Tug of War

by Shelfold Bidwell

  As it happened the fighter-bomber attack had been cancelled only to be replaced, almost at once, by one that was far more formidable. When Clark, then at Anzio, agreed to the revived mission against the Monastery late on the afternoon of the 12th, he told Gruenther not to allow it to take place before 10 a.m. next day. By then he intended to have spoken to Alexander in the hope of dissuading him from the project altogether. Bombarding the Monastery would not help the first phase of Dimoline’s attack, as he wished to conduct it. If the air-strike had been arranged in its original specification, with fighter-bombers, and there had been a pause while the 4th Indian Division fought for its jump-off line, there might have been a faint hope that the true situation inside the Monastery could have been ascertained, although that did not answer the question of how to neutralise the enemy posts close to the foot of the walls without danger to the building. Neither Clark nor Alexander, however, had any first-hand knowledge of the tactical importance of the knobs and wrinkles of rocks over which the battle had to be fought, or indeed where the jump-off line actually was, except from a map, showing a horizontal advance of less than a quarter of a mile to the Monastery. In any case, Clark had no time for details that should have been the concern of battalion and brigade commanders: with the situation in Anzio in mind he wanted immediate effective action. What he had to do was to force or manoeuvre Alexander into taking the decision to bomb or not to bomb. He presented his argument skilfully.

  Half-measures, like an attack limited to precision bombing by a few aircraft, he said, were no guarantee that the 4th Indian Division would secure a lodgement in the building, but if it were not in fact occupied by the Germans, such half-hearted action would give them ample excuse to do so. He suggested that there were only two courses: not to bomb at all, or flatten the Monastery with the biggest concentration of aircraft that could be arranged. Alexander unhesitatingly chose to bomb. For once he was positive. He agreed to approach Maitland Wilson without delay, his correct channel to General Eaker and so to Major-General Nathan F. Twining, USAAF, who commanded the Mediterranean Allied Strategic Air Force with its heavy bombers, while Clark’s “own” airman, Brigadier-General Gordon Saville, 12th Air Support Command, took the matter up through air channels. Eaker and his people were equivocal about the suggestion on technical grounds. But as the Combined Chiefs of Staff, urged on by Arnold, had for some time been dissatisfied with the slow progress in Italy and considered that not enough use was being made of air-power to help the armies forward, Eaker decided to commit his heavy bombers for political reasons. They were ready to go on the 14th.

  During the afternoon of the 13th Freyberg and his air support staff officer were called in by Gruenther to hear of a plan to use “700 odd tons in 1,000 and 2,000 pound bombs”, and also keep up the bombardment on subsequent days. Nothing was said about the bomb safety line nor was any direct liaison between the ground troops and the bombers arranged. Freyberg did not point out that the 14th was a day too soon when he was told about the mission. When he returned to his own HQ his chief of staff came in with the news from the 4th Indian Division that the 5th Brigade would not be in position until the morning of the 15th. Freyberg phoned Gruenther to inform him and asked for a twenty-four-hour postponement. Gruenther immediately agreed subject to weather and the requirements of Lucas at Anzio, where the German Operation FISCHFANG was expected to start on the 16th. From then on things began to go badly wrong.

  Freyberg had been ill-advised not to tell Gruenther the truth about the situation at Snakeshead. The consequence was that Clark thought that the Indians were being slow. Keyes had kept quiet and Gruenther never learned that the 2nd Corps had relinquished its forward positions. There was worse to follow. On the morning of the 14th Dimoline learnt that when the 1st/2nd Gurkha Rifles had attempted to take over the positions of the 142nd Infantry in the valley below Point 593 and on its north side, they too proved to have been abandoned by the Americans, and that the enemy was in them. Dimoline gave Freyberg this latest instalment in his tale of woe that afternoon. It meant that Point 593 could only be attacked on a one-company front as there was no way around it on the right. Dimoline said that he had to take the advice of his commanders on the spot that to attack the Monastery without taking Point 593 would be suicidal, since their right flank and rear would be completely open. Freyberg was very short with him. He would take no excuses for putting off the main attack. Dimoline was to stick to the date agreed: “We cannot go on putting it off indefinitely.”

