The Royal British Legion have kindly been reminding their councillor network of a number of significant anniversaries taking place this year of which there are many. The first of these was the Battle of Monte Cassino, the 80th anniversary of which is taking place tomorrow.
Having failed to study the Italian Campaign in any great detail, it was not a WWII battle I had any familiarity with, but upon investigation it became clear why it deserved a place on the list.
The Battle of Monte Cassino took four months, costing the lives of 55,000 Allied soldiers, 20,000 German soldiers and 2,000 civilians as the Allies tried to break through the fortified Winter Line at the hilltop abbey of Monte Cassino in order to make it through to Rome and the territory beyond. While essential, victory clearly came at an exceedingly high cost.
What is particularly fascinating to see is the range of nationalities and ethnicities which made up the Allied effort. British (including the Royal Sussex regiment), Americans, French, Canadians, New Zealanders, South Africans, Italians, Indians, Moroccans, Algerians, Gurkhas and Poles all fighting as one to free Europe from Nazism, with Polish soliders ultimately breaking through and raising their flag above the abbey.
To my mind, it’s a reminder that the history of the Second World War isn’t the tale of one standing against many which political scoundrels often try to exploit, but rather the most significant combined international effort in history, in which countries which for the most part had alternatives to war, instead made great sacrifices to free others from oppression, not because they intended to exploit of for their own colonial gains but out of a belief that the tyranny of Nazism could not be permitted to stand by any reasonable people.
If only we could find that same clarity of purpose to overcome the challenges we face today.
Peter Lamb for Crawley 