The Perths had shipped out to Italy at the end of October 1943, and at the beginning of January had been sent to the Adriatic Front. At the River Riccio they had gone into battle for the first time, a sobering experience in which they had been criticised by the divisional commander, Major-General Vokes, for not showing enough determination. ‘It had been a rough baptism of fire no one had expected,’ noted Stan, ‘an ass-kicking that we’d have to face up to and live down over the months ahead.’61
Although they had manned a section of the Cassino Front in April 1944, the Perths had not been in battle since. Not that Stan personally felt a sense of trepidation just yet. He’d been terrified that first time he’d gone into combat, but although they could now hear the battle raging fifteen and more miles away, he was too far back to feel fear. And anyway, roaring overhead almost incessantly were reams of fighter-bombers, flying back and forth between the front and their bases nearby. ‘At times,’ noted Stan, ‘the roar of engines was so loud as the low-flying planes flew northward with their bomb-loads that conversation was out of the question.’ But Stan found it comforting to know that their air forces had such complete mastery of the skies.
The Allied air forces had not let up their effort once the battle had begun. This was why 90th Panzer Division was having such a difficult time getting to the front: daylight travel was out of the question. Increasingly, there were fewer vehicles available as more and more trucks and cars were left burning and riddled on the side of the road. Petrol was in ever-shortening supply. So too was ammunition. And there were other important side effects too. The men were badly undernourished: Jupp Klein and his men felt hungry all the time. It also made it harder for post to reach the front – which was why Major Georg Zellner had still not received any letters from home.
One of those contributing to the massed swarms of aircraft over the battlefield that day was Lieutenant Charles Dills of the US 27th Fighter-Bomber Group. He had begun the battle seconded to Fifth Army headquarters for a few days to fly General Clark and other senior commanders around and in and out of the Anzio bridgehead. On his first flight with the army commander, Charles had found himself flying with Clark sitting next to him in the co-pilot’s seat. Knowing Clark flew, he offered the general the chance to take the controls for a while. ‘He agreed,’ says Charles. ‘He was a pretty nice guy. I had a lot of respect for him.’
His stint as a courier pilot with Fifth Army headquarters had finished a few days before, however, and he had immediately returned to the 27th Fighter-Bomber Group at their airfield near Caserta. On 18 May his flight was taking part in an armed reconnaissance over the Ceprano area, a town on the Via Casilina, some fifteen miles north-west of Cassino. Their task was to look out for any significant troop movements and to shoot up and bomb anything they saw while they were about it. The day before they’d been sent up with a more specific target: a mortar position north of Aquino. The drill was always the same: fly towards the target at around 14,000–15,000 feet, high enough to avoid the countless enemy flak batteries, then nearing the target, the leader would waggle his wings and the rest of the pilots would fall in line behind him, turn on their backs and, one by one, follow him down in a dive. ‘From a distance,’ says Charles, ‘this procedure might resemble a number of balls on a slightly tilted table following one another, coming to the edge of the table and then dropping straight down.’ Once over the target they would level out of the dive then drop their bombs – usually one 500lb bomb and six 20lb fragmentation bombs – and then flatten out, usually at around 5,000 feet, but often higher depending on the intensity of flak. ‘You drop the bombs as best you can,’ explains Charles, ‘and then get the hell out of there!’
Also flying that day was Leutnant Willi Holtfreter. After bailing out of his Messerschmitt on 1 May, he had luckily landed well behind German lines. Although he had not been seriously injured he had, nonetheless, been packed off to hospital in Montefiascone, near Lake Bolsena, ‘for observation’, and had been kept off flying duties ever since. On the 18th, however, he was finally back on operations with the 9th Staffel – or squadron. That morning he was up before dawn, as the fighter pilots always were, stumbling out of their quarters and then taking a short ride to the airfield. Breakfast would be eaten at the dispersal tents and then they would sit out on deck chairs, dozing or playing the card game Doppelkopf, waiting to be scrambled. ‘Our hearts would always beat faster whenever the telephone rang,’ admits Willi. If it was a scramble, they would hurry to their planes where their groundcrew would be waiting for them, their Messerschmitt 109Ks ready.
On that day, Willi was scrambled and took off at 11.35 a.m. Orders were to cover the Via Casilina: troops were on the move and they were to do their best to protect them from Allied bombers and strafing fighter-bombers – the dreaded jabos* as the Germans called them – although how one flight of 109s was supposed to make much difference was anyone’s guess. ‘We knew how outnumbered we were,’ says Willi. ‘It was obvious. Whenever we spotted any bombers there were always so many fighters accompanying them that we couldn’t get at them at all.’ It was fortunate for Willi that he was such a naturally calm, clear-headed person. ‘We had a job to do,’ he says, ‘and we had to do it, whatever the odds.’ Just over an hour later, he landed back at their base at Tuscania, south of Lake Bolsena, his Messerschmitt free of bullet holes. For once, they had avoided the massed swarms of Allied aircraft.
* * *
At least by now the senior German commanders were back at the front. Generaloberst von Vietinghoff had returned to take command of AOK 10 once more, while so too had General Frido von Senger, who had finally resumed command of 14th Panzer Corps on 17 May. He had been shocked by what he had found. AOK 10 was still sharing his HQ at Castel Massimo near Frosinone, so after getting himself up to speed with the situation he had hurried down to the southernmost part of the line to see for himself the parlous state of his Corps.
The Americans had reached Formia, while further inland, the French were now overlooking a critical German line of communication, namely the road that ran south from the Via Casilina at Ceprano to the coast. In his absence and with his deputy, General Hartmann, failing to show proper ‘grip’, Kesselring had fed penny packets into gaps in the front between the two retreating German divisions. With bullets pinging around him, von Senger discovered a detachment of the 44th Infantry Division (to which Georg Zellner, still in the mountains north of Cassino with his battalion, belonged), already being forced back. As he was all too aware, these replacement units were far too small to be able to make much difference; he simply couldn’t understand how this had been allowed to happen. It had been almost a week since the start of the offensive – ample time in which to send a reserve division in its entirety to plug the gap between the 71st and 94th Divisions. It was incomprehensible folly, especially as, when he had left Italy, 15th Panzer Grenadier Division had been positioned perfectly as a reserve behind the right wing of the corps. Now he had returned to discover the division had been committed by battalions across the front. ‘This,’ noted von Senger, ‘is a classic example of the way conduct of operations degenerated under Hitler’s influence.’62
Meanwhile, up on Monte Cassino, the Poles had launched their second attack, and this time there was no German changeover taking place. Moreover, they had not attacked blind as before. Wladek Rubnikowicz and the 12th Polish Lancers had remained dug in along the meadow below Snake’s Head Ridge between the two attacks, but although they had been unable to move by day, they had patrolled aggressively by night, as had the rest of the Polish troops on Monte Cassino. What had made their life marginally easier had been the amount of mines around the monastery that had been detonated by Polish shell and mortar fire. Shells and mortars rained over the narrow battlefield day and night. On one occasion, Wladek had been standing behind