Clark’s fury over the Monastery incident is quite understandable: he lost the tactical battle when Freyberg’s corps did not take the Monastery and he lost the political battle when it was destroyed. Two important but unanswered questions bear on these points. The first is how it came about that a request by Freyberg for fighter-bombers, which it was within Clark’s authority to grant without reference to Alexander – other than to inform him, perhaps – became a mission by 135 heavy and 87 medium and light bombers, which had to be authorised by Maidand Wilson and his chief airman, Lieutenant-General Ira Eaker, in Algiers.9 The second bears on the failure of the ground attack. Why did the bombers strike about sixty hours before 4th Indian Division attacked the Monastery? Had the Monastery been captured immediately after the bombing on February 15 its destruction might have been excused even if subsequently it had been found to have been unoccupied by German troops. The act appeared wicked as well as inept because the ground attack failed and the means used were disproportionate and inappropriate to the end desired, for the bombers were inaccurate. Proportionality, the principle on which Eisenhower had based his instruction about wanton damage in December, was ignored. The same criticism may be applied to the destruction of the town of Cassino on March 15.
The reader may have had his fill of fighting after following the fortunes of the US 2nd Corps in the first battle of Cassino that died away on February 11. It will therefore be enough to say that in the two operations that comprised the second and third battles the New Zealand Corps succeeded by the end of March in adding a small bridgehead in the town (too small to provide a springboard for an advance into the Liri valley). The first of these was called AVENGER and opened with the bombing of the Monastery on February 15. The second, DICKENS, exactly a month later, opened with the destruction of what remained of Cassino town. Instead of offering an account of AVENGER, which resulted in no gains, we shall attempt to answer the questions that we posed above, namely how the heavy strategic bombers were committed and why the 4th Indian Division was unready to exploit their mission. First, though, it is necessary to introduce the two divisions on whose behalf the Monastery and the town were destroyed.
The New Zealanders had been in the Mediterranean since 1940. They had fought in Greece and Crete, in Syria and in the Western Desert. Their role at Alamein had been prominent and after it the New Zealanders fought across North Africa, their Government bowing to Churchill’s appeal to keep them in the Mediterranean and to the compelling argument that shipping could not be spared to send them home, as it wished. But when Montgomery wanted the 2nd Division for the invasion of Sicily because it was his most experienced and highly trained formation which worked, in Churchill’s words, “with unsurpassed cohesion”, Mr Fraser, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, demurred until he had consulted the House of Representatives.
The question before the House was whether or not to reinforce the Pacific, as had the Australians. By 1943, however, the Japanese threat had receded from the South Pacific and with it some of the enthusiasm of New Zealanders for fighting there with their 3rd Division. In the long run it was a question of retaining either the 3rd in the Pacific or the 2nd in the Mediterranean and disbanding the other, for the economy also had to be maintained. It was decided to keep both for the time but to recall the 3rd and use it as a pool of replacements for the 2nd. The reasoning was both sentimental and hard-headed. There was a surge of public feeling at the time that enough had been done for the Allied cause by a country of only a little over one and half million and that fighting in both the Pacific and Europe was too much. Affection for Britain was strong even if the military tradition celebrated on Anzac Day was not, so New Zealanders were readier to fight in Europe than against the Japanese in “America’s war”. Moreover, by 1943 the 2nd Division had attained a place in public esteem that could not be ignored. At the time that the House decided to renew its mandate, and to allow it to fight in Italy, glowing pride in its deeds was fanned into flame by Freyberg’s account of its operations up to the Axis surrender at Tunis in April 1943. Freyberg’s bulldog expression staring out from the pages of the newspapers had more appeal to New Zealanders than the words of wishy-washy politicians. But it was Winston Churchill who “set the magic of his style in the service of a cause”. Instructed by a true reading of New Zealand history, he sounded the strain of Imperial unity in “sentences resonant with the cadences of Gibbon and ornamented by a reminiscence of Tennyson” – which naturally impressed a House unfamiliar with eloquence, and it decided to continue the war in the Mediterranean.10
Unlike Canada, whose wily Prime Minister, W. L. Mackenzie King, had promised “conscription if necessary but not necessarily conscription” and then introduced a dubious scheme by which only volunteers were sent overseas, New Zealand conscripts went where they were told. But the first three “echelons” or brigades sent to Egypt in 1940 had been volunteers who had enlisted before conscription was introduced when the supply of volunteers dried up. They had been overseas since then and it was time to replace them. So the summer of 1943 saw a general-post in the division in Egypt. Six thousand men went home in leave drafts in exchange for new men who came out in the returning ships. It was hoped that most of the veterans would return after taking their leave but as only 20 per cent did so the division lost all but a cadre of experienced men. Their replacements were also refreshment; for too much experience of battle takes the edge off the best and makes men unduly cautious. The New Zealand Division crossed to Italy to rejoin the Eighth Army in October, and in November and December fought the gruelling battles, Orsogna in particular, of which we have already written.
