T
THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 1957.
Pago 7
THE MEN RIGHT AT THE CENTRE
JOIN THE BIG CONTROVERSY
HOLLOW VICTORY New inquest on the blunders that still shadow us today
THE lives of everyone in Europe today are still being shaped by the decisions, victories, Few decisions and defeats of the war. caused greater controversy than the one that slowed down the Italian campaign and a possible advance into what is now Russian-dominated Europe. The controversy goes on.... with added impetus, from a book just out . . . . . .
H'S
by TOM POCOCK
15 was not to reason why. But now it i. An Infantry man has been reasoning why the bloody Italian campaign, in which ho fought, was a failuro. Why it failed to strike into Central Europe before the Russians.
Today ho gives his reasons.
CUMMINGS ON
THE CONTINENT Report from abroad No. I
LOOK
TOURS
WICAN
In that secluded Urile village in Catalonia we found ourselves among the British...
H
TTE blames 11 Roosevelt's
President It lasted five months and cost the opposing armles 250,000 men generals
send, wounded, misskg, broken. for giving the campaign
And now here is one ut the half-hearted support. They survivors saying that it ended declined to put their full with "Hitle more than a victory of the human spirit: on elegy weight behind it."
for the commen soldier,
Majdaluny Acting as chorus, prosents his high tragedy in four nets--the four great offen- sives which the Allies threw against
of the 1,700. penk Monte Cassino and the massive Benedictine monastery
lis summit.
Be blumes Mc. Churchill's eagerness to capture Rome and his 50 justify
Mediterrean strategy. For him I was a per- sonel issue. The campaign had been bis idea in the Aist place.
He blames American General Muck Clark for failing to trap the defeated Germans offer the battles of Cassino and Anzio.
ilo bitince the American Chiels cf Statt for depriv. ing the Allied annies of com- plete victory in 1944 by with- drawing seven divisions from Italy for the wall-over Invasion of the French Riviera,
There accusations are made in infantryman Fred Majdalany's book CASSINO-PORTRAIT OF A BATTLE
TRAGIC...
on
T was in January 1044 that the cast walled, in a spec- tacular mountain arena, the rise of the curtain.
odvance
from
The Allied Naples to Rome hnd halted before the sheer wall of moun tains at Cassino, plerced
only
can hold the organised defensive line through Cassino."
The Allied Command knew
so little about the fortress-like mestery that commanded the batticfleld that British General Tuker, compiled his own appre-
" elation of its strength from second-hand book he bought in Naples,
The first attack on Cassino was to precede by two days the landing behind the German lines ut Anzlo, which, it was hoped, 'would turn the German flank.
was also
Majdaiany writes: "But 11 1 personal affair, a effort by Mr determined Churchill to 8ght for his baby the strategy which had taken the war into Italy,"
FLIMSY
AS I SEE IT; FOUR BIG NAMES REPLY
◆ General Władysław Anders commander of the Polish Corps that finally stormed Monte Cassino: With utmost grief I saw the diversion of divisions to Pranes and the abandon- ment of a strategy which
would
not only bring an early penetration of the most vital enemy centres but would have safeguarded East and Central
·European countries from being sub- Jugated by Russia,
L
℗ American General Mark Clark, Fifth Army commander in Italy: The primary reason our Arst attacks on Cassino did not succeed was because i did not have in my Fifth Army sufficient troops to do that job and undertake the Antio landings.
1 reconimended against the bombing of the Cassino monastery. ...
A grave error was made in diverting troops from Italy to southern France,
not
• Lieut-General Bir Francis Taker, 4th Indian Division com- mander at Cassino: There was no need whatsoever to attack Monte Cassino directly. If the monastery Was to suffer then the Germans should not have included the feature in their tao- tical positions and the Alltes should never have attacked It My opinion was that if it had to be attacked directly, then It should be reduced to pulp.
