Battle of Monte Cassino - 17 January – 18 May 1944

The Battle of Monte Cassino (also known as the Battle for Rome and the Battle for Cassino) was a costly series of four battles during World War II, fought by the Allies with the intention of breaking through the Winter Line and seizing Rome. In the beginning of 1944, the western half of the Winter Line was being anchored by Germans holding the Rapido, Liri and Garigliano valleys and certain surrounding peaks and ridges, together known as the Gustav Line. The Germans had not occupied the historic hilltop abbey of Monte Cassino, founded in AD 524 by Benedict of Nursia and which dominated the town of Cassino and the entrances to the Liri and Rapido valleys, although they manned defensive positions set into the steep slopes below the abbey walls. On 15 February, the monastery, high on a peak overlooking the town of Cassino, was destroyed by 1,400 tons of bombs dropped by American bombers. The bombing was based on the fear that the abbey was being used as a lookout post for the German defenders (this position evolved over time to admit that German soldiers were not garrisoned there but that the risk of the monastery becoming occupied justified the action). Two days after the bombing, German paratroopers took up positions in the ruins; the destruction caused by the bombing and the resulting jagged wasteland of rubble gave troops improved protection from air and artillery attack making it a more viable defensive position. From 17 January to 18 May, the Gustav defences were assaulted four times by Allied troops. For the last of these the Allies gathered 20 divisions for a major assault along a twenty mile front and drove the German defenders from their positions but at a high cost. The Allied landings in Italy in September 1943 by two Allied armies commanded by General Sir Harold Alexander, Commander-in-Chief Allied Armies in Italy, were followed by an advance northward on two fronts, one on each side of the central mountain range forming the "spine" of Italy. On the western front, the U.S. 5th Army, commanded by Lieutenant-General Mark W. Clark, moved from the main base of Naples up the Italian "boot" and in the east General Sir Bernard Montgomery's British 8th Army advanced up the Adriatic coast. 5th Army made slow progress in the face of difficult terrain, wet weather and skillful German defenses. The Germans were fighting from a series of prepared positions in a manner designed to inflict maximum damage, then pulling back and so buying time for the construction of the Winter Line defensive positions south of Rome. The original estimates that Rome would fall by October 1943 proved much too optimistic. Although in the east the German defensive line had been breached on the British 8th Army's Adriatic front and Ortona was captured, the advance had ground to a halt with the onset of winter blizzards at the end of December, making close air support and movement in the jagged terrain impossible. The route to Rome from the east using Route 5 was thus excluded as a viable option leaving the routes from Naples to Rome, highways 6 and 7, as the only possibilities; highway 7 (the old Roman Appian Way) followed along the west coast but south of Rome ran into the Pontine Marshes which the Germans had flooded. Highway 6 ran through the Liri valley. Dominating the south entrance to this valley was the hill mass behind the town of Cassino. Excellent observation from the peaks of several hills allowed the German defenders to detect Allied movement, prevent any advance northward, and direct artillery fire on Allied units. Running across the Allied line of advance was the fast flowing Rapido River which rose in the central Apennine mountains, flowed through Cassino and across the entrance to the Liri valley (where the Liri joined the Rapido) after which its name changed to the River Garigliano (often referred to as the "Gari" by the Allies) and it continued to the sea. With its heavily fortified mountain defenses, difficult river crossings (not only was the river fast flowing, but the Germans had temporarily diverted the Rapido at the head of the valley so as to flood the valley bottom and make conditions underfoot most difficult for any attackers), Cassino formed a linchpin of the Gustav Line, the most formidable line of the defensive positions making up the Winter Line. Because of the historical significance of the fourteen centuries old Benedictine Abbey, in December 1943, the German commander-in-chief in Italy, Field Marshall Albert Kesselring, ordered German units not to include the monastery itself in their defensive positions, and informed the Vatican and the Allies accordingly. Some Allied reconnaissance aircraft reported seeing German troops inside the monastery. The monastery had excellent observation of the surrounding hills and valleys, and thus was a natural site for German artillery observers. What is clear is that once the monastery was destroyed the Germans occupied it and made use of the rubble to build defensive positions. Ultimately, however, the military arguments leading to the monastery's destruction rested on its potential threat rather than its actual state of occupation. First battle The plan of U.S. 5th Army commander General Clark was for British X Corps, on the