By February 1944, after three and a half months of winter fighting, all the armies in Italy were suffering to a lesser or greater degree from disillusionment and lack of enthusiasm. Among the Allies, desertion was becoming a problem. Men were sometimes charged with it, although cowardice in the face of the enemy was the crime, because it was less difficult to prove in law but bore the same penalty. Desertion – real desertion – in the Western Desert, or even in North Africa, had had few attractions. In Italy it had many, for there were farms into which men were welcomed with open arms and warm beds as replacement for husbands and sons who were prisoners, refugees or dead. In the cities it was not difficult to hide and a thriving black market provided a living. In the prevailing circumstances it was discouraging for New Zealand soldiers to hear that 30,000 Grade 1 soldiers were retained at home, that miners were exempted from service and that many contemporaries had been released from the home army for extended periods. When the 3rd Division returned home from the Pacific in February, many fighting in the 2nd at Cassino asked why they should not go too. The sense of purpose that had been universal in the desert and in the first months in Italy was eroded, not to be recaptured until the final months of the war when men from the New Zealand 3rd Division arrived as reinforcements.
Discipline became a concern of divisional officers in both of Alexander’s armies in February 1944, although the two divisions in Freyberg’s corps were the least affected by the prevailing mood, to judge by statistics. Freyberg was always sensitive to the spirit – “the feel” – in his division. Alexander, another soldier with an excellent regimental record in action and a sixth sense about morale, was increasingly worried as the year 1944 wore on. The figures in the table overleaf are extracted from those collected for Alexander by his staff and by Freyberg’s.
General Freyberg attributed the low rate of crime and high morale in his division to date to the good type of man who had been sent overseas, to medical services that dealt with cases of shock before they reached a point of no return, and to sufficient reinforcements to allow sick and wounded time to recover. Everyone knew that he could return to his own unit and his own friends. Most of all, the high state of training and the care that Freyberg took to ensure that his operations were successful, and that lives were not wasted, gave everyone confidence in the management. The junior officers were largely selected from men wh
o had been proved in battle while serving in the ranks. Many of the rest had joined with the first echelons and had fought in many battles. But Cassino proved to be a strain on the morale of all ranks, particularly Operation DICKENS, a failure which could be attributed to no other division. Long afterwards soldiers were outspoken against the way that it had been handled, to an extent that would have been unacceptable in any other division. But the 2nd was like a family business run by a lot of cousins who were shareholders. Criticism was a natural right.
The New Zealand of 1939 was still a rural country and most of the men came from small communities where they were used to being close to the boss and to righting grievances by speaking directly to him themselves. Even the Prime Minister was accustomed to being hailed in the street or phoned by complete strangers, including private soldiers. The government and corporate structure was unpretentious – as befitted a small country in which wealth was very evenly spread and real poverty or conspicuous wealth were rare. Living in an uncrowded country (it is a thousand miles from the North Cape to The Bluff) in a natural environment second to none where bananas, oranges, grapes and peaches, fine livestock, cereals, timber, fish and fowl could all be raised in one area of the country side by side, New Zealand soldiers considered that they had a natural right to enjoy life wherever they were, including the battle zone, or be told the reason.
TABLE
Source: Freyberg Papers, New Zealand Archives, Wellington.
If there was a characteristic that Freyberg’s men had in marked degree it was sensitivity to unfair treatment and unwillingness to put up with it. They would not stand for “side” or class and rank privileges, but they were not “pushy”, being unspoiled by hectic life in big cities where the need for a man to stand up for his rights leads to a chip on the shoulder. With their throw-away humour and unhurried ways, so exasperating to the city-bred, they resembled the Canadian Maritimer and his American cousin from the State of Maine.
Freyberg was soft-hearted in dealing with his men, sometimes over the objections of his superior officers. “Don’t your fellas salute any more?” asked Montgomery as he rode around the Division with Freyberg when it had just arrived in Italy. “Oh well!” replied Freyberg, “if you wave at them they’ll wave back.” It was true, and Freyberg probably was waving to a soldier whose name he knew, particularly if he was one of those who had behaved outrageously out of the line. Like Wimberley of the 51st Highland Division with his “Jocks”, Freyberg treated his Kiwis like unruly children of whom he was unspeakably proud, even when they misbehaved. “Bernard, you really must do something about it,” said Oliver Leese when he had been offered bottles of Chianti by soldiers hanging out of the back of a truck in front of his staff car. “That’s nothing,” said Freyberg, “they filled a whole water bowser with wine and ruined it.”
Freyberg’s paternalism took the form of manipulating his immediate subordinates, a practice at which most successful generals excel. His conferences were run as democratic assemblies where relaxed pipe-smokers, like Kippenberger, had their full say, but in the end it was Freyberg’s plan that was adopted even if someone else proposed it and was allowed to believe that it was his own. But sometimes there remained a doubt as to what had been decided and as Freyberg’s staff tidied up the details they found it difficult to know what private arrangements their general had made.
