Monte Cassino Question

I read about the fighting below Castle hill we were trying hard to clear it the germans were able to put alot of enfilading fire with there mg42 into the town from there causing a lot of trouble for anyone trying to attack the continental hotel and the De roses.

What happened at the Fish market?.

 

Hi Erich,

so we have different sources a with different results, but all was possible during this chaotic days. According to my book General Freyberg made some bad decisions too. And after the heavy bombing on the 15th of march 44, they thought nobody could be alive and indeed only 90 - 100 paras survived and from the 5 Sturmgechuetze only one was intact but couldn´t move. Freybergs mistake was, not to order more infantery to be with their tanks in the town of Cassino. During the rain in the night General Heidrich was able to replace troops. The assault of the New Zealand Brigade was to week and had not enough space to move. And on the day after according to my book the German artillery and the Nebelwerfer wasn´t very healthy for this poor boys. Generalleutnant von Senger-Etterlin said:" This battle will probably be remembered as one of the most incomprehensible acts of struggle in the war history!"

He was right on that point. I have no informations to the Fish-market. Could you tell us something about it?

Regards

Ulrich

 

Ulrich let me check I have fotos of the so-called last surviving Stug moving around in Cassino town. have to run for a cancer check-up but will try to reply back by late tonight. have at least 6 maps of the overview of the are up to Castle Hill with important points for the paras and the Nz'ers and will talk about these points of disaster soon.

 

Thanks Erich, and good luck for the Check-up!!!

Regards

Ulrich

 

Ulrich be patient I am burned out from the treatments today, will be back................. now to regain strength from all this crap I have been dealing with the last 3 months. found the maps though small still give some good details will try and find something very close on the net to post and maybe we can go segment by segment with the battle within the town which was just demolished perfect defense for the paras that made it through the bombing and the poor NZ'as trying to sift out the paras through all the debris

 

When the bombing happened there were 300 germans in the town and 150-160 were killed there was about 140 left over one of there companies from the german battalion was in caves on the edge of the town and survived the bombing intact with 4 companies in the battalion that would average out at 75 men per company and they were able to take up positions.

There was no room to move for our division at the start of the battle and the bombing just made it even worse with bomb craters 10 feet deep and 60 feet wide and rubble piled up at times 20 feet high and our tanks got stuck at the edge of town.

The battle plan for the division was not followed at the time freyberg was not the Division commander he was the Corps commander the New Zealand division commander was Ike Parkinson and he didn,t follow the plan that had been layed out.

A disaster struck the New Zealand Division when our Divisional commander who was a star in our division Howard Kippenberger just after the end of the second battle stood on a mine and lost both his feet he was a highly regarded offficer that the British offered command of one of there divisions which he turned down to stay with the New Zealand division.

It was a disaster because not only did we lose our best officer but the Guy who replaced him Ike Parkinson commander of 6th brigade had never commanded a division before and his background was in artillery he was really only a jouneyman officer there was nothing special about him and then Ian Bonifant from the divisional cavalry took over 6th brigade who were going to led the attack he had never commander a infantry brigade before it was a hugh blow.

The plan was to blast the town with hugh volume of bombs then poor infantry into the town as fast as they could be push down the roads and swamp the town before the germans could get back on there feet there was supposed to be all three battalions in the town by night fall but it didn,t happen the first infantry from 25th battalion moved in around i think 12.30pm three companies into the town and one went up and captured castle hill and from the numbers i have been able to obtain the three companies would have been about 70 men each so the total infantry in the opening attack in the town would have been around 210 when you consider they say when attacking a well entrenched enemy you need an advantage of 3-1 the germans had 140 men in the town we weren,t even close to that ratio.

The first company from the 24th wasn,t sent in till 5.00pm and the 26th battalion didn,t move till after dark and the tanks were still bogged town,the 25th made it through the town to there objective the quisling line i think from memory it was opposite the Continental hotel but with out tank support could get no further aginst the mg42,the plan had not be followed and we lost the inititive the advantage swung to the defenders on the high ground sitting behind there guns our infantry had to attack them across open ground with no tank support and most of the time couldn,t even see who was shooting at them.

this is a comment from our commander Howard kippenberger after the battle Quote''while the the bombing and artillery had been very successful in smashing the town and destroying half the german garrision then Ike Parkinson entirely disregarded my plan which he knew for swamping the defence with infantry before it (the garrision) had recovered and Bonifant dribbled troops into it so slowly as to lose all the possible gains of our crime.

