Poland’s revenge at Monte Cassino
To secure Allied victory the Polish II Corps travelled across three continents to break the German Gustav Line and raise the Polish flag at the summit of Monastery Hill
Read how the Polish II Corps marched from Soviet captivity to the frontline in Italy
In the spring of 1944 the German defence across the Italian peninsula, The Gustav Line, proved impenetrable. To help secure Allied victory and open up the road to Rome, General Wladyslaw Anders led the Polish II Corps, an army of soldiers that had survived Siberia, and travelled across the deserts of the Middle East, to reach their destiny… and raise the Polish flag at the summit of Monte Cassino.
Surviving Siberia
In 1940, when Otton Hulacki was 18, the NKVD came to his home in Lwow. Deportations of Poles began shortly after the Soviet invasion of eastern Poland in 1939, and few of the Poles sent to the desolate wastelands across the Soviet Union would ever see their homeland again. Hulacki’s father was deported to a gulag in the Urals on the 10 April, two days later the Soviet Secret Police came back to deport young Hulacki along with his mother and siblings.
The cattle car train journey took weeks. “But I was not in despair,” Hulacki remembers, “As a young man, going into the unknown … it was unpleasant but still a kind of adventure. Being sent to Siberia was something that many, many Poles had experienced… including Pilsudski.”
Like so many of his generation, young
Hulacki took courage and inspiration from Jozef Pilsudski, the Marshal of Poland and the architect of Polish independence after 123 years of Partitions – times when generations of Poles under Russian rule had been deported to Siberia. Looking back, despite the dire situation, Hulacki also felt lucky because things could still have turned out much worse. As a sworn member of the Polish resistance since the very start of the war Hulacki’s fear, like for most in the resistance, was to be interrogated and give up fellow members of his underground cell. “I have a high pain threshold, but…” Nobody knows if – and for how long – they would be able to withstand torture.
When Hulacki and his family arrived in Kazakhstan, how did they imagine their lives and future? “You don’t have time to think. You have to organise. You must survive,” he says. It is estimated that up to half of the approximately 1.5 million Poles deported had died from hard labour, disease and starvation by the time Operation Barbarossa began in 1941. As the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, the Soviets switched sides to join the Allies, and an amnesty was declared for all Poles on Soviet territory. In addition a Polish army was to be formed under the command of General
Wladyslaw Anders.
“SINCE THE VERY START OF THE WAR HULACKI’S FEAR, LIKE FOR MOST IN THE RESISTANCE, WAS TO BE INTERROGATED AND GIVE UP FELLOW MEMBERS OF HIS UNDERGROUND CELL”
“HE BELIEVES HIS LIFE WAS SAVED BY EATING A STEW WITH DOG MEAT. HIS FATHER ONLY TOLD HIM WHAT HE HAD EATEN ONCE HE HAD FINISHED, AND THEN ASKED WHAT HE THOUGHT OF THE MEAL”
Following the amnesty, Hulacki was reunited with his father, but due to a miscalculation they travelled south, to the today almost dried up Aral Sea, where the shortage of food proved devastating. “I was dying from hunger, but at least I saw some of the world!” Hulacki says with characteristic humour. He believes his life was saved by eating a stew with dog meat. His father only told him what he had eaten once he had finished, and then asked what he thought of the meal. “It was good,” young Hulacki answered. Only those that have not experienced real starvation, have the luxury to object to the idea.
Eventually, in March 1942, Hulacki was able to join the Polish 6th Armoured “Children of Lwow” Regiment, and together with fellow soldiers in Anders Army, left the Soviet Union.
Scorpions in the desert
Altogether around 114,000 soldiers and dependants travelled with Anders Army to Persia. The British were deeply shocked seeing this skeleton army – all in urgent need of healthcare, food, and later military training to be able to become a fighting force. In time many of the roughly 35,000 civilians would find refuge across the world, in Africa, India, Palestine and Mexico. The Polish II Corps was officially formed in July 1943 in Iraq, where it became part of the British 10th Army under the command of General Sir Henry Maitland Wilson.
The main problem for the Polish II Corps was the shortage of officers – too few had survived Soviet incarceration, something General Anders had become aware of much earlier. The tenuous relationship with the Soviet Union was deteriorating again and the case of the missing officers – and later revelation of the Katyn Massacre – would end diplomatic relations altogether. Instead, young cadet officers were put into positions of responsibility above their rank. As their training intensified, the Polish II Corps was moved to Palestine in the late summer of 1943, where in September General Wilson pronounced them ready for action. With this began the next part of their journey, this time travelling to Egypt in preparation for their transfer to the new front lines in Italy.
