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By Root 1615 0

and I say it with the full knowledge of the controversy that has raged round this episode,’ wrote Mark Clark in his autobiography Calculated Risk, in 1951. ‘Not only was the bombing an unnecessary psychological mistake in the field of propaganda, but it was a tactical military mistake of the first magnitude. It only made our job more difficult, more costly in terms of men, machines and time.’26 Though he later denied responsibility for it, in fact Clark had been personally involved in and approved of Alexander’s and Freyberg’s decision to destroy the abbey.27 Certainly the commander of the Cassino defenders, Senger, later claimed that ‘The bombing had the opposite effect of what was intended. Now we would occupy the abbey without scruple, especially as ruins are better for defence than intact buildings… Now Germany had a mighty, commanding strongpoint, which paid for itself in the subsequent fighting.’28 The defensive superiority of ruins over intact buildings had already been seen at Stalingrad, and was to be so again at Caen. Yet it is hard to believe that during the Allied attacks the Germans would not have abandoned their moral ‘scruple’ and defended the abbey room by room.

Visitors to the magnificent rebuilt structure will immediately be impressed by how completely the abbey dominates the hilltop, which in turn dominates the Liri Valley. It was effectively doomed as soon as Kesselring chose it as the hinge of the Gustav Line, which a glance at the landscape from the top of the hill looking south shows was unavoidable. Churchill could never understand why Cassino could not simply be outflanked, and why three divisions had to ‘break their teeth’ on a front only 3 miles wide, and it is indeed difficult to comprehend on two-dimensional maps. The folds of the land, the overlaps of the rivers, above all the heights of the mountains protecting the Liri Valley are best studied in situ, and make the tactical difficulties instantly comprehensible. As for Monte Cassino itself, Harding believed that ‘It was necessary to bomb it from the point of view of the morale and the confidence of the troops. Everybody thought the Germans were using it for military purposes… It’s part of my military philosophy that you must not put troops into battle without giving them all possible physical and military support to give them the best chance for getting a success.’29 The political price of attacking the abbey without first having flattened it was felt to be too high, especially in New Zealand, whose troops were to form the first wave, and Freyberg, Clark and Alexander all approved its destruction. Of course it was paradoxical that, in the crusade for civilization against Nazi barbarism, a prominent jewel of that very civilization should have been destroyed by the Allies, but such was the nature of the Total War unleashed by Hitler, who must therefore bear ultimate responsibility for the aesthetic and cultural tragedy.

By the end of January, the French Mountain Corps had made considerable advances between Monte Cairo and Monte Cassino, and the US 34th ‘Red Bulls’ Division had reached Point 593 behind the monastery hill. Snake’s Head Ridge, of which Point 593 was a part, saw bitterly contested fighting, reminiscent of the Great War, as the Allies attempted to outflank Cassino from the north; indeed as many men fell there as in the full-frontal assaults up Monastery Hill itself.

The four battles of Monte Cassino were fought by Germans, Americans, British, French, Poles, Australians, Canadians, Indians, Nepalis, Sikhs, Maltese and New Zealanders, although not by the Italians themselves, the majority of whom had by now largely adopted a che sera, sera attitude to their national fate, apart from (mainly Communist-dominated) partisans who fought against the Germans further north. ‘We do not want Germans or Americans,’ one representative piece of Italian graffito read. ‘Let us weep in peace.’30 The four battles have been likened to the Somme: at the first battle after 12 February, for example, the Fifth Army suffered 16,000 casualties, above all