Wojtek the Bear [paperback] (6 page)

Historians still argue over whether the Battle of Monte Cassino, in which Wojtek fought with his comrades, was strategically necessary. It was the largest land battle fought in
Europe in World War II, and was actually a series of four battles. The death toll was horrendously high. It is estimated it cost the lives of 60,000 men. One Polish soldier recollected: ‘My
battalion of 1,001 men advanced into Monte Cassino village; three days of fighting reduced it to 97 men.’

The reason for such heavy casualties was the rugged mountain terrain – and the fact that skilled German troops were making their stand at the strongest point of a powerful German defensive
line known as the Gustav Line. Stretching coast-to-coast across Italy from Gaeta in the west to Ortona in the east, the Gustav Line had been prepared by the Germans long before the Allies landed in
Italy. Some 10,000 men had worked for nine months constructing it along the Garigliano and Rapido rivers. It was a most formidable obstacle. Defended by 15 divisions of the German army, all
seasoned troops, it had been fortified with dug-in artillery gun emplacements, concrete bunkers, machine-gun turrets, barbed wire and minefields.

The village of Monte Cassino and its nearby 1,400-year-old Benedictine monastery were regarded by the troops as
the toughest section of them all on the Gustav Line. It was
a virtually impregnable redoubt standing at the end of a narrow valley which the Allied troops nicknamed Death Valley. It stood between them and their next military objective, driving their way
through to Rome some 80 miles away.

Unable to detour around Monte Cassino because its existence as an observation post threatened their supply lines, and already bogged down militarily for months on the beachhead it had
precariously established at Anzio, the Allied advance had come to a halt in January 1944. The Germans, although heavily outnumbered, were well able to hold their positions. The mountainous terrain,
ravines and rivers forced Allied tanks, military transport and guns down narrow valleys where, backed up in numerous clusters and log jams on narrow roads which were often little more than
glorified tracks that could only be traversed by pack mules, they were highly vulnerable to German heavy artillery fire. Bitter weather added to the Allies’ woes.

In the larger picture of the European campaign, the Battle of Monte Cassino had two other strategic goals: to facilitate break-out from the port of Anzio where the Allies had been penned in for
five months and to engage as many German troops as possible in Italy so that they couldn’t replenish the forces defending the coastline of France from Allied invasion.

When 2nd Polish Corps and the men of the 22nd Company arrived on the scene, three attempts to break through at Monte Cassino had already failed. The first assault took place in January and was
beaten back. The second battle took place in February after heavy bombing of the monastery and its nearby village. Again the Allied
troops were repulsed. A third fierce
military engagement the following month was unsuccessful and left Monte Cassino in ruins.

For the fourth and final assault, named Operation Diadem, General Anders volunteered his Polish troops to spearhead the attack on the Germans’ seemingly impregnable position and capture
the Benedictine abbey. In the three weeks prior to that final battle, led by the Poles, it was Wojtek’s company’s job, along with others, to supply the artillery positions with the
ordnance they needed to do the job.

It was an exceptionally hazardous business. Ammunition had to be brought to the forward positions of the forces’ medium and heavy artillery so that meant 22nd Company and a number of other
artillery supply companies had to drive without lights up narrow mountain roads with numerous hairpin bends. Total blackout was required for fear of alerting the enemy and drawing down a deadly
artillery barrage. In complete darkness the drivers of each three-ton truck had to negotiate steep gradients, knowing that one false move could mean plunging hundreds of feet down one of the many
sheer mountain precipices.

It was a slow, laborious process getting the munitions to the guns. Often the driver’s mate had to walk in front of the truck, a white towel on his shoulders, guiding the vehicle.
Alternatively, he would lie flat on the lorry’s front mudguard, telling the driver where and when to turn. The negotiation of virtually every hairpin bend was a cumbersome and nerve-wracking
business for such large vehicles which were traversing roads completely unsuitable for their size. It involved the 22nd Company drivers sawing their lorries back and forth using forward and reverse
gears to get
round each corner. In addition, sections of the road were enveloped by clouds of artificial fog in order to conceal any movement from German observation points;
German artillery was already zeroed in on critical sections of the route.