Somewhere along the road in the desert, together with fellow soldiers in his unit, Hulacki watched with fascination as scorpions fought each other to death. “They fight like hell,” he remembers. When the Polish 4th Armoured Regiment was being formed, which Hulacki would later join, their new emblem was a given, “A silver scorpion. Very beautiful,” he recalls.
The transfer of Polish troops to Italy began in mid-december 1943 and took considerable time, as it was carried out using different routes and ports in smaller convoys, so as not to endanger the whole corps.
By April 1944 there were 50,000 Polish military in Italy. They were organised into the
3rd Carpathian Rifle Division and the 5th Kresy Infantry Division (both divisions had two, rather than three brigades) and the 2nd Armoured Brigade. There was also an artillery force, engineers and women volunteers – defined as soldiers on active service in the Polish Auxiliary Women’s Service, similar to the British ATS.
Allies at Cassino
The Italian Campaign had opened in July
1943 as the Allied forces landed in Sicily, but as progress became slow through the mountainous terrain of southern Italy, it allowed German Field Marshal Kesselring time to build strong defensive lines. The Gustav Line was a set of fortifications crossing the peninsula and centred on the great Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino. The Abbey was truly awe-inspiring and in its majestic setting also a natural defence position that dominated the surrounding area. From the viewpoint at the top of the massif, the Germans overlooked the entire Rapido and Liri Valleys below and had a clear view of Highway 6 – the road leading directly to Rome.
Since January 1944, men of many different nations fought to break through the German defence at Monte Cassino: the Americans, the French, with Moroccan and Algerian divisions, the British, yet each assault provoked devastating counterattacks from the Germans. The hillside was filled with dugouts, mortars and artillery, and whilst the monastery itself had not been fortified, it held not only a physical, but also a psychological hold over the troops.
For soldiers on both sides, “Cassino developed an emotional, almost mythical, significance,” wrote British soldier Fred Majdalany. The bombing of the monastery by the US Airforce on 15 February remains controversial to this day. The stalemate following the second attack by the Indian and New Zealand divisions enabled the Germans to fortify the monastery ruins. After the third
assault had failed, tactics needed to change. Quoting Nelson, “Only numbers can annihilate,” General Harold Alexander began two months of elaborate preparations for a fourth attempt to break the Gustav Line – Operation Diadem. An attack much larger in scale than the previous was planned. With the British 8th Army on the right, the French Forces centre and the US 5th Army on the left, all Allied divisions would strike along 20-mile front – and the Polish II Corps, would be asked for the near-impossible.
A battle for Poland
As the Polish Army Corps arrived in Italy, they followed in the footsteps of the Polish legions led by General Dombrowski, some 150 years earlier, where in the times of Napoleon they too had been fighting for Poland’s freedom.
Now, a few days following his arrival, General Wladyslaw Anders, Commander of the Polish II Corps, met with Brigadier-general Oliver Leese, commander of the 8th British Army, under whom he would work. Both men conversed with each other in French, albeit one of them more fluently than the other.
Following General Alexander’s preparations for the fourth attack, Leese outlined his proposal for the Polish II Corps’ contribution to the planned battle. Whilst being the smallest Corps in the 8th Army, the Poles were handed the most difficult task of all – to take Monastery Hill by frontal attack.
Leese gave Anders ten minutes to consider the proposal – it was chance to honourably refuse a proposition that had already defeated men from several nations. However General Anders was acutely aware of Poland’s political and military predicament. With no independent Polish theatre of operations – the necessity of Poland’s armed forces to play a decisive role in Allied operations was crucial for the future of the country. Anders reasoned, “Monte Cassino is a fortress for which many nations have battled; it is a fortress known the world over … If I refuse, then the Corps will be deployed in the Liri Valley, which will also cause heavy losses but scattered over a longer period of time … If we do capture Monte Cassino, and capture it we must, then we will bring Poland’s cause – currently so hard pressed – to the fore of world opinion.”
As General Anders agreed to the proposal, he estimated a loss of around 3,500 men. In preparation for the coming battle he met with all the generals who had commanded divisions in the previous attacks, and found General Freyberg and General Keightley very helpful. Whilst ground reconnaissance was practically impossible, Anders flew over the Cassino massif on 7 April and studied topographical maps and photographs, identifying two neighbouring hilltops, Hill 593 and Sant Angelo. These were to be secured by 3rd Carpathian and 5th Kresy divisions respectively, before proceeding with the attack on Monastery Hill itself.
The Fourth Battle
On the night of the 11 to 12 of May, before the infantry assault began, the Allied bombardment was immense. The German positions were so well hidden in the steep mountainside that the artillery was firing blind, “I remember this moment, when artillery opened fire. A bloody cannonade. It was terrifying. I don’t know how the Germans could stand it, but they did,” Hulacki remembers. At 1am the Polish infantry began their attack under a barrage of German gun and mortar fire. The 5th Kresy Division was to take the mountain ridge, Sant Angelo, Hills 575, 505, 452 and 447. Simultaneously the 3rd Carpathian Rifle Division would capture Hills 593, 569 and Massa Albaneta, as an initial position for the attack on the monastery. Charging uphill, dragging weapons and ammunition with them, the soldiers’ every move exposed them to German fire.
