title: You'll Never Walk Alone

text: "You'll Never Walk Alone" is a show tune from the 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical "Carousel". In the second act of the musical, Nettie Fowler, the cousin of the protagonist Julie Jordan, sings "You'll Never Walk Alone" to comfort and encourage Julie when her husband, Billy Bigelow, the male lead, stabs himself with a knife whilst trying to run away after attempting a robbery with his mate Jigger and dies in her arms. The song is reprised in the final scene to encourage a graduation class of which Louise (Billy and Julie's daughter) is a member. The now invisible Billy, who has been granted the chance to return to Earth for one day in order to redeem himself, watches the ceremony and is able to silently motivate Louise and Julie to join in with the song.


title: You'll Never Walk Alone

text: The song is also sung at association football clubs around the world, where it is performed by a massed chorus of supporters on match day; this tradition developed at Liverpool F.C. after the chart success of the 1963 single of the song by the local Liverpool group Gerry and the Pacemakers. In some areas of the UK and Europe, "You'll Never Walk Alone" became the anthem of support for medical staff, first responders, and those in quarantine during the COVID-19 pandemic. The composition is sometimes treated by performers as a religious song, such as with the 1967 version by Elvis Presley, which was featured on several of his gospel albums.


title: You'll Never Walk Alone

text: Christine Johnson, who created the role of Nettie Fowler, introduced the song in the original Broadway production. Later in the show Jan Clayton, as Julie Jordan, reprised it, with the chorus joining in.


title: You'll Never Walk Alone

text: In the film, it is first sung by Claramae Turner as Nettie. The weeping Julie Jordan (Shirley Jones) tries to sing it but cannot; it is later reprised by Julie and those attending the graduation.


title: You'll Never Walk Alone

text: In the UK, the song's most successful cover was released in 1963 by the Liverpudlian Merseybeat group Gerry and the Pacemakers, peaking at number one on the UK Singles Chart for four consecutive weeks. The band's version also reached the top of the charts in Australia, Ireland and New Zealand.


title: You'll Never Walk Alone

text: After becoming a chart hit by a local band, the song gained popularity on the Anfield terraces, and the song quickly became the football anthem of Liverpool F.C., which adopted "You'll Never Walk Alone" as its official motto on its coat of arms. The song is sung by its supporters moments before the start of each home game at Anfield with the Gerry and the Pacemakers version being played over the public address system. In 2013, the 50th anniversary of the song being sung on the Kop, Simon Hart of "The Independent" writes,


title: You'll Never Walk Alone

text: According to former player Tommy Smith, lead vocalist Gerry Marsden presented Liverpool manager Bill Shankly with a recording of his forthcoming cover single during a pre-season coach trip in the summer of 1963. "Shanks was in awe of what he heard. ... Football writers from the local newspapers were travelling with our party and, thirsty for a story of any kind between games, filed copy back to their editors to the effect that we had adopted Gerry Marsden's forthcoming single as the club song." The squad was subsequently invited to perform the track with the band on "The Ed Sullivan Show" with Marsden stating, "Bill came up to me. He said, 'Gerry my son, I have given you a football team and you have given us a song'."


title: You'll Never Walk Alone

text: Shankly picked the song as his eighth and final selection for the BBC's "Desert Island Discs" on the eve of the 1965 FA Cup Final. As Liverpool fans sang "You'll Never Walk Alone" at Wembley during the 1965 FA Cup Final win over Leeds, commentator Kenneth Wolstenholme referred to it as "Liverpool's signature tune". Marsden told BBC Radio how, in the 1960s, the disc jockey at Anfield would play the top 10 commercial records in descending order, with the number one single played last, shortly before kickoff. Liverpool fans on the Kop would sing along, but unlike with other hit singles, once "You'll Never Walk Alone" dropped out of the top 10, instead of disregarding the song, supporters continued to sing it. In retirement, as his granddaughter Karen Gill recollects, Shankly would get out the gramophone and "put the record on and play it, so we would hear it in the house."


title: You'll Never Walk Alone

text: In his commentary on the memorial service following the Hillsborough disaster in 1989, Peter Jones recited the lyrics, which were then sung by a cathedral choir. Aretha Franklin's recording of the song was played by BBC Radio 1 DJ and Liverpool fan John Peel in his first show following the disaster, when he became too upset to carry on broadcasting for a period. In 2019, during a Take That concert at Anfield, lead singer and Liverpool fan Gary Barlow brought out a guest vocalist, Gerry Marsden – who had come out of retirement for the performance – and they sang the club's anthem "You'll Never Walk Alone".


title: You'll Never Walk Alone

text: In 1995, the Gerry and the Pacemakers version peaked at number 34 on the Dutch Single Top 100 on the week ending March 18 and number 24 on the Dutch Top 40 on the week ending April 1. It re-entered the Irish Singles Chart in 2012, peaking at number four on the week ending 20 September.


title: You'll Never Walk Alone

text: In 1958, members of an operatic society performed the song as a tribute to the Busby Babes in the first home match of Manchester United at Old Trafford after the Munich air disaster, and fans in the stadium joined in the singing.


title: You'll Never Walk Alone

text: The song was adopted by Scottish team Celtic after a 1966 Cup Winners' Cup semi-final against Liverpool at Anfield, and is now sung by Celtic fans prior to every home European tie, and later by Germany's Borussia Dortmund, which Liverpool went on to play in the cup final. When Celtic and Liverpool played in the quarterfinals of the 2002-03 UEFA Cup, Gerry Marsden performed the song at Celtic Park before both teams took the field and both sets of fans sang along.


title: You'll Never Walk Alone

text: The song has also been adopted by Dutch team FC Twente after it was officially given to them by the Anfield stadium speaker George Sephton during the last game in the Diekman stadium, before moving to the new Arke Stadion. Today, Twente fans sing the song before every home game. Elsewhere in the Netherlands, Feyenoord and SC Cambuur have adopted the song as well, with Feyenoord using the Lee Towers version.


title: You'll Never Walk Alone

text: Additional football teams which now use the song include 1. FSV Mainz 05, TSV 1860 Munich, Austria's FC Admira Wacker, Belgium's Club Brugge KV and KV Mechelen, Japan's FC Tokyo, Spain's CD Lugo, and Greece's ARIS. In ice hockey, the song has been adopted by German Deutsche Eishockey Liga side Krefeld Pinguine and Croatian Medveščak Zagreb.


title: You'll Never Walk Alone

text: A special recording of the song was made in solidarity with Bradford City following the Valley Parade fire in 1985, when 56 spectators died and many more were seriously injured. The song was performed by The Crowd, which was a supergroup featuring Gerry Marsden, Paul McCartney and others, and spent two weeks at number one in the UK.


title: You'll Never Walk Alone

text: Some years later, after witnessing a rendition of "You'll Never Walk Alone" at Anfield in 2007, the President of the Spanish Olympic Committee, Alejandro Blanco, said he felt inspired to seek lyrics to his country's wordless national anthem, the Marcha Real, ahead of Madrid's bid to host the 2016 Olympic Games.


title: You'll Never Walk Alone

text: During the 2014 Hong Kong protests, legislator Tam Yiu Chung quoted the song during a Legislative Council of Hong Kong meeting, to salute the Hong Kong Police, who had received widespread criticism for using excessive force against pro-democracy protesters. More than 2,000 Liverpool Football Club fans in Hong Kong condemned his inappropriate use of the song, comparing his support of the police action to the police actions in the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, where South Yorkshire Police were found to have distorted facts relating to the unlawful killing by negligence of 96 Liverpool supporters.


