited second front.
45:37The second disappointment was caused by the Allied grand strategy.
45:41At the Americans' insistence, the invasion of Normandy was to be followed and supported
45:47by an invasion of southern France.
45:50Accordingly, General Alexander was forced to surrender seven of his best divisions for
45:56the invasion, with them his chance of bouncing the Germans quickly out of Italy.
46:04It was a frustrating end to a frustrating campaign.
46:10At the heart of what happened in Italy is the fact that the whole Mediterranean strategy
46:17was deeply flawed.
46:20One does not invade a mountainous peninsula from the south and then fight one's way north.
46:26This is just stupid.
46:28The question is still debated.
46:32Was there an alternative to the Italian campaign?
46:37Was the bloody struggle for Cassino warranted?
46:41I think the reality is yes.
46:43What was happening in the spring offensive at Cassino meant that important divisions
46:50and very good divisions that would have been invaluable to the Germans in Normandy and
46:57north-west Europe weren't available because they were in Italy.
47:09Five war cemeteries exist at Cassino, one for each nation that fought in the battle.
47:17Twenty thousand soldiers are buried in the German cemetery alone.
47:27Amid the bustle of tourists in the rebuilt town and monastery, the endless ranks of crosses
47:34are all that is left to remind the visitor of the sacrifices made during this most savage
47:40of battles.
47:47What clusters were done from the First World War were meant to Cassino, where they fought
47:51over a piece of land for months and months and months, backwards and forwards, backwards
47:55and forwards.
47:56I would not like anybody to go through the same predicament I went through there.
48:11Up into the mountains, on the grim slopes of the old 593, there is this inscription.
48:18For our freedom and yours, we soldiers of Poland gave our soul to God, our life to the
48:24soil of Italy, our hearts to Poland.