Monte Cassino

The following is the 7th installment of the Memories of my Uncle Jim who served in the 1st and 8th Army, who as agreed that they may be posted.

CHAPTER SEVEN

MONTE CASSINO

So the Brigade took up positions at Cassino. This was a place that I would imagine Hell must be like. The Inniskillings went on 28th March and were closest to the Monastery, it taking around four hours to climb to the positions. Trenches couldn’t be dug, so the men had to build ‘Sangers’, rocks placed upon one another and in daylight movement was lethal. So a call of nature had to be answered the best you could.

We of the Anti-Tank Platoon couldn’t use our 6-pounder guns in this position, so we had other jobs to do. Some would be riflemen, I myself had the job of escorting mules taking supplies up the Companies at night. We would start off from the Mule Point as it got dark and make our way over the land, hoping that the Royal Engineers had cleared the mines and laid white tapes, and that Jerry didn’t catch us with an Artillery ‘Stonk’. We had to go over a small bridge over a river. This stretch was known as the ‘Mad Mile’ because the enemy knew we had to cross it. From there we started to climb up the Battalion. The smell of dead men and mules was terrible. Having delivered the supplies we would load the water cans up into a jeep trailer and set off down the track like mad. Jerry was forced to hear us because the empty jerry-cans rattled like thunder. To get back to the Mule Point we had to pass through a village called Caira, which was constantly shelled. So you had to time it to dash through as soon as one landed before the next. The mules were brought back by the Italian muleteers.

There are always some men who show remarkable courage. One such man was the Brigade Roman Catholic Padre, Father Dan Kelleher. He was awarded the Military Cross for the work he did in carrying badly wounded men while under extreme shellfire in the village of Caira, and that wasn’t the only time.

I think it would be some time in April when the Irish Brigade said a temporary farewell to Cassino and moved back to a village named Farmicola. It was just like heaven — a nice valley with green crops etc, and if it’s the place I am thinking of, at night when it was dark it was alive with fireflies. We had four days to relax and unwind before beginning training ready for the next job, such as river crossing, a thing you couldn’t go far in Italy without meeting, street fighting, and working with tanks. You might think why this was necessary when we had fought all through North Africa, Sicily, and from the Toe of Italy up as far as Cassino. This was for the benefit of the new lads who had joined us and had not seen action, and also for chaps who had been made up to NCOs to replace those killed and wounded.

Everybody had six days leave. A choice of visit to Capri, the ruins of Pompeii, Naples, Bari or Ravello. I think I chose Naples because I sent a small box of oranges from the Royal Palace.

Like all good things this rest came to an end on 10th May. The Irish Brigade moved back to the Cassino front. Until Cassino was taken the road to Rome was blocked. One hour before midnight on 11th May for forty minutes, sixteen hundred of our guns opened up on the German gunlines, then switched to the objectives which the Infantry were attacking over the River Rapido. In January, the Americans had lost a lot of men attempting to cross this river. This time it had to succeed.

As you will understand, after all these years one is not able to remember every little details but what I do remember about this time was waiting to follow the tanks over a little bridge over a little river called the Piopetto. It was around eight o’clock on very misty morning when I got to the other side. I picked up rifles, Brens etc, and put in the back of my truck. We wandered about in the mist for quite a time but later the mist cleared and we got on the right track. The Platoon Officer said “Put your gun here” — this was on a track against a big tree. As I have already mentioned tracks are a bad place to be, as they get shelled a lot. In this case also there were tanks running up and down which always attract shellfire.

