The Journey to Monte Cassino
Kazik’s Story: As told to his son Mark Slaski
Marking the 75th Anniversary of one of World War Two’s costliest battles
The Battle of Monte Cassino was a pivotal battle in the Allied invasion of Italy in 1943–1944.
Monte Cassino was a mountain top monastery, transformed by the Germans into a fortress. It formed a crucial part of Hitler’s line of defence protecting the heavily fortified town of Piedimonte, and ultimately the route to German occupied Rome. The allied forces had been trying to break through this line for the past nine months and had taken heavy losses.
The battle for the monastery at Monte Cassino is well documented — many men from many nations lost their lives in an effort to take this strategic position. Eventually on May 18th 1944 the mountain was taken. This is the story of one man’s journey from deportation in Poland to battle in the mountains of Italy. I tell it not because it is unique but because it is a story shared by tens of thousands of Poles, and because it remains largely untold.
For me it had been a long and hard journey from my native Poland and some of the hardest years of my youth, as I grew from schoolboy to soldier along the way.
When war broke out with the German invasion of Poland on September 1st 1939, I was 16 years old and, with my younger brother, attending the prestigious Korpus Kadetow, boarding school in Lwow in eastern Poland — considered to be one of the best schools in the country, full of tradition with a military background. My father was a major in the Polish army.
The German advance through Poland was rapid. Within a few days, and with no warning, the city of Lwow was bombed, resulting in a considerable number of civilian casualties. For a time Peter and I stayed at school and performed guard duties around the area.
Within a few weeks the invading German army moved closer and closer, pushing back the remnants of the Polish army towards Lwow. Finally, with the German army less than 100 miles away, the school was evacuated and we stayed with my mother at my grandmother’s house.
My role was as coordinator and publisher.
To read the full story go here:
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