The Battles of Monte Cassino

The Campaign and Its Controversies

By Glyn Harper, John Tonkin-Covell

Allen & Unwin

Copyright © 2013 Glyn Harper and John Tonkin-Covell
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-74114-879-4

Contents

Foreword by Lieutenant General Rhys Jones,
Acknowledgements,
Abbreviations,
Operation Codenames,
List of Maps,
Introduction,
Timeline, 1944,
1 The Four Cassino Battles: An Overview,
2 The Anzio Magnet,
3 War Crime or Military Necessity? The Bombing of Monte Cassino Abbey,
4 Climbing the Flagpole: Lieutenant General Mark Clark, Part 1,
5 Masters of the Air? Part 1,
6 The Melting Point: Alex and the Generals,
7 Masters of the Air? Part 2,
8 Hero or Bum? Lieutenant General Mark Clark, Part 2,
9 The Other Side of the Hill: The Germans at Monte Cassino,
10 A Mighty Coalition?,
Select Bibliography,
Notes,

CHAPTER 1

The Four Cassino Battles: An Overview

By the autumn of 1943 in the fourth year of the Second World War, the Axis powers of Germany, Italy and Japan were coming under increasing pressure. Where the battles of Midway, El Alamein and Stalingrad had signalled prospective turns in the tide of war in 1942, further reverses had begun to put pressure on the ability of Hitler’s Germany to hold on to the Greater Reich it had so successfully expanded between 1939 and early 1942. North Africa had been lost to the German — Italian armies by mid 1943, and the successful July assault on Sicily left Italy with the prospect of an invasion of its mainland. The Germans continued to lose heavily on the Eastern Front, most notably at the climactic Battle of Kursk in July 1943, and by November they lost Kiev. In July 1943 there was also a crisis for Italy, with Il Duce Benito Mussolini replaced by Marshal Pietro Badoglio as premier.

The Battle of the Atlantic had turned decisively in the Allies’ favour during 1943. There was a dramatic decline in the number of Allied merchant ships sunk by U-boats, and the Allies had developed effective countermeasures such as long-range maritime patrol aircraft and convoy tactics against enemy submarines. The combined bomber offensive by the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) from bases in Britain was gathering pace, with effects on German infrastructure, including a short but spectacular loss of hydroelectricity in the Ruhr from May to September caused by the Dambusters’ raid. The German Atlantic campaign and the Allied bombing were both sucking in more and more German resources which had little to do with holding back the Russian armies in the East, or indeed propping up the weak member of the Axis: Italy. More and more manpower was being employed on repair and rebuilding because of bomb damage. The requirement for thousands of 88-mm anti-aircraft guns to be used defensively against bombers, rather than opposing Soviet tanks, was just one of the costs to Nazi Germany of this bombing campaign. US military historians Williamson Murray and Allan Millett have noted of this phase of the war, which they call `the killing time’:

The Germans were no longer masters of events. No matter how skilled their conduct of defensive battles, the weight of Allied military power was wearing away the Wehrmacht’s tactical advantages.

Unfortunately, the Wehrmacht’s tactical skill — especially its tenacious defence and cunning use of terrain — made the later months of 1943 and all of 1944 a deadly `killing time’ for both sides fighting on the European mainland. The Allies’ goal had become `the killing of Germans by every means available in order to win the war. But Allied armies could accomplish that goal only at heavy cost to themselves.’ The war had transformed into one of attrition, much like the previous great European conflict.

On 8 September Italy surrendered, and the following day Allied troops landed at Salerno. On 10 September, German forces occupied Rome. Handed a strategic dilemma — to go or stay in Italy — Hitler made the strategic error of trying to defend the Italian mainland. The loss of Italy would admittedly have brought Allied air bases much closer to southern Germany; however, the price was a situation where 10 per cent of Hitler’s ground forces and a large but dwindling number of precious aircraft would then have to be committed to Italy rather than being deployed on the Eastern Front or in France and Belgium. The situation worsened between June and August 1944, when Allied landings in Normandy and southern France took place at last. But that was all in the fluid future. Hitler had made his strategic bed to lie on in Italy, and his obstinacy would cost him dearly in terms of lack of flexibility. The Italian decision was just one of a larger number of strategic commitments that would bleed Nazi Germany of precious human and materiel resources.

In the short term, though, the German prospects looked promising. Hitler was aided in his defence of Italy by the geographical and climatic realities of autumn and winter on the Italian peninsula. The spine of mountains and the rivers that flowed to the east and west coasts provided natural defensive barriers; and rain, mud and snow made it difficult for the Allies to use armoured advances and air attacks. This was very different from the experience in North Africa, or even the recent taking of Sicily. The strategic decisions made by both sides `set the stage for a long, discouraging campaign’; it would be protracted and brutal, resulting in some of the fiercest and most bitter fighting of the war. Yet it was a necessary campaign too, as the Allies sought to annihilate Nazi Germany’s war capabilities wherever they were located. As Max Hastings recently commented:

It is hard to imagine how the campaign might have been accelerated, avoided or broken off. But it yielded neither glory nor satisfaction to those who fought, or to the hapless inhabitants of the battlefield.

