11
Lieutenant General Anders’ order for the day of 11 May opened: ‘Soldiers! The moment for battle has arrived. We have long awaited the moment for revenge and retribution over our hereditary enemy.’1 Generals Leese and Alexander must have raised their eyebrows at such words; the passionately expressed hatred of the Germans was like that of no other Allied contingent and there could be no mistaking the savagery of the fighting to ensue. Indeed, the Eighth Army’s attempts to buoy them up before the battle were far from being so evocative, with Leese’s address concluding, ‘We address our special greeting to the Polish Corps which fights now at our side for the liberation of its beloved country. I appeal to you all. I wish to see in your eyes the eagerness for battle. To arms! Every man must do his duty in the struggle ahead but final victory will belong to all of us.’2
The difference between the addresses of Anders and Leese clearly showed the Poles as being motivated by passion and the British by a sense of duty – indeed Leese and his staff appeared to be oblivious to the fact that the Poles viewed the coming battle as vengeance for the plight of their homeland. These men had lost everything and it was clear to them that the end of the war would not mean the end of their troubles but the beginning of new ones. There was a cold fury in their demeanour. More than any other soldiers on the Allied side they had good reason to hate. They had come a long way and endured a great deal to fight the men who had ravaged their country in 1939, and there would be no half measures about the way they went into the attack. The British Military Liaison to the Polish II Corps also seemed to miss the mark, with a rallying speech that left the Poles with a sense of being inadvertently embarrassed and patronized. The only emotional contribution made by the British was in their christening the Polish attack with the code name Operation Honker, a name the Poles believed likened them to a flock of geese homeward bound. The British, for their part, wondered whether the intensity of the Poles might not sometimes be their undoing and perhaps cost them many lives. For modern war is a skill as well as a test of courage, and bravery is not enough. Assault had to be cunning not merely fanatical. What was certain was that these men would give everything. They had willingly taken on the unpleasantest of the many unpleasant tasks this offensive entailed – the scramble across the vicious ridges that were now strewn with nearly as many corpses as boulders.
The preceding days had been sunny but the morning of 11 May was dull and it remained so all day; a little rain fell and by afternoon there was a haze over the valley. Summer had arrived and the valley floor erupted with wild corn and poppies that flourished undeterred by the salvos of artillery. The winter fighting had taken a huge toll on the mountainsides – where there should have been groves of acacia, olive, orange, vine and oak stood only lacerated stumps. The shattered remains of the monastery still stood on high, in noble defiance of the passing battle, a fleeting though destructive episode in its long history. The early morning sun would burst through the dawn haze, bathing the blue-grey mountain and honey-coloured ruins of the Abbey in a glow of gold and pink.
That day the plan was for the Allied artillery to cease firing before nightfall and the day’s light firing programme petered out altogether during the afternoon to create a low-key atmosphere, a calm before the storm. Almost simultaneously the German guns also ceased firing and a strange silence descended on Monte Cassino and the valley. Prior to this the guns of both sides had fallen quiet only once that year, on Easter Day, and in the prelude to the offensive the silence was uncanny and oppressive. The Poles in their forming-up positions were aware this was to be no ordinary battle; their thoughts during these long hours varied according to each man’s temperament. Probably all felt the weight of the occasion, unless war-weariness had filled their minds with apathy and resentment. The men experienced every emotion and thought from exhilaration to acute fear, and states of mind succeeded each other, or passed only to return, or most strangely occur almost simultaneously.
The sun set at a quarter past eight to the singing of nightingales, and as darkness fell fireflies took to the calm air. The night was warm, with some mist forming in the valleys of the Gari and Liri and in pockets on the higher ground. Looking up the commanders were relieved to see a bright starry sky and to know they would not be deprived of the services of the late moonrise.
At 2300 hrs, half an hour before moonrise, the artillery of the entire Eighth and Fifth Armies sprang to life, tearing the night sky to pieces in a blaze of gun flashes and a cacophony of destruction. Throughout the first forty minutes, in positions from Acquafondata stretching as far east as the Tyrrhenian coast, over 1,000 guns of the Eighth Army concentrated their fire on known enemy artillery and mortar positions in the area of Atina–Belmonte, Villa S. Lucia and the Liri valleys, ‘Mortar’, Wadi, Passo Corno and the area of Terelle. This counterbattery fire was of particular importance to the Polish II Corps’ operations, owing to the right-angled bend formed by the front line in the area of Monte Cairo, which enabled enemy artillery from Belmonte–Atina to fire into the rear of attacking Polish troops. At the end of this 40 minutes, that is after 2340 hrs, the bulk of the artillery was directed against enemy infantry positions on the objectives of both Corps’ attacks, while at the same time the harassing of enemy artillery and mortars continued.
