Why were we fighting ? Monte Cassino

 

Members of the 18th Battalion hitch a ride in a Sherman tank belonging to the 4th New Zealand Armoured Brigade during the advance through northern Italy in late 1944.

Thirty-eight New Zealand war veterans will be in Italy this week to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Monte Cassino. The veterans, all in their 90s and accompanied by a medical support team, left New Zealand yesterday.
In Cassino they will attend a service of remembrance at the Cassino railway sation and the New Zealand national commemorative service at the Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery. 

 Men of 28th (Māori) Battalion marching north of Faenza, Italy, in January 1945. They are moving out of the line approximately 2 km from the enemy-held Castel Bolognese.

The veterans are expected to be joined by Prince Harry at the New Zealand service on May 18.

They will also attend a private service at the Abbey of Monte Cassino and have a guided battlefield tour.
Governor-General Sir Jerry Mateparae is attending the commemorations, along with Minister of Defence Jonathan Coleman and Chief of Army Major General Davenport Gawn.
A total of 2176 New Zealanders lost their lives in Italy during World War II, and 456 are buried in Cassino.
The Battle of Monte Cassino is regarded as one of the hardest-fought battles of the war.
German defenders were driven from their positions but at a high cost, including the loss of 352 New Zealand lives and 1200 wounded. 

 

 Cassino - the Italian campaign

The struggle for Cassino in early 1944 was one of the most brutal and costly battles involving New Zealand forces in the Second World War. For the New Zealand Division, this German strongpoint southeast of Rome would prove the most tragically elusive prize of the Italian campaign.

 

 The Germans' success in resisting the Allied offensive along the Gustav Line prompted the Allies to switch their focus to the Liri Valley, which led directly to Rome. However, the entrance to the valley was just over ten kilometres wide and was overlooked by the 500-metre-high Monte Cassino, topped by an historic Benedictine monastery.

 

 A defender's dream

Augmented by the Germans' meticulous deployment of minefields, fortifications and flooding though demolition of stop-banks, Cassino was a defender's dream and an attacking army's nightmare. New Zealand involvement in this challenging task was in part due to the failure of the American 5th Army's attempt to bypass the German front line by staging a seaborne attack at Anzio, south of Rome. An initial attack by American forces on Cassino in January had already met with heavy losses and a failure to break through to the Liri Valley.

Temporarily heading a New Zealand Corps bolstered by the inclusion of the 4th Indian Division, Lieutenant-General Sir Bernard Freyberg now steeled himself and his forces for the battle ahead. Desperate to minimise casualties, he requested a massive bombardment of the German defences to precede the assault by his troops. This was approved by the Supreme Allied Commander in the Mediterranean, General Sir Harold Alexander. The subsequent aerial bombardment on 15 February laid waste the historic monastery and its environs.
Controversy about this decision would persist long after the war was over. Tragically for the waiting New Zealand soldiers, most of the German defenders survived and exploited the ruins of the town and monastery to create an even more formidable set of defences.

The 17 February attack

Adding to the New Zealand Corps’ woes, the aerial bombardment took place a day and a half before the corps was prepared to mount an attack. They nevertheless proceeded with the plan, which involved the Indian Division attacking Cassino from the north, while the New Zealanders were to attack the town from the south with the hope of punching an opening for the Allies into the Liri Valley. Due to the Germans’ demolition of floodbanks south of Cassino, only one New Zealand battalion was able to cross the flooded Rapido in the southern attack. It fell to the 28th (Māori) Battalion to initiate the attack on the town's well-defended railway station south of the town on 17 February.

The ruins of Cassino

After one of the fiercest and costliest battles fought by the unit during the war, men of the battalion seized positions in and around the station. But the equally courageous engineers following behind them were unable to clear a path through the flooded terrain for reinforcements. Without support, the isolated Māori soldiers were forced to withdraw after a withering counter-attack by German infantry backed by tanks. It was the first of a number of setbacks for the New Zealanders at Cassino.

Further assaults fail

A series of other brave but unsuccessful assaults ensued. After another heavy bombardment, New Zealand forces fought their way into the devastated town from the north on 15 March. Once again, the Germans put up tenacious resistance from hidden positions in the maze of rubble that was once Cassino. In creating ideal positions for enemy snipers and hindering access for New Zealand’s armoured support, the bombing of the town had proved to be counter-productive. After eight days of fighting from one shattered building to the next, Freyberg decided the cost was proving too high and he ordered his troops to stop their attack. Shortly afterwards in early April, the New Zealand Division withdrew from the Cassino area, having suffered 343 deaths and over 600 wounded.

Cassino finally falls

Cassino finally fell in  May 1944 to British and Polish troops, with support from New Zealand artillery. The Gustav Line was finally breached. Allied forces entered Rome on 4 June, two days before the D-Day landings in Normandy. The success of the cross-channel invasion meant that the Italian campaign became a secondary theatre of operations, with seven Allied divisions redeployed to France in August 1944. The Italian campaign's main purpose was now to divert part of the German war effort and to tie down forces which might otherwise have been used to defend France and Germany itself.

 Why were we fighting ?

Baldrick the incorrigible star in Blackadder said " War is a terrible thing."
Never a truer statement.

My father fought in the 2nd World War and was on that terrible battle for Monte Cassino as part of New Zealand's 23rd Battalion.

Recently my brother and his wife visited Monte Cassino and laid five roses there, one each on behalf of his five children. Private James William Godfrey McKerrow fought gallantly on Monte Cassino and saw a huge number of his friends die around him. He was wounded, but able to continue fighting. Dad spoke little of the war, but would often get nostalgic at Christmas time as he remembered the Christmas he spent in a trench on Monte Cassino. He told me how there was a half day cease fire and he and his comrades crossed the frontline to celebrate Christmas with the German soldiers they had been trying to kill for the past few months. Dad said. " they were good men like our soldiers, fathers and sons like us. " He said rather sadly to me, " I wondered then and still do now, why we were fighting ? "

My Dad told me how they swapped precious gifts such as chocolate, sweets, canned meat and cigarettes. They also sang songs in tehir own languages.

I have worked for the Red Cross for more than 40 years years and have seen first hand the Vietnam War, the war that created Bangladesh, wars in Ethiopia, India/Pakistan, Nepal, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Tajikistan. My Dad's words turn over in my head, " Why were we fighting ? "