“As a rule, before a larger attack, brothers were put in separate units,” Hulacki says, “My older brother, Mieczyslaw, was given the very difficult task of supplying food and ammunition during very heavy battle. Later I finished schooling as an officer cadet, but at the time I was an ordinary soldier. My role in the battle was to supply tanks to the front – and at times create diversionary manoeuvres as to distract the Germans’ attention.”
Tanks of the 2nd Armoured Division were initially planned to coordinate with the infantry assault, but the mountainous and heavily mined terrain proved difficult and little progress was made. Eighteen out of 20 sappers clearing the paths for tanks were killed or wounded within just a few hours. The fates of some tank crews were the most horrific: men burned alive, like human torches, while trying to get out – others remained trapped inside burning tanks.
As with all battles, Monte Cassino came to have its own, particular surrealistic landscape. Among red poppy-covered slopes lay “corpses of Polish and German soldiers, sometimes entangled in a deathly embrace”, General
Anders wrote after the battle. “It is not easy to describe an action made up of the experiences of individual detachments, sections and even of single soldiers. It was a collection of small epics, many of which can never be told, for their heroes took to their graves the secret of their exploits”.
Engaging the enemy in intense hand-to-hand fighting in the overgrown and rocky terrain, the 1st Carpathian managed to take Hill 593 and 569. Yet, “it is easier to capture some objectives than to hold them,” Anders noted. German artillery fire and counterattacks made advancing near impossible and in the very heavy fighting, Polish casualties were severe. Some companies ceased to exist entirely. As it
“THE FATES OF SOME TANK CREWS WERE THE MOST HORRIFIC: MEN BURNED ALIVE, LIKE HUMAN TORCHES, WHILE TRYING TO GET OUT”
proved impossible to continue, Anders issued orders to pull back to the starting lines. While the Polish II Corps had tied down enemy forces, they themselves had no reserves to call upon – and could only mount one last attack.
Monastery Hill
The second phase of the battle began on the 17 May, when the Poles renewed the assault at 7am, this time coordinating with the British 13 Corps advance in the Liri Valley and so dividing the German artillery onslaught between them. Majdalany wrote, “Every Pole who had reached the Polish Corps of General Anders, had endured a personal epic to get there. For the Poles it was a crusade. There was a cold, contained fury in their demeanour. More than any soldiers on the Allied side they had good reason to hate.”
Still exhausted from fighting only a few days earlier, progress was slow, but the Poles fought with such fierce determination and fervour, that “they seemed to know no fear” to their fellow soldiers.
The account of Lance-corpral Dobrowski, of
5th Battalion, describes the battle in vivid and brutally honest detail, “We lie there waiting and then at last comes the order to move. Always the same old cry. We must take ammo, ammo, ammo. Apart from our normal ammunition each of us must take 30 or 40 pounds of grenades.
It is a hot day and the going is difficult. When we begin to ascend Hill 593, the weakest soldiers can no longer keep pace. We are in no particular formation. No sections, no platoons. The situation is such that we must take our own initiative. Later we can reorganise – those of us who are left. Now we engage the enemy. All is confusion and the Germans’ positions are mixed with ours. With munificent impartiality we hurl our hand grenades. From the neighbouring heights Spandaus, Schmeissers and heavy machine guns catch us in a murderous cross-fire.”
By the end of the 17 May, the Poles broke through the German defence and captured Hill 593 and San Angelo. However the situation was still uncertain and casualties very high. In the words of Colonel Rudnicki, “It was impossible to say what the dawn would bring.” As it turned out, during the night, Field Marshal Kesselring judged the German position untenable and began withdrawing troops from Monastery Hill.
On the morning of the 18 May, a patrol of the 12th Podolian Lancers Regiment moved up towards the ruins of the Monastery, where at 10.20am they first raised their regimental flag above the ruins. At midday, one of the Lancers played the medieval Hejnal on his bugle to signal victory. Against all the odds the Polish II Corps had taken Monastery Hill.
The moment lives on in the heart of the
Polish nation and today, the victory of Monte Cassino stands as a symbolic feat of arms in Poland’s history.
“I remember walking up to the summit to see the raised flag. We were filled with emotion and we were very proud, but so many had died,” Hulacki says. For a country that did not regain its freedom it was a high price to pay. “I think our price was too great,” he says.
