Monte Cassino, battles for

Monte Cassino, battles for.   A series of four battles fought during the Italian campaign as the Allies tried to advance on Rome. They took place between January and May 1944 when German Panzer Grenadiers and paratroopers defended the fortified town of Cassino, and Monastery Hill which overlooked it. The area, precipitously steep, rocky, and bleak, was a key part of the German Gustav Line which barred Lt- General Mark Clark's Fifth US Army from advancing on the Italian capital via the Liri valley and also prevented relief of the Allied beachhead at Anzio.

During the first battle, fought in appalling conditions, the French Expeditionary Corps (FEC) broke through outlying defences on the night of 11/12 January 1944. It then drove towards Atina before being halted, while to the west 2nd US Corps, between 25 January and 12 February, fought desperately to capture and hold vital features adjacent to Monastery Hill. The German commander, Lt-General Fridolin von Senger und Etterlin, later said that the Americans had come ‘within a bare 100 metres of success’, but in fact they never got within ten times that distance of his main defences.

The second battle was fought by Freyberg's New Zealand Corps from 15 to 18 February when 2nd New Zealand Division was ordered to attack Cassino railway station, and 4th Indian Division Monastery Hill. The commander of 4th Division thought the Germans might use the 6th-century Benedictine abbey on top of the hill to defend it and requested its destruction. Clark disagreed—he rightly foresaw that the ruins would become an ideal defensive position—but Freyberg insisted and the Army Group commander, General Alexander, supported him. In fact the Germans, who had told the Vatican they would not use the abbey, did not do so until after its destruction by Allied bombers. The bombing killed many civilians who had taken refuge within it, but not one soldier, and occurred before the Indian Division could take any advantage of the situation that was meant to have accrued from it. The assault failed.

The third battle, much delayed by atrocious weather, began on 15 March. The Indian Division assaulted features below the abbey before trying to take the hill, but made little progress. The New Zealanders again attacked the town of Cassino, this time after a massive air strike and artillery bombardment. But the rubble to which it was reduced helped the defenders rather than those attacking and this assault, too, was soon halted.

The final battle, which took place between 11 and 18 May as part of Alexander's spring offensive (DIADEM), involved the Eighth Army's 13th Corps and the 2nd Polish Corps (see also Anders' Army) as well as Clark's Fifth Army. The FEC now moved to the Garigliano bridgehead, cut across the Aurunci mountains, which were thought impassable by most, and destroyed the southern hinge of the German defences. Further inland 13th Corps took Cassino town and struck along the Liri valley, but the task of capturing Monastery Hill was given to the Poles. Their first attack was repulsed, two battalions being virtually wiped out, not one man escaping death or injury. A second night attack took two important features but the hill itself remained impregnable. By now, however, the Gustav Line was no longer tenable and late on 17 May the German paratroopers defending the hill reluctantly withdrew; but it took the Poles, whose casualties amounted to about 3,500, time to find anyone with enough strength to climb up and occupy the monastery's ruins.

After the war the Allies insisted they had irrefutable evidence that the monastery had been part of the German defences and it took until 1969 for the Americans to admit that it had not been. A British government investigation into the bombing in 1949 was kept from the public for 30 years when it concluded no such irrefutable evidence existed. Objections to Freyberg being blamed for the bombing were still being voiced in the 1980s.

Bibliography

Ellis, J. , Cassino (London, 1984).