  Dimoline sensed that he had failed to persuade Freyberg to allow a separate attack on Point 593 on the 15th, and now he had been rebuffed again. Yet his staff continued to believe that the main attack was to be on the 16th/17th and prepared a plan for withdrawal behind a suitable bomb safety line, assuming the bombing was to be late on the 16th. On the evening of the 14th Freyberg saw Clark at Fifth Army HQ and they “laid on terrific air attack on Monastery to start tomorrow”. The word “start” meant that he had been promised mediums and fighter-bombers on the 16th too, although not heavies, which might be called to Anzio. The time of the attack was to be as late in the day as possible. Later that night, and precisely when is not clear, the air force looked at the weather forecast, which was generally good for the next three days, and decided that as cloud was expected to thicken in the mountains in the afternoon, they would advance the time of the bombing from about 1 p.m. to 9.30 a.m. As late as 2 a.m. the change of timing was not known by the 2nd Corps. In fact it was not until 7.30 a.m. that they sent a message to 34th Division: “Abbey will be bombed this morning 0930 and 1015.” The vagueness and lateness of both reports does not say much for the staff work at Fifth Army HQ, which may have been under the impression that all Americans would be off the hill.8

  Late that evening Dimoline called and learnt that the bombing was the next day. “A difficult situation arose. He did not realise the bombing was on tomorrow.” Not only could he not attack the Monastery on the night of the 15th/16th, as he thought that he had explained to Freyberg, but the final relief of the 168th Infantry by the 5th Indian Brigade would only be completed in the early hours of the 15 th and so the leading troops could not possibly withdraw behind the BSL. In fact, the takeover had been so difficult that he did not think that he could attack the Monastery until the night of the 17th/18th. Freyberg was very angry. If they cancelled the heavies they would never get them again, he told Dimoline. He refused to go to Clark “cap in hand”, after all the fuss over the arrangements. After some arm-twisting Dimoline agreed to attack the Monastery on the 16th/17th covered by the mediums and fighter-bombers scheduled for the second day of the air attack. Dimoline said that he hoped that his forward troops would be safe.

  At 9.30 a.m. on the 15th the bombing began and continued with long pauses until 1.30 p.m. One hundred and thirty-five B-17s dropped 500-pound bombs and incendiaries. They were assisted by forty-three Mitchells and Marauders. The bombing of the heavies from between 15,000 and 18,000 feet was inaccurate and it was only the final flights of mediums at 10,000 feet that were able to demolish the outer walls. Even then, the walls of the west wing remained standing, and the massive foundation, with its rabbit-warren of cellars, was untouched. The building was not reduced to powder but made into an admirable defence position which the Germans quickly occupied after dark. The 7th Brigade received only a few minutes’ notice of the bombing and the units received none. “They told the monks and they told the enemy but they did not tell us,” wrote Glennie, whose battalion received a few loose bombs. The division had twenty-four casualties.

  Two attacks by Glennie’s battalion on the 15th/16th and 16th/17th on Point 593 failed. Nevertheless, the division attacked the Monastery on the 17th and 18th. In three nights of hard fighting against the 1st Parachute Division, well protected by anti-personnel minefields and wire, the 4th Indian Division had nearly forty officers and six hundred men killed, wounded and missing.

  On the Rapido flats, two companies of Maoris crossed the flooded fields and the b
ridges and causeways repaired under fire by the engineers, and fought their way into the railway station. Behind them the engineers failed to complete the last of several bridges to enable tanks to follow. Thousands of rounds of smoke shell concealed their work from German observers on the mountain but it was to no avail. In the late afternoon the survivors in the station were attacked by a few tanks. Their PIAT ammunition exhausted, they withdrew.

  This brief mention of the fighting does not presume to do justice to the effort of the Indians on the heights nor to the superb fighting qualities of the 28th New Zealand Battalion in the Cassino station. The purpose here has been to determine how the Monastery was bombed on the wrong day using inappropriate aircraft.

  So ended the Second Battle of Cassino, but Clark was not yet prepared to give up, and Freyberg wasted no time in preparing for the Third.

  * With good reason. Apart from ballistic probable errors, target identifications were often faulty. The authors have certain knowledge. The USAAF bombed the town of Souk-el-Arba in Tunisia, well inside the Allied lines, and the administrative echelon of the 74th Medium Regiment, Royal Artillery, 10,000 yards from the intended target and one of its battery command posts (FDCs) during the third Cassino battle, killing all the occupants.