When General Anders died in exile in 1970 he was, at his own request, buried at the Polish Military Cemetery at Monte Cassino. Located
between Hill 593 and Monastery Hill in ‘Dolina Smierci’ – the ‘Valley of Death’, one of the inscriptions at the Polish memorial reads, “For our freedom and yours, we Polish soldiers gave our souls to God, our bodies to Italy’s soil, and our hearts to Poland.”
Piedimonte
Yet, the story does not end here. In fact, in war correspondent Melchior Wankowicz’s classic three-tome on Monte Cassino, published in 1945-47, the battle at Piedimonde takes up most of the third part. For Otton Hulacki’s unit, the 6th Armoured ‘Children of Lwow’ Division, the most difficult battle was still to come.
After taking Monastery Hill the Polish II Corps began the second stage of the offensive – breaking the Adolf Hitler Line. The task was
“to capture Piedimonte and to protect the right flank of the XIII British Army Corps” which were then taking heavy German fire. Like a miniature version of The Abbey at Monastery Hill, the fortified small town of Piedimonte sat atop a steep hill with views over the Liri Valley and Highway 6. Accessible only by a single road it provided a natural defence position where the Gustav and Hitler Lines joined.
The attack on Piedimonte began on the 20 May, by an especially assembled task force, “Bob”, under the deputy commander of the 2 Polish Armoured Brigade, Lieutenant Colonel Bobinski. It was comprised of the 6th Armoured Division ‘Children of Lwow’, along with an assortment of remaining combat assets of the Polish II Corp. However, prior to the initial attack, the terrain and enemy positions had not been clearly established and along with the re-occurring problem of tank and infantry coordination there was a lack of fuel and artillery support. So when the 6th Armoured Division, without infantry support, made the first approach on Piedimonte, the three leading tanks drove straight into an ambush with the Germans unleashing an onslaught of anti-tank weaponry upon them.
Nevertheless the attempts at taking Piedimonte continued, though conditions in the days that followed were to prove extremely difficult, Lieutenant Bobinski persisted, convinced the Germans would be defeated. Bobinski’s fearlessness was already then becoming legendary, as he strolled seemingly unfazed by the sound of sniper bullets at his heels. What followed was five days and four nights of heavy battle where it was difficult to assess who was the worst enemy: the Germans, the mines or the mountainous terrain. At night dugouts under immobilised tanks serving as pillboxes only provided relative safety.
While infantry support eventually arrived – the conditions remained very difficult. With each renewed advance during the day tanks were immobilised by mines, broken engines or caterpillars, or slipped into ravines or stranded on rocks blocking progress along the narrow road leading up to the town.
All this, while under constant German fire. “You never look at people the way you do in battle,” Wankowicz writes, “knowing that you may never see them again.”
During the engagement at Piedimonte, the 6th Armoured Division comprised of 49 Sherman tanks, out of which 27 were destroyed or abandoned as wrecks.
“A tank crew is like family,” Hulacki says. “For my unit, this battle was one of the most difficult experiences. Many of my very best friends were killed and also the commander of my unit, Captain Kuczuk-pilecki, whom I liked very much.”
Eventually Group “Bob” would achieve its objective. On the 25 May they broke through the Hitler Line and, along with the British, forced the German Army into headlong retreat.
The road to Rome was finally open and the Eternal City would be liberated on the 4
June, but the cost of lives had been very high. Estimates as always vary, however according to General Anders the losses of the Polish II Corps at Monte Cassino and Piedimonte totalled – killed, wounded or missing – 281 officers and 3,503 other ranks.
Otton Hulacki was lucky and lived to fight another day. He later joined the 4th Armoured “Scorpion” Regiment, fighting at Ancona, Bologna and in the end he would serve throughout the entire Italian Campaign. Among the many medals for his service, Hulacki was awarded the Monte Cassino Cross, Italy Star and the War Medal 1939-1945.
Afterglow
After the war ended Hulacki travelled to Britain where the Poles in 1946 had not been invited to join the victory parade in London. The hurtful omission is still remembered today, yet Hulacki speaks frankly, “We could not go on a victory parade anyway – we did not win the war. They sold us out.” The Poland they had left no longer existed. When Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill agreed to re-draw Poland’s map they also erased the homes of most of the soldiers in Anders Army. Hulacki’s Polish hometown of Lwow was now located in Ukraine. As post-war Poland fell under communist rule, General Anders and his soldiers were branded as traitors. Few returned to Poland and those that did rarely lived for long under communist repressions. Hulacki had already survived the Soviets once. Instead he decided to build a new life in Britain, married an English girl and remained active among the Polish veteran and émigré community throughout his life.
Living with his wife at the Isle of Wight, today, at 97 years of age, now retired Lieutenant Colonel Otton Z. Hulacki prepares to make the journey back to Monte Cassino for the 75th anniversary of the battle. The Polish eagle and silver scorpion, sitting proudly on his black beret, will once again gleam in the Italian sun.