By Adam Pullar - Year 13, The Catlins Area School
On January 17, 1944, Allied forces advanced on the heavily defended town of Cassino.
Their purpose was to open a path to Rome and force the Germans to commit more troops to Italy before the planned landings in Normandy.
While the Italian campaign is often forgotten in favour of the eastern, western and Pacific theatres, it should stand as an important figurehead for the Allied effort during World War 2, as troops from New Zealand, Australia, Britain, the United States, India, Free France, Free Poland, Canada, Belgium, Greece and Brazil all fought as one force together against the Germans.
Cassino was the hardest fought battle in the campaign and involved the majority of these countries.
The Cassino area was well suited to the German's defensive battle.
The peak of Monte Cassino towers 520m above the town of Cassino, providing panoramic views of the valley below.
This allowed defenders to see any movement the attackers made and gave them an excellent firing angle whilst being protected from returning fire. Consequently, it was harder for the Allies to assault the town and monastery because they needed to cross the flooded Rapido in rowboats and fight through the town before climbing the steep rocky cliffs, all while under heavy fire.
The Americans were the first to attempt to assault the town and monastery, sending the 34th Infantry in after a preliminary artillery bombardment.
The Germans, however, had prepared for the attack, placing minefields and mortars in strategic locations and breaking the floodbanks of the Rapido River, slowing down the attackers and funnelling them into MG42 fire.
The American attack quickly lost momentum and ground to a halt.
Shortly after the first attack on Monte Cassino the Allies launched Operation Shingle, which was an amphibious landing with the objective of securing a beach-head at Anzio and a secondary objective of drawing defenders away from Cassino.
The latter of which was achieved, though not making the decisive difference the Allies had wanted.
After the initial resistance encountered by the Americans, the controversial plan was drawn up for a heavy bombardment of Cassino and the millennia-old monastery on Monte Cassino.
Allied commanders believed that the Germans were inside the monastery and made the decision to flatten it.
Aerial bombing commenced on March 15, followed by artillery.
It was hoped the bombings would kill the Germans and destroy their positions while weakening the morale of any survivors.
The opposite was true.
While the Cassino landscape had been shattered and the town left in ruins, the defenders were still very much alive and now had new places to hide and set up traps.
It fell to the New Zealanders to capture Cassino and its vital railway station.
However, they encountered similar problems to the Americans while crossing the Rapido and were unable to receive armoured support due to rubble and shell holes littering the ruins of Cassino.
This hindered their advance and made capturing the railway station by the 28th Battalion more difficult.
They did succeed in capturing positions in and around the station but high casualties and a strong German counterattack forced them to retreat.
Two days later, New Zealand troops moved into Cassino from the north and captured most of the town after close-quarter house-by-house fighting with elite German paratroopers known as Fallschirmjager.
In addition to the town, they successfully captured Castle Hill.
There are accounts of soldiers, sent to provide reinforcements, losing their footing on loose rocks while moving along ridges under fire and falling to their deaths.
Past this point, Allied attacks once again began to grind to a halt until they were called off for high casualties and lack of territory gained.
Germans in the ruins of the monastery told the monks from Monte Cassino to escape to Rome, which they did after some persuasion.
The Allies realised that attacking around the flanks of the Germans had been their most effective strategy and a plan was formulated by New Zealand Lieutenant-general Bernard Freyberg.
The attack comprising British and Polish forces, to push up through Albaneta farm on the southeast side of the monastery on May 18, 1944, eventually led to the taking of Monte Cassino.
The five-month-long battle resulted in a Pyrrhic victory for the Allies, with 55,000 casualties while German casualties numbered near 20,000.
A week later, on May 25, American forces had linked up with the Anzio beachhead and on June 4, Rome was captured by the allies.
This achievement was overshadowed by the D-day landings on June 6, marking Allied forces' presence in the east, west and south of Europe and the inevitable downfall of the German Reich.
