ABILENE. TEXAS. SUNDAY MORNING,
APRIL 9, 1S44 -THIRTY-TOUR PAGES IN THREE SECTIONS
Allies Attempted Too
Much With Too Little at
Cassino Says War Correpondents' Joint Report
EDITOR'S NOTE: Four United Press
war reporters collaborated to present the following dispatch on the Italian
campaign, a military enigma which after seven months still leaves the public
asking such questions as: What were 'the Allied objectives? Why do they advance
so slowly? Why was, the British 8th Army stopped at Ortona? Why was General Clark's
5th Army halted at Cassino?
What went wrong at the Anzio
beachhead and what are Allies trying to do there now?
Reynolds -Packard, who has
covered the Italian campaign from the beginning, has consulted from Naples with
his men in. the field — James. E. Roper
on the Cassino front, Robert; Vermijlion at the Anzio beachhead and Clinton B.
Conger, presently with the 15th, U. S.
Air Force and formerly attached
to. the 8th Army's Adriatic front. This is their joint report.
By REYNOLDS
PACKARD
United Press War
Correspondent
ALLIED HEADQUARTERS;
Naples,. April 8.— (UP)—
This is a frank description of
the Allied Campaign in 'Italy by correspondents who "have been in the
field with the troops. It is not a cheery, optimistic ^report because that
isn't the kind, of a war American, British, Canadian, African, Indian, French
.and Italian troops have" been waging against the Germans in this theater.
The war in Italy is a matter of
slogging ahead in some places a few hundred yards in a week and in others of
just digging in and trying to hold firm at a stiff cost of lives and limbs, It
is ,a war of mud and booby traps, of hopes and disappointments. It is war at
its most' undramatic and unpleasant.
The men at the
front want the people back home to know that. I have been at the main 5th Army
front and more recently at the Anzio beachhead and at both
places I was impressed
by the Doughboy's
wish that the home folks know that their task in Italy is "tough going."
Some of them actually "dared"' me to write how rough the going
was in the mountains around Cassino and on the flat beachhead where
soldiers feel "like cockroaches in a bathtub" when the Germans shoot
down at them from the surrounding heights.
Seven months of struggling up the
Italian boot through mud and mountains and across bloody beaches leave the
Allie today still short of Rome, the glittering Christmas objective of the
armchair strategists at 'home but with these considerable advantages won:
1. The Mediterranean cleared for Allied
shipping to the Middle East; -
2. Italy knocked out of the war except
for a Fascist remnant scarcely holding propaganda value to its Nazi masters;
3. The great network of air fields
,at" Foggia nesting Allied planes that fly daily to pound German targets
in Southern Europe and the Balkans—now hammering enemy communications centers-
just ahead of the onrushing Red Army,
These are substantial
achievements but the "limited nature of Allied investment of forces has sometimes
resulted in spectacular disappointments such as at Cassino and Anzio,
Correspondents
at those fronts believe that
Allied leaders have .learned many lessons which will be applied
to the forthcoming battle in
western Europe.
Here are the front-by-front
reports of the correspondents:
James E. Roper,
Cassino Front
—The Allies
latest attempt to overrun Cassino was an example of trying to do too much with too
little. They over-estimated the ability of Allied bombers to desstroy the
dug-in German garrison and underestimated the amount of infantry needed to take
the town
after the
bombardment. Cassino
offers lessons that every Allied general will study before the
opening of the western front, along which the' Germans "
probably will be dug in even deeper than- they were at Cassino and will resist even more
methodically.
The failure to use more infantry
seems to have been due primarily to miscalculation, although
Allied generals have not had
unlimited resources at their disposal. They have been far short of the 3 to 1
superiority an attacking force- is supposed to have in four major assaults—the
-.Americans' bloody failure to cross the Rapido river, three miles south of
Cassino, in mid-January; the Americans' first thrust into Cassino with 38 men
and two tanks in early February; the New Zealanders' attempt to capture the Cassino
railroad station Feb. 18 with two companies
and the latest New Zealand and Indian
assaults on Cassino.
On Feb. 8 the Allies came close
to capturing the Monte Cassino monastery, which would have cut off the Germans
and provided a dominating height to fight from. I watched that attack from a
dugout 400 yards from the Abbey and saw Allied troops get within' 75 yards of
the walls. If a fresh regiment of- infantry had been thrown into the fight that
night I believethe mountain would have been taken.
The failure to provide more infantry
for the latest attacks on the town itself ,was partly the result of the high
command's belief the terrific bombbardment- would leave the Germans in Cassino
dead or "bomb happy." This was a. tragic mistake
Part .of the failure must be attributed
to inaccurate bombing. I watched the bombing: for
three and one half hours from Cervaro,
two miles from Cassino. and saw sticks of bombs sown across the valley and town
and up the nearby mountains. Perhaps 45 percent hit the city, a mile long and
twothirds of a mile wide. One stick of bombs fell two miles from Cassino and
another dropped from a Liberator a mile behind my vantage point, which I shared
part of the time with Lt. Gen. Mark W. Clark. Pilots blamed these wild misses
on defective bomb racks. Cassino was turned into a cauldron of fire, smoke and
rubble but the Germans came up out of tunnels to resist the infantry- Allied
intelligence apparently had not considered the possibility of the Germans
utilizing the ancient tunnels
under Cassino, although the Todt labor groups were known to have been working
in Cassino as far back as January. Some officers now feel they should have
guessed the tunnels were being incorporated in Cassino's defensive network.
The one thing the bombing has -done
is to make the streets impassable for armor. With the
armor stuck, Cassino remains a job
for infantry and that's what the Allies haven't had enough
of.
ROBERT VERMLLION,
Anzio
Beachhead—
The beachhead
south of Rome has been quiet for the past 30 days and everywhere in the 90
square miles of American and British-held soil there is an awareness that the curving
front is likely to expand in the direction of Rome. Neither side holds the
initiative at the moment but the balance is so delicate either may seize it
with brief preparation.
Both sides have powerful
artillery concentrations and armored forces ready to spearhead
an attack. This situation has
prevailed since the last German attack in March between Carroceto
and Cistmia. which was beaten off
with heavy losses to the Germans in men and armor and
not without considerable American
casualties. Both sides have repaired the damage and now each waits for the
other's next move.
Both sides have reached the
highest p o i n t of defensive strength. The Germans are laying minefields,
stringing barbed wire and erecting strong points all around the Allied
perimeter.
The Allies also lie behind wire and
mines.
The beachhead commander is confident
the Anglo-Americans can withstand another attack as great as the Germans
launched in mid-February. American soldiers in the beachhead, fighting for the
first time in flat land where movements by day are suicide and by the bright
Italian moon
are almost equally dangerous, and
becoming increasingly "attack- minded." They are tired of lying all
day in "slit trenches or crouching in foxholes exchanging a few shots.
with the enemy, or engaging him in inconclusive "combat patrol"
action. Many of the Allied soldiers express a desire to attack, take the losses
"at one crack" and "get somewhere."
CLINTON* B.
CONGER,
8th Army
front —
Since
Montgomery's Sangro offensive last November expired two miles above Ortona with
a counter-attack by German paratroopers, the rain has kept the 8th Army almost
static in its Adriatic coastal positions.
The only offensive action was the
New Zealanders gallant but unsuccessful charge against Or-
Sogna in December. The right
flank of the 8th faces almost insurmountable obstacles in 'a series of river
crossings between its present line and Pescara. To the southwest the Germans
are' anchored to the snow-covered Maielli mountains, ranging from six to ten
thousand feet high.
Frequent rains are melting the
snows but mud and mire still rule this battlefront.
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