Tug of War

by Shelfold Bidwell

  I have been so hamstrung and jockeyed by higher headquarters that the Fifth has lost a great deal of its power to control its own tactical operations but I will insist, as long as I am commander on presenting my views and demanding their execution as far as possible.

  It is a measure of Clark’s confusion that in his diary he never had a good word to say about the British Army, but strongly resented any move to remove his British divisions. It is also a measure of the man that he never revealed his resentments by anything more than momentary outbreaks of irritation, when he took advantage of Alexander’s monumental calm.6 He poured it all out in his diaries.7 Perhaps it would have been better if the two men had had one good blazing quarrel, but neither man was built for such a solution. As the fighting in Anzio died down Clark turned his attention to the problem of breaking through at Cassino, enough to try the best of generals.

  * Five-barrelled rocket launchers known to US troops as “Moaning Minnies”, from the discouraging sound of the bombs in flight.

  10

  FEAR, HOPE AND FAILURE

  After Walker’s Texans had been defeated on the Rapido Clark decided to attack Cassino town itself. He had rejected that course earlier for the good reason that its defences were so formidable. Indeed, Italian staff studies and exercises over the years had concluded that it was impregnable from the south. Were Clark to succeed, and to go on to take Rome, he would join a very small band that included Belisarius, the Byzantine, in 536, and Garibaldi, who had conquered the Eternal City from that direction, none of whom, however, had found a defended Montecassino blocking his way.1

  Cassino sat astride the Via Casilina which crossed the Rapido before entering the town. In the centre of the town the road turned southwards through a right angle, skirted the foot of Montecassino (Monastery Hill) with the huge stone abbey on its summit, and then curved north-westward up the Liri valley towards Piedimonte. Monastery Hill and the town were a single defence unit; the hill rammed into the town like the bows of a huge ship, its prow a ruined castle. From the castle you could drop stones down the chimneys of the houses below. South and east of the town and the Via Casilina the flat lands on either side of the Rapido were wet and had been deliberately flooded. Huge lakes of water made that approach impracticable, even to tracked vehicles. The railway entered the town on that quarter by a series of bridges and viaducts over the main stream, its tributaries and some small canals. All of them had been demolished.

  A glance at the ground was enough to persuade Clark to cross the river north of the town. He would then advance under the port side of the ship, as it were, on a road paralleling the river’s west bank, and enter the town from the north. He would, at the same time, climb the hills above the road and make a short right hook to occupy the summit of Monastery Hill and to cut the Via Casilina west of the town. This assignment he gave to Ryder’s 34th Division.

  Time was still Clark’s enemy. Ryder’s operation would not start until the 24th, and, unaided, it would take him a week to clear the Germans who were blocking the Via Casilina in the Cassino position. Needing to bring more pressure on the Germans facing Ryder, Clark decided to use Juin’s CEF on a thrust line that threatened Cassino more directly. The CEF had been engaged on a wide hook deep in the mountains and making towards Atina. Clark now persuaded Juin to shift his thrust to the southern side of M. Cairo with objectives Terelle and then Piedimonte. The Frenchman was not keen on it for he believed firmly in the old military adage that sweat saves blood; his interpretation was to advance where the Germans did not expect Him, in the higher mountains. Clark’s new directive still required his units to climb mountains, to depend on mule trains for their supplies and to live on scanty rations and go short of water, as before, but also to run head-on into tenacious resistance to his attempt to outflank Cassino within sight of the town. The immediate objectives M. Belvedere and M. Terelle were bound to be tough ones, for which reason he wished Clark had ordered the 34th Division to attack on his flank or left him to pursue his original objective, Atina. He did not approve of Clark’s tendency to give single divisions or corps separate and loosely coordinated tasks; the CEF and 34th Division ought to attack side by side. A key to the fighting in the mountains was observation. M. Cifalco had been within his grasp but would now be abandoned. From it the Germans would look into his rear as he attacked towards Terelle, on to the Rapido where Ryder was to attack, and be able to observe most of the American and New Zealand gun areas behind M. Trocchio.

  Juin started his new operation on the 25th and Ryder on the 24th. Like the 36th, Ryder’s division had had a tough time getting to the Rapido. His operation report for January, issued on about February 3 when two of his regiments seemed on the eve of a great victory up in the clouds behind the Monastery, included this passage:

  Fighting was the bitterest met to date; casualties from all causes were high; replacements were slow in arriving and were inadequate in number. Nevertheless, with 33 days of front line duty behind them, 28 of which had been spent in sanguinary conflict, the period ended with the 135th Infantry attacking through the 168th Infantry to capture the high ridge which dominated the valley and barred further progress to the northwest.

  The 34th Division’s operations staff had not exaggerated their experience in January, although had they known what was in store for them in the first ten days of February they might have worded it differently. The division had reached the Rapido opposite Cassino after bitter fighting. Its infantry had inched forward against tenacious 44th Infantry Division rearguards. When the leading companies reached the valley it was a quagmire. The Germans had diverted the river. Patrols splashed forward and found it running swiftly between steep, muddy banks or stone walls. The promising approaches to it were blocked by bands of barbed wire and mines.

