Tug of War

by Shelfold Bidwell

  Von Senger was never given to premature optimism and reminded his superiors of the casualties his units had suffered from artillery fire. In future daylight counter-attacks might have to be replaced by night raids. The worst was yet to come, he thought. And he ordered the 2nd/361st Panzer Grenadiers of the 90th Division from the Garigliano front across to Arce, twelve miles up the Liri valley, and sent the 2nd/134th, the last reserve behind the 15th Panzer Grenadiers, to M. Castellone. An Ersatz (field replacement-holding) battalion* and a company of German Air Force ground troops were hurried to the M. Abate area. Kesselring himself could only offer to send an element of the 90th Division fighting at Anzio, KG von Behr, to Cassino “within the next few days”.

  It was as well that von Senger acted, for on the 29th the French were again attacking at M. Abate and in the Belmonte valley and were threatening to take Terelle by an advance up the road. He took the 3rd/131st out of the line south of Cassino and sent it to M. Castellone, and he extended the front of the 5th Mountain, then in the central Apennines, on whom the pressure had been eased, to include the Belmonte valley.

  At a conference at his headquarters that day von Senger told General F. Wentzell, von Vietinghoff’s chief of staff, that he believed that the Terelle thrust was the most dangerous. Even though the Allies seemed to be employing no more than two French regiments there, and a third US one was reported to be coming forward, the artillery concentrations were so heavy that he believed they realised its importance. The British in the south were systematically destroying the units of the 94th Infantry and 29th Panzer Grenadiers, and although they were no longer believed to be intending an operation “in the grand style”, they were preventing him from pulling out any more units of the 90th and relieving the 211th/71st for use in the Castellone sector. Von Senger was losing men at the rate of a battalion a day in the north and the 29th Panzer Grenadiers’ casualties for the period 21–31 January were even heavier.

  Wentzell clarified a number of points about the future. The Cassino block had to be held until the Anzio bridgehead had been eliminated by the Fourteenth Army. When that was done, he could expect to be reinforced and he might take the offensive. On the other hand, if von Mackensen failed, a new situation would arise. Von Senger cited the inadequacies of the Hitler switch line through Piedimonte and declared that the Gustav Line was more economical in man-power. If a withdrawal became necessary, he thought that the 14th Corps ought to go right back to the area of the Alban Hills, but Wentzell told him that no withdrawal from Cassino was contemplated at the moment. Von Senger would have to take risks in other sectors to find the men to hold it.

  Once the Germans had made up their minds to hold the Cassino block at all costs, they thinned out their line elsewhere even more ruthlessly. On the 31st, the 3rd Battalion of the 3rd Parachute Regiment was ordered south from the Adriatic and a battalion from the 200th and another from the 361st Panzer Grenadiers arrived, both from the 90th Division. Their division commander, General Baade, was appointed to command the Cassino sector on the same day.

  January 30 had been another bad day at Caira village and along the Rapido. A large force of American tanks, having forced their way over the river the day before, shot up the bunkers of the 1st/132nd Grenadiers, one by one, forcing the survivors up on to the Colle Maiola behind. Thirty-five men of the 191st, all that were left, were pushed off M. Abate by the French that night. On their right the 2nd/134th, with only thirty men remaining, withdrew towards Terelle. The remnants of the men from Caira, together with the 2nd/132nd and the newly arrived 2nd/361st Panzer Grenadiers, began to prepare a makeshift switch line between M. Castellone and Villa S. Lucia on the 31st. The three battalions of the 131st Grenadiers moved to cover the road to Terelle on either side of Massa Manna. But by the time they got there the US 142nd Regiment had forced the handful of defenders from the 134th back into Terelle. (The 142nd had been detached from the 36th Division to reinforce Ryder. On February 6–7 the rest of the division was relieved on the Rapido by the New Zealanders and joined in the battle on the heights.)

  The 142nd were slow to follow up and there was time for the 1st/8th Panzer Grenadier Regiment of the 3rd Division to arrive at Terelle on February from the 5th Mountain Division’s zone on the left. An alpine battalion from the 76th Corps also started on its way from the Adriatic. But the 14th Corps was now sure that the French were exhausted and that the Americans intended to switch the main thrust southward round the back of the Monastery towards Villa S. Lucia.