left of a twenty mile (30 km) front, to attack on January 17, 1944, across the Garigliano near the coast (British 5th and British 56th Infantry Divisions). British 46th Infantry Division was to attack on the night of January 19 across the Garigliano below its junction with the Liri in support of the main attack by U.S. II Corps on their right. The main central thrust by U.S. II Corps would commence on January 20 with 36th (Texas) U.S. Infantry Division making an assault across the swollen Rapido river five miles (8 km) downstream of Cassino. Simultaneously the French Expeditionary Corps, under General Alphonse Juin would continue its "right hook" move towards Monte Cairo, the hinge to the Gustav and Hitler defensive lines. In truth, Clark did not believe there was much chance of an early breakthrough,but he felt that the attacks would draw German reserves away from the Rome area in time for the attack on Anzio where U.S. VI Corps (British 1st and U.S. 3rd Infantry Divisions) was due to make an amphibious landing on January 22. It was hoped that the Anzio landing, with the benefit of surprise and a rapid move inland to the Alban Hills, which command both routes 6 and 7, would so threaten the Gustav defenders' rear and supply lines that it might just unsettle the German commanders and cause them to withdraw from the Gustav Line to positions north of Rome. Whilst this would have been consistent with the German tactics of the previous three months, Allied intelligence had not understood that the strategy of fighting retreat had been for the sole purpose of providing time to prepare the Gustav line where the Germans intended to stand firm. The intelligence assessment of Allied prospects was therefore over-optimistic. The Fifth Army had only reached the Gustav line on January 15, having taken six weeks of heavy fighting to advance the last seven miles (11 km) through the Bernhardt Line positions during which time they had sustained 16,000 casualties.They hardly had time to prepare the new assault, let alone take the rest and reorganization they really needed after three months of attritional fighting north from Naples. However, because the Allied Chiefs of Staff would only make landing craft available until early February, the Anzio landing had to take place in late January with the coordinated attack on the Gustav line some three days earlier. The first assault was made on January 17. Near the coast, British X Corps (56th and 5th Divisions) forced a crossing of the Garigliano (followed some two days later by British 46th Division on their right) causing General von Senger, commander of German XIV Panzer Corps and responsible for the Gustav defences on the south western half of the line, some serious concern as to the ability of the German 94th Infantry Division to hold the line. Responding to Senger's concerns, Kesselring ordered the 29th and 90th Panzer Grenadier Divisions from the Rome area to provide reinforcement. There is some speculation as to what might have been if X Corps had had the reserves available to exploit their success and make a decisive breakthrough. The corps did not have the extra men, but there would certainly have been time to alter the overall battle plan and cancel or modify the central attack by U.S. II Corps to make men available to force the issue in the south before the German reinforcements were able to get into position. As it happened, 5th Army HQ failed to appreciate the frailty of the German position, and the plan was unchanged. The two divisions from Rome arrived by January 21 and stabilized the German position in the south. In one respect, however, the plan was working in that Kesselring's reserves had been drawn south. The three divisions of X Corps sustained 4,000 casualties during the period of the first battle. The central thrust by U.S. 36th Division commenced three hours after sunset on January 20. The lack of time to prepare meant that the approach to the river was still hazardous due to uncleared mines and booby traps, and the highly technical business of an opposed river crossing lacked the necessary planning and rehearsal. Although a battalion of the 143rd Regiment was able to get across the Rapido on the south side of San Angelo and two companies of the 141st Regiment on the north side, they were isolated for most of the time, and at no time was Allied armor able to get across the river, leaving them highly vulnerable to counterattacking tanks and self-propelled guns of General Eberhard Rodt's 15th Panzer Grenadier Division. The southern group was forced back across the river by mid-morning of January 21. Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Keyes, commanding II Corps, pressed Maj. Gen. Fred Walker of 36th Division to renew the attack immediately. Once again the two regiments attacked but with no more success against the well dug-in 15th Panzer Grenadier Division: 143rd Regiment got the equivalent of two battalions across, but once again there was no armored support, and they were devastated when daylight came the next day. The 141st Regiment also crossed in two battalion strength, and despite the lack of armored support managed to advance 1 km (0.5 miles). However, with the coming of daylight, they too were cut down, and by the evening of January 22 the regiment had virtually ceased to exist; only 40 men made it back to the Allied lines. The assault had been a costly failure, with 36th Division losing 2,100 men killed, wounded and missing in 48 hours. The next attack was launched on January 24. The U.S. II Corps, with 34th Infantry Division under Maj. Gen. Charles W. Ryder spearheading the attack and French colonial troops on its right flank, launched an assault across the flooded Rapido valley north of Cassino and into the mountains behind with the intention of then wheeling to the left and attacking Monte Cassino from high ground. Whilst the task of crossing the river would be easier in that the Rapido upstream of Cassino was fordable, the flooding made movement on the approaches each side very difficult. In particular, armor could only move on paths laid with steel matting, and it took eight days of bloody fighting across the waterlogged ground for 34th Division to push back General Franck's 44th Infantry Division to establish a foothold in the mountains. On the right, the Moroccan-French troops made good initial progress against the German 5th Mountain Division, commanded by General Julius Ringel, gaining positions on the slopes of their key objective, Monte Cifalco. Forward units of the 3rd Algerian Division had also by-passed Monte Cifalco to capture Monte Belvedere and Colle Abate. General Juin was convinced that Cassino could be bypassed and the German defenses unhinged by this northerly route but his request for reserves to maintain the momentum of his advance was refused and the one available reserve regiment (from 36th Division) was sent to reinforce 34th Division.By January 31 the French had ground to a halt with Monte Cifalco, which had a clear view of the French and U.S. flanks and supply lines, still in German hands. The two Moroccan-French divisions sustained 2,500 casualties in their struggles around Monte Belvedere. It became U.S. 34th Division's task (joined by 142nd Regiment of 36th Division) to fight southward along the linked hilltops towards the intersecting ridge on the south end of which was Monastery Hill. They could then break through down into the Liri valley behind the Gustav Line defenses. It was very tough going: the mountains were rocky, strewn with boulders and cut by ravines and gullies. Digging foxholes on the rocky ground was out of the question, and each feature was exposed to fire from surrounding high points. The ravines were no better since the gorse growing there, far from giving cover, had been sown with mines, booby-traps and hidden barbed wire by the defenders. The Germans had had three months to prepare their defensive positions using dynamite and to stockpile ammunition and stores. There was no natural shelter, and the weather was wet and freezing cold. By early February, American infantry had captured a strategic point near the hamlet of San Onofrio, less than a mile from the abbey, and by February 7 a battalion had reached Point 445, a round top hill immediately below the monastery and no more than 400 yards (370 m) away. An American squad managed a reconnaissance right up against the cliff-like abbey walls, with the monks observing German and American patrols exchanging fire. However, attempts to take Monte Cassino were broken by overwhelming machine gun fire from the slopes below the monastery. Despite their fierce fighting, the 34th Division never managed to take the final redoubts on Hill 593 (known to the Germans as Calvary Mount), held by the 3rd battalion of the German 2nd Parachute Regiment, the dominating point of the ridge to the monastery. Second battle With U.S. VI Corps under heavy threat at Anzio, Freyberg was under equal pressure to launch a relieving action at Cassino. Once again, therefore, the battle commenced without the attackers being fully prepared. As well, Corps HQ did not fully appreciate the difficulty in getting 4th Indian Infantry Division into place in the mountains and supplying them on the ridges and valleys north of Cassino (using mules across 7 miles (11 km) of goat tracks over terrain in full view of the monastery, exposed to accurate artillery fire — hence the naming of Death Valley). This was evidenced in the writing of Maj. Gen. Howard Kippenberger, commander of New Zealand 2nd Division, after the war: "Poor Dimoline (Brigadier Dimoline, acting commander of 4th Indian Division) was having a dreadful time getting his division into position. I never really appreciated the difficulties until I went over the ground after the war". Freyberg's plan was a continuation of the first battle: an attack from the north along the mountain ridges and an attack from the southeast along the railway line and to capture the railway station across the Rapido less than a mile south of Cassino town. Success would pinch out Cassino town and open up the Liri valley. However, Freyberg had informed his superiors that he believed, given the circumstances, there was no better than a 50% chance of success for the offensive. Increasingly, the opinions of certain Allied officers were fixed on the great abbey of Monte Cassino: in their view it was the abbey—and its presumed use as a German artillery observation point—that prevented the breach of the ‘Gustav Line'. The British press and C. L. Sulzberger of The New York Times