World War II Behind Closed Doors by Laurence Rees Page A

the II Polish Corps and started training first in Iraq and then in Palestine. Now he listened as ‘thousands of guns started shelling Monte Cassino’ and the first wave of Polish soldiers climbed the mountains to attack: ‘Monte Cassino is known as a very difficult battle’, Wolwowicz says. ‘Yes, it's true. Can you imagine rocks? When the German army started shelling us there was no green grass, there were no bushes, there was just rocks and rubble…. It wasn't easy…. When the guns were shelling the rocks, the rocks used to break up’. The Poles moved forward in the darkness, but the lack of cover and the murderous German fire from above wreaked havoc on the advancing troops. Still they pressed on, reaching the ridge on top of the mountain adjacent to Monte Cassino, where they fought the Germans hand-to-hand.
    Tomasz Piesakowski 71 learnt of the carnage in the mountains around Cassino from his position commanding a mortar troop behind the lines. Like Wolwowicz, he came from eastern Poland, now claimed by Stalin as Soviet territory, and had previously been imprisoned in the Soviet Union. He describes the battle as a ‘hell on earth’ as the Poles tried to seize the high ground from the Germans. ‘When [after the battle] I went to the cemetery – the provisional cemetery – to find out where the graves of my friends were, I couldn't believe my eyes! So many graves were there!’
    The Poles were unable to hold the territory they had captured, and Anders was forced to order his men back. Just as before, the defenders of Monte Cassino – by now fewer than a thousand of them – had proved too strong. And Anders was clear why the attack had failed: ‘Enemy reserves would suddenly emerge from concealment in caves to make a series of powerful counter-attacks which were supported by accurate fire from guns…it soon became clear that it was easier to capture some objectives than to hold them’. 72
    But even though the initial attack had failed, the Poles had earned the respect of their opponents. ‘They were brave soldiers’, says German parachutist Joseph Klein. ‘They were the bravest ofthem all, in fact. But it was more like an inner drive that went almost to the level of fanaticism…. They looked at death but marched ahead nevertheless, which nobody else did…. This was a devastating thing – the order and sense of duty the Poles had. The thinking that: “We have to get through. We have to show the Allied forces that we are worthy of belonging to them. We must make the breakthrough”…. We often couldn't believe it’.
    On 16 May the Poles mounted another attack, and this time Wiesław Wolwowicz and his unit moved forward into battle: ‘There were many people who died, many wounded. Being in charge of a unit I tried to help them as much as I could…. Being a commander you don't really think much about danger. In fact, you do think about it at the back of your mind, but you don't believe that you will be wounded or you will die. But in practice, of course, it's not always the case’.
    Conditions on the battlefield were appalling. Wolwowicz could ‘smell the decomposing bodies of our soldiers, of the animals in the sun. All the bodies of the dead soldiers were swollen and they looked almost like barrels. We could smell the terrible, terrible smell of dead bodies. You could smell this smell later on for a long time afterwards. It was like a nightmare haunting you…the smell coming from the dead bodies of the soldiers lying in the open sun’.
    This time the Poles managed to hold their forward positions against a German force that – though still resisting fiercely – was now considerably depleted. Elsewhere on the front, Allied troops had succeeded in advancing through the Liri valley, which meant that the Allies now had the opportunity to skirt around Monte Cassino, and by 17 May the mountain was all but encircled. As a consequence, the German commander Field Marshal Kesselring ordered the 1st