title: You'll Never Walk Alone

text: On 13 March 2016, after Borussia Dortmund's 2–0 win against 1. FSV Mainz 05 in the German Bundesliga, supporters of both teams performed the song to commemorate a Dortmund fan who died from a cardiac arrest in the stands during the game.


title: You'll Never Walk Alone

text: Marcus Mumford, lead singer of the British folk rock band Mumford & Sons, released a cover version of "You'll Never Walk Alone" as a single on 20 March 2020 through Glassnote Records. Mumford's version was originally recorded for the Apple TV+ sports comedy-drama "Ted Lasso"; it appears in the first-season finale, "The Hope That Kills You."


title: You'll Never Walk Alone

text: All proceeds from the song will be donated to the Grenfell Foundation and War Child UK. On his Instagram account, Mumford explained the idea behind releasing the song and revealing the charities that would benefit from sales of the song, "It felt like we could get something out in the world that would benefit both of those organisations." The song was in the works prior to the announcement of the global coronavirus pandemic and was originally slated to air on a TV show in production, but "for lots of reasons we wanted it just to be out in the world sooner rather than later, so here it is", the singer shared on his YouTube account.


title: You'll Never Walk Alone

text: On 1 April 2020, Mumford performed the song from his home on American late-night talk show "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon". The video was shot by his wife, Carey Mulligan. He stated why he released the song earlier than planned, "This is a cover of 'You'll Never Walk Alone', which I had recorded in January for Jason Sudeikis, who I know well. I recorded it because I did the music for his TV show and we spoke and felt like it was appropriate to try and get it out sooner. We put it for two charities that are really close to my heart, War Child UK and the Grenfell Foundation, and also just to accompany people who might like it through a pretty weird time."


title: You'll Never Walk Alone

text: In April 2020, to mark 99-year old Captain Tom Moore completing the first phase of his fundraising walk during the COVID-19 pandemic, English actor, singer and broadcaster, Michael Ball sang "You'll Never Walk Alone" for him live on "BBC Breakfast". Ball said: "It's an extraordinary achievement. I've been trying to think of a song which encapsulates your achievement and what you have done for us." Within 24 hours, the performance was recorded, and made into a digital single featuring the NHS Voices of Care Choir, and Moore's spoken words. It was released by Decca Records on 17 April, with all proceeds going to NHS Charities Together. The duo appeared on Zoe Ball's Radio 2 show, where they both performed the song.


