Roll the dice: Surviving Cassino
PAGE 17-19
Arthur Hurley was one of the last troops to return home to New Zealand after fighting in the battle of Cassino in Southern Italy in 1944. On the 75th anniversary of Cassino, and after years of hearing second-hand stories about his grandfather’s enlistment, Bevan Hurley inspected Arthur’s army personnel file.
The Benedictine abbey at Monte Cassino sits atop a rock 100 metres above the town of the same name. Behind the brick facade, a portrait of Pope Francis looks out benevolently over the impeccable courtyard roses. A shop hawks T-shirts and grappa, and tourists wander through gleaming golden crypts beneath the cathedral.
There are few clues to the devastation witnessed here 75 years ago, except for signs pointing to the many war cemeteries which encircle the town.
In early 1944 Cassino saw some of the fiercest fighting of World War II. Two of the four Allied attempts to retake the town, a strategic linchpin on the road to Rome, saw New Zealand forces take a leading role, and suffer hundreds of casualties.
One of those was young private Arthur James Cullis Hurley, who was badly wounded by shrapnel. The men on either side of him were killed.
Like many from the greatest generation, Arthur Hurley, or Grandad as I knew him, wasn’t one to talk about the war. He died of emphysema in 1987.
As I began reporting on more recent military engagements, I requested his personnel record from the archives of the New Zealand Defence Force. It arrived a few weeks later.
Arthur Hurley turned up for his examination by the New Zealand Military Forces medical board at Palmerston North on December 10, 1940. The legend
was that, like many, he’d lied about his age to get in. His recorded age at the examination – 18 years and 329 days – was accurate.
He gave his occupation, bank clerk; religion, Catholic; height, weight, complexion, chest measurement, and girth – when fully expanded. The doctor’s questions went on:
Is his heart normal? they asked. Is he free from hemorrhoids and varicose veins? He was.
Are his limbs well formed? Are the movements of all his joints full and perfect? Are his lungs normal? Yes, yes, yes.
With no obvious abnormalities, a normal nervous system , and ‘‘free from inveterate and contagious disease’’, doctors passed ‘‘AJ’’ Hurley fit for ‘‘home defence, active service in any part of the world, and garrison duty in the Tropics’’.
On the same day he undertook the medical, Arthur filled out an Attestation for Service. He declared his preferred service weapon would be a machine gun.
Private Hurley enlisted on January 3, 1941, with the Manawatu Mounted Rifles. It would be another two years before he left New Zealand for the theatres of war, on April 21, 1943, having sorted out the particulars of his will before leaving.
‘‘When we enter the battle zone, I would ask you to tune up your senses, so that you can smell the clinging smoke, the stinging cordite and the decomposing bodies . . .’’
– Cassino: New Zealand Soldiers in the Battle for Italy by Tony Williams.
On February 15, 1944, Allied forces rained Armageddon down upon Monte Cassino as British Kittyhawks and American B-17 Flying Fortresses, B-25 Mitchells, and B-26 Marauders dropped more than 1000 tonnes of ordnance.
The controversial destruction of the centuries-old monastery was later blamed on communication errors. Fortunately the priceless art, some dating back 800 years, was shipped out of harm’s way beforehand.
Not so fortunate were the 250 Italian men, women and children who were sheltering there. No Germans were killed during the bombing, and the ruins would provide excellent cover for the German paratroopers.
In the days after the bombing, the Ma¯ ori Battalion led a New Zealand advance on the town. But the roads had been turned into craters which prevented supporting tanks from getting through. Close-quarter fighting with grenades, guns, and even hand-to-hand, ensued.
On the night of February 17, the Ma¯ ori Battalion attacked the railway station, but without tanks were forced to withdraw under heavy fire.
George Sutherland of 28 Ma¯ ori Battalion described the ‘‘ghastly scene’’ at first light. ‘‘The dead lay everywhere. The wounded were being taken to the rear . . . a pall of smoke hung over everything and the smell of gunpowder and blood was sickening . . . Nga¯ puhi and Arawa lay side by side and died. Tommy guns spat and grenades exploded and screams curdled the blood.’’
The battle was called off, and forces withdrew for another push. On February 22, New Zealand forces gathered again for another onslaught.
Piecing together family stories with military records, official army accounts, and the dozens of websites and books devoted to Cassino, you begin to get a sense of what life was like on the ground.
Private Hurley and the rest of 25 Battalion waited for three weeks in the rain and snow for the code words – ‘‘Bradman is batting today’’ – to attack as part of Operation Dickens. Morale was low after defeats. Supply lines were treacherous.
‘‘We were living in a world where there was no day,’’ wrote C W Hollis, a soldier with the 21 Battalion. ‘‘Our nerves were stretched to breaking point, hands shaking so much that cigarettes were hard to light. Hot meals were impossible, as was washing and shaving.’’
