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Monte Cassino Anniversary Commemorated
A SPECIAL ceremony to mark the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Monte Cassino was held at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s Cassino War Cemetery in Italy on May 16. The burial ground is the final resting place of more than 4,200 Commonwealth servicemen who lost their lives in the battle. A further 4,000, killed in Sicily and Italy as well as at Monte Cassino, and have no known grave, are commemorated by name on the Cassino Memorial. The soldiers were drawn from many nations. Alongside the graves of British and Irish troops from regiments such as the Green Howards, the Grenadier Guards, and the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers are Muslims from Indian battalions, Maoris from New Zealand, Canadian and South African servicemen.
Although it was one of the toughest campaigns of World War Two, the Allied victory was almost immediately overshadowed by the landings in Normandy just two weeks later. Disparagingly referred to at the time as ‘D-Day Dodgers’, the servicemen and women of the Italian campaign saw some of the fiercest fighting of the entire conflict. The reality of their service and s…