title: You'll Never Walk Alone

text: On 19 April 2020, the song went straight to number one in the United Kingdom's "The Official Big Top 40" chart, selling almost 36,000 copies in its first 48 hours. On 21 April 2020 the song was the "biggest trending song" as measured by the Official Charts Company. On 24 April 2020, the song entered the UK Singles Chart at number one, with combined chart sales of 82,000 making it the fastest-selling single of 2020 so far and making Moore – six days short of his one hundredth birthday – the oldest person to achieve that position and meaning that he was at number one on his 100th birthday, beating the previous record-holder Tom Jones, who was 68 years old when a Comic Relief rendition of "Islands in the Stream" reached number one in 2009.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: The Battle of Monte Cassino, also known as the Battle for Rome and the Battle for Cassino, was a series of four assaults made by the Allies against German forces in Italy during the Italian Campaign of World War II. The ultimate objective was to break through the Winter Line, and facilitate an advance towards Rome.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: At the beginning of 1944, the western half of the Winter Line was anchored by Germans holding the Rapido-Gari, Liri and Garigliano valleys and several of the surrounding peaks and ridges. Together, these features formed the Gustav Line. Monte Cassino, a historic hilltop abbey founded in 529 by the Benedict of Nursia, dominated the nearby town of Cassino and the entrances to the Liri and Rapido valleys. Lying in a protected historic zone, it had been left unoccupied by the Germans, although they manned some positions set into the slopes below the abbey's walls.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: Repeated artillery attacks on assaulting allied troops caused their leaders to conclude incorrectly that the abbey was being used by the Germans as an observation post, at the very least. Fears escalated, along with casualties, and in spite of evidence, it was marked for destruction. On 15 February 1944, Allied bombers dropped 1,400 tons of high explosives, creating widespread damage. Fallschirmjäger forces then occupied the area and established defensive positions amid the ruins.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: Between 17 January and 18 May, Monte Cassino and the Gustav defences were attacked on four occasions by Allied troops. On 16 May, soldiers from the Polish II Corps launched one of the final assaults on the German defensive position as part of a twenty-division assault along a twenty-mile front. On 18 May, a Polish flag followed by the British flag were raised over the ruins. Following this Allied victory, the German Senger Line collapsed on 25 May, and the German defenders were driven from their positions. The capture of Monte Cassino resulted in 55,000 Allied casualties, with German losses estimated at around 20,000 killed and wounded. The battle has been described as a Pyrrhic victory, or a victory which was not worth the effort.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: The Allied landings in Italy in September 1943 by two Allied armies, following shortly after the Allied landings in Sicily in July, commanded by General Sir Harold Alexander, the Commander-in-Chief (C-in-C) of the 15th Army Group (later retitled the Allied Armies in Italy), were followed by an advance northward on two fronts, one on each side of the central mountain range forming the "spine" of Italy. On the western front, the American Fifth Army, commanded by Lieutenant General Mark W. Clark, which had suffered very heavy casualties during the main landing at Salerno (codenamed Operation Avalanche) in September, moved from the main base of Naples up the Italian "boot" and on the eastern front the British Eighth Army, commanded by General Sir Bernard Montgomery, advanced up the Adriatic coast.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: Clark's Fifth Army made slow progress in the face of difficult terrain, wet weather and skillful German defences. The Germans were fighting from a series of prepared positions in a manner designed to inflict maximum damage, then pulling back while buying time for the construction of the Winter Line defensive positions south of the Italian capital of Rome. The original estimates that Rome would fall by October 1943 proved far too optimistic.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: Although in the east the German defensive line had been breached on the Adriatic front and Ortona was captured by the 1st Canadian Division, the advance had ground to a halt with the onset of winter blizzards at the end of December, making close air support and movement in the jagged terrain impossible. The route to Rome from the east using Route 5 was thus excluded as a viable option leaving the routes from Naples to Rome, highways 6 and 7, as the only possibilities; Highway 7 (the old Roman Appian Way) followed along the west coast but south of Rome ran into the Pontine Marshes, which the Germans had flooded.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: Highway 6 ran through the Liri valley, dominated at its south entrance by the rugged mass of Monte Cassino above the town of Cassino. Excellent observation from the peaks of several hills allowed the German defenders to detect Allied movement and direct highly accurate artillery fire, preventing any northward advance. Running across the Allied line was the fast flowing Rapido River, which rose in the central Apennine Mountains, flowed through Cassino (joining to the Gari River, which was erroneously identified as the Rapido) and across the entrance to the Liri valley. There the Liri river joined the Gari to form the Garigliano River, which continued on to the sea.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: With its heavily fortified mountain defences, difficult river crossings, and valley head flooded by the Germans, Cassino formed a linchpin of the Gustav Line, the most formidable line of the defensive positions making up the Winter Line.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: In spite of its potential excellence as an observation post, because of the fourteen-century-old Benedictine abbey's historical significance, the German commander in Italy, "Generalfeldmarschall" Albert Kesselring, ordered German units not to include it in their defensive positions and informed the Vatican and the Allies accordingly in December 1943.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: Nevertheless, some Allied reconnaissance aircraft maintained they observed German troops inside the monastery. While this remains unconfirmed, it is clear that once the monastery was destroyed it was occupied by the Germans and proved better cover for their emplacements and troops than an intact structure would have offered.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: The plan of the Fifth Army commander, Lieutenant General Clark, was for the British X Corps, under Lieutenant General Richard McCreery, on the left of a thirty-kilometer (20 mi) front, to attack on 17 January 1944, across the Garigliano near the coast (5th and 56th Infantry Divisions). The British 46th Infantry Division was to attack on the night of 19 January across the Garigliano below its junction with the Liri in support of the main attack by U.S. II Corps, under Major General Geoffrey Keyes, on their right. The main central thrust by the U.S. II Corps would commence on 20 January with the U.S. 36th Infantry Division making an assault across the swollen Gari river five miles (8 km) downstream of Cassino. Simultaneously the French Expeditionary Corps (CEF), under General Alphonse Juin would continue its "right hook" move towards Monte Cairo, the hinge to the Gustav and Hitler defensive lines. In truth, Clark did not believe there was much chance of an early breakthrough, but he felt that the attacks would draw German reserves away from the Rome area in time for the attack on Anzio (codenamed Operation Shingle) where the U.S. VI Corps (British 1st and U.S. 3rd Infantry Divisions, the 504th Parachute Regimental Combat Team, U.S. Army Rangers and British Commandos, Combat Command 'B' of the U.S. 1st Armored Division, along with supporting units), under Major General John P. Lucas, was due to make an amphibious landing on 22 January. It was hoped that the Anzio landing, with the benefit of surprise and a rapid move inland to the Alban Hills, which command both routes 6 and 7, would so threaten the Gustav defenders' rear and supply lines that it might just unsettle the German commanders and cause them to withdraw from the Gustav Line to positions north of Rome. Whilst this would have been consistent with the German tactics of the previous three months, Allied intelligence had not understood that the strategy of fighting retreat had been for the sole purpose of providing time to prepare the Gustav line where the Germans intended to stand firm. The intelligence assessment of Allied prospects was therefore over-optimistic.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: The Fifth Army had only reached the Gustav Line on 15 January, having taken six weeks of heavy fighting to advance the last seven miles (11 km) through the Bernhardt Line positions, during which time they had sustained 16,000 casualties. They hardly had time to prepare the new assault, let alone take the rest and reorganization they really needed after three months of attritional fighting north from Naples. However, because the Allied Combined Chiefs of Staff would only make landing craft available until early February, as they were required for Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Northern France, Operation Shingle had to take place in late January with the coordinated attack on the Gustav Line some three days earlier.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: The first assault was made on 17 January. Near the coast, the British X Corps (56th and 5th Divisions) forced a crossing of the Garigliano (followed some two days later by the British 46th Division on their right) causing General Fridolin von Senger und Etterlin, commander of the German XIV Panzer Corps, and responsible for the Gustav defences on the south western half of the line, some serious concern as to the ability of the German 94th Infantry Division to hold the line. Responding to Senger's concerns, Kesselring ordered the 29th and 90th Panzergrenadier Divisions from the Rome area to provide reinforcement. There is some speculation as to what might have been if X Corps had had the reserves available to exploit their success and make a decisive breakthrough. The corps did not have the extra men, but there would certainly have been time to alter the overall battle plan and cancel or modify the central attack by the U.S. II Corps to make men available to force the issue in the south before the German reinforcements were able to get into position. As it happened, Fifth Army HQ failed to appreciate the frailty of the German position and the plan was unchanged. The two divisions from Rome arrived by 21 January and stabilized the German position in the south. In one respect, however, the plan was working in that Kesselring's reserves had been drawn south. The three divisions of Lieutenant General McCreery's X Corps sustained some 4,000 casualties during the period of the first battle.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: The central thrust by the U.S. 36th Division, under Major General Fred L. Walker, commenced three hours after sunset on 20 January. The lack of time to prepare meant that the approach to the river was still hazardous due to uncleared mines and booby traps and the highly technical business of an opposed river crossing lacked the necessary planning and rehearsal. Although a battalion of the 143rd Infantry Regiment was able to get across the Gari on the south side of San Angelo and two companies of the 141st Infantry Regiment on the north side, they were isolated for most of the time and at no time was Allied armour able to get across the river, leaving them highly vulnerable to counter-attacking tanks and self-propelled guns of "Generalleutnant" Eberhard Rodt's 15th Panzergrenadier Division. The southern group was forced back across the river by mid-morning of 21 January. Keyes pressed Walker to renew the attack immediately. Once again, the two regiments attacked but with no more success against the well dug-in 15th Panzergrenadier Division: the 143rd Infantry Regiment got the equivalent of two battalions across, but, once again, there was no armoured support, and they were devastated when daylight came the next day. The 141st Infantry Regiment also crossed in two battalion strength and, despite the lack of armoured support, managed to advance . However, with the coming of daylight, they too were cut down and by the evening of 22 January, the 141st Infantry Regiment had virtually ceased to exist; only 40 men made it back to the Allied lines.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: The assault had been a costly failure, with the 36th Division losing 2,100 men killed, wounded and missing in 48 hours. As a result, the army's conduct of this battle became the subject of a Congressional inquiry after the war.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: The next attack was launched on 24 January. The U.S. II Corps, with 34th Infantry Division under Major General Charles W. Ryder spearheading the attack and French colonial troops on its right flank, launched an assault across the flooded Rapido valley north of Cassino and into the mountains behind with the intention of then wheeling to the left and attacking Monte Cassino from high ground. Whilst the task of crossing the river would be easier in that the Rapido upstream of Cassino was fordable, the flooding made movement on the approaches each side very difficult. In particular, armour could only move on paths laid with steel matting and it took eight days of bloody fighting across the waterlogged ground for 34th Division to push back General Franek's German 44th Infantry Division to establish a foothold in the mountains.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: On the right, the Moroccan-French troops made strategical initial progress against the German 5th Mountain Division, commanded by General Julius Ringel, gaining positions on the slopes of their key objective, Monte Cifalco. Forward units of the 3rd Algerian Infantry Division had also by-passed Monte Cifalco to capture Monte Belvedere and Colle Abate. General Juin was convinced that Cassino could be bypassed and the German defences unhinged by this northerly route but his request for reserves to maintain the momentum of his advance was refused and the one available reserve regiment (from 36th Division) was sent to reinforce 34th Division. By 31 January the French had ground to a halt with Monte Cifalco, which had a clear view of the French and U.S. flanks and supply lines, still in German hands. The two Moroccan-French divisions sustained 2,500 casualties in their struggles around Colle Belvedere.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: It became the task of the U.S. 34th Division (joined temporarily by the 142nd Infantry Regiment of the 36th Division, which had been held in reserve and unused during the Rapido crossing) to fight southward along the linked hilltops towards the intersecting ridge on the south end of which was Monastery Hill. They could then break through down into the Liri valley behind the Gustav Line defences. It was very tough going: the mountains were rocky, strewn with boulders and cut by ravines and gullies. Digging foxholes on the rocky ground was out of the question and each feature was exposed to fire from surrounding high points. The ravines were no better since the gorse growing there, far from giving cover, had been sown with mines, booby-traps and hidden barbed wire by the defenders. The Germans had had three months to prepare their defensive positions using dynamite and to stockpile ammunition and stores. There was no natural shelter, and the weather was wet and freezing cold.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: By early February, American infantry had captured a strategic point near the hamlet of San Onofrio, less than from the abbey and by 7 February a battalion had reached Point 445, a round-topped hill immediately below the monastery and no more than away. An American squad managed a reconnaissance right up against the cliff-like abbey walls, with the monks observing German and American patrols exchanging fire. However, attempts to take Monte Cassino were broken by overwhelming machine gun fire from the slopes below the monastery. Despite their fierce fighting, the 34th Division never managed to take the final redoubts on Hill 593 (known to the Germans as Calvary Mount), held by the 3rd Battalion of the 2nd Parachute Regiment, part of the 1st Parachute Division, the dominating point of the ridge to the monastery.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: On 11 February, after a final unsuccessful 3-day assault on Monastery Hill and Cassino town, the Americans were withdrawn. U.S. II Corps, after two and a half weeks of battle, was worn out. The performance of the 34th Division in the mountains is considered to rank as one of the finest feats of arms carried out by any soldiers during the war. In return they sustained losses of about 80 per cent in the Infantry battalions, some 2,200 casualties.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: At the height of the battle in the first days of February von Senger und Etterlin had moved the 90th Division from the Garigliano front to the north of Cassino and had been so alarmed at the rate of attrition, he had "mustered all the weight of my authority to request that the Battle of Cassino should be broken off and that we should occupy a quite new line. ... a position, in fact, north of the Anzio bridgehead". Kesselring refused the request. At the crucial moment von Senger was able to throw in the 71st Infantry Division whilst leaving the 15th Panzergrenadier Division (whom they had been due to relieve) in place.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: During the battle, there had been occasions when with more astute use of reserves, promising positions might have been turned into decisive moves. Some historians suggest this failure to capitalize on initial success could be put down to Clark's lack of experience. However, it is more likely that he just had too much to do, being responsible for both the Cassino and Anzio offensives. This view is supported by the inability of Major General Lucian Truscott, commanding the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division, as related below, to get hold of him for discussions at a vital juncture of the Anzio breakout at the time of the fourth Cassino battle. Whilst General Alexander, C-in-C of the AAI, chose (for perfectly logical co-ordination arguments) to have Cassino and Anzio under a single army commander and splitting the Gustav Line front between the U.S. Fifth Army and the British Eighth Army, now commanded by Lieutenant General Sir Oliver Leese, Kesselring chose to create a separate 14th Army under General Eberhard von Mackensen to fight at Anzio whilst leaving the Gustav Line in the sole hands of General Heinrich von Vietinghoff's 10th Army.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: The withdrawn American units were replaced by the New Zealand Corps (2nd New Zealand and 4th Indian Divisions), commanded by Lieutenant General Sir Bernard Freyberg, from the Eighth Army on the Adriatic front.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: With U.S. VI Corps under heavy threat at Anzio, Freyberg was under equal pressure to launch a relieving action at Cassino. Once again, therefore, the battle commenced without the attackers being fully prepared. As well, Corps HQ did not fully appreciate the difficulty in getting the 4th Indian Infantry Division into place in the mountains and supplying them on the ridges and valleys north of Cassino. This was evidenced in the writing of Maj. Gen. Howard Kippenberger, commander of New Zealand 2nd Division, after the war:


