Seemingly countless books have been written about the Battle of Monte Cassino, as befits one of the bloodiest engagements of World War II. Most devote considerable attention to the tactics employed by the Allied forces, notably the destruction from the air of the historic Benedictine monastery that sits high above the town of Cassino. They question whether this treasure of Western civilisation should have been laid waste, even for so laudable a purpose as saving the lives of attacking soldiers.
Such esoteric debate, however, means little to the New Zealand veterans who have returned to southern Italy for the 60th commemoration of the battle. Their pilgrimage is far more personal: to pay tribute to the 343 New Zealanders who died at Cassino, especially those they called their mates.
Most of the veterans are now in their 80s. But such was the intensity of the conflict that their recollections remain vivid. This was warfare at its most brutal; a grim street-to-street, door-to-door infantry slog. Once the monastery had been destroyed, the shattered masonry and jagged walls provided an ideal stronghold for the German defenders.
Further, American saturation bombing had reduced the streets of Cassino to rubble. The New Zealanders' Sherman tanks quickly became little more than frustrated bystanders. This was a battle, like Stalingrad, in which technological superiority counted for nothing.
A common theme among the veterans on their return to Monte Cassino has been the sheer difficulty of the task they were set. The abbey has been rebuilt, as it had been several times before, so it resembles the imposing obstacle that confronted them in 1944. Back then, it seemed almost to taunt them, so much so that, in the interests of morale, its destruction became a virtual necessity.
That accomplished, the New Zealanders approached their job with the can-do brashness of youth. Now, however, there is only circumspection. "What hope did we have?" asked one veteran this week, as he surveyed the surrounding countryside from the monastery. "The more you see up here, the more you realise the impossibility of the task."
It is an impression echoed by those who gaze down on the beach at Gallipoli and visualise the task allotted an earlier generation of New Zealanders.
Monte Cassino, then, was an epic of death, heroism and, ultimately, futility. New Zealand troops fought not only elite German units but cold, filth and hunger. This was yet another battle in which their courage and tenacity was of a far higher order than the strategic and tactical nous of those who oversaw their assaults in mid-January and mid-March. Finally, and anticlimactically, Polish troops took the monastery in May. The Germans had withdrawn because their defensive line had been breached elsewhere.
Another common refrain from those at the Cassino commemorations is that their mates did not die in vain. "No, it was part of the war and it was a job we thought had to be done," said Lawrence Matthews, of Katikati, as he surveyed the grave of a friend.
And whatever the shortcomings of those who placed them in such an untenable position, there is little bitterness. Nor, in the main, is there recrimination against the Germans who so skilfully exploited their advantage.
It hardly needed the Prime Minister to tell the veterans that reconciliation with their former enemies was an important part of their pilgrimage. Time has largely buried the enmity.
Time, however, must never dim the memories of what the New Zealanders who fought in this most savage of battles endured. Their "job" might have been an impossibility, but they were not deterred. Many paid the ultimate price for this supreme demonstration of dogged determination.
In so doing, they richly embellished this country's military tradition.
<i>Editorial:</i> Cassino: a triumph against all odds
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