John Radzilowski
This week marks the 80th anniversary of the fourth and final battle of Monte Cassino, the most famous Polish battle of World War II. The story of the battle and the men who fought it almost defies belief. A Hollywood writer could not come up with a script with greater drama. Imagine a force made up of men ranging in age from 18 to 60, most of them former concentration camp prisoners. The majority are Catholic Poles, but the force also includes Polish Jews, Ukrainians, Belarusins, Lithuanians, Orthodox and Protestant Christians, and Muslims. This force is tasked with storming a mountaintop fortress defended by elite Nazi paratroopers—the cream of Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich. The fortress is considered impregnable and has defeated attacks by courageous armies of many nations. Yet it is vital to Allied war goals, since it controls the main road to the City of Rome. In our imaginary script, this untested force of former prisoners is sent on what some consider a suicide mission and yet against all odds and with great sacrifice they succeed. Such a script, if it were even written, would likely be rejected for being too unrealistic. The fact that it truly occurred is surely one of the most remarkable tales in modern history.
The Saga of the Second Corps
The story began in September 1939 when Nazi Germany started World War II by attacking Poland along with the assistance of Josef Stalin’s Soviet Union whose Red Army attacked Poland from the east. The two dictators partitioned Poland with Stalin taking eastern Poland and Hitler taking the rest. Stalin’s portion contained many Polish prisoners of war as well as refugees who had fled the fighting in western Poland. Most of the refugees and POWs were rounded up by Stalin’s NKVD. The officers were separated from the enlisted men and sent to special camps where in 1940 many would be murdered on Stalin’s orders at places such as Katyn. The remaining POWs and many of the refugees were sent to the Gulags, the communist regime’s infamous system of concentration camps.
Beginning in the winter and spring of 1940, these unfortunates were joined by the victims of mass deportation from eastern Poland. The NKVD rounded up at least 1.7 million men, women, and children from eastern Poland, mostly ethnic Poles and deported them to Gulag camps in northern Russia, Siberia, and Kazakhstan. Whole families were loaded into unheated cattle cars shipped to the camps and forced to work with little food and minimal shelter. As many as one in four died of overwork, mistreatment, hunger, and disease. Yet they were lucky ones in one respect, since the Soviets murdered many tens of thousands of Poles during their occupation of eastern Poland.
In June 1941, Adolf Hitler turned on his communist ally and invaded the Soviet Union. With the war going against him, Stalin agreed to release the captive Poles so they could join the fight against the Germans. Yet forming an independent Polish army in Russia was unthinkable so the Poles had to somehow make their way to the British-controlled Middle East.
Released from Soviet concentration camps, the Poles were malnourished, exhausted from forced labor, and many were sick with diseases ranging from typhus to TB. Although only men of military age were supposed to leave, no one wanted to stay in the communist hell. Women and children, sometimes whole families, trekked along with the men. Across the length of Siberia and Central Asia, tens of thousands of Poles walked, hitched rides on trains, and traveled on any means of conveyance they could find to escape. Many died of illness or hunger along the way. By early 1942, 116,000 Poles made it to Persia (today’s Iran) and freedom. While the younger children and those unable to fight were sent to refugee camps in places as far afield as India or Africa, the Poles of military age were sent to British territories in Iraq, Lebanon, or Palestine (today’s Israel). There they joined with the Independent Polish Carpathian Brigade which had been fighting with British since 1940 to form the Polish Second Corps under the command of Gen. Władysław Anders. Because many of the Poles were ill-nourished and sick, it would take many months until the Corps was ready for combat.
Italy
The Italian campaign began with high hopes for a quick Allied victory in the summer of 1943. After the capture of Sicily and the collapse of Benito Mussolini’s fascist government, Italy made peace with the Allies and German forces took control of the Italian peninsula. Although the Allies were able to capture southern Italy, German delaying action slowed the advance, allowing Hitler’s forces to build a massive defensive line south of Rome which stopped the Allied advance by December 1943.
Known as the “Gustav line,” German defenses stretched across the rugged terrain of the Italian peninsula over mountain ranges and rivers that were reinforced with concrete emplacements, minefields, and carefully sighted artillery. The key to the German defenses was Monte Cassino, a high bluff overlooking the Liri Valley and the main road to Rome. At its peak was the ancient Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino. Although initially the Germans did not occupy the monastery itself due to its historical and cultural importance, the slopes around it, the town of Cassino at the base of the mountain, and the surrounding peaks were a dense network of Nazi defenses held by a division of elite German paratroopers.
In January 1944, the Allies made their first attempt to break through the Gustav line and take Monte Cassino. The U.S. 36th Division, made of up Texas National Guardsmen attempted to cross a flood-swollen river and take the town of Cassino. Attacking across open ground the Americans were decimated by German artillery and machine guns. A couple battalions of brave Texans managed to cross the river but were nearly wiped out by German counterattacks. At the same time, Allied forces landed by sea behind the German defenses at Anzio south of Rome, but hesitation and conflicting orders allowed the Germans to regroup and trap 36,000 British and American troops on the beaches where they would remain for the next five months.
The next attempt to break the German defenses began with the ill-advised bombing of the ancient monastery itself. The building was reduced to rubble, but the German troops were untouched and they soon used the ruins of the monastery to make an even more effective defensive position. On February 17, Indian and New Zealand forces attacked Monte Cassino and once again, Allied forces in spite of great courage, were defeated with heavy losses. A month later, a combined force of New Zealand, Indian, and British troops tried again preceded by a massive campaign of bombing and artillery designed to paralyze German defenses. Once again, however, rugged terrain, bad weather, and the tenacity of the German defenders resulted in another bloody failure.
