Word: cassino
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Near the southwestern end of the Allied line across Italy, the town of Cassino nestles at the base of holy, historic Mount Cassino. There, Byzantine conqueror Belisarius paused on his way to Rome in 536; the Benedictine Order was founded in 529.* Forbiddingly fortified by the Germans, Cassino now straddles the road to Rome chosen by General Mark W. Clark's Fifth Army. Last week, yard by yard, French, U.S. and Canadian troops advanced toward the ancient, strategic town...
...miles. In the north the French, under Tunisian veteran General Alphonse Pierre Juin, drove the Germans from Mount Ferro (3,500 ft.), Mount Pagano (3,600 ft.) and Mount Pile (3,700 ft.). They slid into the village of Acquafondata, gained a hold on one of four roads to Cassino. In the central-southern sector, U.S. and Canadian soldiers took Mount Porchia (where 16 stretcher-bearers were killed), Mount Capraro, Mount Trocchio, the strongly held village of Cervaro. From Trocchio, they overlooked Cassino itself. They rushed down Trocchio, massed to crash the outer Cassino fortifications...
...Americans moved on to the next fortress-village, San Giusta, less than a mile north. There they won another house-to-house battle, then struck for Cassino, where the valley broadens, where tanks may be used advantageously, and Highway 6 begins its last 70 miles to Rome...
...Fifth Army climbed and clawed the mountain slopes where Wehrmacht pillboxes blocked the old Via Casilina route to the Tiber. By week's end, after three bloody days of artillery and infantry fighting, the Fifth took San Pietro village, moved toward the key Liri Valley town of Cassino...
...observation post), the men could see their problem ahead-mountain ridges converging to a bottleneck, and in the bottleneck two obstructions, a bare rocky spine and a round wooded knoll. These hills squeezed Highway No. 6 into a horseshoe before it could straighten out on its way to Cassino and Rome, 90 miles away. Infantrymen named the hills "Old Baldy" and "The Fat One," and got ready to take them...