Cassino 1944

Cassino: sixty years on by historian and author Matthew Wright

It is sixty years since New Zealanders fought and died in the mud of Cassino. The battle, fought between February and late March 1944, pitted the three-division strong New Zealand Corps against German panzer grenadiers and the crack 4 Parachute Division, who were entrenched in the strongest defensive positions of the war.

The struggle has gone down in history as a rare defeat for the New Zealanders, usually attributed to combination of circumstance and command failure. Some of that blame has fallen on US 5th Army commander General Mark Clark; the rest has usually been dropped on the shoulders of Corps commander, Lieutenant-General Sir Bernard Freyberg.

Sir John White
Lieutenant-General Sir Bernard Freyberg (left) with US 5th Army General Mark Clark at Cassino.

However, many of these conclusions have followed post-war debate by historians and participants, often with the 20:20 vision of hindsight.

The facts, outlined in documentation ranging from Freyberg’s war diary to divisional records, personal accounts, letters and official reports, reveals a very different picture. Cassino was a complex battle, fought under difficult conditions against well-entrenched forces. Any explanation must, by definition, also be complex. We are wrong to simply blame Freyberg, the New Zealanders, or even Clark for the outcome.

The first effort to break the line was an extension of an American attack, run to very tight timetable by the newly formed New Zealand Corps. Freyberg hoped to get 4 Indian Division across the ridges to the mountaintop, opening the way for 2 NZ Division to push through the town below.

The Germans had built the monastery into the defences, which put it in the front line whether it was occupied or not. But it is quite wrong to suggest - as many historians do - that New Zealand commanders assumed the Germans were using it, ordering its destruction on that basis.

In fact, the heavy bomber attack that smashed the monastery on 15 February was thoroughly divorced from what Freyberg envisaged. His main concern - reflecting objections raised by ailing 4 Indian commander, Major-General Francis ‘Gertie’ Tuker – was that the monastery might be used as a strongpoint by retreating troops during the Indian assault. After receiving Tuker’s requests, Freyberg envisaged a precision strike by fighter-bombers to damage the walls, making it less of a refuge.

Clark, who apparently did not appreciate this motive, took up this plan. Through the machinations of Allied politics it was then transmuted into a general assault by the 8th Air Force, a move that made 4 Indian Division prisoner of a schedule beyond their control. Freyberg thought the bombing scheme had all the hallmarks of failure, ‘and an expensive one at that’, as he put it, but accepted what he had been given.

The bombing destroyed the monastery, but 4 Indian were held up by an unexpected gully. More trouble followed when 28 (Maori) Battalion led the New Zealand assault over the Rapido river rail bridge. Slowed by German demolitions, they were caught by dawn before heavy equipment could be brought across, and after a desperate day in the railway station had to withdraw.

Freyberg’s second plan revolved around a direct assault into the town after an air and artillery attack of unprecedented scale, while 4 Indian skirted the flanks of Monte Cassino to take the monastery. He recognised that speed was essential, but the clouds rolled in, and it was 15 March before weather and 8th Air Force were able to co-ordinate. Darkness, wet, cold and rubble conspired to derail the attack that followed, though it was pushed with intense resolve.

	Alexander Turnbill Library
	New Zealand Tanks and infantry in Cassino town.

The New Zealand effort gains true perspective in context of the way Cassino was finally taken in May. Where Freyberg had brigades and divisions, theatre commander General Sir Harold Alexander now deployed divisions and corps. For the first time they had the necessary 3:1 superiority on the ground. Nor were the forces detailed to Cassino expected to fight alone. Spring weather made it possible to move over terrain that had been impassable in winter, and Alexander envisaged a broad offensive across the whole front, preventing the Germans plugging gaps.

Even so, the armies had to be thrown into battle with such profligacy that huge casualties were inevitable – the Polish divisions detailed to take Monte Cassino suffered 4000 casualties alone. These facts make clear that Cassino was untakeable with the comparatively meagre forces Freyberg had been given for the job, in the depths of a bitter winter.

Cassino was also a mis-use of the New Zealanders. The division, by composition and training, was geared for break-through battle and pursuit – the task for which Freyberg had been originally detailed when they were brought into the Cassino area.

To grind this expert force up against the stones of Cassino, as Allied command demanded, was wasteful – though, under the circumstance, Alexander had little choice. The pressure had to be kept up to support the Anzio landings, and it is a testament to their abilities that the New Zealand Corps achieved so much under such adverse conditions.

Sir John White

The bombardment of Cassino, 15 March 1944 – prelude to Operation Dickens, the direct assault into the town.