Freddy, isn’t this resurrecting recent chestnuts……..by you………again! I mean, are we going to establish anything new by more Clark bashing???

Re Cassino, I would be interested in reading the war diaries in the US for the officers involved. Closest I can get is Clark’s version in his book, and associated British references. Clarks Chief of Staff first took the request from Freyberg to ‘bomb the convent’. It was established he mean the monastery and was told it wasn’t on the list of targets he could pick from. Clark, who was elsewhere at the time, says he backed the advice. Freyberg continued to argue his demand and Clark took it to his boss, Alexander, who gave him a non committal answer (i.e. no ‘yes’ or ‘no’), but left the ball in his court saying Freyberg should not be ignored out of hand, and, the New Zealander’s were given special consideration. Clark maintains he was not in favour of the bombing, but, ‘had’ to give in to Freyberg and this was following Freyberg’s statement that; ‘If the monastery is not bombed as I want and my assault fails, it’s your fault’. This, in the high end chain of command, is a classic Catch 22 comment. Alan Brooke used a similar ploy with Churchill when Churchill was trying to bully him over deployment of the second BEF. (Specifically; "You've already lost one Scottish Regiment, do you want to lose another?")

It’s also the case that the New Zealander’s were being given special consideration from the top, Churchill. The PM of New Zealand was coming under pressure at home from his citizens as to the number of men provided for the war and the duration of their absence. While the numbers were not the largest contribution among the Allies, they represented a large proportion of prime New Zealand manpower. The folks wanted the boys brought home, something Churchill had to diplomat over, and, had to give assurances and concessions. The spectre of use (or abuse) of NZ forces in WWI also a consideration. Freyberg in turn was told, formally, from his PM to minimise the risk to his men, and Churchill passed a similar sentiment to Alexander etc.

All this does not excuse the case that bombing the monastery was a bad a pointless call. No one was saying the Germans were using the monastery and if they were, how much use could be made of it? You didn’t need the monastery as a firing point, the windows and structure would provide fewer opportunities than open ground. It had most use as a shelter/store/command post. It wasn’t being used for any of the above and the Germans didn’t particularly need it as such, and, when reduced to rubble it actually benefited the Germans by providing more firing points and obstacles than when intact!

Whether or not Clark objected as strongly as he claims, I don’t belive he could have denied the request and the can is to be carried by Freyberg.

No.9