In the absence of detailed intelligence at Fifth Army HQ, he had found a book dated 1879 in a Naples bookshop giving details of the construction of the abbey.
The original estimates that Rome would fall by October 1943 proved far too optimistic. Although in the east the German defensive line had been breached on the Adriatic front and Ortona was captured by the 1st Canadian Division, the advance had ground to a halt with the onset of winter blizzards at the end of December, making close air support and movement in the jagged terrain impossible.
In 1943, the Goumiers were colonial troops formed into four Groupements des Tabors Marocains ("Groups of Moroccan Tabors"; GTM), each consisting of three loosely organised Tabors (roughly equivalent to a battalion) specialised in mountain warfare.
Benedict first established the Rule that ordered monasticism in the west, was entirely destroyed by Allied bombing and artillery barrages in February 1944. During prior months in the Italian autumn of 1943, two officers in the Hermann Göring Panzer Division, Captain Maximilian Becker and Lieutenant Colonel Julius Schlegel, proposed the removal of Monte Cassino's treasures to the Vatican and Vatican-owned Castel Sant'Angelo ahead of the approaching front.
The task was completed in the first days of November 1943.
The intention was a breakthrough to Rome. At the beginning of 1944, the western half of the Winter Line was being anchored by Germans holding the Rapido-Gari, Liri and Garigliano valleys and some of the surrounding peaks and ridges.
Tuker said he could not be induced to attack unless "the garrison was reduced to helpless lunacy by sheer unending pounding for days and nights by air and artillery". On 11 February 1944, the acting commander of 4th Indian Division, Brigadier Dimoline, requested a bombing raid.
Finally Clark, "who did not want the monastery bombed", pinned down the Commander-in-Chief Allied Armies in Italy, Alexander, to take the responsibility: "I said, 'You give me a direct order and we'll do it,' and he did." The bombing mission in the morning of 15 February 1944 involved 142 Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bombers followed by 47 North American B-25 Mitchell and 40 Martin B-26 Marauder medium bombers.
Benedict first established the Rule that ordered monasticism in the west, was entirely destroyed by Allied bombing and artillery barrages in February 1944. During prior months in the Italian autumn of 1943, two officers in the Hermann Göring Panzer Division, Captain Maximilian Becker and Lieutenant Colonel Julius Schlegel, proposed the removal of Monte Cassino's treasures to the Vatican and Vatican-owned Castel Sant'Angelo ahead of the approaching front.
The assertion that the German use of the abbey was "irrefutable" was removed from the record in 1961 by the Office of the Chief of Military History.
Army’s official record was made in 1969 and concluded that "the abbey was actually unoccupied by German troops." ===Marocchinate=== The day following the battle, the Goumiers, French Moroccan colonial troops attached to the French Expeditionary Forces, have been accused of rape and murder through the surrounding hills.
der Benediktinischen Monatsschrift, Beuron: Beuroner Kunstverlag, S. 112–138. ===Italian=== Gerhard Muhm, La tattica tedesca nella campagna d'Italia, in Linea gotica avamposto dei Balcani, a cura di Amedeo Montemaggi – Edizioni Civitas, Roma 1993 Dal Volturno a Cassino, Le vicende, i luoghi e gli uomini che hanno segnato gli otto mesi più sanguinosi della Campagna d'Italia.
366 (March 2002) "Goumiers, Goums, Tabors" ===German=== Emmanuel Munding (1947): Der Untergang von Montecassino am 15.
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