  The new danger sector was between Castellone and Colle Maiola. Castellone itself was reported to have been occupied by two American companies in the mist on February 1. A counter-attack by the 15th Panzer Grenadiers’ engineer battalion failed to dislodge them, but two companies of the 2nd/361st Panzer Grenadiers prevented the 135th Infantry from advancing over the col towards M. Caira. The rest of the battalion blocked the Americans on Colle Maiola.

  Baade arrived on February 1 and at once began to reorganise the Cassino defences. A flamboyant, stormy figure, he demanded fresh troops, and made them a condition for stabilising the front. As a start, the 3rd Parachute Battalion arrived to throw the Americans off Castellone, which Baade considered his main task. His own 1st/361st Panzer Grenadiers were pulled out from the Garigliano front and anti-tank, field artillery and engineer battalions from the 94th. The 3rd/8th Panzer Grenadiers followed their 1st Battalion from the 5th Mountain’s front.

  The activities of the 34th Division on February 2, however, gave Baade no time to mount a counter-attack and he found that he had to use the parachutists to plug holes in his front. Von Senger was not much concerned at the US 133rd Regiment’s attack in the valley from M. Villa towards Cassino town, but he was determined to reinforce behind the Monastery until the massif was safe. He told Baade that he was to have another parachute battalion from the Adriatic and even the division’s machine-gun battalion from Anzio. The 2nd/200th Panzer Grenadiers of his own division would reach him on February 4. The wisdom of thinning out opposite the 10th Corps was confirmed when it was learned on the evening of February 2 that the 56th Infantry Division had left the 10th Corps for Anzio.

  By the evening of February 2 the US 2nd/135th Infantry had occupied most of the area of gullies and spurs called Colle Maiola. They had shelled the 2nd/132nd Grenadiers until they were “pulverised” and the 2nd/361st Panzer Grenadiers until they “melted like butter in the sun”. Only thirty-two men survived the ordeal and they scratched some shelter in the area of Point 593, hoping to hold out until the 3rd Parachute arrived to stop the rot. Battalions caught in the open on those rocky hillsides were quickly destroyed. If the Americans could maintain their momentum it seemed that they must sweep Baade’s men off the south-western edge of the Cassino massif.

  But during the night the parachutists counter-attacked from the area of Point 593, and although they lost the Point 475–Point 476 spur after recapturing it, they retained the ridge that included Points 450 and 445 opposite it, which was separated only by a deep gully from the Monastery. On Castellone the US 3rd/135th pushed on to Point 706, while two battalions of the 142nd held the higher feature behind them against attacks from the north. The 1st/361st Panzer Grenadiers arrived to take over Point 593 and the parachutists were moved back to the Albaneta area as a reserve behind the 1st Alpine Battalion, who now faced the US 3rd/135th Infantry. The fighting had already reduced the parachutists to 130 men.

  When the Parachute Machine Gun Battalion and the 1st Parachute were on the way to Cassino, von Vietinghoff decided that the whole of the Parachute Division should be brought in by degrees from the Adriatic and that Baade’s 90th Division should replace them there. The shattered 2nd/361st was the first to be pulled out. But instead of going to the Adriatic it found itself helping to relieve units of the 44th Division Group so that they could be reorganised. The other battalions of the 361st Panzer Grenadiers suffered the same fate. By February 4 the nine battalions of the 44th, two of the 8th Panzer Grenadier Regiment and an alpine compan
y numbered less than 1,500 men.

  February 4 and 5 were wet and stormy days on which a lull in American activity seemed to indicate that they were at last tiring. Baade’s position, on the other hand, was improving. The 1st Parachute Division celebrated its arrival by pushing the 3rd/135th Infantry off Point 706, but lost it soon after to a counter-attack. In what was to be called the Snakeshead Ridge area, the German positions along the ridge containing Points 445 and 450 and around Point 593 began to harden. The 1st/200th Panzer Grenadiers, part of the Behr group from Anzio, reached Roccasecca and, soon after, went into reserve behind the Colle S. Angelo. Some of the parachute machine-gunners took up positions near the Monastery and others joined the hard-pressed 211th Grenadiers in the northern outskirts of Cassino town, where they were located on the mountainside near Point 175, at Point 165 and on Castle Hill.

