Cassino 2004

In May 2004 over 100 veterans of the Battle for Monte Cassino in 1944, returned to the scene of this historic and savage battle to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the end of the battle, and to remember those who died and are buried near this site.

Accompanying the group of 52 veterans that were flown to Italy on the Air Force Boeing 757 was NZPA Auckland Bureau Chief Ian Stuart. The following "dispatches" are some of the stories from the veterans filed by Ian during that pilgrimage.

Photographs by Corporal Tim Jordan RNZAF.

Nurse tells of wounded Cassino soldiers

Tears Flow as Old Soldiers Remember their Fallen Mates

Ex Padre ‘Bloody Glad’ Abbey was Bombed

Cassino Veteran reflects on Lessons of War

Nurse tells of wounded Cassino soldiers

By Ian Stuart of NZPA

Cassino, May 21—Peg Limmer could not afford to get emotional about the hideously wounded soldiers brought into her hospital near Cassino, Italy, during World War 2. Some had arms or legs blown off, or only half a face and many died because nothing could be done for them but to Mrs Limmer every one was a hero.

"You couldn’t let it get to you because you had to go to the next bed and try to comfort him in whatever way you could," Mrs Limmer, 86, from Northcote in Auckland, told NZPA as she walked among the graves in the Cassino War Cemetery of some of the men she had nursed 60 years ago.

Mrs Limmer was in Cassino for the 60th anniversary of the battle, which accounted for 1400 New Zealand casualties, including 343 dead. The battle to capture the small Italian town and the 6th Century Benedictine Monastery overlooking the town and the Liri Valley was one of the costliest of the war for New Zealand.

Mrs Limmer’s unit was based near Naples and was the first to receive wounded soldiers from the battles in February and March 1944. The nurses were housed 10 at a time in huts. Mrs Limmer said nurses did not cry on duty when a badly wounded soldier was brought into the hospital or died.

"We used to talk about this one or that one and some of us would have a little bit of a weep and some of us would say, ‘He probably won't be there when I go back in the morning’, and more often than not he wasn’t," she said.

The wounded soldiers were carried in by the hundred after a big battle.

"They were delivered outside the entrance to the hospital and whoever was on duty—there might be four doctors and six nurses—were given a stethoscope and it was over to you whether you looked at some guy perhaps without an arm, without a leg, without an eye or without half his head."

Despite the emotional hardship, Mrs Limmer said she would never regret one moment of her service with the army field hospital. She said the hard thing about returning to Cassino 60 years after the battle was to see the graves of the young men who died.

"They were just kids and they lost their lives for what?… It wasn't worth it." She said none complained about their injuries. "They might say ‘That's a crummy breakfast we had or this bed is bloody hard’ and things like that but no real moans at all."

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Tears Flow as Old Soldiers Remember their Fallen Mates

By: Ian Stuart of NZPA

Cassino, May 17 2004—The tears flowed virtually unchecked and the voices were too choked with emotion to talk today as New Zealand's old soldiers from the World War 2 Italian Campaign remembered their mates who died at Cassino.

The Royal British Legion commemorative service was the first of several to mark the Battle of Cassino, which lasted three months and which cost the Allies 45,000 killed or wounded.

Among them were the 343 New Zealand soldiers who died in two failed assaults on the township under the imposing Monte Cassino on which stands the centuries old Benedictine Monastery. The town and the monastery were both bombed and blasted by artillery into rubble 60 years ago before the New Zealand troops hurled themselves at the German paratrooper defenders.

Both New Zealand attacks—in the middle of January and two months later in the middle of March—failed, and the monastery was not taken until 17 May 1944.

Today, some of the old soldiers who survived the New Zealand attacks were at the Cassino War Cemetery for the British Service, which opened a week of commemorations.

For some the day was too much, particularly when they found the graves of their mates who died in the campaign and are buried under the shadow of the ountain.

Stuart Black (Tuhoe) from Kawerau, was of the first soldiers from the 28th Maori Battalion to reach the Cassino Railway station the night before the second assault in March. Most of the officers in his unit, B Company, were killed.