Over to the right I noticed a big hill, so I asked “Who is over there?” He replied “I don’t know” and cleared off. So I replied “I know them”. I gave the order to unhook the gun and sent the lads to get the gun ready for action, and to get digging fast. I started to dig my trench away from the tree, and I wanted some beating with a pick and shovel and told the lads to dig at the side of me. Two of them, for some reason, decided to dig under the tree. Normally I would not have allowed them to disobey my orders. But something told me time was short. I had knocked my trench out enough to get my head down and the two under the tree had naturally met with roots, so weren’t very far down. Suddenly what I had feared happened — the German gunners bracketed us, one short, one over, the third one hit the tree, causing shrapnel to come down, hitting one of the lads in the kidney region. His reaction was to jump into my trench and say “I’ve been hit”. I lifted his shirt up and could see the wound, so immediately pushed him out of the trench and took him to the RAP, which was luckily only fifty yards or so away in an old barn. He was a good man but I never saw him again and have often wondered if he survived the war.

When I got back to the gun which had only taken minutes, I couldn’t see any one of my lads, but could hear someone crying. I looked around and found one. He said “I’ve been hit”. I looked at him and said “I’ll bloody hit you if you don’t get up.” What had happened, a shell had thrown up some soil that had dropped on his back. You might think that I was being hard on him but you had to keep a grip on your men. Although I was a sergeant I was just as frightened as them, but couldn’t show it.

I decided to move the gun to a better place, but I had now only three men, and they were rather shaken, and the gun weighed 23 cwt. So as German prisoners were now coming in I made them pull it to a fresh location. I found a ditch close by and decided to put the gun there. We hadn’t been there long when I could hear someone crying, rather hysterically, so I crawled up the ditch and came across a big chap belonging to some other unit. I told him to clear off as I had enough on with my own chaps.

Soon after we got orders to hook up and go forward. Again I was put in a bad position on the junction of two tracks. So once again I found my own position. This was the start of the attack on the Gustav Line in the Liri Valley, and Cassino could not be taken until the Gustave was secured. The Poles had suffered very badly and could not take Cassino until the threat from the Germans had been reduced. This was to come from our Division, the 78th Battleaxe Division particularly the Irish Brigade, with the Inniskillings in the lead. Somewhere in this battle our Colonel was wounded in both legs and refused to leave the field and conducted the battle strapped to a jeep until he fainted from loss of blood. I’ve met him in London several times since the war on the Old Comrades parades and dinners.

At 3.00 pm that afternoon the London Irish were to pass through the Inniskillings on their attack, but German gunfire caught the CO’s order group, fatally injuring the CO of the Rifles and the CO of the Lancers, and seriously wounding several of the Officers as well as most of the signal team. In passing I mention that when our Colonel got wounded the Battalion was taken over by Major John Kerr, who was in the Sergeants’ Mess as a CSM when I went in the Mess in Cumnock, and he eventually became Colonel commanding the Battalion. In this part of the campaign the German shellfire and mortar fire including the Neblwerfer, ‘the six barrel mortar’ was far worse than anything we had seen in Africa and Sicily.

The Battalion did a good lot of house-to-house fighting against the German Paras, and to see them coming out with their hands up was a sight you very rarely saw, but the Skins had caught them on the hop, so they had no time to mount a counter-attack. They also captured over one hundred prisoners and a good amount of weaponry. A large number of Germans died and I understand the Battalion lost four dead and thirty-one wounded. The lads carried out the Regiments Motto that day — Nec Aspera Terent — Difficulties do not Deter.

The battle for Cassino was now being won, although at what a cost - the lives of tens of thousands of young men, as most of us wouldn’t be more than twenty four, and a good lot no more than nineteen.

The Germans abandoned the Cassino positions now, and on the morning of 18th May the Poles were able to raise their flag on the ruins of the Monastery. The Gustav Line having been taken, the next was the Hitler Line and the objective was Rome — but there were many more battles before we got there. I don’t recall any particular incident about this time, but names of some of the places which the Division was concerned with -—Pntecorvo, Aquino, Arce, Caprano, Strangolagalli, Ripi.

One thing that I was not aware of until I read about it in the History of the 38th Irish Brigade happened around this time. The Poles had attacked Piedimonte and in the confusion of the German counter-attack the Black Watch has attacked the 6th Inniskillings. The Major in charge of the Skins informed the Brigadier that he was being attacked by some bare-arsed barbarians - the problem was soon sorted out.

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