◆ American General Lucien Truscott, Allied commander st Ansio: The failure of our earlier attacks on the Cassina front and at Analo ware due to allempiing too much under BHormonely diffiealt conditions with means that weto totally Inadequate. Allied beadquarters were convinced that the monastery -wäs Decupled by the Germans and that was the Justification for bombing 16.
1
they were reduced from officers and 813 men offeers and 15 men.
the
10
and
15 and the bulding at lis summit. British forces were plotting three were in military terms a single secretly to trespass
plece of ground.” but, "because Army territory and make A of the obsessive theatrical man- race for it for the capital was a Gurkhas who, one night on ner in which it towered Over Agment that could only have
approaches
Monte the scene," the monastery "had suggested itself to a romantic Cassino, ran into what they became the embodiment of ro- and harassed imagination." and scrub. It was thorn, laced symbol."
on
Fifth
tangible
SLAUGHTER
Longmana, 218.) by a narrow valley taking the T5 pm, on January 20. 11 Chought was enfe cover of rock. sistance
The battle he describes hes the market been named after town of Cassino. But, together with the Anzio jarding, IT WAS really the Battle of Reme,
road to Rome.
WCTC
big attack went in at
because only The Allies
tragically had to be then Intelligence then were enough landing craft over-confident. ofcers reported that "1 would available for the Anzio landing. And, because it could not be appeur doubtful If the enemy
delayed, the attack went in with Blasy preparation.
Through the sound barrier -at 10 feet
WHAT ARE the sensations of flying through the sound barrier? Everyday stuff to the test pilots who carve up the sky to thrill Farnborough's
but here thousands
Ronald Walker tells of the impact of supersonic flying on the
newcomer to high speed.
to come.
It was to be a taste of things Writing with a soldier's tough compassion, Majdalany tells of the Americans' attempted cross- ing of the little river Rapido in front of Cassino.
Essex men who beat Germán” puratroops from
He begins: "There is an element of tragi-comedy about the mandeuvre of war known as the opposed river crossing." There is always something ramparts of Cassino castle with grotesque, if not pathetic, about their ride butts. the efforts of landsmen handle boats.
the end.
So the Fifth Army. was fret Into Rome. But half of the German defenders of Cassino and Anzio
and had escaped Itved to fight another day,
DRAGGED ON
urey fought north of Rome.
with barbed wire and mines.
German machine gunners "had only to pour their dre into the cries. and flashes and silhouettes grotesquely lighted up on the thora and barbed NO it was bombed. But there
wentwas wire every time a mine
no co-ordination with off."
the Infantry writing outside its The New Zealander writing: walls, and the attackers, going in "There is no day, only two kinds late, were slaughtered of
And by that time the United 'smoky. night a yellow. eboking night and a black, But the monastery dki fall in States Government, against the meteor-ridden night."
Majdalany calls the opposkion of the British Gov- ernment and of the Allied the final assault "an operation in C
Command in Italy. had with- the major-with-fuli-orchestra, *---
This time the Germans broke, drawn so much frontline strength But was
for the almost unopposed land- this the victory? Ing on the French Riviera, that
from Cassino. the Italian Concerted drives
campaign dragged and Anzio were to encircle the
on mul Germany collapsed. Germans south of Rome. They falled.
This was the campaign that During the weeles that
had been designed by Churchill followed, the battlefeld moved This act has been condemned switchied his Fifth Army from to liberate Central Europe from into the wilderness of jagged on the grounds that no Germans its appointed task of cutting the the Germans and save it from
the monastery German line of retreal rocks, sudden milles, rocky out were within
and the Russians. struck north towards Rome, It crops, and cloud-capped peaks wells.
Monte that clustered about
But Infantry omeer Majda Jany,
The who got to know Cassino.
There are so many stories to monastery well at close range, believed that this bombard- of the Royal ment The charger
was essential-not only Sussex, The two nights when because "the forined mountain
to
There was. They were almost wiped out.
Poles, who finally took monastery, the scat ol. Benedictine Order, that
the the
tad
been bombed and shelled into pyramids of rubble.