Five soldiers were sent in to set up demolition charges as a prelude to the attack but were told not to go as far as the railway station.

"Things went that good and being young... someone tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Hey, we’re in the railway station’," he said.

They pulled back in preparation for the main assault.

Today, his moving farewell to his wife’s uncle, Tahae Trainor, 25, had a large crowd of old soldiers from other countries and their relatives, weeping and clapping at the same time.

Mr Black, 82, from Katikati in the Bay of Plenty, wore a specially made Maori cloak as he stood in front of Mr Trainor’s grave with his wife Ani and bade him a powerful and emotional farewell.

With his head bowed and his shoulders shaking with 60 years of pent up grief, he let the tears flow after a Maori cloak of kiwi feathers was placed on Mr Trainor's headstone.

"It’s hurting, we are all hurting. They are not," he said of the hundreds of young New Zealand men lying in their graves at Cassino.

"But we are from what we did."

Mr Black said he and his wife and members of his family were at Cassino today because they had to come back for those who were killed.

"I am coming to them. I had to have it with them."

Sixty years after the battle Mr Black said the many young lives lost in the battle was too high a price to pay.

"The whole thing was wrong. None of it is worth it."

However, Mr Black said he was glad he was able to do something for the Italian people, many of whom were very poor and many were hungry.

Many of the young New Zealand soldiers in the Cassino War Cemetery were only 18 or 19 after lying about their ages to get past the army regulations that would not allow all young men under 21 to enlist.

	The Kiwi veterans march into the Cassino War Cemetary.

As they trod the perfectly manicured lawn cemetery looking for their mates, the Kiwi veterans held their handkerchiefs at the ready. Without exception they were used when the tears flowed as they stood at the simple white headstone and read the engraved name, rank and serial number of their fallen mates, not because they did not want to but because they could not get past the emotion which choked their voices.

"I can’t, I can't. Talk to someone else," one said as he dabbed at his eyes.

"I am no good to talk to. It’s too hard, too hard," another said as he stood at the grave of his 21-year-old friend.

"At least he will never grow old."

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Ex Padre ‘Bloody Glad’ Abbey was Bombed

By: Ian Stuart of NZPA

At 91, former army padre Pat Gourdie, stood at the foot of the imposing Benedictine monastery on top of Monte Cassino in Italy today and said he was "bloody glad" it was blown to bits by the Allies in World War 2. Mr Gourdie, an Anglican padre, served at Cassino in 1944 when the allies bombed and shelled the sixth-century monastery and turned it to rubble to prevent it being used by the Germans as an observation post.

The monastery dominated the Liri Valley and the town of Cassino and until the Germans had been routed, the Allies’ push north up the Italian Peninsula to Rome stalled. The town and the monastery finally fell on May 17 and today as part of the commemorations an ecumenical service was held in the abbey, restored to its former glory from the original plans when it was first built in 529.

As he walked up the steep drive to the abbey, Mr Gourdie said as an Anglican he wanted to praise God for the ecumenical service in a Catholic church.

"It is our prayer it is here for thousands of years without being hurt."

Pat Gourdie discusses the battle of Cassino with Master Cadet Natasha Morgan (Christchurch). Natasha is wearing her grandfather’s medals.

However, Mrs Gourdie said during the war he was "bloody glad" it was being bombed. He said the decision to bomb the monastery and the resulting controversy should not be blamed on Lieutenant General Sir Bernard Freyberg, the commanding officer of the New Zealand Corps which was given the task of capturing the town and the monastery.

"I don’t agree with that. It was the decisions of the Germans to have this as their bastion point of their winter line. They were so damned close—probably a 100 metres off it so technically they might not have been in there."

He said the Kiwi troops, struggling to take the town amid terrible losses, were right behind the bombing.

"It was like a bird of ill omen brooding over us. I don't know who said that originally but boy was it like that." He said the soldiers did not want to see sacred buildings bombed but it was a military stronghold.

