The Gustav Line was the strongest German defensive position in Italy. Running coast to coast, it exploited every ridge, river and ravine — and nowhere more so than at Monte Cassino, where the mountains had been turned into a near-impregnable fortress.

The abbey itself — founded by Saint Benedict in 529 AD and one of the oldest monasteries in the Western world — stood over the only viable route north to Rome. Whether German troops occupied it became one of the war's bitterest controversies. On 15 February 1944 Allied bombers reduced it to rubble, which German forces then used to build even stronger positions.

It was the Polish II Corps — soldiers who had come by way of Soviet camps, Persia, the Middle East and North Africa — who raised their flag over the ruins on 18 May 1944, after four days of fighting on Monastery Hill that cost them thousands of casualties.

The fall of Monte Cassino broke the Gustav Line and opened the road to Rome, which Allied forces entered on 4 June 1944 — two days before D-Day. Today the rebuilt abbey stands again in white stone above the valley, and the war cemeteries below it bear quiet witness to those who fell in its shadow.