A twenty-six-year-old farmer from upstate New York, Bob Wiggans had undergone reserve officer infantry training whilst at Cornell University – an activity that was compulsory for all male students – and so when he was given his draft notice just a couple of weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, he was immediately sent to Camp Shelby in Mississippi to join the cadre that would help form and train the brand-new 85th Infantry Division.
Bob regarded 7 December 1941 as one of the saddest days of his life. The war would not only take him away from the farm he had bought less than a year before, but also from Dot, his wife of five months. Leaving home was a terrible wrench, but he believed that the United States was doing the right thing, and that Nazism had to be defeated.
In the two years in which Bob had served with the 85th, it had grown from nothing to a fully-formed and trained combat division. However, the division showed its inexperience during its first few days on the Cassino front, when it took over positions from the British in the rubble and remains of the town of Minturno, the most westerly point of the front line. Most of the 85th’s men found the whole experience of being on the battlefield and close to the enemy and of coming under shellfire deeply unsettling. Bob had been called out one night offering to help 3rd Platoon who were convinced there were Germans crawling around in the rubble above them. It turned out the ‘enemy’ were just rats scurrying about. Bob had found that hurtling through the ruined town in his jeep, distributing mail, ammunition and supplies, was enough to get his heart racing. ‘These night missions were harrowing enough with the interdictory artillery fire,’ he noted, ‘but the awful smell of decaying flesh from under the rubble made it infinitely worse.’6
That the ‘Custermen’ were a little jumpy is no wonder: all the draftees, officers and enlisted men were entirely new to war, with no battlefield experience to draw upon. And like the Poles and so many of the assaulting troops, their first battle would be one of the biggest their countries had ever taken part in.*
That afternoon, back in his caravan at Fifth Army headquarters, General Clark dictated a message of best wishes to his fellow army commander, General Sir Oliver Leese – happy, on this occasion, to observe inter-army protocol. The British commander promptly replied in kind. ‘We all in Eighth Army,’ wrote Leese, ‘send your Fifth Army our cordial good wishes and look confidently forward to advancing shoulder to shoulder together.’7
Leese was impatient for the battle to begin, and though apprehensive was quietly confident. ‘Ultra’ intercepts of German Enigma codes passed on by the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire, suggested that the Allies’ elaborate deception plans had worked and that the Germans were not expecting a major attack until the following month. Leese had more than a quarter of a million men under his command – ‘an immense army’ – all of whom were fully trained and briefed. Ammunition and petrol were ready in dumps at the front line. Everyone was agreed on the battle plan, and from his manic tours around the front, Leese believed his troops to be in good heart. ‘It has been a vast endeavour and it will be a huge battle,’ he wrote. ‘All we want is fine weather and a bit of luck.’8
As the evening shadows lengthened, infantrymen along the front furtively began moving up to their start lines and forming-up positions. In the Liri Valley, men uncovered assault boats; bridging parties moved trucks of Bailey bridge sections forward, while other sappers reeled out long lines of white marker tape to later guide the troops in the dark towards specific river crossing points.
Dusk soon gave way to the darkness of night, and the first desultory shelling of Cassino began just as it had every night for weeks since the end of the third battle of Cassino in March. Partly as cover, and partly to give the impression that this was just like any other evening along the front, the shelling gradually died out, so that at ten o’clock, when General Leese sat down to write to his wife, Margie, the front seemed eerily quiet.
‘In sixty minutes,’ he scrawled on the thick blue writing paper Margie Leese had sent out to him, ‘hell will be let loose, the whole way from Monte Cairo to the sea. At 11 p.m. on 11 May, 2,000 guns will burst forth.’* It had, he added, been a lovely day, and it was now a glorious night.
A huge weight of responsibility rested on Leese’s shoulders and those of his fellow commanders, not only for the men under their command but also because there was so much at stake with this, the biggest battle the Western Allies had yet attempted in the war. A sweeping, crushing victory promised untold riches, yet defeat would not only be a blow to Allied chances of success in launching an invasion of northern France, but it would also wreck the future of the Italian campaign and with it British credibility in particular. No wonder General Leese was counting down the minutes.
* Although they were now operating as infantry, the Polish cavalry and armoured units kept their usual structure and formation.
* Allied Central Mediterranean Forces had become Allied Forces in Italy on 9 March 1944.
* The 85th was given the association ‘Custer’ because the division was activiated in 1917 at Camp Custer in Michigan, so named after the Civil War and Indian Wars general who had led the Michigan Cavalry Brigade at the Battle of Gettysburg.
* There were 158,805 men in AOK 10 and AOK 14, while Alexander could call on 602,618 Allied troops in Italy at this time, of whom 253,859 were British, 231,306 were American, 71,827 were French and 45,626 were Polish. Although nothing like this number would take part in the coming battles, Alexander was still able to have the three to one advantage in manpower along the main battle line that he believed was necessary for victory. Even so, when one considers the air forces and men in reserve, the best part of a million men were to be directly and indirectly involved in the offensive.
* Leese was never particularly accurate with his facts and figures when writing to his wife. In fact, there were around 1,660 guns in action: 1,060 along Eighth Army’s front, and 600 along that of Fifth Army.
Manning his machine-gun post amongst the rubble near what had once been the Via Casilina – the main road to Rome – was Hans-Jürgen Kumberg. The 4th Fallschirmjäger Regiment had moved down from the heights of Monte Cassino a month earlier. Although the ruins provided excellent defensive cover, the place was a hell hole, swarming with malaria-infested