Freyberg blamed for Cassino

Press, 1 March 1984, Page 15

Freyberg blamed for Cassino

NZPA-AP Washington New evidence that the Germans did not occupy the Italian abbey of Monte Cassino before the United States Army Air Forces destroyed it during a bombing attack in World War II has been disclosed in a new book by two American authors. “Monte Cassino,” by David Richardson and David Hapgood, puts a large part of the blame for what it says was a surprisingly heavy bombardment on Lieutenant-General Sir Bernard Freyberg, of New Zealand. The book quotes from the unpublished diary of a secretary to the abbot, Father Martino Matronola, and from a hitherto secret report to the British Government in 1949 by a Major F. Jones. Mr Richardson said in a telephone interview that he

knew nothing about Major Jones except that he was asked to make the report by the British Cabinet and spent three months examining the evidence. Father Matronola later became abbot of the restored monastery, retiring in 1982 at the age of 80. The abbey of Monte Cassino was founded almost 1500 years ago. St Benedict is said to have founded the Order of Benedictine monks there, St Thomas Aquinas attended the school, and it was the home of centuries of art and historical records. “The shell that plunged through a window of the basilica and ruined the painting by Luca Giordano had come from the Allies,” the book says. “The Germans fired the shell that wrecked the famous bronze doors.” The Germans had removed much of the art for

safekeeping, but diverted some of the best pieces for the collection of Reichsmarshal Hermann Goering. Most of the destruction was caused by 453.5 tons of bombs dropped on February 15, 1944,.by 239 heavy Bl7s and 826 medium bombers of the United States Army Air Forces. “This was by far the largest concentration of bombers that the Allied air forces had ever sent against a target as small as a single building,” the book says. “It was also many times •more than the 36 fighterbombers General Freyberg had requested in his telephone call three days earlier. Who caused this enormous escalation, and why, has never been explained,” says the book. Martin Blumenson, who wrote the official United States Army history of the event, suggested in a telephone interview that the Air Force wanted to demonstrate precision bombing, a technique the British were sceptical about. Hapgood and Richardson quote the Jones report as saying that General Henry Maitland (“Jumbo”) Wilson, commander of Allied forces in the Mediterranean, could not give conclusive evidence that the Germans occupied the abbey. Father Matronola’s diary makes it clear that although they did not occupy it, they put up machine-gun nests and stored ammunition within a few metres. “They were almost inviting bombardment of their heavy machine-gun positions,” Mr Blumenson said. The new book puts much of the responsibility for the bombardment on General Freyberg, and what the authors see as his implied threat to withdraw New Zealand troops.