Howard Kippenburger also said after the war when he was in charge of writing the Offical histories of New Zealand in WW2 that it was going to be hard for us to write our own account of the Cassino battles for they were so miss managed but to his credit he did doing a very good job and the account of the battle is very well written and makes no excuses credit given where it,s due but it is not a cover up job thankfully.

 

Böhmlers account is varied depending on the German source found and quoted. possibly a 100 maybe 150 paras left after the bombing though this is rather a random count due to where the positions lay within the ruined town as there was no communication between the paras. what was found was the brazen disregard in the Para's words of the Sherman tank CO's standing in the turret driving down the debris covered roads what was left of them. the Paras had a field day picking off the poor chaps on the Sherman's until blow to bits by the 75's ............

 

Thats a thing i always wondering about, why the hell does all of the tank crews hang out of their tanks? They give so easy targets. There must be a reason why a tank is made out of steel and not of wood. But thats another story. According to my book they said that onl 60 Para´s with the CO Captain Foltin survived for the reason they changed places befor the bombing started. They had their HQ in the ruins of the Hotel Excelsior and changed to a cave in the Abbey´s hill. Intersting is that tone of the bomber crew´s ahd the hit of the day. They destroyed Lt.Gen. Leese trailer with an direct hit. I suppose that he was not so amused. With the heavy bombing the allies built up obstacles for themselve. I can´t imagine what deadly fights were at there. Here is stated that only one privat of the 2.Kompanie/FJR3 survived the assault of the "Rajputanas" at hill 193. Yes it was a tragic loss that Brigadier Kippenberger was a victim of a wooden mine. But a good point why your CO´s were so stubborn with Monte Cassino was that Stalin said to your Politicians he have to make the major part of the war against Germany and the western allies made vacation in Italy. Maybe that they wanted the succsess to show Stalin that they aren´t lazy??
Erich, hope you´re doing well again?!

Regards

Ulrich

 

It,s worth noting the trouble our bulldozer drivers had trying to clear the rubble if you see photos of the bulldozers they were like a civilian bulldozer they had no roof the crew were wide open and were getting picked off when they tried to clear paths for the tanks.

I would love to get my hands on some Books giving a German account of the battle as long as they are not bias i can,t stand books that aren,t balanced.

Could you recommend some.

By the way i hope you win your own battle with cancer Erich.

 

actually no Steven the German books are strictly German point of view, losses and stout defense types, truly there really needs to be a re-issue of some German accounts and a new edition come out with other German viewpoints added; thanks but the cancer thing has been going on for years, I get weary at times after getting shocked/socked with meds as it really just drains me out and everything is an effort. Still looking for more clear and definative maps of Cassino Town.

 

A lot of people don,t know this outside of New Zealand but our commanders really didn,t want to do the cassino battle when they got there our division commander Howard Kippenberger was fearful of the division in his words being bleed white because of the high ground advantage the germans had and the narrow frontages you couldn,t delpy your forces in strength a classic example was in the second battle of cassino when the New Zealand division sent the Maori into the railway station we had 6 battalions which amounted to 24 companies backed up with hundreds of tanks but in the opening attack we could only deploy 2 companies with no tanks because of the flooding and mines.

The 4th Indian division going across the hills had 9 battalions which amounted to 36 companies but in the opening attack along snakes head ridge it was only wide enough to attack with 1 company again with no tanks.

What you had on paper didn,t matter at cassino because the terrain simply didn,t allow you to deploy it you couldn,t attack with full force throwing in everything you had in a concerted blow.

Freyberg actually felt that the battle defied military logic in the fact that it was a limited attack against a fortress i mean when you think about it we were asked to attack the strongest defensive position in Europe with limited resources in winter it was insane.

When freyberg asked if he said no to the job were they going to send someone else the answer he got was yes so he said we would do it because it was coalition warfare and there is a lot of politics involved he didn,t want the New Zealand Division to be seen as only taking the easy jobs and anything hard palming off to someone else but he put a limit on casulties he said he would take 1000 casulties and if they got to that amount and could see light at the end of the tunnel they would push on and take more but if they got to 1000 and saw nothing he would call off the attack as it turns out we took 1600 in the end.

I personally think if the allied commanders could have not gone to Italy and just sat out the time and got ready for Normandy they would have but your right there was pressure from the Russians to do something and we really couldn,t just sit back and take a year off.

