1957-09-21 — Page 7

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

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