WILLIAM Delaney, Robert Habington, Brendan Doherty, Robert Apling, Albert Lyttle, Eric Heaton and Roy Gilliland went to war and never came back.
I studied the names of these young men on the headstones at the War Memorial graveyard at Montecassino in Italy last month and tried to imagine the pain their parents must have felt at their loss, especially when they knew they wouldn’t even be able to bury their sons where they could easily visit.
I have no record of the ordeal of these men other than they were soldiers in the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers the regimental district of which during the time of the Second World War comprised Donegal, Londonderry, Tyrone and Fermanagh with a garrison in Omagh. They would have been local men.
Four of them, Roy Gilliland, Robert Habington, Robert Apling and Albert Lyttle died on the same day, April 8, in 1944, while Eric Heaton died nine days later. Brendan Doherty died on March 23 that year while William Delaney had died 10 days earlier on March 30. Yet they all lie in the same graveyard which suggests that through no fault of their own they were involved in what was one of the most infamous events of WW2.
Montecassino was the scene of a famous World War 11 event, also known as the Battle for Rome and history describes it in fact as a ‘costly series of battles fought by the Allies against Germans and Italians with the intention of breaking through what was a combined route known as the Winter Line and seizing Rome’.
In the beginning of 1944 the western half of the Winter Line was held by the Germans who were also holding a series of lines, peaks and ridges known as the Gustav Line. The Allies knew they had to penetrate this line in order to get to Rome. And in the way was one of the most difficult areas Montecassino which, today, is a charming mediaeval town known for its famous Abbey which sits on top of a hill on the remains of what was once a Roman fortification.
Military intelligence held by the Allied troops at the time believed that the world famous Abbey with its 150 high walls 10 feet thick in places was a garrison of the German army and had to be got rid of. British and American newspaper at the time had encouraged the view that it was a hotbed of Germany activity though it turned out this intelligence was deeply flawed.
The Germans as it turned out weren’t in the Abbey but in the slopes and caves well below it which was the view at the time of some of the Allied Generals who were reluctant to launch an attack on the Abbey. The inhabitants of the Abbey at the time comprised a handful of monks and terrified locals who thought it would protect them if the town was attacked. Few of them survived the bombing of the historic, hallowed building.
It was left to General Sir Harold Alexander Commander of the Allied Armies in Italy to take a decision whether or not to bomb the Abbey. He decided to go ahead and American bomber planes began the deadly mission on February 15 – an event later described by a Vatican Cardinal as ‘a colossal blunder, a piece of gross stupidity’. They used what was known as blockbuster bombs – some 1,400 tons worth - as ordinary bombs would have had little effect on the colossal building which had been founded in AD529 by St Benedict.
A number of the bombs missed their target and killed in turn Allied and German troops. A series of battles known as the Montecassino campaign followed before Rome was finally taken on June 5, 1944. The entire campaign resulted in 105,000 Allied casualties. And amongst them were William Delaney (29), Robert Habington (20), Brendan Doherty (20), Robert Apling (27), Albert Lyttle (23), Eric Heaton (22) and Roy Gilliland (22).
Recent history has shown that the Germans had agreed with the monks who lived in the Abbey that they wouldn’t use it for military purposes while they remained in it. They even allowed its treasures to be moved to the Vatican for safe keeping just in case anything went wrong. And tourists can see those treasures back where they belong in the Abbey which was rebuilt as an exact copy of the original after the war in a joint effort by the British and the Italians.
Irish men north and south acquitted themselves honourably in WW2 and we are left to ponder where and how the seven Ulstermen lost their lives in those manic days before and after the fall of the Abbey which it seems no one but the Americans wanted to bomb into oblivion. But that is often what happens in war and it’s the brave like the seven mentioned who pay with their lives. This weekend is one opportunity to remember their sacrifice.