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: Freyberg's plan was a continuation of the first battle: an attack from the north along the mountain ridges and an attack from the southeast along the railway line and to capture the railway station across the Rapido less than south of Cassino town. Success would pinch out Cassino town and open up the Liri valley. Freyberg had informed his superiors that he believed, given the circumstances, there was no better than a 50 percent chance of success for the offensive.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: Increasingly, the opinions of certain Allied officers were fixed on the great abbey of Monte Cassino: in their view it was the abbey – and its presumed use as a German artillery observation point – that prevented the breach of the 'Gustav Line'.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: The British press and C. L. Sulzberger of "The New York Times" frequently and convincingly and in (often manufactured) detail wrote of German observation posts and artillery positions inside the abbey. The commander in chief of the Mediterranean Allied Air Forces Lieutenant General Ira C. Eaker accompanied by Lieutenant General Jacob L. Devers (deputy to General Sir Henry Maitland Wilson, the Supreme Allied Commander of the Mediterranean Theater) personally observed during a fly-over "a radio mast ... German uniforms hanging on a clothesline in the abbey courtyard; [and] machine gun emplacements from the abbey walls." Countering this, U.S. II Corps commander Geoffrey Keyes also flew over the monastery several times, reporting to Fifth Army G-2 he had seen no evidence that the Germans were in the abbey. When informed of others' claims of having seen enemy troops there, he stated: "They've been looking so long they're seeing things."


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: Kippenberger of the New Zealand Corps HQ held it was their view the monastery was probably being used as the Germans' main vantage point for artillery spotting since it was so perfectly situated for it no army could refrain. There is no clear evidence it was, but he went on to write that from a military point of view it was immaterial:


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: Major General Francis Tuker, whose 4th Indian Division would have the task of attacking Monastery Hill, had made his own appraisal of the situation. In the absence of detailed intelligence at Fifth Army HQ, he had found a book dated 1879 in a Naples bookshop giving details of the construction of the abbey. In his memorandum to Freyberg, he concluded that regardless of whether the monastery was currently occupied by the Germans, it should be demolished to prevent its effective occupation. He also pointed out that with high walls made of masonry at least thick, there were no practical means for field engineers to deal with the place and that bombing with "blockbuster" bombs would be the only solution since 1,000 pound bombs would be "next to useless". Tuker said he could not be induced to attack unless "the garrison was reduced to helpless lunacy by sheer unending pounding for days and nights by air and artillery".


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: On 11 February 1944, the acting commander of the 4th Indian Division, Brigadier Dimoline, requested a bombing raid. Tuker reiterated again his case from a hospital bed in Caserta, where he was suffering a severe attack of a recurrent tropical fever. Freyberg transmitted his request on 12 February. The request, however, was greatly expanded by air force planners and probably supported by Eaker and Devers, who sought to use the opportunity to showcase the abilities of U.S. Army air power to support ground operations. Clark and his chief of staff Major General Alfred Gruenther remained unconvinced of the "military necessity". When handing over the U.S. II Corps position to the New Zealand Corps, Brigadier General J.A. Butler, deputy commander of U.S. 34th Division, had said "I don't know, but I don't believe the enemy is in the convent. All the fire has been from the slopes of the hill below the wall". Finally Clark, "who did not want the monastery bombed", pinned down the Commander-in-Chief Allied Armies in Italy, Alexander, to take the responsibility: "I said, 'You give me a direct order and we'll do it,' and he did."


