WAR CORRESPONDENT’S OPINION OF BOMBING OF CASSINO MONASTERY

Wanganui Chronicle, 7 November 1950, Page 5

WAR CORRESPONDENT’S OPINION OF BOMBING OF CASSINO MONASTERY

LONDON, Nov. 6 (Recd. 6pm).—A suggestion that General Clark gives an incomplete picture, which makes his statements on the bombing of the Cassino Monastery misleading, is made by Marsland Gander, in a letter to the "Daily Telegraph.” Gander was one 6f the “Daily Telegraph’s” war correspondents and he says: “I entered the monastery ruins cn 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 a 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. "Abbot Rea, 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 Cassino town 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 positions. It is clear that the monastery’s position conferred certain immunity upon German operations close to it. There always was 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 a doubt. Reconstruction, I suggest is now more important than recrimination.”—N.Z.P.A. Corespondent.