frequently and convincingly and in (often manufactured) detail wrote of German observation posts and artillery positions inside the abbey.The commander in chief of the Mediterranean Allied Air Forces Lieutenant-General Ira C. Eaker accompanied by Lieutenant-General Jacob L. Devers (deputy to General Sir Henry Maitland Wilson, the Supreme Allied Commander of the Mediterranean Theater) personally observed during a fly-over “a radio mast.German uniforms hanging on a clothesline in the abbey courtyard; and machine gun emplacements 50 yards (46 m) from the abbey walls.”Major-General Geoffrey Keyes of U.S. II Corps also flew over the monastery several times; he then reported to Fifth Army G-2 that he had seen no evidence the Germans were in the abbey. When informed of others who had claimed to have seen Germans in the abbey, he stated: “They’ve been looking so long they’re seeing things." The view in New Zealand Corps HQ, as articulated in the writings of Major-General Kippenberger, was that the monastery was probably being used as the German's main vantage point for artillery spotting, since it was so perfectly situated for the purpose that no army could refrain from using it. There is no clear evidence to this effect, but he went on to write that from a military point of view the current state of occupancy of the monastery was immaterial: "If not occupied today, it might be tomorrow and it did not appear it would be difficult for the enemy to bring reserves into it during an attack or for troops to take shelter there if driven from positions outside. It was impossible to ask troops to storm a hill surmounted by an intact building such as this, capable of sheltering several hundred infantry in perfect security from shellfire and ready at the critical moment to emerge and counter-attack. ... Undamaged it was a perfect shelter but with its narrow windows and level profiles an unsatisfactory fighting position. Smashed by bombing it was a jagged heap of broken masonry and debris open to effective fire from guns, mortars and strafing planes as well as being a death trap if bombed again. On the whole I thought it would be more useful to the Germans if we left it unbombed". Major-General Francis Tuker, whose 4th Indian Division would have the task of attacking Monastery Hill, had made his own appreciation of the situation. In the absence of detailed intelligence at U.S. 5th Army HQ, he had found a book dated 1879 in a Naples bookshop giving details of the construction of the abbey. In his memorandum to Freyberg he concluded that regardless of whether the monastery was currently occupied by the Germans, it should be demolished to prevent its effective occupation. He also pointed out that with 150 foot (45 m) high walls made of masonry at least 10 feet (3 m) thick, there was no practical means for field engineers to deal with the place, and that bombing with "blockbuster" bombs would be the only solution since 1,000 pound bombs would be "next to useless". On February 11, 1944, the acting commander of 4th Indian Division, Brigadier Harry Dimoline, requested the bombing of the abbey of Monte Cassino. Tuker reiterated again his case for bombing the monastery from his hospital bed in Caserta, where he was suffering a severe attack of a recurrent tropical fever. Freyberg transmitted his request on February 12. Freyberg's request for an air attack, however, was greatly expanded by air force planners, and probably supported by Ira Eaker and Jacob L. Devers. They sought to use the opportunity to showcase the abilities of U.S. Army air power to support ground operations.Lieutenant-General Mark W. Clark of Fifth Army and his chief of staff Major-General Alfred Gruenther remained unconvinced of the “military necessity”. When handing over the U.S. II Corps position to the New Zealand Corps, Brigadier General J.A. Butler, deputy commander of U.S. 34th Division, had said "I don't know, but I don't believe the enemy is in the convent. All the fire has been from the slopes of the hill below the wall".Finally Clark, "who did not want the monastery bombed,"pinned down the Commander-in-Chief Allied Armies in Italy, General Sir Harold Alexander to take the responsibility: "I said, 'You give me a direct order and we’ll do it,' and he did." The bombing mission in the morning of February 15, 1944 involved 142 B-17 Flying Fortresses together with 47 B-25 Mitchell and 40 B-26 Marauder medium bombers. In all they dropped 1,150 tons of high explosives and incendiary bombs on the abbey, reducing the entire top of Monte Cassino to a smoking mass of rubble. Between bomb runs, the II Corps artillery pounded the mountain.Many Allied soldiers and war correspondents cheered as they observed the spectacle. Eaker and Devers watched; Juin was heard to remark “... no, they’ll never get anywhere this way.”Clark and Gruenther refused to be on the scene and stayed at their headquarters. That same afternoon and the next day, in an aggressive follow-up, further artillery barrages and additional tonnage onto the ruins by 59 fighter bombers convulsed the rubble of the great abbey. The air raid however, had not been coordinated between the air and ground commands, with the timing driven by the Air Force projecting it as a separate operation, considering the weather and to be