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: The bombing mission in the morning of 15 February 1944 involved 142 Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bombers followed by 47 North American B-25 Mitchell and 40 Martin B-26 Marauder medium bombers. In all they dropped 1,150 tons of high explosives and incendiary bombs on the abbey, reducing the entire top of Monte Cassino to a smoking mass of rubble. Between bomb runs, the II Corps artillery pounded the mountain. Many Allied soldiers and war correspondents cheered as they observed the spectacle. Eaker and Devers watched; Juin was heard to remark "no, they'll never get anywhere this way." Clark and Gruenther refused to be on the scene and stayed at their headquarters. That same afternoon and the next day an aggressive follow-up of artillery and a raid by 59 fighter bombers wreaked further destruction. The German positions on Point 593 above and behind the monastery were untouched.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: Damningly, the air raid had not been coordinated with ground commands and an immediate infantry follow-up failed to materialize. Its timing had been driven by the Air Force regarding it as a separate operation, considering the weather and requirements on other fronts and theaters without reference to ground forces. Many of the troops had only taken over their positions from II Corps two days previously and besides the difficulties in the mountains, preparations in the valley had also been held up by difficulties in supplying the newly installed troops with sufficient material for a full-scale assault because of incessantly foul weather, flooding and waterlogged ground. As a result, Indian troops on the Snake's Head were taken by surprise, while the New Zealand Corps was two days away from being ready to launch their main assault.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: Pope Pius XII was silent after the bombing; however, his Cardinal Secretary of State, Luigi Maglione, bluntly stated to the senior U.S. diplomat to the Vatican, Harold Tittmann, that the bombing was "a colossal blunder … a piece of a gross stupidity".


