BOMBING OF CASSINO WAS JUSTIFIED, SAYS NEW WRITER

Taupo Times, Volume VI, Issue 287, 8 August 1957, Page 8

BOMBING OF CASSINO WAS JUSTIFIED, SAYS NEW WRITER

Whether or not the bombing of the Oassino monastery on Pebruary 15, 1944, was justifled — and also the conduct of the Italian campaign at this stage — have hecome among the foremost controversies resulting from the last Vf ar. Cassino, a hook by Fred Majdalany, will he on sale in New Zealand shortly The writer states that the bombing of the monastery was justifled. It was being used as an observation post by the German troops. He writes : "Everybody has experienced the sensation when walking alone past a house, that invisible eyes were watching from a darkened interior, "Hostile eyes can he sensed, and the soldier develops an exceptional awareness of this. Monte Cassino projected this feeling over an entire valley and. the feeling was substantiated all the time by gunfire that could only have been so accurate and so swiftly opportunist th rough being directed by quite exceptionally positioned observers. "Even in peacetime Monte Cassino overwhelms the least imaginative visitor gazing up at it from below. In the cold desolation of winter and fatiguing travail of unresolved hattle the spell of its monstrous eminence was complete and haunting. "This was the psychologicat crux of the matter. To the soldiers dying at its feet the monastery had itself become in a sense the enemy." This is a sample of the writlng to be found in the hook. Its sub-title is "Portrait of a Battle," and the best part of the book's 264 pages give vivid descriptions of the four battles required to take Cassino, the barricade to Allied advance on Rome. About Us Of particul-ar interest is the author's summing of the New Zealand Hivision and his views are the more effective because he is not a New Zealander. He writes: "So when the New Zealand division went to war it was a small hand-picked national army with a nation watching its every move, a national press reporting on every detail of every experience it encountered. "If a New Zealand paper announced that the New Zealanders were fighting at Cassino every second family in the country would be directly or indirectly concerned. "The effect of this, conpled with the character of the men themselves was almost to compel the New Zealand division to take itself for granted as the corps d'elite, forced always to excel. If a man did well it would certainly get back to his home town or village. If he did badly it would get back too." Other descriptions of the New Zealanders are : "Tough, dour, sardonically humorous, physically robust, selfreliant, hard leathery men/" The division is described as being "A closed shop with the quality of an exeiusiye club for which there is a waiting list." Lieutenant-General Sir Bernard Freyberg and the late Major-General Sir Howard Kippenberger come in for due mention. In a prelude the book gives the history of the Abbey of Monte Cassflno, lounded by St Benedict in A.D. 529. It goes on to describe the ill-fated attempts of the American forces to cross the Rapido River in the first assault on Cassino, and the landing of forces at Anzio. The terrible plight of the Abbot, the monks and the refugees in the monastery during the bombing is given in detail. ,"It was a little after 9.30 and they had just sung the words "Beseech Christ on our behalf" when the first of a succession of great explosions sent. a sliudder throngh the thick Abbey walls and great gusts of thunder echoed along the vast stone passageways giving continuity to the crashes so that, they were no longer a succession of explosions but a single, great eataclysmic roar. "To those men whose most violent Qcquaintance with sound was the Gregorian ehant of the Divine Office, the bombing was, apart from anything else, an overwhelmingly terrifying baptism of sheer noise beyond anything they could conceivably have imagined. "They huddled together in a corner on their knees, numb with terror. "Automatically the eighty-year-old Abbot gave them absolution. Automatically they composed themselves for death." The book, which may be ranked »s dhe of the foremost abbut the last war, is published by Longmans, Green »nd Co., Ltd, — S.P.W,