As one Polish veteran of the campaign – 65 years on, still the proud possessor of the Wojtek insignia that was created in the bear’s honour – recalls: ‘When we finally
pulled into the positions of our artillery, we unloaded the ammo and fuses, and after a short rest, turned around and got out as fast as possible. In spite of all our precautions, a number of
trucks crashed into the steep gorges, killing their drivers.’

This, then, was the maelstrom into which Wojtek was pitchforked. It was an alien, dangerous and frightening world, and the first time he had seen action, but Wojtek very quickly adapted. Within
a matter of days he went from being needy and clingy and refusing to go out in the open air because of the noise and explosions of gunfire to climbing up an exposed tree near 22nd Company’s
encampment and calmly observing the mysterious flashes and bangs of enemy lines being bombed, strafed and pounded by heavy artillery.

It was at this juncture that Wojtek achieved legendary status. His comrades were frantically unloading boxes of artillery shells for the Allied guns in the heat of battle. Wojtek joined them and
with his paws outstretched, he indicated that he would help. Although he had never been trained to handle the unloading of 100-pound boxes of 25-pounder shells, shell fuses and other supplies, he
simply observed what the men were doing and joined in, without any bidding. Standing upright, he held out his front paws into which men loaded the heavy boxes of shells. Effortlessly, he carried
the munitions to their storage areas beside
the artillery positions, and returned to the lorries to collect more. It was the company’s proud boast that he never dropped
a single shell. However, it has to be said he did the lifting very much on his own terms: he chose when and how long he would work. At times he had to be wheedled into helping out. If he decided to
stop and lie down for a bit, a titbit or two at either end of his supplies run could reinvigorate his war effort. In actual fact, during the Battle of Monte Cassino, Wojtek’s company supplied
approximately 17,300 tons of ammunition, 1,200 tons of fuel and 1,100 tons of food for Polish and British troops.

On 11 May 1944, the final battle of Monte Cassino began. Before the attack General Anders addressed his troops, telling them: ‘For this action let the lion’s spirit enter your hearts
and keep deep in your heart God, honour and our land – Poland.’ He urged his men to go and take a revenge for all the suffering in Poland, for what they, themselves, had suffered in the
many years spent in Russia and for the years of separation they had endured from their families.

At 11 p.m. – H-hour – some 1,200 Allied guns opened up. Their coordinated artillery fire was so great that it practically turned night into bright day. It was a shock-and-awe
engagement where the very ground shook. But Wojtek stayed with his comrades, ensuring the munitions got through.

All along the Gustav Line, Allied troops were engaging the enemy in attacks which resulted in the wholesale slaughter of their men. The single most critical phase of the battle was the crossing
of the Rapido River under the German guns. If that failed so did the offensive.

At separate points, infantrymen of numerous nationalities attempted the crossing, including the 8th Indian
Division far west of Monte Cassino at San Angelo and the 4th
British Division just west of the town near the railway cuttings. The 2nd Polish Corps’ task was to cross the river and advance up the north-east flank of the monastery at Hill 593.

That most decisive phase of the battle to capture Monte Cassino was recalled by Black Watch veteran John Clarke MBE. He recalled that the river crossings attempted by the Poles and their British
counterparts were almost a complete disaster: ‘To cross the river, canvas folding boats had been sent from Burma. They had only arrived a few hours before zero hour. Attacking infantrymen
assembled the boats and set off across the swift-flowing river. Many were simply swept away to their deaths.’

Other men drowned within yards of setting out. Their boats sank almost instantly because the canvas sides were riddled with holes caused by insects which had infested them during their storage
in the Far East. The men in the canvas boats were mostly soldiers from the Argylls and the Hampshires, although the attrition rates were so high that many others, including Poles, were brought in
as re-inforcements. And all this was happening before the Germans, from their well-protected positions, laid down withering curtains of artillery fire.

Against all the odds, some of the troops made it to the other side and established several frail bridgeheads. As they dug in amid the smoke and the river mist they faced a new and unexpected
danger. The soil around them was heavily impregnated with phosphorus. They disturbed it as they dug their foxholes and there arose an eerie glow which made the troops easy targets for German
snipers.