  13

  SCARCELY ANY GOAL

  I have beheld the agonies of war

  Through many a weary season; seen enough

  To make me hold that scarcely any goal

  Is worth the reaching by so red a road.

  Thomas Hardy, The Dynasts, 111, 5

  When the Second Battle of Cassino died down on February 18, Kesselring sent his congratulations to von Vietinghoff. “Convey my heartfelt gratitude to 211th Regiment and to 1st Parachute Regiment not quite so strongly. I am very pleased that the New Zealanders have had a smack in the nose. You must recommend the local commander for the Knight’s Cross.” He felt that Oberst Knuth’s grenadiers in Cassino had done a particularly good job in resisting the 133rd Infantry and then turning to beat the New Zealanders in their rear. It was they who had saved the day. Phillips wrote that “New Zealand hopes were dupes and German fears were liars”, because only two companies of Maoris had been used against the station, but that the battle could have been won.1 After deceiving the Germans into expecting an attack through the Americans on the Caruso road Freyberg had lost the initiative by not reinforcing the Maoris. A serious lack of drive and courage amongst the engineers, who admittedly came under heavy fire, had caused the bridging operation to be abandoned and the infantry to be withdrawn. Had the Maoris been reinforced the engineers would have had the time and the inducement to finish the job. The bridgehead at the station would have been invaluable when the battle resumed.

  Freyberg drafted an outline plan for the new, third battle, operation DICKENS, on the 19th and took it to Clark that evening. (So called because someone recalled that Charles Dickens had once visited Montecassino.) Freyberg’s problem was to find fresh ideas, since every variation so far seemed to have been already played; wide flanking movements, shorter hooks, direct river crossings and a drive into Cassino from the north down the Caruso road, where the 133rd US Infantry still held out in the outskirts of the town. Just before he saw Clark, Freyberg discussed the plan with Kippenberger and agreed with him that it was essential to enter the town from more than one direction and to get tanks into it, with the infantry, quickly. As the bottleneck between Point 175 and the Rapido restricted the rate at which infantry could enter the battle by the Caruso road, they decided to put only the Indians in there, while the New Zealanders entered by the bridge over the Rapido on Highway No. 6. The town would be taken in the first phase, and the Monastery heights would fall to the Indians in the second, while the New Zealanders exploited beyond the town, helping to dislodge the Germans above by outflanking them.

  Clark’s comment on the plan was that Freyberg had got it back to front; he did not think that Cassino could be taken until the Monastery heights had been secured. Freyberg, on the other hand, no longer believed that operations behind and beyond the Monastery could succeed. There were insuperable problems of terrain and logistics. The Indian Division could not attack on a broad front and it would be slaughtered if it attacked on a narrow one. The 7th Indian Brigade was exhausted, and most of the 11th was still required as porters. Only the 5th Brigade was reasonably fresh, but, even if reinforced by a battalion of the 11th, it was not strong enough to attack in two places. His own New Zealanders had to attack the town and exploit beyond it in conjunction with CC“B” of the 1st US Armored, also in two directions; southwards towards S. Angelo to enable the British 78th Division, which had moved into the line south of Cassino, to cross the Rapido, and along Highway No. 6. When Clark told him that he was “shocked” that he should repeat the mistake made at S. Angelo by attacking without first securing his flanks, Freyberg agreed to compromise. He would commit the 5th Indian Brigade against the Monastery. Its jump-off line would be from Point 445 at the top of the Hill on the right, through Point 236 above the top bend of the road from the town to the Monastery, to the Castle on the left. The 6th New Zealand Brigade would thrust into the town along the Caruso road. In short, the Indians would take the Monastery and the New Zealanders the town. The entry by Highway No. 6, and possibly by the railway line, would be opened up on the first night of the battle and used by the 5th New Zealand Brigade and CC“B” for the exploitation phase.2

