Cassino - Waste of Time and Effort

Heroes Remember

Cassino - Waste of Time and Effort

Transcript

Interviewer: And Cassino, another big...Big battle. Yeah, but all we did was shoot out a few thousand rounds you know, trying to destroy something or knock out something for the infantry. But they were unsuccessful, they never took that monastery. What a waste of time and men. Oh my. Interviewer: Tell me about that. You probably know about the monastery there, cause Cassino is on the tip of the land that jutted out and you know the road was around the base. Now you couldn't get around there with those fellows sitting up there, bam..bam.. you know. So they decided, foolishly, they could have gone around one way or the other, go up the Adriatic, they had, and in the meantime Anzio had started. General Clark had landed north of Cassino just south of Rome actually, just in between, at Anzio. And we tried to take that silly monastery, walls 9 feet thick, you know. You couldn't blow it to pieces and you couldn't hurt anybody that was inside. It was just one of those strange silly things that they decided to do. And up the mountain, no roads, mules to bring up supplies and things, slaughter. Indian division, New Zealand division, a Gurkha division, American divisions, English divisions, couldn't take it. The Canadians broke through miles from there to the right, after. Cause you're up in the mountains eh, in the Apennines. I was on the Appian Way incidentally, that's the Caesars road and the Canadians broke through and they had to evacuate Cassino now or the monastery because it had been surrounded. Why didn't they plan that, instead of trying to take an impossible target. I don't know.

Description

Mr. Candow explains his view that the battle waged at Cassino was a waste, and how the objective could have been accomplished much easier.

Gordon Henry Candow

Mr Candow was born December 15, 1920, and is the oldest of nine children. Joining in with the lads he was working with when war broke out, he signed into the navy but was quickly transferred to artillery. In May 1940, Mr. Candow sailed overseas as a part of the 57th Heavy Regiment, and was stationed to Norfolk, Great Britain, performing costal defence for a year and a half. After being shipped to Southern England the 57th was soon incorporated into the 166th Newfoundland Field Artillery Regiment. In January 1943, the regiment was shipped to North Africa. They remained in action until the end of the North African campaign, when they were shipped to Italy where the unit saw action in Fogia, Cassino, Ortona, and Boulogne. When the war ended, he returned to Southern England for a short period and then returned home to Newfoundland.

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