THE BOMBINC OF CASSINO

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26263, 7 November 1950, Page 7

THE BOMBINC OF CASSINO

ACCOUNT BY WAR CORRESPONDENT (Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.) (Rec. 9 p.m.) LONDON, November 6. A suggestion that General Mark Clark gives an incomplete picture, which makes his statements on the bombing of Cassino Monastery, misleading. is made by Marsland Gander in a letter to the “Daily Telegraph.” Marsland Gander was one of fl the “Daily Telegraph’s" war correspondents. and he says: “I entered the monastery ruins on May 18. 1944, the day the Poles captured them, and I returned to the scene only last year. "My observations and subsequent inquiries on the spot lead me to the conclusion that the Allied commanders were faced with a particularly tough problem.

“All Monastery Hill, 1750 feet high, was a strongly defended area, and the Benedictine Monastery, merging from the summit, was virtually part of it. "The Abbot, when I interviewed him, said that 'the Germans were* using a cave 30 metres from the walls as a mortar dump and admitted that along the road leading up from the town of Cassino they had two tanks operating. "These tanks, or possibly self-pro-pelled guns, were hidden by day not far from the Monastery, and at night rolled out down the road to bombard the Allied position.

“It is clear that the monastery's position conferred a certain Immunity unon German operations close to it. There was always the danger of hitting the buildings in our retaliatory bombardment, and whether the Germans entered it or not the monastery was always a grave handicap to us. "Personally I am convinced that they did not enter it before the bombing—there is ample evidence that they used the ruins afterwards—but that their own manoeuvres helped to create doubt.

"Reconstruction. I suggest, is now more important than rfcrimihation," he adds.