  Towering above the Rapido was the formidable bulk of the Monte-cassino massif. The Colle Maiola spur rose steeply above the road which was one of the divisional objectives. Astride the road an Italian artillery depot at M. Villa, called “the Barracks”, seemed to be strongly held by the enemy. From it a re-entrant, or “draw” as the US Army called it, ran up to the high ground. A northern spur of Colle Maiola ran into a much larger valley in which the village of Caira guarded the twisting road leading up to Terelle. The valley led on up into the clouds to M. Castellone, one of the 34th Division’s probable objectives. If the direct route to Cassino above the Barracks were blocked the Caira valley would offer a back door to Montecassino. Detached and hovering above everything and only visible on clear days was the snow-covered mass of M. Cairo, 5,500 feet. It, too, was a vantage point for observant German eyes.

  The Barracks was the first objective of the assaulting 133rd Infantry Regiment on January 24. Having taken it the regiment would attack southwards into Cassino. Behind it the 168th would cross and attack into the hills. But the mud near the river, even more mines than had been expected, fierce small-arms fire and heavy mortaring and shelling brought the attack to a halt on the near bank. In the early morning of January 25 Ryder shifted the attack further north to avoid the fire from the Barracks. Attacking with three battalions abreast and every gun that could bear pounding the Barracks and the hills behind, the 133rd hacked out a shallow bridgehead. But they had not done enough to allow the 168th Infantry to pass through them and had temporarily lost the will to move forward themselves under the German fire. The battalions remained in their wet and shallow holes being hammered all through the 26th.

  For the operation to succeed, it was essential to seize a bridgehead of sufficient depth that enemy anti-tank guns could not dominate the river crossings. If tanks could cross into the bridgehead they might be able to eliminate the strongpoints holding up the 133rd by direct fire, but itwas not possible. The valley bottom was so soft that twenty tanks of the supporting 756th Tank Battalion were so badly bogged on the approaches to the river they could not be recovered until the battle was over, and routes by-passing the boggy ground were covered by German anti-tank guns.

&nbs
p; After a company of the 135th, the remaining regiment in the 34th Division, crossed on the left of the 133rd and was pinned by fire, Keyes pressed Ryder to commit the 168th, as Clark was in turn pressing him to hurry and get armour moving through Cassino. Clark, bad as the going was, still believed that it was possible to launch armour up the Liri valley, and the Via Casilina through Cassino was the bottleneck that he was determined to clear. Consequently the 168th was ordered to cross the Rapido on the right of the 133rd. With six companies of engineers building tracks four tanks at last were able to join the forward infantry on the 27th and help them carve out a shallow bridgehead. Although all were knocked out by the early afternoon, and others were prevented by the collapse of the tracks leading to the river from crossing, the infantry made progress alone. Their principal objectives were a grassy hill above the barracks called Point 213 and a knoll nearer Caira village, Point 56. With these captured, they might attack the barracks and then advance down the road to Cassino and in the other direction to Caira.

  That night of the 27th a company reached the top of Point 213 and occupied it. And then in one of those moments of stress caused by fatigue and isolation its commander lost his nerve. He ordered his men down again. A panic started and soon two other companies retired. The regimental commander then decided to withdraw his remaining companies which had been isolated.

  The French had made progress on the right of the 34th Division by this time. Attacking on January 25 they took the Colle Grosso. By the end of the 26th they were on Belvedere above the top bend of the hairpin road to Terelle. They could not reach M. Abate, from which they would have overlooked Terelle, until the Americans had made some progress, but from Belvedere they were able to harass the German positions in Caira village.

  With the German defence on his right so loosened by the French, Ryder recommitted his 168th Infantry further north to attack across the lower ground and take Hills 213 and 56. On January 29 his tanks found a way across the river. Their appearance on the far bank proved decisive by the afternoon, although the night was far advanced before the two objectives fell. That night also, the 142nd, brought over from the 36th Division to reinforce Ryder and provide a link with the French, started working across the slopes behind Caira and below Belvedere in the direction of M. Castellone. On January 30 Caira fell to a platoon of infantry and tanks of the 168th.

  With the 133rd still held up by the Barracks and unable, for the time being, to advance on Cassino, Ryder’s next move was to commit the 135th and 142nd through the breach at Caira to exploit into the mountains between Monastery Hill and Castellone. The clouds which commonly descend from M. Cairo enveloped the advance of both regiments. The 135th occupied much of the Colle Maiola and the first and highest ring contour of the Castellone feature, while the 142nd reached the Mass Manna feature, only a kilometre from Terelle. Both objectives were seized on February 1 almost unopposed. In the narrow passage between the Rapido and the hills the 133rd attacked and cleared the Barracks after bitter fighting on the 1st and 2nd but when tanks and infantry tried to exploit towards Cassino they were halted by anti-tank and machine-gun fire.

  While the 135th was continuing its thrust towards the back door of the Cassino defences and the 133rd was held up at the front, von Mackensen was beginning his counter-stroke against the British 1st Division at Campoleone. Churchill, watching “his” force at Anzio with disgust which was now turning into apprehension, urged Alexander and Clark to keep attacking the Germans at Cassino. “We have a great need to keep continually engaging them, and even a battle of attrition is better than standing by and watching the Russians fight.”