  The modified plan for DICKENS was issued on the 21st. From the beginning it was an unfortunate tactical compromise and a few days later became a strategic compromise as well. The heights beyond the Monastery and the town formed a single defence unit linked by a gully that ran down the hill from behind Point 445, past Points 236 and 165, under the Castle on Point 193 and into the town. The Germans could use this route to reinforce the town from the Hill, and vice versa, if they continued to hold the line of strongpoints above and along its length. In theory the way to close off this avenue was to launch a broad-front attack against it, but it could not be retained unless Point 445 at the top was taken and held, which was unlikely, because it had repulsed many American and Indian attacks. At the other end, the Castle would be hard to hold unless the thrust into the town down the Caruso road penetrated beyond the Hotel Continental. It was the stopper in the second bottleneck, the first being the one between Point 175 and the junction of the Pasquale road and the parallel road at the entry into the town. This second bottleneck was between the Castle and the Gari river which ran southwards parallel to Highway No. 6 (Via Casilina) around the back of the station and provided an obstacle to an advance towards the Baron’s Palace. Once the New Zealanders were astride Highway No. 6 at that point they would close off the escape of the Germans in the town. Freyberg’s first idea had been to squeeze the enemy in this corridor between the Indians, coming down Caruso road and working along the hillside from the Castle, and the New Zealanders, with their tanks, coming round the southern outskirts from Highway No. 6. Both brigades would have stayed clear of the centre of the town.

  The snag to the new plan was that the hillside could only be scaled at one place, Point 175. The Castle had to be taken either from there or by troops climbing up an almost vertical hillside from the town after advancing down Caruso road. The Castle was the only entry to the heights if Point 445 remained in enemy hands. Freyberg had weakly consigned himself to passing all his troops through the Caruso road-Point 175 bottleneck and then agreed to a divergent attack with one arm striking out for the Monastery and the other into the town. It was precisely the situation that he and Kippenberger had sought to avoid; one in which gaining and maintaining momentum was going to be very difficult. He had wanted to avoid fighting in the town. Now he was resigned to having his New Zealanders fighting from house to house. It was then that he asked Clark for heavy bombers. If he was going to commit the 6th Brigade into the town he would try to ensure that not a brick remained and the Germans would die under the rubble. He would have the infantry swiftly occupy the ruins
before the German survivors recovered, and the tanks would accompany them, if possible. Behind the leading battalion the Indians would take over the Castle and assault across the hillside to the Monastery. However, bombing demanded the imposition of a bomb safety line, that irritating necessity, and the infantry would have to withdraw 1,000 yards before the bombing and advance again, a source of delay and confusion.

  Why were not Freyberg’s and Clark’s conceptions both employed; namely by attacking simultaneously across the river into the southern part of town, down Caruso road into the town and after it had been taken from the Castle across the hillside to the Monastery? The reason was that Freyberg could only commit himself to two thrusts out of three because he had been told to reserve his second brigade, the 5th, to exploit. Clark did not want to use a brigade of the 78th Division for that role since it would have created a delay while it passed through the New Zealanders; he was probably right. He insisted on exploitation, impracticable though it was with so small a force, because the emergency at Anzio had reached a climax on the 19th and he wanted to draw German units to the Rapido front. In this dubious aim lay the source of the second, strategic, compromise in the plan.

  In the days between the 19th, when the plan was conceived, and March 15, when it was eventually executed, Alexander’s operational concept had changed radically. In January Lieutenant-General A. F. Harding had become his chief of staff and at once brought his strong intelligence and powers of analysis to bear on the subject of future strategy. His plan, to be later realised in Operation DIADEM (a code-name adopted later) will be described in Chapter 15. Its bare bones were a rationalisation of the mixture of Allied divisions, the concentration of the main effort of the Allied armies on the Garigliano-Cassino front, and the postponement of a major offensive until the weather had improved, permitting full use to be made of the Allied superiority in the air and in tanks. As preliminary steps the New Zealand, the 4th Indian and the 78th Divisions were moved into the Fifth Army sector, and he proposed when the time was ripe to shift the inter-army boundary to the Liri river. Meanwhile, by February 22 Harding judged that FISCHFANG had been defeated and that von Mackensen’s bolt was shot, so the 6th Corps was in no danger and did not require a rescue operation at Cassino. He recommended that Freyberg’s aim should be restricted to securing a bridgehead big enough to serve as a springboard for the Eighth Army in the May offensive.