The Fourth Battle of Cassino
In February 1944, the Polish Second Corps arrived in Italy. Originally Allied leaders tried to break the Polish corps into small units and use them piecemeal to reinforce other Allied units, but Gen Anders insisted on keeping his men together and fighting as a single unit. Allied commanders then offered Anders the unenviable task of storming Monte Cassino where so many brave Allied soldiers had already lost their lives in futile attacks on the mountain stronghold. Although he was under no illusion about the price his men would pay, Anders knew that Poland’s political situation—with a Soviet “ally” increasing hostile to Polish independence—was precarious and a victory at such a well-known battlefield would provide a boost to his country’s fortunes. Anders and his men accepted the challenge.
Instead of attacking the Germans from the front, Anders and other Allied commanders decided to mount a strong right hook into the German positions. While this would avoid the problems of the earlier failures, the Poles would have to break through equally strong German defenses on the flanks of Monte Cassino. The Poles would storm Cassino from the right flank while to their right French forces made up of Moroccan and Algerian mountaineers would hit the German lines in a one-two punch. If successful, the Poles and French could take the German defenders from behind using the high ground to their advantage.
To support his attacking infantry, Gen. Anders also needed to use his tanks but the rough terrain and German minefields made this difficult. One of the main approaches for the tanks was a dirt track but it was heavily mined and covered by German machine guns, mortars, and snipers. Polish engineers could remove the mines, but only if protected by the tanks but the tanks couldn’t advance without the engineers first clearing the way. To overcome this dilemma, the Polish engineers crawled on their bellies between the treads underneath their tanks. The tanks would move forward a foot or two and engineers would crawl along sheltered from German fire by the tanks’ armor, removing the mines by hand with bayonets and trench shovels. Once they had cleared a few feet, the tanks would move forward a few more feet and the process would repeat itself. Foot by foot, the engineers crawled the length of the track to clear all the mines with German bullets and mortar rounds landing around them.
On the night of May 11/12, 1944 with Polish forces in place and Allied forces ready to move in other sectors, the Fourth Battle of Monte Cassino began.
Breaking the Gustav Line
Only veterans of the Second Corps would truly be able to understand the hell experienced by the Polish soldiers at Monte Cassino over the next seven days. Stories told to families around the kitchen table or interviews by historians can only convey a fraction of what the men faced on those rocky slopes. It was one of the most intense battles of the entire Second World War. Early in the fighting the Germans captured two Polish officers, tied them up with barbed wire, and crucified them. After that, neither side took prisoners.
The 5th Kresowa Division attacked Point 593—known as Mount Calvary—while the 3rd Carpathian Rifles attacked Phantom Ridge and Albaneta almost in the shadow of the monastery itself. With little cover, the Poles attacked up the rocky slopes in the face of intense German fire. The former concentration camp prisoners took enemy positions only to be driven back by fierce counterattacks mounted by the elite Nazi paratroopers. Positions changed hands again and again in vicious hand to hand fighting. Soldiers ran out of ammunition and then fought with knives, entrenching tools, and rocks.
Finally on the evening of May 12, within feet of their objectives, the Polish attacks could go no further in spite of having suffered—and inflicted—heavy losses.
Over the next couple days, Gen. Anders regrouped his exhausted men. In the place of the losses suffered, rear areas troops such as cooks, clerks, and drivers shouldered rifles and joined the front lines. On the night of May 17, Polish and other Allied artillery pounded German positions. Second Corps veterans recalled that the barrage was so intense and so continuous that it lit up the night like it was daytime.
At dawn, the Poles attacked once more, overrunning German positions, surviving the inevitable enemy counterattacks, then pressing forward once more. By nightfall, German defenses began to give way, with even their elite paratroopers losing hope. Soldiers of the 12th Podolian Lancers fought their way to the walls of the ruined monastery and just after sunrise on May 18, they entered the ruins only to find that the remaining Germans had fled. In other sectors, French troops also broke through German defenses as British and Indian forces now joined in as the Gustav Line finally collapsed.
Aftermath
The victory at Monte Cassino and the capture of Rome a few weeks later was overshadowed by the D-Day landings in France on June 6, 1944. The bravery of the Polish Second Corps was forgotten by many in the Allied camp and as war came to close almost a year later, the Polish troops with their strong opposition to the Soviet takeover of the Polish homeland, were deemed an inconvenience. Few of the veterans returned home and those who did were often persecuted by the new communist authorities. The rest remained in exile, finding homes throughout the free world. While the bitterness of their treatment remained, most went on to rebuild their lives and raise families.
Eighty years has passed since the Poles raised the white and red standard over Monte Cassino. Few of the veterans who experienced the horrors of the battle now remain among the living. Yet their experience endures as a symbol of Polish courage and the refusal to surrender freedom in the face of evil regardless of how hopeless the cause may seem. As the final veterans of the Second Corps pass away, it is the duty of those of us who remain to remember and pass on the story of the Polish soldiers at Monte Cassino and make sure what they fought for is not lost.
As the inscription at the Polish cemetery at Monte Cassino notes:
Passerby, go tell Poland
That we have perished, obedient to her service.
For Our Freedom and Yours
We soldiers of Poland gave
Our souls to God
Our lives to Italy
Our hearts to Poland
Image 1: Monte Cassino Polish soldiers, Wikimedia
Image 2: THE Polish Army in the Italian Campaign , 1943-1945, Imperial War Museums
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