A trip in the hills

I took some photos around north Cassino before heading up to Lorenzo’s to discover that lunch was a picnic and J was expected. We picked her up from where she had been walking in town then headed into the hills in a Land Rover. The track we took was called the ‘Honker Road’ in the war and had been a mule path originally until ‘improved’ to jeep track status. It was still jeep track status. Lorenzo took us to his Grandfather’s house in the hills behind Cassino, looking across the hillsides to the Abbey. (For those who follow the battle, it is to the west of the Great Bowl, below Monte Maiola.) The hills form a kind of U-shape, with one side of the U on the north outskirts of Cassino pointing at the Castle, and the other side running along the hills to the Monastery. The house is at the bend of the U and would have been a resting point for the Allies in their climb up the hill from the valley below. The house next door was the location of a Polish Anti-tank unit (and possibly others before them).

We had a quick look at the view over the ridge behind the house. It looks down on the Rapido Valley and there are still German sangars (shelters/gun-pits) along the ridge line. That the house was a hotspot was shown by the amount of shell fragments scattered around the house. Everywhere you looked there was another piece.

We had lunch – another grand affair that was far from a picnic. The rest of the family had walked up the hill to meet us so it was another full on meal. After that Lorenzo and his father took me up to where the Great Bowl meets the Little Bowl, with the intention of climbing Monte Maiola. Instead we wandered out to Pt 481 and Lorenzo fossicked with his metal detector. He found a clip and 7 spent cartridges from a point where the Yanks had reached the crest of the hill and had obviously fired on German positions. I scrambled around the rocks and found a complete British 2" mortar shell wedged in a crevice so tightly it couldn’t be moved. It shouldn’t have been fired there, so may simply have been dropped, which may explain why it hadn’t gone off. There were fragments everywhere here too, and Lorenzo was disappointed he didn’t get much of a haul. I think he wanted larger items.

It was getting late so we headed home, but not before a small adventure. We followed the road down into the Little Bowl, but as we spiralled down the bush closed in and more and more rocks blocked the road. We ended up heaving these aside until we found a place where we could turn. The paintwork got scratched to hell and there was nothing at the bottom to see in all the bush anyway. Fun though. The track back passed by the building used as a Battalion HQ by the different nationalities as they took over the lines. I think it may be the one mentioned in Harold Bond’s book, Return to Cassino as one where bodies lay outside because it was too dangerous to stop to clear them away.

Lorenzo’s dad, uncle and aunty walked back down the hill while we took the jeep track again. I was tired by the time we got home.