The majority of Polish artillery guns were located in the valley floor beneath the monastery and thus were firing at targets unseen to the gunners, relying totally on the accuracy of the observers’ radio reports and preceding artillery-mapping surveys. Amongst the many gunners involved was Captain Bronisław Sokołowski, Commander of 4 Troop, 2nd Battery, 9 Light Artillery Regiment, which commenced firing at 2305 hrs and continued non-stop all night. From his sandbagged command post, nicknamed the Stork’s Nest, Sokołowski relayed target coordinates received from headquarters to the gunners by a one-way phone link, the gunners using hand signals to acknowledge receipt of the orders. During the following morning Sokołowski had to leave the command post to visit one of his gunners who had apparently not acknowledged the receipt of an order. He was only ten paces from the Stork’s Nest when it was destroyed by German artillery fire. This counter-fire from the Germans inflicted many casualties amongst the artillery positioned on the flat valley floor beneath the hills. Despite the Corps’ gun positions being concealed by a smokescreen over a belt of ground 7km wide for the whole period of the attack, the German artillery began shelling their positions once they had been revealed during the preceding firing. However the smoke did prove successful in hampering the accuracy of this counter-battery fire.
In preparation for the attack the Sherman tanks of the 2nd and 3rd Squadrons, along with two tanks from the regimental headquarters and two batteries of self-propelled anti-tank guns (Wolverines), moved out from San Michele at 2300 hrs. The 1st Squadron along with the 17th Lwów Infantry Battalion was held as a corps reserve around San Michele. To avoid unnecessary complications between the tank squadrons and the infantry brigades, coordination of the tanks, Wolverines and engineers was overseen by Captain Iwanowski. The 3rd squadron’s 1st platoon based in the car park was the first to make the start line. The front could only be reached along the narrow, winding mountain track called the Polish Sapper’s Road, which proved to be extremely demanding for the tank drivers. Traffic control was especially important along the single-track road and the Inferno Track, so the Military Police set up one-way systems to keep things moving. One tank driver, upon rounding a hairpin bend, was blinded by the intense artillery barrage and crashed his vehicle into the mountainside, blocking the road to all traffic. After several unsuccessful attempts to move it there was no option but to push it off the road and let it roll down the mountainside.
Artillery preparation on II Corps sector continued until 0100 hrs on 12 May, then the infantry of both divisions, 1 Carpathian Brigade and 5 Wileńska Brigade, began to cross their start lines. From the 1 Carpathian Brigade the 2nd Battalion was to launch an attack from the area of Point 596, along the ridge toward Snake’s Head Ridge with the objective of its capture and also of Point 569. The 1st Battalion to the right of the 2nd Battalion attacked with its four companies one behind the other, with the aim of first capturing the Gorge and then Albaneta Farm. The northern flank was to be protected by a troop of tanks using the track running from Colle Majola to Massa Albaneta, supporting the 1st Battalion, supplemented by two self-propelled guns, a machine-gun company and the dismounted 12 Podolski Lancers reconnaissance regiment.
The 2nd Battalion stormed Snake’s Head Ridge at 0130 hrs and through the sheer fury of their first onslaught had by 0245 hrs liquidated most of the enemy pillboxes on the hill; further, some infantry elements overran the northern part of Point 569. However, the Germans were now beginning to recover and Polish casualties had already been severe. Under the intense German counter-fire the Polish instinct for bravado kicked in, much as the British had feared. One Polish officer recalled: ‘Most of us were content to huddle ourselves in the holes and hollows we had found, but some soldiers, in my opinion, were stupidly reckless. Many were killed through their carelessness. I noticed that the Germans very wisely stayed under cover at all times, whereas our men would suddenly stand up to hurl defiance at the enemy. They paid dearly for these and similar acts of bravado.’3
The 1st Battalion was suffering heavy casualties in the gorge, as the Germans had arranged its defence with frontal and flanking machine guns. It was not until dawn and after further artillery ‘softening’ of the area that the 1st Battalion, supported by tanks, could attack the gorge and several infantry sub-units managed to struggle through to the northern slopes running up to Albaneta, although these troops in turn became pinned down by increasingly heavy artillery fire. The supporting tanks of the 4 Armoured Regiment were having a hard time. At 0430 hrs the two regimental headquarters’ tanks, four tanks of the 3rd Squadron and fifteen from the 2nd Squadron advanced along the track to meet Lieutenant Bobaka’s platoon before the gorge. The gorge had not been cleared of mines and the whole area was under constant observation from the German positions high upon Mount Cairo. At 0500 hrs Lieutenant Białecki, Commander of the 4th platoon, with an additional two tanks from the regimental headquarters squadron pushed forward into the gorge. Enemy artillery and mortar fire concentrated on them and in a matter of minutes Lieutenant Białecki’s lead tank suffered a direct hit to its ammunition magazine. The resulting explosion blew the turret clean off the tank’s hull, killing three of the crew instantly. Covered in flames Lieutenant Białecki managed to jump out of the tank, as did one other crewman, who died of his burns and injuries on 19 May – the day after victory at Cassino. The remaining tanks in the gorge were now without radio contact with headquarters and the infantry; trapped by poor visibility they were forced to a halt under the heavy German fire.