fitted in with other requirements on other fronts and theaters and without reference to the ground forces (indeed, the Indian troops on the Snake's Head were taken by surprise when the bombing actually started). The raid took place two days before the New Zealand Corps was ready to launch their main assault. Many of the troops had only taken over their positions from U.S. II Corps on February 13, and besides the difficulties in the mountains, preparations in the valley had also been held up by difficulties in supplying the newly installed troops with sufficient material for a full-scale assault because of incessantly foul weather, flooding, and waterlogged ground. Third battle For the third battle, it was decided that whilst the winter weather persisted, forcing the Rapido downstream of Cassino town was an unattractive option (after the unhappy experiences in the first two battles). The "right hook" in the mountains had also been a costly failure, and it was decided to launch twin attacks from the north along the Rapido valley: one towards the fortified Cassino town and the other towards Monastery Hill. The idea was to clear the path through the bottleneck between these two features to allow access towards the station on the south and so to the Liri valley. British 78th Infantry Division, which had arrived in late February and placed under the command of New Zealand Corps, would then cross the Rapido downstream of Cassino and start the push to Rome. None of the Allied commanders were very happy with the plan, but it was hoped that an unprecedented preliminary bombing by heavy bombers would prove the trump. Three clear days of good weather were required and for twenty one successive days the assault was postponed as the troops waited in the freezing wet positions for a favourable weather forecast. Matters were not helped by the loss of Major-General Kippenberger, commanding 2 New Zealand Division, wounded by an anti-personnel mine and losing both his feet. He was replaced by Brigadier Graham Parkinson. The good news was that the German counter-attack at Anzio had failed and been called off. The third battle began March 15. After a bombardment of 750 tons of 1,000-pound bombs with delayed action fuses,starting at 08:30 and lasting three and a half hours, the New Zealanders advanced behind a creeping artillery barrage from 746 artillery pieces.Success depended on taking advantage of the paralysing effect of the bombing. However, the defences rallied more quickly than expected, and the Allied armour was held up by bomb craters. Nevertheless success was there for the New Zealanders' taking, but by the time a follow-up assault on the left had been ordered that evening it was too late: defenses had reorganised, and more critically, the rain, contrary to forecast, had started again. Torrents of rain flooded bomb craters, turned rubble into a morass and blotted out communications, the radio sets being incapable of surviving the constant immersion. The dark rain clouds also blotted out the moonlight, hindering the task of clearing routes through the ruins. On the right, the New Zealanders had captured Castle Hill and point 165, and as planned, elements of Indian 4th Infantry Division, now commanded by Major-General Alexander Galloway, had passed through to attack point 236 and thence to point 435, Hangman's Hill. In the confusion of the height, a company of the 1/9th Gurkha Rifles had taken a track avoiding point 236 and captured point 435 whilst the assault on point 236 by the 1/6th Rajputana Rifles had been beaten off. By the end of March 17 the Gurkhas held Hangman's Hill, 250 yards (230 m) from the monastery, in battalion strength (although their lines of supply were compromised by the German positions at point 236 and in the northern part of the town), and whilst the town was still fiercely defended, New Zealand units and armour had got through the bottleneck and captured the station. However, the Germans were still able to reinforce their troops in the town and were proving adept at slipping snipers back into parts of the town that had supposedly been cleared. March 19 was planned for the decisive blow in the town and on the monastery, including a surprise attack by tanks of 20th Armoured Brigade working their way along the track from Cairo to Albaneta Farm (which had been prepared by engineer units under the cover of darkness) and from there towards the Abbey. However, a surprise and fiercely pressed counter attack from the monastery on Castle Hill by the German 1st Parachute Division completely disrupted any possibility of an assault on the monastery from the Castle and Hangman's Hill whilst the tanks, lacking infantry support, were all knocked out by mid-afternoon.In the town the attackers made little progress, and overall the initiative was passing to the Germans whose positions close to Castle Hill, which was the gateway to the position on Monastery Hill, crippled any prospects of early success. On 20 March Freyberg committed elements of 78th Infantry Division to the battle; firstly to provide a greater troop presence in the town so that cleared areas would not be reinfiltrated by the Germans, and secondly to reinforce Castle Hill to allow troops to be released to close off the two routes between Castle Hill and Points 