A 'Superb' History of Monte Cassino

Army, Feb 2005 by Hymel, Kevin M

A 'Superb' History of Monte Cassino Monte Cassino: The Hardest-Fought Battle of World War II. Matthew Parker. Doubleday. 414 pages; photographs, maps; index; $27.50.

The Italian campaign was the same battle, day in and day out, for the Allies. There were no breakouts, flanking attacks or sweeping maneuvers. Every hill that was taken revealed another hill on the horizon. Almost every attack was a frontal assault. And where Allied air power made such a substantial impact in other theaters, the rare appearance of bombers in a tactical role was so poorly coordinated with ground movements that their effects were almost always nullified.

Matthew Parker's Monte Cassino: The Hardest-Fought Battle of World War II explores the Monte Cassino campaign, its place in the larger picture of World War II and its effects on the men who fought it. Parker, a writer and editor, has done an excellent job of showing both sides of the fivemonth long campaign, as well as the details of the daily misery and trauma faced by frontline troops on this mountainous, muddy, cold battlefield.

Monte Cassino itself was an ancient monastery perched on top of a dominating mountain southeast of Rome. It stood as the centerpiece of the German Gustav Line, a series of bunkers and strongpoints blocking the Allies access to the Eternal City, manned by Germany's elite paratroops. The defensive position was well laid out and practically impenetrable.

Against the Germans was a truly allied force: Americans, British, New Zealanders, Ghurkas, Indians, French, French colonial troops and Poles. Parker does an excellent job exploring each nationality: the green Americans, experienced British, the tenacious Kiwis (New Zealanders) and all the colonial troops. But the most fascinating story Parker tells, and the most tragic, is that of the Poles.

Imprisoned by the Russians when their country was divided between the Soviets and Germans in 1939, the Poles were sent to Siberia to work and die.

When the Soviet Union was invaded by Germany, the Soviets made a deal with the British in 1941 to create a Polish force made up of the survivors. The Poles eventually found themselves in Italy fighting the Germans.

The book is divided into five parts. The first provides background on the entire war and the Italian campaign. The other four parts describe the efforts to capture, or at least flank, Monte Cassino. The campaign was inaugurated by the British, who made minimal gains after crossing the Garigliano River in December 1943. Their effort was followed by the disastrous attempt by the Americans to cross the Rapido River.

Troops had to drag boats over a mile of flat ground just to get to the river, and only a few men made it across while many of the boats were sunk by artillery fire. Subsequent waves of Americans remember walking over an endless stream of dead bodies just to reach the river. Despite the poor showing, Gen. Mark Clark, the commander of the American Fifth Army, kept sending men forward in broad daylight with the help of a smoke screen. The Germans, realizing this, simply fired their cannons into the smoke screen.

The battles that followed were replicas of the first. Despite the destruction of the Cassino by Allied air forces, the troops pushed forward only to be ambushed by German paratroopers. The terrain was too rough to bring up reserves and artillery quickly enough to exploit success. The battles took on a World War I quality, with men shivering in the cold and fighting along static lines for incremental gains while the artillery traded shots.

When a major New Zealand attack failed, and the corps commander, Lt. Gen. Sir Bernard Freyberg, was told that the Germans had received a pasting and that one more push might break through, he answered with one word: "Passchendaele."

The bombing of Monte Cassino in February 1944, the subject of conjecture since its occurrence, is all but ignored by Parker, with good reason. In the big picture, where thousands of men were falling to enemy fire, the need to preserve the historic monastery seems quite irrelevant. The Germans, of course, used the bombing of the monastery for their propaganda purposes, showing the Allies' disregard for Italian culture, but of course this did not deter the Germans from making it the centerpiece of the Gustav Line.

The bombing, however, was ineffective-troops were not ready to attack until the following day, giving the Germans time to man the rubble and fight back. The defense of Monte Cassino became a rallying point for the German people back home, searching for some kind of success after their reverses in the Soviet Union.

Following the unsuccessful assaults after the bombing, the Allies rested, refitted and brought new divisions into the fight, including the American 88th Infantry Division, the first alldraftee unit to see action. Yet, even with a new plan and some deception work by the Allies, the same results seemed to occur. It was only when the Germans were completely spent that they began a retreat in May. The road to Rome was open.