General Mark Clark suddenly
tell.
was sald that General Clark It was, anys Fred Majdalany, was determined to be In Rome a failure, and Cassino, the most before the British Eighth Army, agonising battle of the war, was But, says Majdalany, "this thus "deprived at the last of the That would have was war, not a sporting engage full victory
the notion that made it worth while," ment, and
*
BROWN
TOURS
SMITS
TOURB
TOURS)
And in that remote little place on the Mediterranean caust we found ourselves in the midst of the British...
BLACKS CRUISE
Also in that isolated hamirt in the Alps we were
surrounded by the British...
However, when we get home to Oxfordætreet we know we shall meet sorsa foreigners then seal
NO MORE NOISE THAN A CAR
OR the first time I have flown at supersonic speed and
Fo the battlenow something of Farnborough
from the other side-the side of the pilots who provide the show for those thousands of upturned faces.
With Bill Bedford, Hawker's chief test pilot, I made
a supersonic flight in the two-seat Hunter. Bill's quiet! introduction to the long, slim fighter gave no warning of: the spectacular moments to come for me.
In
had
Strapped down into the With the coastline getting efector seat. helmeted and nearer
at un astonishing rate, with oxygen puffing into his 111 cased back the stick. nuk, Dill started the Avon Jet those few moments we engine. .For us there was no flown at more than 700 miles an more noise than that of a well- hour. luned car engine.
Two fingers
"Now let's do a low run over the sea," Said Bili. Height only about 10 feet now,”
be
We taxied on to the runway. added. If you think you can
It was odd to realise that I was inbgine what it is like to streak
no longer one of the thousands low
Dver the wave-tope at
of spectators lining the fences, hundreds of miles
hour, my
As the control tower gave the challenge is you connet. It was all clear, Bill released the the most shattering demonstra- brakes and opened the throttle. tion of speed I have
perienced.
ex-
The Hunter bounded forward, The end of the runway hurtled In the lower atmosphere the toward us and was replaced by shock waves appeared on either the sky as the plane bored side of the cockpit hood, They upward at a gentle 500 miles an are caused by the supersonic hour.
flow of air over the cockpit, blueish lines. They appear as flickering, thick,
Bill stroked the controls with the gentle Angers of a mother with a bobe. Over the inter- com he said, "You can fly her with two fingers," and proceed- ed to do so,
Into a loop
Heading back to Farnborough
BI lined up with the distant The
big moment arrived runway and we dashed over It miles an When, having levelled out as at more than 000
nearly 40,000ft, Over the hour.
To me the tents and the;
Than Channel, south of the Isle of crowds became a blur. Wight, Bu pat the nose down the
nose came up and the
and pointed the Hunter toward Hunter shot up almost vertically the coast, I could feel the to go into a loop. plane gathering itself on the Said Bill, "There, is FRIN
borough." So, it was-spread speed bullt.up.
out ko n mip. But 5€ wan The tell-tale was, the machie zupside down. "Rather, I was moter, which shows air spent in upside down, looking at the air- relation to the speed of sound, ned through the canopy, th From 1.9 dhe white hand moved The Hunter, came in to land, to. 1-sonic speed-then passed rolled to a stop. For me, it was If torach 1.09.
Over
Parker 61
The only fountain pen that fills itsoff by itself ... it has no moving parts!
Now, from Parker, comes a completely new and unique fountain pen-the Parker 61 This remarkable pen fills itself by itself in just 10 seconds using capillary attraction alone! Further, the surface of the filling unit sheds liquids so that it cleans itself by itself. The Parker 61 is truly a different and impířed creation...a wonderful gift idea for yourself or for those who appreciate the very best.
For optimum writing performance, use Parker Quink in your Parker 61 pen.
Bois Apsala: SNRIBO (CHINA) LIMITED, Boom 033, Alexandre Mes Fun Bepair Service at Skrizo Showroom, Alexsadia Azonda