A bird’s eye view
Martin Penner unravels the turbulent history of Monte Cassino If you ever take the motorway from Rome to Naples, you may notice that for most of the journey you are moving down a wide valley with grey mountains on each side. At about the halfway point, there is a peak on the left with what looks like a white stone fortress perched on top. It’s immediately obvious that the view from up there will be breathtaking.
Having heard some of the stories about this place, I turned off the motorway here one Sunday afternoon recently. Driving through the town of Cassino and then up the wooded incline along a series of hairpin bends, I reached the top of the mountain in about 20 minutes. And there, looking slightly less forbidding up close, was the monastery of Monte Cassino. St Benedict, who founded it in AD 529, was guided to this soul-stirring spot by three ravens — or so the story goes.
The spectacular view from the monastery, along with a small translation mistake, meant that in February 1944 it was blasted to smithereens by Allied bombers. Afterwards, all that remained was part of the outer wall and the crypt containing the remains of St Benedict. But if the Flying Fortresses did a thorough job, it was a rather pointless one. There were no German guns positioned up there and probably no soldiers either.
The monastery’s misfortune was its supremely strategic position. This sternlooking white stone building overlooks the entrance to the Liri valley leading northwards to Rome. In 1944 the only decent road through the valley ran past the foot of the mountain, not far from today’s motorway. To the British Eighth Army and the American Fifth Army, who were fighting their way up Italy, the monastery seemed to be an all-seeing eye blocking their advance northwards.
The German defensive line did in fact pass through Cassino, but it did not include the mountain-top monastery, whose religious nature the Germans had respected. They were rightly confident that the icy mountain ridges and rivers in this part of the peninsula would ensure an admirable defence, even without the monastery.
Meanwhile, Allied intelligence had intercepted a message to a German officer. It said that — with an Allied attack imminent — the wealth of artworks and manuscripts normally housed in the monastery had been taken to the Vatican for safekeeping. But something referred to as an ‘Abt’ had been left behind. ‘Abt’ was an abbreviation for Abbot, the head of the monastery. The Allies interpreted those three letters as meaning ‘Abteilung’, German for a military unit. There only seemed to be one option. British general Harold Alexander gave the order to flatten the monastery and on 15 February 1944, in the space of a couple of hours, US planes dropped 350 tons of explosives on it.
Most historians agree that the bombing of the monastery at Monte Cassino was one of the low points of the Allied campaign in Europe. Apart from anything else, it did the Germans a huge favour. German paratroopers quickly took up position among the ruins and from there they managed to block the Allied advance for another three months.
As I drove up to the monastery on a rainy spring day, I looked at the oak and beech trees at the lower levels, seeing how they gradually gave way to rocky outcrops and more exposed terrain. I tried to imagine being stuck on this mountainside for months on end, part of a unit ordered to take the monastery. Most of the fighting here was from foxholes, small groups of men struggling with the bitter cold and mud, constantly under fire from artillery and machine guns. Eyewitnesses say the mountainside was swiftly reduced to a barren landscape of craters and tree stumps.
The battle for Monte Cassino, which had begun in January, eventually left a quarter of a million people dead or wounded. ‘Only the bloodbaths of Verdun and Passchendaele, or the very worst of the second world war fighting on the Eastern Front, can compare to Monte Cassino,’ wrote Matthew Parker in a recent book on the battle.
It was the Polish troops that took the monastery in the end. By the time they did so, they had lost 4,000 men, about half the contingent. The Poles had been given this terrible task because, after the invasion of their country, defeating Germany had become a burning existential issue. At one point, when they were trapped on the mountainside without ammunition, they were reduced to hurling stones at their enemy.
On 18 May, a tattered white flag was spotted flying above the ruins. When the Poles entered the monastery, not a shot was fired. Inside they found a handful of ragged German soldiers surrendering, three severely wounded young paratroopers, and many dead.
Being in the carefully reconstructed monastery today is a little like being in a fairytale castle. Clean white stone courtyards are decorated with earthenware bowls of red roses. Wide staircases lead to amazing views, snatches of countryside framed by pillars and parapets. Off one courtyard is a little shop selling soap and sweets made by the monks. From its window you can see the red and white Polish flag flying in a cemetery filled with that country’s dead.
During my afternoon in Cassino, I also visited the Historiale museum down in the town. Here you can watch the monastery being bombed in a film shot by American soldiers as it happened. The Historiale offers an effective multimedia portrayal of the battle for Monte Cassino. An Englishspeaking guide explains what happened, taking you through 14 darkened rooms to show you films, maps, scale models and holograms of German and American generals describing strategy.
You can also see one of the leaflets dropped on local villages by the Allies before the entire area was carpet-bombed in the run-up to the battle. Villagers were advised to leave immediately. Tragically, they thought it was a hoax and stayed where they were. Italy was now on the Allied side and the Germans had apparently retreated. Why would the Allies bomb their town?
Possibly the most moving thing I saw on my afternoon in Cassino was an artwork in the Historiale. It’s a wooden landscape depicting the town just before the onslaught, when the inhabitants still believed the war was over for them. Small wooden figures show children playing with a bicycle in the street. One of them is pointing in surprise at the Flying Fortresses that have just appeared in the sky.
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