Elements of the 1st Battalion managed to advance beyond the gorge, but lacking tank support were forced to withdraw under heavy fire from Mass Albaneta and Point 575. The gorge had been heavily mined and the sappers engaged in clearing a path for the tanks suffered such heavy casualties that they were unable to continue their work; eighteen out of the twenty men were either killed or wounded. The battalion was now at a standstill and efforts to restore momentum to the attack were not helped by an almost total breakdown of radio communication. The Brigade Commander thus received only sporadic and indirect reports that made the position obscure to the commanders. With the tanks unable to hold their forwardmost gains, Captain Iwanowski decided to pull back and ordered all vehicles to fall back to their start lines on the night of the 12/13 May.
At the same time the enemy artillery and Nebelwerfers held the approaches to Point 593 and the gorge under such heavy and continuous fire that any communication forward, including the bringing up of ammunition was out of the question. As the Polish advance slowed so the Germans, true to form, began to launch savage counter-attacks upon Point 593, supported by overhead machine-gun and mortar fire from the monastery and by enfilade fire from Colle d’Onofrio. The first was driven off, as was a second an hour later. A third counter-attack again failed to rout the Poles and seize the crest, but this time the attacking Germans went to ground in craters or behind boulders on the southwest slopes and began to snipe at the Polish positions only a few yards away. When darkness fell the German commander ordered yet another counter-attack and the paratroopers crept right up to the Polish perimeter under cover of a mortar bombardment. The mortars proved devastatingly effective on the bare rocky ground and virtually obliterated the entire 2nd Battalion, who could find no cover. As soon as it ended the paratroopers rose up and rushed forward. After bitter hand-to-hand fighting, the few surviving Poles were either captured or forced to retreat back along Snakeshead Ridge. On the southern slopes of Point 593 only one officer and seven men were found alive, and even next morning, when the stragglers had come in, the 2nd Battalion numbered no more than a few dozen men. The companies of the 1st Battalion on the northern slopes of Point 593 also suffered casualties from artillery and mortar fire, particularly artillery fire from the area Atina–Belmonte falling in their rear, coupled with machine-gun fire from San Angelo and Point 575.
The two assaulting battalions of 5 Wileńska Brigade advanced from their forming up areas at 0100 hrs; the 13th Battalion on the right was detailed to capture the northern parts of Phantom Ridge and the 15th Battalion on the left, the southern face. The attack was preceded by sapper patrols for mine clearing and marking the route. The 18th Battalion of 6 Lwów Brigade was in the second echelon behind the 15th Battalion, and was to leave its forming up area later, passing through the leading battalions to capture the ridge. The 14th Battalion was to hold the start line; with 6 Lwów Brigade providing a diversionary attack on Passo Corno and protecting the right flank, the left flank covered by 2 Carpathian Rifle Brigade. To help keep the advancing infantry on course, light anti-aircraft guns fired tracer bursts to mark the edges of artillery barrages, and the attack was supported by mortars, machine guns, tanks and engineer sections equipped with flamethrowers.
The diversion was successful; however, progress made by the leading battalions of 5 Wileńska Brigade was unexpectedly slow. They were scheduled to commence their assault against Phantom Ridge at 0145 hrs, but the forward elements did not reach the ridge until 0230 hrs. The delay was caused by heavy enemy artillery and mortar fire that began immediately the infantry left their forming-up areas. The massive opening artillery barrage had achieved little more than severing the telephone lines amongst the German gun positions; as these were quickly repaired German artillery commenced heavy coordinated bombardment on the advancing infantry. The forward battalions suffered approximately 20 per cent casualties in their advance towards Phantom Ridge. In addition, this artillery fire was severely disrupting communications between the assaulting troops and the Brigade Commander, Colonel Kurek, with the majority of wireless sets having been smashed up or their operators killed and the impossibility of dispatching runners.
