The meaning of the Cassino Monastery Incident was 80 miles north in Rome. Must the Allies bomb St. Peter's into rubble and then fight their way, chapel by chapel, through the Vatican?
In the valley below Mt. Cassino an American artillery-battery commander spoke: "I don't give a damn about the monastery. I have Catholic gunners in this battery and they've asked me for permission to fire on it, but I haven't been able to give it to them. They don't like it."
The Germans were using the famed 1,400-year-old Benedictine abbey as an artillery-observation post. This seemed well established, as hundreds of young Americans died on the slope below. Collier's War Correspondent Frank Gevasi reported: "I saw 800 [Americans] go out and 24 come back, because the Germans could see every move and turn their fire on them." And the Germans, after noting heavy, bloody U.S. losses, laconically reported in a communiqué that Indian Gurkha troops had replaced "the worn-out Americans."
The slaughter grew too great. After weeks of soul searching and delay, the Allies decided to bomb and to shell the abbey. They followed a Dec. 29, 1943 order of General Dwight Eisenhower: "We are fighting in a country . . . rich in monuments which illustrate the growth of the civilization which is ours. We are bound to respect those monuments so far as war allows. If we have to choose between destroying a famous building and sacrificing our own men, then our men's lives count infinitely more, and the buildings must go."
On a sunlit morning last week the buildings went.
"That's Beautiful." In the Liri Valley, thousands of U.S. soldiers, whose buddies had died on the slope, watched. Then, at 9:28 a.m., from beyond the snow-capped peaks, came the first wave of lordly Fortresses. From the mountain peak came great orange bursts of flame, billowing smoke. The muffled crunch of explosions grew like a roll of thunder.
Three minutes later came more Fortresses; the third wave at 9:45. Watching the precision bombing, a U.S. general cried: "That's beautiful." He seemed to want to direct the planes: "That's the way. Keep them over to the left. Oh, oh, that one's a little bit close. That's better. Oh, that's beautiful."
The bombers came on, 226 of them, Fortresses, Liberators, Mitchells and Marauders, roaming the cloudless sky undisturbed, dropping their bombs with exquisite exactness. Between the waves of bombers the artillery Long' Toms and 240-mm. howitzers pumped shells up the hill. The mountain seemed to jump and quiver, like a great bear twitching in sleep. Observers counted 200 men, some allegedly in uniform, scurrying out of the devastated monastery. As the next-to-last wave of 20 Marauders dropped a cluster smack on the abbey, an American soldier yelled: "Touchdown."
Thus the great Benedictine abbey, built 400 years ago on ground where Benedictine abbeys had stood for 1,400 years, was demolished. Only one wall section remained standing, and the next day Marauders swooped over to pick these ribs.