When the word finally came that the second offensive would begin on March 15 – the Ides of March – a shambolic American bombing campaign that preceded it meant much of their deadly cargo was dropped on Allied troops.
An elite, battle-hardened battalion of German paratroopers, or Fallschirmjager, had burrowed into the ruins of the Monte Cassino monastery, and proved an exceptionally tough enemy.
There were many incidents of heroism. The 25 Battalion’s D Company, which Private Hurley belonged to, came in for special praise for achieving some gains in the initial stages of the attack on Castle Hill, on the edge of Cassino.
‘‘After climbing the ridge, D Company engaged the paratroops while they were still dazed and forced them to surrender with little loss of life,’’ Massey University student historian, Bede Bailey, wrote in 2000. ‘‘If a greater number of soldiers from the New Zealand Corps had been able to come to grips with the Germans in this manner, then the outcome of Operation Dickens certainly would have been different.’’
Ignoring officers’ advice, the head of the New Zealand mission, Lieutenant-General Sir Bernard Freyberg, pushed on with the offensive even as any realistic hope of taking the abbey had been lost.
Arthur Hurley’s record shows he was wounded at 8.30pm on March 22 (although his family always understood it to be the day before).
The next day, Freyberg withdrew and the New Zealand forces’ involvement in Monte Cassino was effectively over – their losses had been 343 killed in action, 1211 wounded in action and 42 captured. In May, Polish forces would retake the mountain, supported by the British, at enormous cost.
Records show shrapnel pierced Arthur Hurley’s thigh in three places, including his upper arm and left leg. The files are light on detail, noting only a ‘‘purulent discharge’’ from the wounds which indicate they probably became infected. He would be awarded the Italy Star and the 1939-45 Star.
His active service effectively over, Grandad spent three months recovering in Bari, Southern Italy, and developed a passion for bridge. He kept a souvenir of the jagged piece of shrapnel – roughly 8cm by 5cm – removed from his upper arm. No-one in the family knows what happened to it, but he used to show it to his sister Bertha.
Later, he moved to London where his clerical skills came in handy in the army pay office. He was promoted from private to corporal and then sergeant, meeting his bride-to-be Joyce, a secretary for one of the bosses at Unilever. She used to sit on the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral in London to have her lunch. Arthur renounced his Catholicism to marry Joyce, an Anglican.
The cemetery is immaculately maintained, the headstone on every New Zealand grave has a cross or a fern, and flags, poppies or fresh flowers are laid at the graves, even for those whose names are unknown.
Arthur Hurley set sail for home on the Rangitata on September 11, 1946, one of the last New Zealand soldiers to return from war due to his value to the pay office. He went back to bank work and became a manager with ANZ, moving with his young family of four children between Dargaville, Hunterville, Waipukurau, Stratford, Karori, Patea, Opotiki, and Rangiora. His ‘‘well-formed limbs’’ still had dents from the mortars, his skin shiny from scar tissue.
The grandkids remember him as a fun-loving, joyous man. Eldest granddaughter Gina Williams recalls singing old war songs such as It’s a Long Way to Tipperary, and Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag endlessly during car journeys.
‘‘I think Nanna was a bit anxious about it bringing up all the old memories. Nanna didn’t like showing emotion too much.’’
Gina asked about Cassino but Grandad was reluctant to speak about it, saving his war stories for afternoons at the RSA. But she did remember overhearing him describing ‘‘seeing his friends in front of him being blown up and limbs being torn’’.
‘‘In his older age Dad had shaky hands and seemed quite nervy and would sometimes have a whisky in the morning – I think to steady his hands for bowls,’’ youngest daughter Lesley says.
His two pack-a-day cigarette addiction was a direct result of his war experiences, and he suffered from emphysema for seven years, still
smoking right up until the day before he died.
Arthur Hurley died in 1987 aged just 65. His widow Joyce passed away last year at the age of 92.
Cassino on a sunny summer’s day in 2018. I’m here to prise open the past, but it is impossible to reconcile the picturesque town with what it would have looked like 75 years earlier. My 21-year-old nephew Blake and I had stayed in another famous World War II battle site, Anzio, before driving the two hours over potholed highways to Cassino.
We drive up the steep winding route to the abbey, which was rebuilt in the 1950s, drinking in the 360-degree views across the stunning Italian countryside.
Then it is off to the Commonwealth War Cemetery, on a busy arterial road on the outskirts of Cassino, the final resting place for more than 4000 servicemen from Canada, Nepal, England, Australia, South Africa, Pakistan and India, as well as 456 from New Zealand. A memorial to the missing also lists another 55 Kiwis, aged from their late teens to early 40s.
The cemetery is immaculately maintained, the headstone on every New Zealand grave has a cross or a fern, and flags, poppies or fresh flowers are laid at the graves.
Grandad was one of the so-called ‘‘lucky ones’’, one of the survivors. We’ll never understand the horrors of what he saw, or how it affected him for the rest of his life.