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RSS FeedsCassino Memorial
Of the 49,261 members of the Commonwealth forces who died in the fighting in Italy, nearly one-tenth have no known grave. The 4,054 names recorded on the Cassino Memorial include those of 194 Canadians. The Memorial itself, situated within Cassino War Cemetery, consists of pillars of green marble which rise approximately five metres on either side of an ornamental pool and a formal garden. The names are inscribed on these pillars.
On the walls above the stairways that lead up from the main road to the Cemetery, the following words, in English and Italian, are inscribed:
WITHIN THIS CEMETERY STAND MONUMENTS WHICH BEAR THE NAMES OF SOLDIERS OF THE BRITISH COMMONWEALTH AND EMPIRE WHO FELL IN THE ASSAULTS UPON THE SHORES OF SICILY AND ITALY OR IN LATER BATTLES TO FREE ITALIAN SOIL AND TO WHOM THE FORTUNE OF WAR DENIED A KNOWN AND HONOURED GRAVE. AROUND THEM ARE THE GRAVES OF THEIR COMRADES WHO DIED FIGHTING IN THESE PARTS TO OPEN THE WAY TO ROME AND THE NORTH
The Campaigns in Sicily and Italy
The Allied campaign in Sicily and Italy during the Second World War lasted from early July 1943 to the beginning of May 1945. The name Cassino will long be associated with some of the fiercest fighting engaged in by Allied armies in all those 22 months. During the battles that were waged here in the early part of 1944, Cassino, about half-way between Rome and Naples, at the lower end of the Liri Valley was completely destroyed, as was the Abbey of Monte Cassino, on its dominating hill above the town.
On July 10, 1943, the landing on the Sicilian coast of an Allied force comprising the American Seventh and the British Eighth Armies marked the first breach in Adolf Hitler's European fortress. The conquest of Sicily was completed in 38 days, the 1st Canadian Division having played an important part in the Eighth Army's operations. On September 3, British and Canadian troops landed unopposed in the "toe" of the Italian mainland; and six days later a large American-British invasion force assaulted the Salerno beaches south of Naples. Italy capitulated, and German armies took over the country.
Slowly the Allied forces battled northward. On the
Adriatic coast the Eighth Army broke the German Winter Line in
November, and during Christmas week in some of the bitterest street
fighting of the war, Canadian infantry and armour drove crack
German troops out of the battered coastal town of Ortona. In the
following spring the Eighth Army crossed the peninsula to join
the American Fifth Army in an offensive to capture Rome. American
and Commonwealth divisions forced the strong Gustav Line between
Cassino and the sea, and on May 23, 1944, Canadian forces breached
the formidable Adolf Hitler Line. American troops entered Rome
on June 4, and the enemy fell back to the prepared defences of
the Rimini-Pisa (or Gothic) Line. In September, the two Allied
Armies smashed their way through the Gothic position, the Eighth
Army's assault on the Adriatic flank spearheaded by the 1st
Canadian Corps. After a winter of making little progress across
the muddy flats south of the Lombardy Plain, the 1st
Canadian Corps moved to Northwest Europe. In the spring a renewed
offensive by the American and British armies cleared the northern
Italian plains and brought the surrender of nearly a million Axis
forces on May 2.
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