  The French and the 34th were certainly doing all that could be expected of them and it had been touch and go for the Germans. January 26 in particular had been a day of crisis for them. The 132nd Grenadier Regiment of the 44th Division had halted the Americans in the marshes opposite M. Villa, but the two battalions of the 191st Grenadiers from the 71st Division which lost Belvedere and the entrance to the Secco valley leading to Belmonte had been hard hit. A small number of French tanks tried to break through to Belmonte but were stopped by artillery fire. HQ 14th Panzer Corps was convinced that an armoured formation was working with the French. The 2nd/191st and some engineers, held in reserve near Terelle, went forward to retake Belvedere but failed. To Schmidt von Altendstadt, the new Chief of Staff of 14th Panzer Corps, it appeared that the French would take Terelle within hours, thus “causing the Cassino block to cave in from the north”.

  Von Altenstadt combed the southern front for reserves. But the 10th Corps was attacking again and on the 27th it forced the redoubtable 29th Panzer Grenadiers off M. Natale and M. Rotondo. Colle Ceracoli was also under attack in the 15th Panzer Grenadiers’ sector. Consequently, only two of the battalions of the third regiment of the 44th Division, the 134th, could be spared to move north into corps reserve in the Belmonte area. The 1st/134th went into action there on the evening of the 26th, but was halted by artillery fire. The 3rd/134th reinforced two battalions of the 191st and one of the 131st which was sealing off the French salient. The 94th Division’s reconnaissance battalion was sent to the Atina area from the south.

  The pattern for German tactics at Cassino was already taking shape. Kesselring personally controlled the use of reserves because he had to balance the needs of the Fourteenth Army at Anzio with those of the Tenth at Cassino. He milked divisions elsewhere, unit by unit, to reinforce the two threatened sectors. As a result the Germans held the front with small Kampfgruppen not divisions, but as they fought against single Allied divisions, whose activities were not closely coordinated or reinforced and consequently grew weaker by the day, these piecemeal defence methods into which they were forced by necessity became a virtue. They also confused the Allies’ Intelligence staffs which found, for example, regiments of the 3rd, 29th and 90th Panzer Grenadiers at both Anzio and Cassino.2

  On the 27th, the 15th Panzer Grenadier Division had to extend its left boundary to cover the positions vacated by the 134th Grenadiers and the Germans still expected an attack on Cassino town from the east. Kesselring visited the 44th Division and 14th Corps on that day and calmly announced that the Allies were not strong enough to break through north of Cassino. He had been encouraged in this belief when the 2nd/191st chased the French off M. Abate on which they had gained a foothold, and the 1st and 3rd/134th retook the top of the road from Caira to Terelle. Caira itself was still firmly held. It looked to both the Tenth Army and Army Group headquarters that the French had been brought to a standstill, for which von Vietinghoff was “deeply thankful”.

  The man responsible for the whole German front from the sea to the watershed of the Apennines was Frido von Senger, a gentle hero, far from the Hollywood stereotype of a stiff, monocled, arrogant German general. He had neither the charisma of Rommel nor the forceful personality of the two men who were to defend Cassino against all comers: Ernst-Guenther Baade, commander of the 90th Panzer Grenadiers,* and Richard Heidrich of the 1st Parachute Division. He was a man of intellect, a Rhodes Scholar at the outbreak of the First World War, as his son was to be after the conclusion of the Second.

  His face once seen was not easily forgotten: his high forehead, under black hair receding at 53, bisected by a prominent vein, and his great beak of a nose between deep-sunken dark eyes, gave him in profile the look of a hawk. In repose his face was austere, but when he smiled, as he often did, the effect was attractive; and his hands with their long fingers, with which he gestured eloquently, were those of a pianist. His daughter remembered especially the way her father carried his trim, athletic frame: “He was quite different from the Prussian image. You would have to see him move, with that gentle grace, not at all stiff – more French really than Prussian.”3

  Von Senger was a Bavarian, a career soldier, who had not been involved politically on behalf of or against the Nazi Party, although he was unsympathetic towards it. By 1940 he was commanding a motor brigade in the great armoured advance across northern France i
n May. After France was defeated in June von Senger stayed on to enjoy two years in association with the rural aristocracy of France, which he found similar to his own in its sympathies, and then became chief liaison officer to the Franco-Italian Armistice Commission in Turin. There, too, he found himself in an environment that he enjoyed and understood. In 1942, though, he was plunged into the Russian slaughter-house when the division that he commanded was one that attempted to rescue von Paulus at Stalingrad in the winter of 1942–3. Returning to the west he was assigned to evacuating the German troops, in particular the 90th Panzer Grenadiers, from Corsica. In October he took command of the 14th Panzer Corps in the Bernhard Line. After Stalingrad he knew that his country would be defeated and he prayed that its leaders would make peace. In the meantime he fought on from his headquarters in Roccasecca (where, as he noted, being a devout Catholic, Saint Thomas Aquinas was born) juggling his units and encouraging them with his visits, usually on foot for their positions were often hundreds of feet up a mountain.4