While the US Fifth Army found moving northwards from Salerno difficult, the British Eighth Army on the Adriatic coast found itself bogged down on the Sangro River as winter came on. The Germans had reacted swiftly to the Italian crisis; and, with an able commander in Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, they were successful in slowing down a contested withdrawal up the peninsula. Time was of the essence, and the slowness of the Allied advance in the face of determined resistance by the German divisions, swollen rivers and bad flying conditions for air support permitted the preparation of a defensive line south of Rome. This position was the Gustav Line. It had the advantages of terrain, with a mountain barrier south of Rome that over the centuries had proved difficult for invaders approaching from the south. The one attractive opening in this line was the Liri Valley, which pierced the barrier at the town of Cassino. The German efforts at fortifying this position were thorough and extensive, and it formed the strongest portion of the Gustav Line.

The Allies decided to punch through the Gustav Line, using General Mark Clark’s Fifth Army supplemented by formations from the British Eighth Army then fighting to the east of the Apennines. A landing was envisaged to take place at Anzio on Italy’s west coast just over 100 kilometres from the Cassino front and some 60 kilometres from Rome. This would threaten the rear of the Gustav Line and therefore turn the German defensive position.

This, then, was the backdrop to a series of Allied offensive operations that became known as the Cassino battles. Eventually there were four battles, beginning in January and ending in May 1944. The first three failed to break through the enemy defences; they culminated in a much larger offensive in May. The Gustav Line at the Cassino position proved difficult to break; indeed, it was only prised open in the final battle thanks to overwhelming force, and other operations elsewhere on the line.

General Alphonse Juin’s French Expeditionary Corps (FEC) opened their attack over the upper reaches of the Rapido to seize the heights to the north of Cassino with the 3rd Algerian Division and the 2nd Moroccan Division on 12 January 1944. The French managed to push their way forward in a four-day offensive, although they took sizeable casualties. By 16 January they had made significant inroads into the mountains.

General Richard McCreery’s X Corps launched `Operation Panther’ across the lower reaches of the Garigliano on the night of 17–18 January. X Corps consisted of three divisions — the 5th and 46th, and the 56th London Division — and the 23rd Armoured Brigade. Bridgeheads were established to begin with; the town of Castelforte was threatened by the London Division — and the German 94th Division was in danger. The German 29th and 90th Panzer Grenadier Divisions were sent urgently from Rome and, by 21 January, were thrown into counterattacks against X Corps. Although the Germans were successful in bringing X Corps to a standstill, the two German divisions brought down were then not available to intervene at Anzio. But the Allied threat up Route 7 via the Ausente Valley had been plugged, and they had no reserve divisions to hand. Later on, in May, it was the thrust through this area with seven divisions that broke through to open up the Gustav Line.

The two widely separated offensive operations at either end of the Mediterranean portion of the Gustav Line stalled, but they had created something of a focus for German attentions. It was, however, the opening of attacks on the strongest part of the German defences on the Gustav Line — the Cassino position itself — that led to a cumulating series of dogged attritional battles that became known as the first, second, third and fourth battles of Cassino.

The Liri Valley, with its road and rail communications through to Rome, was the opportune route for invaders from the south to penetrate. It was overlooked by the high ground of Monastery Hill, with the famous Benedictine abbey of Monte Cassino perched atop the massif. Further inland from Monastery Hill a great sweep of ridges rose like a giant arm, culminating in Monte Cairo. But what looked like a smooth expanse of terrain from a distance was, in fact, a deceptive and troublesome geography. The detailed topography of these ridges, hills and ravines was a defenders’ dream, which the Germans would use to great advantage. As C.J.C. Molony has commented, the test of this broken ground, clefts, rock faces, slabs, boulders and savage thorny scrub meant that assaulting troops would be treated to series on series of tactical questions: what appeared promising would turn out to be blocked by some impassable obstacle.

The German defences were carefully prepared. From late 1943, the German divisions on the Gustav Line had been allocated labour for defensive works and also supplied with engineer units. Around 44,000 Todt Organisation employees were deployed to work on the Cassino defences. Strongpoints were constructed in the river areas of the Rapido, the Garigliano and the Liri; and plans were made to flood areas which, in winter, made the flatter ground unsuitable for the movement of armour. The town of Cassino was evacuated and fortified, as were Monastery Hill, Castle Hill (Point 193) and a series of high points behind the monastery. Immediately behind the monastery was an extremely deep ravine that ran down to one side of Castle Hill. In November the Germans had put 100 steel shelters into the Cassino position, and they added more later, as well as 76 armoured casements and a number of armoured machine-gun nests. They constructed bunkers and emplacements, sometimes strengthened with girders, rails, railway sleepers and concrete; and they made extensive use of barbed wire and mines. The overall depth of German positions at Cassino commonly stretched back 3650 metres.