175 and 165 being used by the Germans to reinforce the defenders in the town.The Allied commanders felt they were on the brink of success as grim fighting continued through 21 March. However, the defenders were resolute and the attack on Point 445 to block the German reinforcement route had narrowly failed whilst in the town Allied gains were measured only house by house. On 23 March Alexander met with his commanders. A range of opinions were expressed as to the possibility of victory but it was evident that the New Zealand and Indian Divisions were exhausted, nearing the end of their tether. Freyberg was convinced that the battle could not be kept going and he called off the attack.The German 1st Parachute Division, some weeks later described by General Alexander, the Italian theatre commander, in a conversation with General Kippenberger as "...the best Division in the German Army...",had taken a mauling, but it had won. Fourth and final battle The plan for Operation Diadem was that U.S. II Corps on the left would attack up the coast along the line of Route 7 towards Rome. The French Corps to their right would attack from the bridgehead across the Garigliano originally created by X Corps in the first battle in January into the Aurunci Mountains which formed a barrier between the coastal plain and the Liri Valley. British XIII Corps in the centre right of the front would attack along the Liri valley whilst on the right 2nd Polish Corps (3rd and 5th Division) commanded by Lt. Gen. Władysław Anders, which had relieved 78th Division in the mountains behind Cassino on April 24, would attempt the task which had defeated 4th Indian Division in February, isolate the monastery and push round behind it into the Liri valley to link with XIII Corps' thrust and pinch out the Cassino position. It was hoped that being a much larger force than their 4th Indian Division predecessors they would be able to saturate the German defences which would as a result be unable to give supporting fire to each other's positions. Improved weather, ground conditions and supply would also be important factors. Once again, the pinching manoeuvre by the Polish and British Corps were key to the overall success. Canadian I Corps would be held in reserve ready to exploit the expected breakthrough. Once the German Tenth Army had been defeated, U.S. VI Corps would break out of the Anzio beachhead to cut off the retreating Germans in the Alban Hills. The large troop movements required for this took two months to execute. They had to be carried out in small units to maintain secrecy and surprise. U.S. 36th Division was sent on amphibious assault training, and road signposts and dummy radio signal traffic were created to give the impression that a seaborne landing was being planned for north of Rome. This was planned to keep German reserves held back from the Gustav line. Movements of troops in forward areas were confined to the hours of darkness and armoured units moving from the Adriatic front left behind dummy tanks and vehicles so the vacated areas appeared unchanged to enemy aerial reconnaissance. The deception was successful. As late as the second day of the final Cassino battle, Kesselring estimated the Allies had six divisions facing his four on the Cassino front. In fact there were thirteen. The first assault (May 11–May 12) on Cassino opened at 23:00 with a massive artillery bombardment with 1,060 guns on the 8th Army front and 600 guns on the 5th Army front, manned by British, Americans, Poles, New Zealanders, South Africans, and French.Within an hour and a half the attack was in motion in all four sectors. By daylight U.S. II Corps had made little progress, but their 5th Army colleagues, the French Corps, had achieved their objectives and were fanning out in the Aurunci Mountains toward the 8th Army to their right, rolling up the German positions between the two armies. On the 8th Army front, XIII Corps had made two strongly opposed crossings of the Rapido (by British 4th Infantry Division and 8th Indian Division). Crucially, the engineers of Dudley Russell's 8th Indian Division had by the morning succeeded in bridging the river enabling the armour of 1st Canadian Armoured Brigade to cross and provide the vital element (so missed by the Americans in the first battle and New Zealanders in the second battle) to beat off the inevitable counterattacks from German tanks that would come. In the mountains above Cassino, the aptly named Mount Calvary (Monte Calvario, or Point 593 on Snakeshead Ridge) was taken by the Poles only to be recaptured by German paratroops.For three days Polish attacks and German counterattacks brought heavy losses to both sides. The Polish Corps lost 281 officers and 3,503 other ranks in assaults on Colonel Ludwig Heilmann's 4th Parachute Regiment, until the attacks were called off."Just eight hundred Germans had succeeded in driving off attacks by two divisions,"the area around the mountain having turned into a "miniature Verdun." At the end of the battles the Poles would "... with bitter pride erect a memorial on the mountain." By the afternoon of May 12, the Rapido bridgeheads were increasing despite furious counterattacks whilst the attrition on the coast and in the mountains continued. By May 13 the pressure was starting to