Two companies of the 13th Battalion, moving on the extreme northern axis, reached the top of Phantom Ridge, where they met concentrated enemy artillery and mortar fire with both frontal and enfilade fire from enemy automatic weapons. Because of the radio failure the Polish gunners had little idea of where their own men were or what parts of the German line should be saturated. The Germans had few such problems and began bracketing the whole eastern face of Phantom Ridge with the most terrible rolling barrage, moving up and down and destroying everything. The troops had no means of fighting against it and were struck down or forced to seek cover behind rocks that afforded them no protection. Under this heavy fire the companies were quickly whittled away. The two rear companies of the 13th Battalion also reached the top of Phantom Ridge, but after clearing pillboxes on its northern sector were pinned down by intense fire that made further movement impossible. Again it was impossible to coordinate the actions of these companies and platoons because of the almost total breakdown in communications.
In the meantime, at 0200 hrs Lieutenant Trejdosiewicz, tank commander of the 1st Platoon, 3rd Squadron, moved onto the slopes of Phantom Ridge. Despite their heroic efforts, the 3rd Company of the Corps Engineers had been unable to clear the area of mines and in the first hours of fighting had lost six men killed and thirty-eight wounded carrying out mine clearance and demarking the cleared routes. The tanks suffered losses as well; enemy artillery fire had destroyed two and a third had become wrecked in a crevasse. During the night the forward medical facilities of the 4 Armoured Regiment were housed in dugout shelters further protected by the bulk of parked-up Valentine bridge-laying tanks. All four of the doctors working at the station were wounded but refused to be evacuated, choosing to remain and tend to the incoming casualties. The Kresowa Division’s assault sappers were fully engaged supporting the attack on Phantom Ridge, during which action engineer Second Lieutenant Jerzy Gradosielski won the Polish Militari Virtuti and British Military Cross.
In the south, the 15th Battalion charged to the top of Phantom Ridge and engaged pillboxes there, a difficult task owing to the thick undergrowth, rocky ground and the darkness. Two companies of this battalion managed to force a way between the enemy pillboxes to reach Point 517 before coming under intense enemy fire. Upon finding himself out of touch with the flank units and completely isolated, the commander of these two companies withdrew to Phantom Ridge, where he started mopping up enemy positions that had been overrun.
At 0300 hrs, the 18th Battalion arrived at its forming-up location alongside the 14th Battalion’s defences, but all communications forward and with the Brigade Commander were broken. The Battalion Commander, seeing elements of the 15th Battalion passing over Phantom Ridge, assumed that this ridge was completely in Polish hands and ordered his men to advance. By 0630 hrs, the 18th Battalion reached Phantom Ridge and its troops joined with the men of the 15th Battalion in mopping up enemy pillboxes. By this time, the narrow and exposed piece of ground was congested with Polish troops and after daybreak casualties began to mount as the Germans began picking them off. At dawn, an enemy counter-attack was hurled back, but no attacker could hold out for long on the exposed slopes by day. They could not be reinforced, nor could they be supplied. They were on their own and continued to fight as best they could. Major General Sulik reviewed the progress of the battle and although the formations were without signals and had incurred heavy casualties the intermediate objective was in Polish hands. He therefore decided to commit the 16th and 17th Battalions in a second attack at 1500 hrs.