Capturing the feature of Monastery Hill and the high ground was both necessary and difficult. Except for Monastery Hill itself, every other hill feature — Castle Hill, Points 593, 569, 444 and so on — could be enfiladed by the German defenders from yet higher ground. Rather than chance the fortified town with its narrowed approaches, the Allies needed to take the lesser heights first, from Castle Hill to those up and behind the abbey — an interlocked series of hilltop points behind Monastery Hill. Any lack of depth in attack and limit of penetration into the defences were sure to be costly and bloody. As Kesselring himself noted, the use of natural features went from simple field improvements all the way to permanent concrete and armoured positions and minefields: concealment; cover by enfilading flanking fire; use of natural and artificial obstacles; construction of separately protected shelters; and covered communication trenches were all part of the picture.

The winter weather of January 1944 had assisted the German preparations of the Cassino position by making the offroad use of vehicles and armour impossible. In addition, there were blown bridges on Route 6 and the railway embankment running into Cassino, which would need repair. The character of the defences is described in detail in this New Zealand Division Intelligence Report of 19 January, the day before the American 36th Texas Division launched an assault on the Sant’Angelo strongpoint:

The CASSINO or GUSTAV line closely follows the west bank of the river RAPIDO from where the narrow river valley widens into a plain at G8627 through CASSINO and SANT’ANGELO to the confluence with the river LIRI. North of CASSINO the line consists of machine-gun positions and weapon pits supported by field artillery. Houses have been demolished and trees felled along the river bank to improve fields of fire. At CASSINO anti-tank ditches have been dug and an area flooded between the main road and the railway. Demolitions are seen to be carried out within the town, and many of the buildings have doubtless been fortified.

Considerable progress has been made between CASSINO and the LIRI-RAPIDO confluence. Wire is almost continuous and numerous machine-gun positions, weapon-pits and mortar positions are sited on rising ground west of the river. The village of SANT’ANGELO has been turned into a large strongpoint and other strong points are sited at irregular intervals of five hundred to fifteen hundred yards all along the line. This section of the line is strongly supported by field artillery. Trees east of the river and along the river bank have been felled so that at no point could good cover approaches to the river be made. In the area of the LIRI-RAPIDO confluence large tracts have been flooded. Forward of the line many of the road and rail bridges have already been blown.

It is clear from this that the main Cassino defences were formidable and not to be trifled with. It was surprising, then, that the first attack to be mounted on those defences should be a divisional attack by US II Corps across the strong-running river — described in the report as the Rapido but actually the Lower Gari — at the Sant’Angelo strongpoint. The village of Sant’Angelo at the centre of this strongpoint sat on high ground commanding the surrounding area, while the approach to the river was an unpleasant prospect: it was open to both easy direct and indirect fire, and had been mined to channel attacking troops into defined kill zones. It should be noted in passing that the commander of the 36th Division, Major General Fred L. Walker, had commanded an American battalion in the First World War that had hammered a German division’s attempt to cross the Marne under his guns. At Sant’Angelo the tactical position was reversed, and Walker was very apprehensive about the impending assault.

Opposing the Americans was the 15th Panzer Grenadier Division, one of the best German units, commanded by General Eberhardt Rodt. The 36th Division opened its attack at 2000 hours on 20 January in the dark under cover of heavy fog — although any idea of surprise was blown away by German and Allied artillery fire. The 141st Regiment of 36th Division attempted to cross the Gari to the north of Sant’Angelo, first by boat and then by footbridge. Despite losses, some 400 troops had made it across the river by 0400 hours on 21 January, but became quickly pinned down. Once the light dawned, further reinforcement became impossible.

The 143rd Regiment had attempted to cross the Gari south of the village. The same pattern was repeated, and the battalions sustained heavy losses. Once the light came up, the positions of two companies of the 141st to the north and the battalion of 143rd to the south became clear to the German artillery spotters on Monastery Hill, and these units were now subjected to heavy fire from close at hand and further afield. Moreover, German tank and self-propelled guns joined in against the 143rd. A request for a withdrawal was refused, but this was received after battalion remnants had already crossed back over the river. Tellingly, the Germans had not realised that this had been a divisional attack: General Rodt reported the attacks as a reconnaissance in force.

The US II Corps commander Major General Geoffrey Keyes then insisted that the 36th Division put in another attack in daylight. The 143rd Regiment began its second assault on 21 January in the late afternoon. Using smoke and darkness, the Americans were able to get the nearly two battalions’ worth of troops across by midnight; but once daylight came, the 143rd elements found themselves in a rapidly deteriorating exposed situation. The destruction of boats and footbridges, the close proximity of the enemy and the low-lying wet fields led to the inevitable, and the troops were pulled back; most of them had to return by swimming the river.

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