monte casino

[Kiwiwriter]

The 12th Podolian Lancers were the first troops to take Montecassino Abbey. They hoisted their regimental colors, and then Anders ordered the Polish and British flags hoisted as well.

[No.9]

Err - no one ‘took’ the monastery, they just walked into the ruins. The Germans evacuated it because they didn’t want to get surrounded as the French had made breakthroughs on the west side of the Liri Valley!

No.9

[Kiwiwriter]

Sorry, the precise term should have been "moved into" or "entered" the Monastery.

[BeppoSapone]

Originally posted by Kiwiwriter@Aug 27 2004, 10:05 AM
Sorry, the precise term should have been "moved into" or "entered" the Monastery.

Quoted post

But how many days did the Poles fight to be in position to occupy the Abbey at Monte Cassino?

What casualties did the Poles take before the CEF outflanked the Germans?

Also, I wonder if the attacking Polish troops knew what the French had done, and that Monte Cassino would have to be evacuated by the Germans.

After all there are rather a lot of dead Poles who are still at Cassino!

"We Polish soldiers, for our freedom and yours, have given our souls to God, our bodies to the soil of Italy, and our hearts to Poland."

[Kiwiwriter]

Look, let's not get into a semantic debate here. The Poles found no opposition when they entered the ruined abbey, finding the art treasures that had not been evacuated in ruins. But they did fight bloody battles to get there, and certainly thereafter.

Dominick Graham's book "Cassino: The Phyrric Victory," part of the Ballantine series, has a very fine photograph of a Polish Rabbi conducting a burial service for Polish Jews who died in the Cassino battle. I often wonder what their war was like, and how they wound up as casualties beneath "that bloody monastery."

There is also, of course, a Polish war cemetery near Cassino, and I hope that the maintenance level has gone up since the end of the Cold War, as the Polish government has moved to recognize the achievements of men like Anders, Maczek, and Sosabowski.

[No.9]

Cassino was a prime objective of the Gustav Line which dominated the approach to the Liri Valley and the optimum land approach to Rome, and, it was the Poles who eventually entered the monastery and raised an Allied flag. All credit to them for that and it is generally taken as a symbol to mark the end of the Gustav. However, it reality marks the end of a long a desperate struggle by a great number men without whose sacrifices the Line would not have been broken.

The glory belongs just as much to the men of the 36th Texas who were spent in their attempt to cross the Rapido, and all the men after them working towards the same ends as it does to the Poles. Breaking the Gustav was not a hundred metre sprint, it was a relay race. Human nature is such that everyone wants to see a runner cross the finish line and rush to congratulate them, and quite right too. However, it is fact that without the other runners who carried the baton over their stretch, he wouldn’t have made it.
No.9

[Kiwiwriter]

Originally posted by No.9@Aug 28 2004, 12:10 AM

The glory belongs just as much to the men of the 36th Texas who were spent in their attempt to cross the Rapido, and all the men after them working towards the same ends as it does to the Poles. Breaking the Gustav was not a hundred metre sprint, it was a relay race. Human nature is such that everyone wants to see a runner cross the finish line and rush to congratulate them, and quite right too. However, it is fact that without the other runners who carried the baton over their stretch, he wouldn’t have made it.
No.9

Quoted post

I wish people would share those sentiments about the entire war.