  The US 133rd Infantry took up the running on the 5th. Having previously reached the outlying houses of the town on the road from M. Villa, they sliced through the machine-gunners on Point 175 and briefly occupied Castle Hill. The Castle, separated by a deep gully from Point 175, was to be a tactical position of great importance in the struggle ahead, but the Americans were not strong enough to hold it.

  The lull on top of the hill was required to allow the US 168th Infantry to relieve the 135th opposite the Point 450–445 ridge, six or seven hundred yards from the Monastery itself. The 135th would then concentrate on the thrust from Snakeshead to Point 593 and Albaneta after its 3rd Battalion had been pulled off the Castellone ridge. The weak 141st and 143rd had been relieved by the 5th Brigade of the New Zealand Division on the night of February 5 and would reinforce the 142nd. The 36th Division would then be concentrated in the area from Castellone to Massa Manna.

  The remoteness of the battlefield up in the clouds from staff and commanders must be stressed for, as we shall see, it was to cause serious errors of judgment, and even ignorance of the exact location of the front-line troops. Battalions took three hours to climb to the forward positions and several days to become oriented to a new type of fighting and new terrain. From their caravans miles away on the other side of the Rapido, the divisional and corps staffs could easily lose touch with the conditions of battalions which had been “up there” a week or more. They knew, as a staff statistic, that the turn-round time of a mule column was about fourteen hours, but not, perhaps, what proportion of the food, blankets, batteries and ammunition was lost on the hillside on the way up, and what the loss entailed for attacking battalions. The commanders, daunted by the length of the journey on foot and the time it took, did not often visit battalions and regiments. In consequence, they were inclined to plan operations from the map without properly grasping the importance of particular features or the peculiar nature of the terrain. Only a close and detailed examination on the ground could reveal that the tangle of features identified by spot-heights constituted a single tactical system, articulated by the skilled German tacticians into a web of strongpoints supported by mutual cross-fire and local counter-attack. It was useless to try to nibble at it: only a strong simultaneous attack could succeed. This is the key to understanding the whole battle on the heights.

  Loss of communication with the fighting units led rear staffs to look at the short distance on the ground which separated their men from the edge of the Montecassino massif and to assume that they were as close to victory. Yet their divisions were growing weaker while Baade’s original battalions, tired and almost decimated too, were being continually reinforced by fresh units. The US Army at this time was short of reserves in Italy and was traditionally reluctant to break up organisations in one part of the front to provide fresh battalions in another as the Germans had done. The employment of British troops from the 46th Division was a possibility, although it raised many administrative problems and the touchy question of the employment of troops of one nationality under the divisional command of another. But when all is said, there is no indication that Keyes or Ryder was prepared to lay down the torch or to accept help from outside the corps to carry it further. By the time they did so, it was too late.

  The reinforcement by the 168th Infantry did little to relieve the plight of the men of the 34th Division, worn out by lack of hot food, exposure to damp and extreme cold and unceasing bombardment. Attacks were repeatedly arranged and then postponed because the infantry were physically incapable of movement or so demoralised that they refused to leave their fox-holes and sangars. The full story of that last week of hell behind the Monastery has never been told. All coherence and direction of the battle was lost. Operational reports written at divisional HQ record attacks that may never have been launched although planned, and certainly placed the forward troops in locations that had been lost to the enemy. The staff in the valley below did not recognise, or would not admit what the battalion officers knew full well, that their men had reached the absolute limit of their endurance. The fact was that the regimental commanders had to order officers to man the police posts behind the front line to turn back “stragglers” – deserters – who joined the steady flow of walking wounded and litter-bearers moving to the rear.*

  It does not seem that attacks along M. Castellone were ever pressed to the col connecting it with the Colle S. Angelo feature. But the 142nd almost reached Albaneta on the 11th and only the intervention of Oberst Schulz, who committed a platoon of engineers until he could organise a force from his 200th Panzer Grenadier Regiment from behind Points 505 and 575, saved the position. Meanwhile, the terrifying Nebelwerfers from the 71st Regiment caught a company of the 142nd on the forward slopes of Phantom Ridge and on the open ground in front of the buildings called Albaneta. Few of them returned.

