3 - A Destiny Repeated: Episodes of Destruction

Summary

Abstract

This chapter introduces numerous historical witnesses to the abbey's past, whose perspectives are preserved from the Middle Ages to the present day. Telling their stories is fundamental to understanding the abbey's representation over time. This historical exercise is critical also to framing Monte Cassino's resilience and rationalisation in the face of great adversity, which is a necessary step towards explaining its full-scale resurrection in the aftermath of destruction. Treating each case in tandem provides a wider view of the abbey's ‘destruction tradition’ over fourteen centuries; its focus also explains and positions these episodes in the construction of Monte Cassino's true identity during the process of recovery, which inevitably followed.

Keywords: Lombards; Saracens; earthquake; French Revolution; Kingdom of Naples; Risorgimento; Second World War

I had seen the famous old Abbey, with its priceless and irreplaceable works of art, only from a distance, but with the thundering salvos that tore apart the hillside that morning, I knew there was no possibility that I ever would see it at any closer range. I remained at my command post all day and tried to work.

The bombardment of Monte Cassino began promptly at 9:25 a.m. on the morning of 15 February 1944. According to British General Henry Maitland Wilson, ‘142 flying fortresses dropped 287 tons of demolition bombs of 500 pounds and 66 and a half tons of incendiary bombs of 100 pounds, they were flooded by 47 B-25 and 40 B-26 which launched 100 tons of high explosive bombs.’ American General Mark W. Clark, tallied an even greater number of 255 Allied bombers (including B-17 ‘fortresses’), which dropped 576 tons of explosives. Taking shelter in various parts of the abbey, many perished or were injured during the waves of attack. The following day, while the bombing continued from 150 aircraft, a group of approximately 40 souls (children, sick and wounded) surfaced from beneath the rubble. Despite repeated artillery fire, they slowly made their way down the venerable mountain along a mule path to a Red Cross station. Led by their abbot bearing a seventeenth-century crucifix, the procession of survivors ‘took the way of the hills towards Monte Cairo and descended into the valley somewhere near Piedimonte’. Fearing for the abbot's safety, the Germans sent an ambulance to escort him first to their headquarters at Castel Massimo, before eventually transporting him to Sant’Anselmo in Rome the following day.