There have been countless thousands of published works devoted to all or of it. They seized arms, munitions, and vital infrastructure. He recalled his battered troops and regrouped. Stymied in his attempts to have the attack shifted to more favorable ground upriver, he grew increasingly dejected over the fate that awaited his men. Ironically, the final fight for the great prize of the monastery that crowned Monte Cassino would prove nearly bloodless. It stretched for 100 miles from the Tyrrhenian Sea in the west to the Adriatic Sea in the east. It was a painful question that increasingly nagged at every Allied soldier in Italy. Despite heavy casualties, the British drove several miles in two days of fighting. By mid-morning on May 18, cautious Polish troops inched their way toward the summit only to discover the enemy was gone. “Capture of Cassino means a great deal to me and my armies,” he wrote. The fierce French colonial troops stormed into German lines north of Cassino, breaking through initial defenses and eventually seizing Monte Belvedere five miles inside the Gustav Line. In the Battle of Monte Cassino, the Allies faced insurmountable obstacles in their mission to break down German defenses and liberate the Eternal City of Rome. In fact, the heights beyond the Rapido, dominated by steep ridges, plunging ravines, and jagged peaks, constituted some of the most rugged terrain in central Italy. It changed the world more than any other single event in history. Anders exhorted his men to triumph over the Germans they deeply despised. The Germans had fortified every high point and rushed in reinforcements from the veteran 90th Grenadier Division, as well as the fearsome paratroopers of Maj. Gen. Richard Heidrich’s 1st Parachute Division. Allied artillery also bombarded the mountaintop, lobbing shells into the ruins. Heading up the German war effort in Italy was a gifted and widely experienced career officer, Field Marshal Albrecht Kesselring. The cemetery is the closest of all allied cemeteries, symbolizing the importance of the Polish fighters during the battle. In the hope of seizing Monte Cassino and unhinging the Gustav Line, Clark ordered an all-out attack February 7. The first interments in the cemetery occurred in 1944 and the cemetery was completed in 1946 based on designs by Wacław Hryniewicz and Jerzy Skolimowski. In co-ordinated military operations, the British, French, Americans,Indian, New Zealanders, Moroccans, and Polish … Beyond Cassino, forbidding terrain assured the Allies of a difficult and bloody fight. With the German line of retreat in threat of being cut off entirely, Anders and his Poles launched another attack from the north. On Castle Hill, a life-or-death struggle ensued in the darkness. Whether a wartime or postwar piece, a Monte Cassino Cross is highly prized by any Polish veteran. By mid-January 1944, lead elements of Clark’s army mounted the heights of Monte Trocchio but were forced to halt the advance. The Poles, whose homeland had been overrun and occupied by the Wehrmacht five years earlier, fought with a tenacity borne of patriotic determination and a thirst for outright vengeance. Rather than directly assault Cassino and the formidable heights behind the town, Allied forces would execute a wide pincer move designed to envelop the position. While Eaker claimed to have seen Germans in the abbey compound, Keyes reported that he saw nothing. “The battle for Cassino,” Clark recalled, “was the most grueling, the most harrowing, and in one respect the most tragic, of any phase of the war in Italy.”. But there’s NEVER been anything like THIS before. At dawn the Poles suffered a murderous fire from German small arms, mortars, and artillery. They were able to force their way across the Rapido and then seized the ruins of former Italian Army barracks on the German side of the Gustav Line. On February 14 Maj. Gen. Ira Eaker, commander in chief of the Mediterranean Allied Air Forces, and Keyes made reconnaissance flights over Monte Cassino. “About five or six divisions have been worn out going into those jaws.”. The focus increasingly shifted to a particularly conspicuous mountain that dominated the countryside for miles around: the commanding heights of Monte Cassino, which was crowned with a magnificent Benedictine monastery that possessed a fortress-like appearance. The cemetery also holds the grave of General Władysław Anders, who had commanded the Polish forces that captured Monte Cassino. The Kiwis failed to dislodge stubborn pockets of German defenders in the town center, and Allied tank crews found it impossible to operate in the demolished remains of the urban center. The first, based on the Epitaph of Simonides, reads: An anthem, The Red Poppies on Monte Cassino — composed on the eve of the Polish storming of the German stronghold — memorializes the Polish soldiers who gave their lives. Times when the very landscape appears to shift. The refrain is familiar to most Poles: Gravestone of Lieutenant General Władysław Anders at Monte Cassino, Orthodox (front)and Catholic (rear) gravestones at Monte Cassino, The gravestone of the Jewish soldier from Anders army Abraham Wurzel, View of Monte Cassino monastery from Polish Cemetery, Polish Cemetery seen from Monte Cassino monastery, Plaque at Polish Cemetery in Monte Cassino, Polish cemetery, as seen from Monte Cassino monastery, Learn how and when to remove this template message, Lieutenant General Władysław Albert Anders, Polish World War II Military Cemeteries in Italy, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Monte_Cassino_Polish_war_cemetery&oldid=927512802, Articles lacking sources from December 2009, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 22 November 2019, at 23:05. From the outset, the attack went awry. Bloody fighting ensued with the position changing hands four times during a horrific battle that did not end until sunset. Clark’s Fifth Army, which had taken considerable casualties in the fighting around Cassino, shifted to the left and would launch its assault along the coastal route of Highway 7. On September 8, the recalcitrant Italian government publicly announced its surrender to Allied forces. When the Algerians seized the heights of Monna Casale, the Germans counterattacked. The divisions poised to push into the embattled zone included troops from the far reaches of the Commonwealth: Brits, South Africans, Indians, Gurkhas, and Canadians. In four devastating hours the once pastoral town was reduced to rubble. In preparation for the landings, Alexander and Clark sketched out an operation against enemy positions opposite the Fifth Army. Facing a hailstorm of German fire, dozens of men were cut down as they struggled to get their boats in the river. Not surprisingly, the astute and persuasive Churchill won the argument. Elements of the 1st Parachute Division swiftly took up positions in the abbey grounds, which afforded a commanding position of the valley below and dominated the Allied approaches. By the evening of January 22, 1944, it was increasingly apparent that a drastic shift in strategy was needed to break the bloody debacle that had developed in central Italy. By birth a Prussian nobleman, he was a field commander with a decidedly cerebral approach to the art of war. To the West Point-trained Keyes, it was a grave tactical fallacy to attack across the valley unless German positions on the high ground were reduced. In the grinding defensive battle for the Italian peninsula, the field marshal would prove a resourceful and clever opponent. The cemetery is maintained by the Council for the Protection of Memorial Sites of Struggle and Martyrdom. A number of infantrymen reported that they had seen Germans behind its walls or even in the windows. In the annals of military history magazines, this is one of those moments. In fact, Mussolini was voted out of power and arrested on July 25, 1943. Although greatly outmatched in manpower and matériel, Kesselring enjoyed a decisive advantage in terrain. Monte Cassino Polish Cemetery Location Cassino, Provincia di Frosinone , Lazio , Italy Add to Map Most boats were shredded by enemy fire or simply floundered in the waters of the Rapido. South of Casino, the 8th Indian Division and the 4th British Division crossed the Rapido under heavy enemy fire. To Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Keyes, the veteran commander of II Corps, the primary cause of the debacle was obvious. The spirited Frenchman, an experienced veteran and skilled tactician, led a colorful corps of colonial troops renowned for impetuous ferocity. The Indians took over the fight from Castle Hill but were stopped cold in a futile push west. 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