The Bombing of Monte Cassino

I was surprised, we could, from our gun position and the position that we were in, I think...I forget the name of the place...I think it was Savaro (sp), I think was the name of the place, a village. And that was, no civilians, everyone was gone out over there. We were in that area, and that's where we had our gun positions in there. And we could...there was Cassino right over there. The valley was just a bit below us, and there was Cassino, the town of Cassino, and there was Mount Cassino right in front. We were firing open sights, you know, it was a...and no matter what they threw at it, the Germans were still there. And we were there when they decided they were going to bomb it. And I can't remember the number now, something like five or seven hundred bombers or something were going to come in and bomb it there, you know.
But you could look, you'd see these bombers, you took a look behind you, you'd see them coming in. All of a sudden you'd see the bombs coming away. That was how it was. And they'd seem to be just floating then all of a sudden they'd pick up speed and be heading down. And the first, I suppose the first ten or twenty bombers that went and dropped their loads, you could see the big flashes and the explosions and all that. You could feel the vibration of it really. After about the first ten or fifteen planes I suppose, the rest of them kept going in and bombing, but all you could see was just, that was just one big black ball of smoke. That's all. And they kept pounding, and pounding, and pounding, and pounding. And then when the bombing was over, then our guns opened up. What the hell our guns were opened up to fire at, we couldn't see anything anyway, but they knew what they were doing I suppose you know. And all the guns opened up and started shelling. And then it all quieted down after a while. They still couldn't take it. The Germans were still there. After all that pounding, you know. And we found out after, or heard about it after, and I of course read stories about it, how they had these underground pillboxes built underground. And they could...the town of Cassino, we, we were pulled out of there after that because they couldn't take it. They decided the hell with that, we'll go around and go up the Hitler Line take, go around. Forget it, leave it, were not going to waste anymore time on it. And, I remember that we said, my God I don't understand why we're pounding that and we can't take it, you know. But they never did take it, they just went around it.