tell. The German right wing began to give way to the 5th Army. The French Corps had captured Monte Maio and were now in a position to give material flank assistance to the 8th Army against whom Kesselring had thrown every available reserve in order to buy time to switch to his second prepared defensive position, the Hitler Line, some eight miles (13 km) to the rear. On May 14 Moroccan Goumiers, travelling through the mountains parallel to the Liri valley, ground which was undefended because it was not thought possible to traverse such terrain, outflanked the German defense materially assisting XIII Corps in the valley. In 1943 the Goumiers were colonial troops formed into four Groups of Moroccan Tabors (GTM), each consisting of three loosely organised Tabors (roughly equivalent to a battalion) specialised in mountain warfare. Juin's French Expeditionary Corps consisted of the Command of Moroccan Goumiers (CGM) (with the 1st, 3rd and 4th GTM) of General Augustin Guillaume totalling some 7,800 fighting men,broadly the same infantry strength as a division, and 4 more conventional divisions: the 2nd Moroccan Infantry Division (2 DIM), the 3rd Algerian Infantry Division (3 DIA), the 4th Moroccan Mountain Division (4 DMM) and the 1st Free French Division (1 DM). On May 15 British 78 Division came into the XIII Corps line from reserve passing through the bridgehead divisions to execute the turning move to isolate Cassino from the Liri valley. On May 17 the Polish Division renewed their assault in the mountains. By the early hours of May 18, 78 Division and the Polish Corps had linked up in the Liri valley 2 miles (3 km) west of Cassino town. In the early morning of May 18 a reconnaissance group of Polish 12th Podolian Uhlans Regiment found the monastery abandoned and raised an improvised regimental pennant over its ruins. The last German paratroops with supply lines threatened by the advance up the Liri valley, had withdrawn the night before to take up new defensive positions on the Hitler Line. The only remnants of the defenders were a group of emaciated German wounded who had been unable to move.

17 January 1944	The US is involved in their first major assault on Monte Cassino.
18 January - 9 February 1944	US forces begin making headway through the Liri Valley, capturing ground at Monte Calvario.
10 February 1944	In a counter offensive, crack German paratroopers repel US forces and previous Allied gains are lost.
11 February 1944	US and Indian losses mount in the offensives against German positions in Calvario, the town of Cassino and Monte Cassino itself. The entire US 142nd Regiment is destroyed. The 34th and 36th US Divisions both report a high number of casualties from the ensuing offensives. The 4th Indian Division reports unacceptably high casualties when coming up against the stout German defenders. A blanket retreat is enacted by the Allies in an attempt to regroup and plan a new strategy to take Cassino.
15 February 1944	In an effort to destroy the believed German defensive positions atop Monte Cassino, Allied bombers numbering 229 strong, lay waste to the monestary. German forces, having never held a defensive position in the monestary proper, move into the resulting debris from the surrounding mountain slopes and set up solid defensive positions within the rubble. Following the Allied aerial bombardment, the second major Allied offensive to take Cassino is launched.
16 - 18 February 1944	The 2nd New Zealand Division is charged with taking the railway station at Cassino. The 4th Indian Division is charged with taking both Monte Calvario and Monastary Hill. The 2nd New Zealand Division assault is twarted and driven back, suffering high casualties. The 4th Indian Division assault is repelled and driven away, suffering high casualties.
19 February - 13 March 1944	The Italian winter makes its arrival and postpones any further Allied offensives for the next month.
15 March 1944	A third major Allied offensive is put into action. Artillery guns open up on Cassino while 600-plus Allied bombers attempt to shake the German defenders.
16 - 21 March 1944	Against mounting casualties but with tank support, the 4th Indian Division gains ground. The 2nd New Zealand Division captures German-held position with the help of Allied armor support. The 78th British Division makes headway thanks to the support of Allied armor. Positions on Monte Cassino are officially in Allied hands.
22 March 1944	With mounting losses in both manpower and tanks, further Allied thrusts are called off.
23 March - 10 May 1944	A lengthy six-week period allows the Allies to rebuild their forces - though this period allows the Germans to increase their defensive foothold.
11 May 1944	The fourth offensive to take Cassino is put into action. Approximately 2,000 Allied artillery guns open up on Cassino. A combined British, Polish and American assault converge on Cassino involving the British 13th Corps, the Polish II Corps and the US 5th Army.
13 May 1944	German paratrooper forces defending Cassino being their evacuation.
17 May 1944	German paratrooper forces exit the Cassino region.
18 May 1944	The British take the town of Cassino. The Poles take Monte Calvario. Monte Cassino falls to the Allies, costing some 50,000 casualties along both sides of the battlefield.