Every yard the troops advanced was bought with the
blood of brave men. The carnage was almost beyond computation. Nowhere was the fighting more brutal than on the route
being forced to the top by the 2nd Polish Corps. For six days and nights the battle raged. With fanatical courage the Poles hurled themselves at the entrenched positions of the Germans on the hill
leading up to the monastery; it was as if a great and implacable hatred for all the agonies visited on their country by German invaders was driving them to feats of superhuman endurance. At one
point, cut off from their supplies, Polish troops who had run out of ammunition resorted to throwing stones at the enemy.

Tomasz Skrzynski, then a 20-year-old cadet in the Carpathian Lancers Regiment, who would later be part of 22nd Company with Wojtek, was with the Poles in the uplands above the monastery. Like
other Polish soldiers, he had been fighting at close quarters to gain control of the hilltop. But when the savagery of hand-to-hand combat was over, there was no respite. He and his comrades were
forced to spend days sheltering in crude foxholes and a ruined stone hut to escape enemy shelling. When they dug into the ground there they uncovered the corpses of three Germans, whom they
reburied, marking their grave with a makeshift cross.

‘The shelling continued day and night, and there was no such thing as silence,’ he recalled many decades later, in an interview with the BBC. ‘At one point I was ordered to
count the shells falling nearby, but after two hours or so it was above 500 and I lost count.’ The months of battle and constant shelling had turned the normally lush countryside into a
wasteland. ‘There was no greenery, only stumps of trees. Everywhere just stumps, as far as you could see,’ said Skrzynski.

The battle raged on until the Poles prevailed. They finally walked into the ruins of the monastery on 18 May 1944 without a shot being fired, having spotted a tattered
white flag of surrender. Inside they discovered a number of Germans in ragged uniforms, three badly wounded paratroopers and numerous corpses. As the Poles raised a Lancers Regiment pennant to
signify the capture of the monastery, a soldier played an ancient bugle call recognised by all Poles. Known as the Kraków Hejnał, according to legend it was used to alert that city to
an invasion by Genghis Khan’s Mongol hordes. As the notes rang out, the Polish troops wept with exhaustion and relief that the fighting had ended. The carnage was over. In the week’s
fighting 2nd Corps suffered appalling losses. There were a total of 4,199 casualties, including 1,150 killed. It was one of the decisive battles of the war.

Elsewhere along the Gustav Line, other victories were achieved. With his mates from the 6th Black Watch, John Clarke crossed the Rapido on a bridge constructed by the Royal Engineers to take the
weight of tanks. The bridge was built while the sappers came under constant enemy fire – an incredible feat. Clarke recalls: ‘They performed miracles erecting that bridge, but their
losses were terrible. I crossed with the Black Watch. All around were bodies and craters where shells had landed. We formed up, fixed bayonets and moved on. Then a really thick mist came down and
our CO, Colonel Madden, lined up the tanks of the Lothian and Border Horse and placed the lads around the tanks. Then we moved on through the mist. We fought for five days and nights before
reaching our target of Highway Six. This meant the German paras were cut off.’

In a separate engagement, Algerian, Moroccan and
Tunisian troops of the French Expeditionary Corps achieved another extremely important breakthrough in the Aurunci
Mountains south of the Liri River. The combined victories forced the enemy to retreat.

On the morning of 18 May 1944, Private Clarke and his Black Watch comrades were withdrawn from the battle in trucks and taken to Monte Cassino, then in the hands of the Poles. Clarke said:
‘When it was all over and we rested in Cassino town, we had a brew and a preliminary roll-call. We sat among the ruins of the old cathedral when a tubby, red-faced individual came bouncing up
to us. He had a tape recorder in a wooden box hanging from his neck and said: ‘‘Hello, lads, I’m Wynford Vaughan-Thomas from the BBC. Nothing to worry about now –
you’re out of it.’’

‘I’ll never forget what happened next. Not a word was said by our lads. Eyes turned towards this horrible creature and locked onto his face. The silence and the stares lasted several
minutes until, completely unnerved by it, the man turned and ran away in embarrassment.’