After the service—during which video and still cameras and flashes were prohibited but not the guns of Italian police—Prime Minister Helen Clark and Cassino veteran Earle Crutchley returned several items looted from the ruins of the monastery by New Zealand soldiers during the war. Miss Clark presented a copper etching, three pieces of scrollwork and two plates to the Abbot, Cardinal Bernardo D’Onorio.

Mr Crutchley presented a heavy pewter chalice taken by a soldier who handed it to a Christchurch priest to be returned when he heard Mr Crutchley was travelling to Italy for the 60th commemorations of the battle at Cassino.

After he returned the chalice to its rightful owner after 60 years Mr Crutchley was embraced and kissed on both cheeks by the Cardinal.

"From the people of New Zealand and the war veterans, please accept this as a token of reconciliation," Mr Crutchley told the Cardinal.

Later an emotional Mr Crutchley said handing over the chalice was a very special and incredible moment.

"I can hardly speak. It will be a long time before I get over it—wonderful, a very treasured moment," said Mr Crutchley, a gunner in the crew of a New Zealand 25 pounder field gun which pounded the German positions at Cassino with artillery fire.

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Cassino Veteran reflects on Lessons of War

By: Ian Stuart of NZPA

Nearly 60 years ago Ron Hilton instinctively threw himself flat on an Invercargill street when a car backfired. It was his legacy of a war in Europe where he was living on a knife edge and killing German soldiers before they killed him as the Allies pushed north up the Italian Peninsula in the closing stages of the World War 2.

Today 22 May 2004, Mr Hilton and 50 other veterans from the battle of Cassino boarded an Air Force Boeing for the final leg of a 12-day trip home from Italy where they revisited the battlefields around the southern town of Cassino and the graves of mates.

The battle to take the town and the centuries-old Benedictine monastery overlooking the town and the Liri Valley was one of the costliest of the war for New Zealand.

In a few weeks at the beginning of 1944, there were 1400 New Zealand casualties, including 343 dead.

Mr Hilton, 81, from Wanganui has lived with the trauma of "a very ugly war" for most of his life but he said it was several months after he returned to New Zealand and was "demobbed" that his life began to get back to normal.

"I remember being on the streets of Invercargill with my mother. A truck or something backfired and I ended up lying on the ground flat on my face. The reaction was just `down' and my mother said `What are you doing down there Ronnie?' She couldn't understand why I was lying on the ground," he said.

The trip back to Italy for the 60th anniversary of the battle of Cassino gave Mr Hilton an emotional closure after living with the trauma of the war nearly every day for the last 60 years—most days in the recesses of his mind, but every now and then came a sharp memory of the mates he lost.

He visited some of their graves at the Cassino War Cemetery during the New Zealand commemorative service last week and remembered them as young men denied what he had had—60 years of life.

Mr Hilton said he left New Zealand as a naive young man heading off on a big adventure. He returned a changed man.

"It shows you an ugly side of life you never see and that is killing—mass killing."

Mr Hilton said he had had no difficulty killing enemy soldiers.

"It came down to you or him or me and he probably felt the same way."

"It was an ugly business. Blokes come back traumatised to hell."

"You never recover really."

"I asked myself do we have to go through this all again to prove a point?"

"This is where I feel our generation failed in this respect—not just as New Zealanders—but our age group throughout the world who fought but didn't say enough is enough."

He said after the war the generations who had fought should have done more to stop other conflicts.

"As people who had been through it and who had fought against each other we should have said enough is enough. There should be no more of this."

For the Chief of the Defence Force, Air Marshal Bruce Ferguson, who accompanied the Cassino veterans, the return to Italy was an emotional release for some, an emotional homecoming for others.

"It was an reawakening of fears and dreads."

	Bill Marsh finds an old friend amongst the New Zealand headstones at the Monte Cassino Cemetary.

"For the vast majority it has been a healing. It is a homecoming for many—back to where probably the most traumatic event of their young lives occurred."

"They came back to pay respects to those of their friends of that age who didn't return and I think that is very important," Air Marshal Ferguson said.

He said it was impossible for most people to understand exactly what the veterans had been through during the war.

"One can try and appreciate it by going with them as we have done and try to understand and to a certain extent you do understand but only those who were there can experience it."

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