 

I hope this too!!!


Steven,

as i wrote somewhere above my book from J. Piekalkiewicz is a well made one. It is balanced and includes OKW reports statements from all CO´s newspapers, tactical maps a lot of good pics and so on. It is good made and i can recommend it. It seems that the allies would make a signal out of the battle and the leading Germans would have the same effect on it. And for some political reasons both sides sacrificed thousands of good men in the guess that this battle left only loosers!
Another question for me is why didn´t the British army opened up an second frontline with an landing from Ortona? The Wehrmacht had the best troops at Anzio and Monte Cassino, the Luftwaffe wasn´t a dangerous fact in those days and the Kriegsmarine had nothing to compare with the British Fleet. I learned, to split enemy´s power into small groups anywhere it is possible and destroy them part by part. The Routes 6 and 7 been the fastest ways to Rome but the German OKW also known this fact and concentrated a lot of well trained units at there.

Regards

Ulrich

 

thanks Ulrich for the well wishes...............also yes I have the Piek.book as well this is the bildband right ? lousy photos for clarity but at least it is something from the German side of things.

the LW in Italy was negligible and always was during 43-45. the fighter units were too few and the main concern was the defense of the Reich.

 

Hi Erich,

no it isn´t a bildband. He wrote two books and this one is with good pics and only the german para´s were seen as something special. He had some critics to the german tactics and strategy too. But i am sure there will be some better books out there.

Regards

Ulrich

 

Ulrich do you have access to any of the former Fallschirmtruppen Gemeinschaft magazines : Der Deutsche FallschirmJäger ? thin magazine approx. 27-35 pages in length sometimes filled with some real interesting and unknown articles, am looking right now in the darkness of my office for one issue that covered Cassino. Of course the issues usually sit in the more private nature that being - Damals, for the deceased and in their honour.

still looking for the maps

 

We were fighting at Orsogna as part of 8th army in NOV-DEC 1943 it is inland from Ortona and the Canadians were at Ortona.

The whole front in that area had to go on the go slow because the winter set in you had mud so thick it was up to the trucks axels the area just bogged down so sadly for us we were brought down from that side of Italy to the other to fight at cassino.

We took 1634 casulties from the Sangro river crossing to orsogna with 1092 of that in our 6 infantry battalions then we took another 1596 at cassino with 1079 in our 6 infantry battalions so it was certainly tough fighting for the poor infantry.

I will have to look up that book it would be a good read.

 

Yep, the mud! We made the same experiences in Russia with "General Schlamm". Yes your troops had horrible losses and much more as Gen. Freyberg wanted to accept. But your troops were brave fighting and i suppose with the right tactics and better CO´s they would have outpinned the Para´s at Cassino much earlier.

Regards

Ulrich

 

Hey guys if you are interested cheak out www.nzetc.org you won,t regret it it has all the Official histories of New Zealand in WW2.

Our Commander at cassino Howard Kippenberger was the editor in chief of the books and he did a great job the books are so well written i love them because they are not bias books that are written to promote New Zealand they give credit where it die but also don,t sweep mistakes under the carpet they are very detailed with what happaned in the battles and provide great information on untis in the battles right down the the number of the platoons.

I recommend you guys read the stuff on cassino it is so well written i will be suprised if you didn,t enjoy it.

They have in The Italian Campaign Vol 1 a Chapter coving the whole cassino battle then they have a retrospective chapter looking at the aftermath of the battle and what was done well and what could have been done better.

But also make sure you read the individual Battalions chapters because they provide even more detail on the battle and also the Tank regiment and Engineer histories because they also played a big role.

6th Brigade 24th
25th led the attack
26th battalion
5th brigade 21st battalion
23rd battalion
28th maori

4th armoured brigade 18th,19th,20th armoured regiments
22nd motorised infantry battalion which was brough in after the battle was called off 23-26 march but it was stil a dangerous place and they took casulties so worth reading.

On the website you can buy the official histories on disk if you are interested.

Like i said if you read the Official Histories of the Cassino battles i am sure you will really enjoy them they are very well written and a wealth of information.

 

It is true none of the Allied Generals at casino covered themselves in glory Mark Clark,Freyberg,Alexander they all performed poorly once they committed to a frontal assault the results were always going to be horrific loss for little gain.

 

Hi Steve,

Thanks for the link! The chapter 19 is good reading too. I have to read it all tomorrow.

Regards

Ulrich