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: It is certain from every investigation that followed since the event that the only people killed in the monastery by the bombing were 230 Italian civilians seeking refuge in the abbey. There is no evidence that the bombs dropped on the Monte Cassino monastery that day killed any German troops. However, given the imprecision of bombing in those days (it was estimated that only 10 per cent of the bombs from the heavy bombers, bombing from high altitude, hit the monastery) bombs did fall elsewhere and killed German and Allied troops alike, although that would have been unintended. Indeed, sixteen bombs hit the Fifth Army compound at Presenzano from Monte Cassino and exploded only yards away from the trailer where Clark was doing paperwork at his desk.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: On the day after the bombing at first light, most of the civilians still alive fled the ruins. Only about 40 people remained: the six monks who survived in the deep vaults of the abbey, their 79-year-old abbot, , three tenant farmer families, orphaned or abandoned children, the badly wounded and the dying. After artillery barrages, renewed bombing and attacks on the ridge by 4th Indian Division, the monks decided to leave their ruined home with the others who could move at 07:30 on 17 February. The old abbot was leading the group down the mule path toward the Liri valley, reciting the rosary. After they arrived at a German first-aid station, some of the badly wounded who had been carried by the monks were taken away in a military ambulance. After meeting with a German officer, the monks were driven to the monastery of Sant'Anselmo all'Aventino. On 18 February, the abbot met the commander of XIV Panzer Corps, Lieutenant-General Fridolin von Senger und Etterlin. One monk, Carlomanno Pellagalli, returned to the abbey; when he was later seen wandering the ruins, the German paratroopers thought he was a ghost. After 3 April, he was not seen again.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: It is now known that the Germans had an agreement not to use the abbey for military purposes. Following its destruction, paratroopers of the German 1st Parachute Division then occupied the ruins of the abbey and turned it into a fortress and observation post, which became a serious problem for the attacking Allied forces.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: On the night following the bombing, a company of the 1st Battalion, Royal Sussex Regiment (one of the British elements in 4th Indian Division) serving in 7th Indian Infantry Brigade attacked the key point 593 from their position away on Snakeshead Ridge. The assault failed, with the company sustaining 50 per cent casualties.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: The following night the Royal Sussex Regiment was ordered to attack in battalion strength. There was a calamitous start. Artillery could not be used in direct support targeting point 593 because of the proximity and risk of shelling friendly troops. It was planned therefore to shell point 575 which had been providing supporting fire to the defenders of point 593. The topography of the land meant that shells fired at 575 had to pass very low over Snakeshead Ridge and in the event some fell among the gathering assault companies. After reorganising, the attack went in at midnight. The fighting was brutal and often hand to hand, but the determined defence held and the Royal Sussex battalion was beaten off, once again sustaining over 50 per cent casualties. Over the two nights, the Royal Sussex Regiment lost 12 out of 15 officers and 162 out of 313 men who took part in the attack.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: On the night of 17 February, the main assault took place. The 4/6th Rajputana Rifles would take on the assault of point 593 along Snakeshead Ridge with the depleted Royal Sussex Regiment held in reserve. 1/9th Gurkha Rifles was to attack Point 444. In the meantime, the 1/2nd Gurkha Rifles were to sweep across the slopes and ravines in a direct assault on the monastery. This latter was across appalling terrain, but it was hoped that the Gurkhas, so expert in mountain terrain, would succeed. This proved a faint hope. Once again, the fighting was brutal, but no progress was made and casualties heavy. The Rajputanas lost 196 officers and men, the 1/9th Gurkhas 149 and the 1/2nd Gurkhas 96. It became clear that the attack had failed and on 18 February Dimoline and Freyberg called off the attacks on Monastery Hill.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: In the other half of the main assault, the two companies from 28th (Māori) Battalion from the New Zealand Division forced a crossing of the Rapido and attempted to gain the railway station in Cassino town. The intention was to take a perimeter that would allow engineers to build a causeway for armoured support. With the aid of a near constant smoke screen laid down by Allied artillery that obscured their location to the German batteries on Monastery Hill, the Māori were able to hold their positions for much of the day. Their isolation and lack of both armoured support and anti-tank guns made for a hopeless situation, however, when an armoured counterattack by two tanks came in the afternoon on 18 February. They were ordered to pull back to the river when it became clear to headquarters that both the attempts to break through (in the mountains and along the causeway) would not succeed. It had been very close. The Germans had been very alarmed by the capture of the station and from a conversation on record between Kesselring and von Vietinghoff, had not expected their counterattack to succeed.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: For the third battle, it was decided that whilst the winter weather persisted, fording the Garigliano river downstream of Cassino town was an unattractive option (after the unhappy experiences in the first two battles). The "right hook" in the mountains had also been a costly failure and it was decided to launch twin attacks from the north along the Rapido valley: one towards the fortified Cassino town and the other towards Monastery Hill. The idea was to clear the path through the bottleneck between these two features to allow access towards the station on the south and so to the Liri valley. British 78th Infantry Division, which had arrived in late February and placed under the command of New Zealand Corps, would then cross the Rapido downstream of Cassino and start the push to Rome.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: None of the Allied commanders were very happy with the plan, but it was hoped that an unprecedented preliminary bombing by heavy bombers would prove the trump. Three clear days of good weather were required and for twenty one successive days the assault was postponed as the troops waited in the freezing wet positions for a favourable weather forecast. Matters were not helped by the loss of Kippenberger, wounded by an anti-personnel mine and losing both his feet. He was replaced by Brigadier Graham Parkinson; a German counter-attack at Anzio had failed and been called off.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: The third battle began 15 March. After a bombardment of 750 tons of 1,000-pound bombs with delayed action fuses, starting at 08:30 and lasting three and a half hours, the New Zealanders advanced behind a creeping artillery barrage from 746 artillery pieces. Success depended on taking advantage of the paralysing effect of the bombing. The bombing was not concentrated – only 50 per cent landed a mile or less from the target point and 8 per cent within 1,000 yards but between it and the shelling about half the 300 paratroopers in the town had been killed. The defences rallied more quickly than expected and the Allied armour was held up by bomb craters. Nevertheless, success was there for the New Zealanders' taking, but by the time a follow-up assault on the left had been ordered that evening it was too late: defences had reorganised and more critically, the rain, contrary to forecast, had started again. Torrents of rain flooded bomb craters, turned rubble into a morass and blotted out communications, the radio sets being incapable of surviving the constant immersion. The dark rain clouds also blotted out the moonlight, hindering the task of clearing routes through the ruins. On the right, the New Zealanders had captured Castle Hill and point 165 and as planned, elements of the Indian 4th Infantry Division, now commanded by Major General Alexander Galloway, had passed through to attack point 236 and thence to point 435, Hangman's Hill. In the confusion of the fight, a company of the 1/9th Gurkha Rifles had taken a track avoiding point 236 and captured point 435 whilst the assault on point 236 by the 1/6th Rajputana Rifles had been repelled.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: By the end of 17 March, the Gurkhas held Hangman's Hill (point 435), from the monastery, in battalion strength (although their lines of supply were compromised by the German positions at point 236 and in the northern part of the town) and whilst the town was still fiercely defended, New Zealand units and armour had got through the bottleneck and captured the station. However, the Germans were still able to reinforce their troops in the town and were proving adept at slipping snipers back into parts of the town that had supposedly been cleared.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: 19 March was planned for the decisive blow in the town and on the monastery, including a surprise attack by tanks of 20th Armoured Regiment working their way along an old logging road ("Cavendish Road") from Caira to Albaneta Farm (which had been prepared by engineer units under the cover of darkness) and from there towards the abbey. However, a surprise and fiercely pressed counter-attack from the monastery on Castle Hill by the German 1st Parachute Division completely disrupted any possibility of an assault on the monastery from the Castle and Hangman's Hill whilst the tanks, lacking infantry support, were all knocked out by mid-afternoon. In the town the attackers made little progress and overall the initiative was passing to the Germans whose positions close to Castle Hill, which was the gateway to the position on Monastery Hill, crippled any prospects of early success.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: On 20 March Freyberg committed elements of the 78th Infantry Division to the battle; firstly to provide a greater troop presence in the town so that cleared areas would not be reinfiltrated by the Germans and secondly to reinforce Castle Hill to allow troops to be released to close off the two routes between Castle Hill and Points 175 and 165 being used by the Germans to reinforce the defenders in the town. The Allied commanders felt they were on the brink of success as grim fighting continued through 21 March. However, the defenders were resolute and the attack on Point 445 to block the German reinforcement route had narrowly failed whilst in the town Allied gains were measured only house by house.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: On 23 March Alexander met with his commanders. A range of opinions was expressed as to the possibility of victory, but it was evident that the New Zealand and Indian Divisions were exhausted. Freyberg was convinced that the attack could not continue and he called it off. The German 1st Parachute Division had taken a mauling but had held.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: The next three days were spent stabilizing the front, extracting the isolated Gurkhas from Hangman's Hill and the detachment from New Zealand 24th Battalion which had held Point 202 in similar isolation. The Allied line was reorganised with the exhausted 4th Indian Division and 2nd New Zealand Division withdrawn and replaced respectively in the mountains by the British 78th Division and in the town by British 1st Guards Brigade. The New Zealand Corps headquarters was dissolved on 26 March and control was assumed by British XIII Corps. In their time on the Cassino front line the 4th Indian Division had lost 3,000 men and the 2nd New Zealand Division 1,600 men killed, missing and wounded.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: The German defenders too had paid a heavy price. The German XIV Corps War Diary for 23 March noted that the battalions in the front line had strengths varying between 40 and 120 men.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: Alexander's strategy in Italy was to "force the enemy to commit the maximum number of divisions in Italy at the time the cross-channel invasion [of Normandy] is launched". Circumstances allowed him the time to prepare a major offensive to achieve this. His plan, originally inspired from Juin's idea to circle around Cassino and take the Aurunci with his mountain troops to break the Gustav Line, was to shift the bulk of the British Eighth Army, commanded by Lieutenant-General Sir Oliver Leese, from the Adriatic front across the spine of Italy to join Clark's Fifth Army and attack along a front between Cassino and the sea. Fifth Army (U.S. II Corps and French Expeditionary Corps) would be on the left and Eighth Army (British XIII Corps and Polish II Corps) on the right. With the arrival of the spring weather, ground conditions were improved, and it would be possible to deploy large formations and armour effectively.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: The plan for Operation Diadem was that U.S. II Corps on the left would attack up the coast along the line of Route 7 towards Rome. The French Corps to their right would attack from the bridgehead across the Garigliano originally created by British X Corps in the first battle in January into the Aurunci Mountains which formed a barrier between the coastal plain and the Liri Valley. British XIII Corps in the centre right of the front would attack along the Liri valley. On the right Polish II Corps (3rd and 5th Divisions) commanded by Lieutenant General Władysław Anders, had relieved the British 78th Division in the mountains behind Cassino on 24 April and would attempt the task which had defeated 4th Indian Division in February: isolate the monastery and push round behind it into the Liri valley to link with XIII Corps' thrust and pinch out the Cassino position. It was hoped that being a much larger force than their 4th Indian Division predecessors they would be able to saturate the German defences which would, as a result, be unable to give supporting fire to each other's positions. Improved weather, ground conditions and supply would also be important factors. Once again, the pinching manoeuvres by the Polish and British Corps were key to the overall success. Canadian I Corps would be held in reserve ready to exploit the expected breakthrough. Once the German 10th Army had been defeated, U.S. VI Corps would break out of the Anzio beachhead to cut off the retreating Germans in the Alban Hills.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: The large troop movements required for this took two months to execute. They had to be carried out in small units to maintain secrecy and surprise. U.S. 36th Division was sent on amphibious assault training and road signposts and dummy radio signal traffic were created to give the impression that a seaborne landing was being planned for north of Rome. This was planned to keep German reserves held back from the Gustav Line. Movements of troops in forward areas were confined to the hours of darkness and armoured units moving from the Adriatic front left behind dummy tanks and vehicles so the vacated areas appeared unchanged to enemy aerial reconnaissance. The deception was successful. As late as the second day of the final Cassino battle, Kesselring estimated the Allies had six divisions facing his four on the Cassino front. In fact, there were thirteen.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: The first assault (11–12 May) on Cassino opened at 23:00 with a massive artillery bombardment with 1,060 guns on the Eighth Army front and 600 guns on the Fifth Army front, manned by British, Americans, Poles, New Zealanders, South Africans and French. Within an hour and a half the attack was in motion in all four sectors. By daylight the U.S. II Corps had made little progress, but their Fifth Army colleagues, the French Expeditionary Corps, had achieved their objectives and were fanning out in the Aurunci Mountains toward the Eighth Army to their right, rolling up the German positions between the two armies. On the Eighth Army front, British XIII Corps had made two strongly opposed crossings of the Garigliano (by British 4th Infantry Division and 8th Indian Division). Crucially, the engineers of Dudley Russell's 8th Indian Division had by the morning succeeded in bridging the river enabling the armour of 1st Canadian Armoured Brigade to cross and provide the vital element (so missed by the Americans in the first battle and New Zealanders in the second battle) to beat off the inevitable counterattacks from German tanks that would come.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: In the mountains above Cassino, the aptly named Mount Calvary ("Monte Calvario", or Point 593 on Snakeshead Ridge) was taken by the Polish 2nd Corps, under the command of General Władysław Anders, only to be recaptured by German paratroops. For three days Polish attacks and German counterattacks brought heavy losses to both sides. Polish II Corps lost 281 officers and 3,503 other ranks in assaults on "Oberst" Ludwig Heilmann's 4th Parachute Regiment, until the attacks were called off. "Just eight hundred Germans had succeeded in driving off attacks by two divisions", the area around the mountain having turned into a "miniature Verdun". In the early morning hours of 12 May, the Polish infantry divisions were met with "such devastating mortar, artillery and small-arms fire that the leading battalions were all but wiped out".


