Word: rapido
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Fifteen enlisted men won battlefield promotions. After Cassino, where they had spearheaded the crossing of the Rapido River and had clung to a corner of the town for many days, their combat strength was down...
...artillery and their bombing and desperate infantry charges. Reverting to the ancient military doctrine that what cannot be taken by frontal assault can be encircled, General Sir Harold Alexander sent powerful units of his Polish troops around to the right of Cassino. His Britons, Canadians and Indians crossed the Rapido River to the left, circled to cut Via Casilina and join the Poles. The Green Devils were outdeviled...
...left lies the narrow Liri Valley, through which leads the only practical road-but it is not passable so long as the Germans can pour deadly fire from the hills behind Cassino. This was proved in the first attack last January. U.S. troops crossed the Rapido (in the foreground), only to be forced to retire after heavy casualties...
...third attack, just completed, followed another plan. First the town was to be completely destroyed by terrific bombardment and quickly occupied by assault. Then the hills around the abbey were to be stormed, and with the German strong points thus neutralized, another large-scale crossing of the Rapido was to be attempted...
...bombardment six weeks of heavy fighting had taken one-quarter of the town; after bombardment the Allies took three-quarters of it in 24 hours. Early this week the Germans pushed up reinforcements, still held out in the western end. But the Allies' hard-won bridgehead over the Rapido River was growing. Next objective might be to capture Monastery Hill, site of the bombed-out Benedictine abbey, towering beyond the town...