It was not signalling communication alone that had been lost with the attacking formations; the dust and smoke from the artillery barrage resulted in the battlefield being enveloped by a thick impenetrable cloud through which it was impossible to view the conflict. Even the forward artillery observation officers with their elevated positions could not see what was happening. There was general consternation that the Germans had not only survived the initial artillery bombardment but that their infantry were counter-attacking with ferocious success, supported by devastating artillery fire. The reality that this was to be a savage fight to the death now began to sink in, although many could not believe the resolve of the Germans and instead convinced themselves the artillery fire could only be coming from their own Polish artillery. The result was a chaotic and panicky scene, as Lieutenant Dębicki of the 6 Light Artillery regiment recalled: ‘Suddenly a major from one of the units under fire runs up roaring at me: “You son of a bitch you’re killing my boys! Stop it! Now! Now!” I manage to answer: “They’re not our guns, major sir. They’re the Germans’!”…Now he is pulling a gun on me!… Slowly, very slowly, the poor fellow turns away and vanishes into this terrible night.’4
The heavy fighting on Phantom Ridge continued until 1300 hrs, when the 18th Battalion’s commander decided that it was simply not possible to continue the attack and the holding of ground would only lead to greater casualties – indeed the leading battalions of 5 Brigade, the 13th and 15th, had been virtually destroyed. No men in those battalions escaped injury, the broken bodies of those killed tumbled down the mountainside to collect in heaps in the valley below, amongst which was almost the entire complement of Captain Jurowski’s company. Unable to establish liaison with Brigade headquarters the 18th Battalion’s commander realized that he must withdraw to the start line. In the confusion of the German artillery bombardment a number of the exhausted troops from the 13th and 15th Battalions mistook this withdrawal as a general retreat and fell back, leaving only the forward companies, totally isolated and without communications, to hold Phantom Ridge.
During the morning of the 12th Anders decided at first to mount another attack at 1500 hrs, using his sparse reserves. But as the morning passed and as he learned more of the casualties amongst his troops and their subsequent disorganization, coupled with the seemingly unhindered German artillery, Anders decided to withdraw to the start line. Indeed the opening artillery barrage had not succeed in silencing the German guns as during the morning of 12 May the German artillery regained its ascendancy, forcing the withdrawal of the infantry from their recently captured positions and simultaneously inflicting heavy casualties in the rear areas of the Polish infantry divisions. This was largely due to the German artillery and infantry both being protected in heavily entrenched, concealed bunkers on the reverse hill slopes and were thus inaccessible to the Polish guns. The equipment of the light artillery regiments, the 25-pounder gun, which was so effective in the desert campaign, proved to be of too light a calibre, lacking the destructive power needed to destroy the strong German defences built into the solid rock. As a result the Polish infantry were forced to pull back as the German guns were able to fire upon them unhindered. The concentrated fire from the Polish artillery in stage two of the barrage did succeed in inflicting heavy casualties amongst the German infantry and served to clearly delineate the enemy positions.
During the afternoon the commander of the Eighth Army, Lieutenant General Leese arrived at Polish Corps Headquarters and both commanders reviewed the situation. Polish losses had been severe; half of each division had been crippled and no ground had been gained. However, the Germans had been badly mauled and by the sacrifice of the Poles on the mountain heights they had succeeded in easing the burden on the British troops in the Liri Valley. The Generals agreed that the attacks by the Polish II Corps and the British XIII Corps were too widely separated, that the Germans might be prepared to lose some ground in the Liri Valley and that by shifting their fire and reserves onto the Polish sector the Germans might attempt to destroy it by making full use of their advantage of high ground. Anders initially planned to reorganize for an attack during the night of the 12/13 May, however Leese decided that the Polish II Corps would require extensive reorganization following its heavy losses and would not be called upon to attack again until the complementary encirclement of Cassino through the Liri Valley had made more decisive progress. This would shorten the distance between the two advancing forces, preventing the Germans from maximizing their fire manoeuvreability, and it was agreed to reschedule the attack for 15 May. The retirement of Polish combat units took place that night, the 1st Battalion being the last unit to withdraw at 1300 hrs the following day. The battle had so far cost the Poles some 1,800 casualties, and once again the combination of the Cassino position and the resilience of the German paratroopers proved unbeatable.
The attack of the British XIII Corps succeeded in forcing the river and establishing a small bridgehead on the western bank of the Gari, beginning at its confluence with the Rapido and extending to the village of San Angelo – these gains were pivotal to achieving the encirclement of Cassino. As most of the enemy fire was concentrated on the defence of the high ground of Monte Cassino, the troops met comparatively lighter artillery and mortar fire. By the evening of 12 May, units had pushed forward at several points to a maximum distance of 1km from the river. Progress was slow owing to the difficulty of getting heavy equipment across the river. The Allied commanders had hoped for more success yet no one was discouraged and all were planning to continue their attacks or to mount fresh ones. General Alexander summarized the situation in a message to Sir Alan Brooke: ‘On the whole the battle has gone fairly well considering the stubbornness of the opposition. This is the Poles’ first battle… . I saw both my army commanders this morning and they are reasonably satisfied with the opening stages of the battle, but there is no doubt that the Germans intend to fight for every yard and that the next few days will see some extremely bitter and severe fighting.’5