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: By the afternoon of 12 May, the Gari bridgeheads were increasing despite furious counterattacks whilst the attrition on the coast and in the mountains continued. By 13 May the pressure was starting to tell. The German right wing began to give way to Fifth Army. The French Corps had captured Monte Maio and were now in a position to give material flank assistance to the Eighth Army in the Liri valley against whom Kesselring had thrown every available reserve in order to buy time to switch to his second prepared defensive position, the Hitler Line, some to the rear. On 14 May Moroccan Goumiers, travelling through the mountains parallel to the Liri valley, ground which was undefended because it was not thought possible to traverse such terrain, outflanked the German defence while materially assisting the XIII Corps in the valley. In 1943, the Goumiers were colonial troops formed into four "Groupements des Tabors Marocains" ("Groups of Moroccan Tabors"; GTM), each consisting of three loosely organised Tabors (roughly equivalent to a battalion) specialised in mountain warfare. Juin's French Expeditionary Corps consisted of the "Commandement des Goums Marocains" ("Command of Moroccan Goumiers"; CGM) (with the 1st, 3rd and 4th GTM) of General Augustin Guillaume totalling some 7,800 fighting men, broadly the same infantry strength as a division, and four more conventional divisions: the 2nd Moroccan Infantry Division (2 DIM), the 3rd Algerian Infantry Division (3 DIA), the 4th Moroccan Mountain Division (4 DMM) and the 1st Free French Division (1 DM).


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: On 15 May, the British 78th Division with an attached armoured brigade under command came into the British XIII Corps line from reserve passing through the British 4th Infantry Division's bridgehead to execute the turning move to isolate Cassino from the Liri valley.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: On 17 May, General Anders led the Polish II Corps in launching their second attack on Monte Cassino. Under constant artillery and mortar fire from the strongly fortified German positions and with little natural cover for protection, the fighting was fierce and at times hand-to-hand. With their line of supply threatened by the Allied advance in the Liri valley, the Germans decided to withdraw from the Cassino heights to the new defensive positions on the Hitler Line. In the early hours of 18 May the British 78th Division and Polish II Corps linked up in the Liri valley west of Cassino town. On the Cassino high ground, the survivors of the second Polish offensive were so battered that "it took some time to find men with enough strength to climb the few hundred yards to the summit." A patrol of Polish 12th Podolian Cavalry Regiment finally made it to the heights and raised a Polish flag over the ruins. The only remnants of the defenders were a group of thirty German wounded who had been unable to move.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: Units of the Eighth Army advanced up the Liri valley and Fifth Army up the coast to the Hitler defensive line (renamed the Senger Line at Hitler's insistence to minimise the significance if it was penetrated). An immediate follow-up assault failed, and Eighth Army then decided to take some time to reorganize. Getting 20,000 vehicles and 2,000 tanks through the broken Gustav Line was a major job taking several days. The next assault on the line commenced on 23 May with Polish II Corps attacking Piedimonte San Germano (defended by the redoubtable German 1st Parachute Division) on the right and 1st Canadian Infantry Division (fresh from Eighth Army reserve) in the centre. On 24 May, the Canadians had breached the line and 5th Canadian (Armoured) Division poured through the gap. On 25 May the Poles took Piedimonte and the line collapsed. The way was clear for the advance northwards on Rome and beyond.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: As the Canadians and Poles launched their attack on 23 May, Major General Lucian Truscott, who had replaced Lucas as commander of the U.S. VI Corps in February, launched a two-pronged attack using five (three U.S. and two British) of the seven divisions in the beachhead at Anzio. The German 14th Army, facing this thrust, was without any armoured divisions because Kesselring had sent his armour south to assist the German 10th Army in the Cassino action. A single armoured division, the 26th Panzer, was in transit from north of the Italian capital of Rome where it had been held anticipating the non-existent seaborne landing the Allies had faked and so was unavailable to fight.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: By 25 May, with the German 10th Army in full retreat, Truscott's VI Corps was, as planned, driving eastwards to cut them off. By the next day they would have been astride the line of retreat and 10th Army, with all Kesselring's reserves committed to them, would have been trapped. At this point, astonishingly, Clark ordered Truscott to change his line of attack from a northeasterly one to Valmontone on Route 6 to a northwesterly one directly towards Rome. Reasons for Clark's decision are unclear, and controversy surrounds the issue. Most commentators point to Clark's ambition to be the first to arrive in Rome although some suggest he was concerned to give a necessary respite to his tired troops (notwithstanding the new direction of attack required his troops to make a frontal attack on the Germans' prepared defences on the Caesar C line). Truscott later wrote in his memoirs that Clark "was fearful that the British were laying devious plans to be first into Rome", a sentiment somewhat reinforced in Clark's own writings. However, General Alexander, C-in-C of the AAI, had clearly laid down the Army boundaries before the battle and Rome was allocated to the Fifth Army. Leese's British Eighth Army was constantly reminded that their job was to engage the 10th Army, destroy as much of it as possible and then bypass Rome to continue the pursuit northwards (which in fact they did, harrying the retreating 10th Army for some towards Perugia in 6 weeks).


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: At the time, Truscott was shocked, writing later: He went on to write: An opportunity was indeed missed and seven divisions of 10th Army were able to make their way to the next line of defence, the Trasimene Line where they were able to link up with 14th Army and then make a fighting withdrawal to the formidable Gothic Line north of Florence.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: Battle honours were awarded to some units by British and Commonwealth Armies for their roles at Cassino. Some units which participated in the first part of the campaign were awarded the battle honour 'Cassino I'. In addition, subsidiary battle honours were given to some units which participated in specific engagements during the first part. These were Monastery Hill, Castle Hill and Hangman's Hill.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: The capture of Monte Cassino came at a high price. The Allies suffered around 55,000 casualties in the Monte Cassino campaign. German casualty figures are estimated at around 20,000 killed and wounded. Total Allied casualties spanning the period of the four Cassino battles and the Anzio campaign with the subsequent capture of Rome on 5 June 1944, were over 105,000.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: The town of Cassino was completely razed by the air and artillery bombardments (especially by the air raid of 15 March 1944, when 1,250 tons of bombs were dropped on the town), and 2,026 of its prewar population of 20,000 were killed during the raids and the battle.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: In the course of the battles, the ancient abbey of Monte Cassino, where St. Benedict in AD 516 first established the Rule that ordered monasticism in the west, was entirely destroyed by Allied bombing and artillery barrages in February 1944.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: Some months earlier, in the Italian autumn of 1943, two officers in the Hermann Göring Panzer Division, Captain Maximilian Becker and Lieutenant Colonel Julius Schlegel, proposed the removal of Monte Cassino's treasures to the Vatican and Vatican-owned Castel Sant'Angelo ahead of the approaching front. The officers convinced church authorities and their own senior commanders to use the division's trucks and fuel for the undertaking. They had to find the materials necessary for crates and boxes, find carpenters among their troops, recruit local labourers (to be paid with rations of food plus twenty cigarettes a day) and then manage the "massive job of evacuation centered on the library and archive", a treasure "literally without price". The richness of the abbey's archives, library and gallery included "800 papal documents, 20,500 volumes in the Old Library, 60,000 in the New Library, 500 "incunabula", 200 manuscripts on parchment, 100,000 prints and separate collections". The first trucks, carrying paintings by Italian old masters, were ready to go less than a week from the day Becker and Schlegel independently first came to Monte Cassino. Each vehicle carried monks to Rome as escorts; in more than 100 truckloads the convoys saved the abbey's monastic community. The task was completed in the first days of November 1943. "In three weeks, in the middle of a losing war, in another country, it was quite a feat." After a mass in the basilica, Abbot formally presented signed parchment scrolls in Latin to General Paul Conrath, to "tribuno militum Julio Schlegel" and "Maximiliano Becker medecinae doctori" "for rescuing the monks and treasures of the Abbey of Monte Cassino".