  Castellone was a sinister feature – scrubby trees and bushes grew on the three ring contours, but elsewhere there was little shelter. Daylight movement brought immediate retribution from the artillery observers of both sides. The rocks splintered and had as much power to kill and maim as the metal of shells and bombs. Yet it was a highway to the Colle S. Angelo ridge, and if sufficient strength could have been found it provided a route straight to the rear of the German positions.

  Baade recognised the threat and had been waiting to mount a two-pronged counter-attack, operation MICHAEL, since February 5. The left thrust was to cut through to Terelle and bring the reverse slopes of Snakeshead and Maiola under direct fire. The right was to retake Snakeshead and roll up the Point 475 ridge from the north. Early in the morning of the 12th, Baade at last had a battalion of the 200th Panzer Grenadiers ready for the left thrust, but he had to forego the other. The Grenadiers, it seems, got right to the end of the ridge, meeting little opposition, but they were so heavily shelled all the way that the battalion lost 8 officers and 160 men and had to be pulled back. From then until May, when the Poles used this route with initial failure and final success, Castellone saw no important fighting.

  More bitter and continuous was the fighting for the positions immediately behind the Monastery. The German defences on Points 569, 593, 450–445, Monastery Hill, and 444 were arranged round the rim of a bowl. When one position was lost it could be counter-attacked from another point on the rim. The strongpoints were not reinforced by concrete or panther turrets, as were the ones in the town, but caves in Monastery Hill, right under the walls of the Monastery itself and behind Point 593 provided shelter for reserves and aid posts.* Antipersonnel mines were used effectively, particularly in front of the Point 450–445 ridge. The defenders learned from experience to cover every dangerous approach with machine-gun fire. Gradually, they strengthened their sangars, as the number of their dead and wounded mounted from incessant mortar and artillery fire and strafing fighter-bombers, of which they complained bitterly. But they did not measure their casualties in hundreds like the attackers. It is remarkable that although “the head” of Snakeshead Ridge was higher than Point 593 by a few feet, and the other American firm bases were higher than Point 450, the German defences were hidden on the reverse slopes. In contrast the forwar
d American positions were exposed. The Americans could take only two routes to the German positions. They could move along the narrow and closely observed ridge of Snakeshead to Point 593, the highest point on the rim, and by Points 569, 476 and 444 to the Monastery; or from the 475–474 ridge, across the grain of the country to Points 450–445, and from there across a deep gully to the Monastery.

  The 135th won and lost the summit of Point 593 several times between February 6 and 9 and ultimately American sangars were built within forty yards of the Germans on the top. So close were the two sides that it was not possible to shell Point 593 with safety. In the spring of 1944 green shrubs grew among the boulders and screes – an oasis in a sea of death and brown destruction.

  The 168th launched three great attacks by the other route to the Monastery. They held Point 450–445 only briefly and had to be content with some uncomfortable platoon positions in the gully below it. One of their attacks flowed over Point 445 and down to the foot of Point 516, the hill on which the Monastery stood. A patrol winkled some prisoners out of the caves up on the road but fierce machine-gun fire from Points 444 and 476 in the rear, as well as from further along Monastery Hill, prevented them from mounting a heavy attack on that line of approach.

  By the end of the 9th, both sides were already exhausted. Rain and snow storms on the 10th added to the misery of the men. In one last effort Ryder used the 141st and 142nd in an attempt to clear Point 593 and Albaneta, but in vain. By the evening of the 11th the 2nd Corps had to admit that it could do no more. The 135th, with rifle companies down to an average of thirty, were still losing men from shells and sickness even in reserve. The 168th companies may have averaged sixty. The 36th Division had started the battle in a weak state. By the end its battalions were little more than a hundred strong. Down in the Rapido valley, the 133rd Regiment had been attacking the 211th Grenadier Regiment incessantly. It, too, was exhausted.