His formidable physical presence, his medal ribbons attesting to his survival through many battles, and his unquestioned devotion to New Zealand and New Zealanders were assets to those around him that far outweighed his equally obvious limitations. Fifty-four years old, English born, raised in New Zealand, he had fought with Pancho Villa in the Mexican Civil War before he fought in the British Army in the First World War, at Gallipoli and on the Western Front. He was a brigade commander in 1917 and 1918 in the 29th Division and the Naval Division. Awarded the Victoria Cross – a decoration that confers unique prestige on general and private alike – he won the Distinguished Service Order three times and was wounded nine times. He was to emerge from the Second War with another DSO and more wounds, and as a Grand Commander in the Order of Saint Michael and Saint George, a Knight Companion of the Bath, and a Commander in the Order of the British Empire. In February 1944 he was streets ahead of his fellow divisional and corps commanders in experience. Had he not been the chosen instrument and trusted servant of his government he felt that he would have been a corps commander in his own right. Instead, he had a special position as a very senior divisional commander with that right of appeal, which he did not need to use but which allowed him to minimise his casualties. It made him potentially a prickly subordinate. Within the British system, where his position was well understood, he could usually criticise without causing offence, at least in principle. Indeed, he had criticised General Auchinleck’s methods in the final months of his command of the Eighth Army in June and July 1942 which did cause offence, but was saved by the arrival of Montgomery, with whom he saw eye to eye.
Freyberg was not a noted tactician, nor was he an intellectual soldier. His forte was steadiness and experience at the divisional level. He was neither quick on the uptake nor a clear thinker and certainly not at his best when he had to conceive and conduct an independent operation by more than a division, still less by a mixed corps in a difficult operation under an American commander whom he neither liked nor trusted. That was the position in which he was placed at Cassino. Alexander had thought hard and long whether to take over the battle himself, move the army boundary and give it to the Eighth Army, then commanded by Oliver Leese, who knew his Freyberg, or send Sydney Kirkman with his 13th Corps headquarters to run it. But he had left the operation in Clark’s hands. Politics had decided him to do that, not confidence in Clark’s judgment.
The New Zealand Division resembled a panzer grenadier division in that it had two infantry brigades and one armoured brigade. It lacked armoured infantry but its organisation was suited to the roles that the Germans had given their Panzer Grenadier Division – plugging gaps, restoring the front by a limited counter-stroke and end-runs round the enemy flank. The latter had been its task on occasions but Freyberg and his staff were not at their best in that kind of operation. Rather they excelled in the use of their concentrated artillery, which was exceptionally efficient, with infiltration by the infantry to bring about the collapse of German positions. They liked space and naturally opposed battles of attrition. Freyberg had only six infantry battalions and therefore had strictly to limit their casualties. Clark already had the reputation for being an attrition general and Freyberg’s sophisticated nose told him soon after he arrived that Cassino had the potential for becoming such a battle. It stank of the Western Front.
Freyberg’s other division was the famous 4th Indian, which had built up its reputation in Abyssinia, the Western Desert and the long pursuit to Tunisia. Though one of its most brilliant feats had been the escalade of the Jebel Fatnassa by night at the Battle of Wadi Akarit, it was not a “mountain” division, nor were any of its units except the Gurkhas natural mountaineers. Unfortunately, by the time it arrived in Italy it had lost some of its cutting edge, having suffered heavy losses in Africa, including a complete brigade in the débâcle at Tobruk in 1942. The replacements, including the new 11th Indian Infantry Brigade, though fit and eager, had not yet had the time to be welded into battle-hardened fire-teams.
Indian Army divisions differed from other Commonwealth formations both in organisation and the basis of their morale. Commanders, senior staff officers and most of the regimental officers were British. (Although by 1944 “Indianisation” was producing a steady flow of excellent Indian officers they were still a minority.) The artillery was British – “Royal Artillery” – the engineers Indian “Sappers and Miners”, and one battalion in each infantry brigade was British. The soldiers were drawn from “martial races” as distinct from each other as Germans are from Spaniards – Punjabi Mussulmans, Sikhs, Rajputs, Dogras, Jats, Mahrattas and Gurkhas from Nepal – all v
olunteers and men of good social standing, recruited from smallholders and yeoman farmers. Their morale was based primarily on their collective identity as members of an honourable profession subscribing to a code of courage, fidelity and devotion to duty, expressed in the Urdu word izzat* literally “honour”.
This unusual morale, centred on personal honour, the army and the regiment rather than patriotism, was reinforced by the special relationship between the Indian troops and their European officers, recruited in peacetime only from those who were high on the passing-out list from Sandhurst. They were supported by native captains (subedars) and lieutenants (jemadars) promoted from the ranks, roughly equivalent to the under-officers in continental armies. Those unfamiliar with the Indian Army are apt to consider the British view of it exaggerated and sentimental, but its regiments were very professional as well as closely knit, paternal family groups, very durable, and capable of brilliant feats of arms.
Something of the feeling of officers for their men can be understood from a passage in a letter written to General Freyberg by the divisional General, Francis Tuker, who was taken ill just before the battle and forced to relinquish command:
I am ever so thankful my division is being looked after by yourself. With you there, I know that no single life will be squandered and that those that are spent will be well spent.
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