HISTORY: IN ITALY, GRAVES OF OUR SOLDIERS
Oh bury me at Cassino
My duty to England is done
And when you get back to Blighty
And you are drinking your whisky and rum
Remember the old Indian soldier
When the war he fought has been won!
— War Song of the Indian 8th Infantry Division
Cassino, in Italy, is not exactly a holiday resort. Yet for family members of soldiers who gave their lives in WWII and its veterans, it is a place of homage. This small picturesque town is overlooked by the imposing monastery that stands stationed as a sentinel, keeping a watchful eye from its lofty position atop a hill. The paradox is the word ‘PAX’ (peace), painted in deep red at the fortress-like entrance, boldly defying history to repeat itself.
Today, on Remembrance Day, a reminder of the thousands of sons of the subcontinent who perished in the Battle for Rome in WWII
The Battle of Monte Cassino was one of the most important military operations of WWII. Also known as the battle for Rome, it was a series of military assaults by the Allies against the Germans, from January to May, 1944. Rome was captured on June 5, 1944, a day before the Normandy invasion on June 6. “It was ‘a famous victory’ that almost immediately was overwhelmed by the bigger news of the D-Day landings in northern France,” reported Herbert Mitgang in The New York Times. Because of the unglamorous, hard-slogging Italian Campaign, the Mediterranean theatre came to be called the “forgotten front.”
In this forgotten front were our own sons of India. Although the Indian contribution is granted little recognition, at least 4,000 Indian soldiers lost their lives in the Italian Campaign. It was the third-largest allied army in Italy after the Americans and the British, contributing at least 50,000 troops from the Indian subcontinent, who served in this campaign, including Cassino.
Peter Caddick-Adams, a professional military historian (with a career in the United Kingdom’s Regular and Reserve Forces for over 35 years), writes in his book Monte Cassino: Ten Armies in Hell, “By 1944 the most experienced division in Eighth Army … was the 4th Indian Division.
“The Indian and Gurkha units, far from home, realised that regimental pride and battalion spirit would have to make up for a lack of warmth, ammunition, medicine and food on the slopes of Cassino.”
The Germans tried to “split the cohesion of the Allied Coalition effort” with “crude propaganda”, that “the voiceless Indians are put in front to be cannon fodder … but there is no evidence that any Indian deserted as encouraged.”
The miserable weather conditions, especially for the Indians, unused to brutal winters, were a nightmare and “the winter of 1943-44 was literally a killer”. The “field hospitals were inundated with three times the number of exposure and frostbite cases to combat casualties.”
Under such conditions, continuous rain and snow, the Indian soldiers carried on relentlessly. Far away from home and “used to the hot climes of India and the Middle East, where the division had served” earlier; the hostile conditions were an added enemy.
In December 2017, I travelled to Cassino. My father, too, had served there as a captain in the Indian Army Medical Corps (IAMC) of the 4th Indian Division. I was most fortunate to connect with Dr Danila Bracaglia, who has been conducting Battlefield Tours since 2009. After meeting many veterans of the Battle of Cassino on its 65th anniversary, she revealed, “I was so impressed and touched by their stories that I wanted to share them with the next generations, to make them aware of the sacrifices and contributions made for the liberation of my country.” Bracaglia is a professional guide, historian and researcher, specialising in the Italian Campaign. She took a group of seven eager family members — three from New Zealand, two from USA, a serving captain in the US Army, and myself — on a most impressive tour. Her van is fitted with a television to show authentic war footage, documenting events as they happened. This was not only educational, it transported us directly into that terrible past.