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: The American writer Walter M. Miller Jr., a Catholic, served as part of a bomber crew that participated in the destruction of the ancient Monte Cassino monastery. As Miller stated, this experience deeply influenced him and directly resulted in his writing, a decade later, the book "A Canticle for Leibowitz", which is considered a masterpiece of science fiction. The book depicts a future order of monks living in the aftermath of a devastating nuclear war, and dedicated to the mission of preserving the surviving remnants of man's scientific knowledge until the day the outside world is again ready for it.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: The U.S. government's official position on the German occupation of Monte Cassino changed over a quarter-century. The assertion that the German use of the abbey was "irrefutable" was removed from the record in 1961 by the Office of the Chief of Military History. A congressional inquiry to the same office in the 20th anniversary year of the bombing stated: "It appears that no German troops, except a small military police detachment, were actually inside the abbey" before the bombing. The final change to the U.S. Army's official record was made in 1969 and concluded that "the abbey was actually unoccupied by German troops."


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: The day following the battle, the Goumiers, French Moroccan colonial troops attached to the French Expeditionary Forces, have been accused of rape and murder through the surrounding hills. Some of these units were accused of committing atrocities against the Italian peasant communities in the region. In Italy the victims of these acts were described as "Marocchinate" meaning literally "Moroccaned" (or people who have been subjected to acts committed by Moroccans).


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: Immediately after the cessation of fighting at Monte Cassino, the Polish government in Exile (in London) created the Monte Cassino campaign cross to commemorate the Polish part in the capture of the strategic point. Also during this time, the Polish song writer Feliks Konarski, who had taken part in the fighting there, wrote his anthem ""Czerwone maki na Monte Cassino"" ("The Red Poppies on Monte Cassino"). Later, an imposing Polish cemetery was laid out; this is prominently visible to anybody surveying the area from the restored monastery. The Polish cemetery is the closest of all allied cemeteries in the area; an honor given to the Poles as their units are the ones credited with the liberation of the abbey.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: The Commonwealth War Graves cemetery on the western outskirts of Cassino is a burial place of British, New Zealand, Canadian, Indian, Gurkha, Australian and South African casualties. The French and Italians are on Route 6 in the Liri Valley; the Americans are at the Sicily–Rome American Cemetery and Memorial in Nettuno.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: The German cemetery ("Deutsche Kriegsgräberstätte Cassino") is approximately north of Cassino in the Rapido Valley.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: In the 1950s, a subsidiary of the Pontificia Commissione di Assistenza distributed Lamps of Brotherhood, cast from the bronze doors of the destroyed Abbey, to representatives of nations that had served on both sides of the war to promote reconciliation.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: In 1999, a monument commemorating the Battle of Monte Cassino was unveiled in Warsaw and is located next to the street that is named after Władysław Anders.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: In 2006, a memorial was unveiled in Rome honouring the Allied forces that fought and died to capture the city.


title: Battle of Monte Cassino

text: On 8 July 2021, the Chief of Army Staff, General M.M. Naravane, inaugurated the Indian Army Memorial at Cassino, to commemorate the Indian soldiers killed in action during the Battle of Cassino.


title: Sea turtle

text: Sea turtles (superfamily Chelonioidea), sometimes called marine turtles, are reptiles of the order Testudines and of the suborder Cryptodira. The seven existing species of sea turtles are the flatback, green, hawksbill, leatherback, loggerhead, Kemp's ridley, and olive ridley sea turtles.


title: Sea turtle

text: All six of the sea turtle species present in US waters (all of those listed above except the flatback) are listed as endangered and/or threatened under the Endangered Species Act. The seventh sea turtle species is the flatback, which exists in the waters of Australia, Papua New Guinea and Indonesia. Sea turtles can be separated into the categories of hard-shelled (cheloniid) and leathery-shelled (dermochelyid). There is only one dermochelyid species which is the leatherback sea turtle.


title: Sea turtle

text: For each of the seven types of sea turtles, females and males are the same size; there is no sexual dimorphism.


title: Sea turtle

text: In general, sea turtles have a more fusiform body plan than their terrestrial or freshwater counterparts. This tapering at both ends reduces volume and means that sea turtles cannot retract their head and limbs into their shells for protection, unlike many other turtles and tortoises. However, the streamlined body plan reduces friction and drag in the water and allows sea turtles to swim more easily and swiftly.


title: Sea turtle

text: The leatherback sea turtle is the largest sea turtle, measuring 2–3 m (6–9 ft) in length, 1–1.5 m (3–5 ft) in width, and weighing up to 700 kg (1500 lb). Other sea turtle species are smaller, being mostly 60–120 cm (2–4 ft) long and proportionally narrower.


title: Sea turtle

text: The skulls of sea turtles have cheek regions that are enclosed in bone. Although this condition appears to resemble that found in the earliest known fossil reptiles (anapsids), it is possible it is a more recently evolved trait in sea turtles, placing them outside the anapsids.


title: Sea turtle

text: Sea turtles, along with other turtles and tortoises, are part of the order Testudines. All species except the leatherback sea turtle are in the family Cheloniidae. The superfamily name Chelonioidea and family name Cheloniidae are based on the Ancient Greek word for tortoise: (""). The leatherback sea turtle is the only extant member of the family Dermochelyidae.


title: Sea turtle

text: Fossil evidence of marine turtles goes back to the Late Jurassic (150 million years ago) with genera such as "Plesiochelys", from Europe. In Africa, the first marine turtle is "Angolachelys", from the Turonian of Angola. A lineage of unrelated marine testudines, the pleurodire (side-necked) bothremydids, also survived well into the Cenozoic. Other pleurodires are also thought to have lived at sea, such as "Araripemys" and extinct pelomedusids. Modern sea turtles are not descended from more than one of the groups of sea-going turtles that have existed in the past; they instead constitute a single radiation that became distinct from all other turtles at least 110 million years ago. Their closest extant relatives are in fact the snapping turtles (Chelydridae), musk turtles (Kinosternidae), and hickatee (Dermatemyidae) of the Americas, which alongside the sea turtles constitute the clade Americhelydia.


title: Sea turtle

text: The oldest possible representative of the lineage (Panchelonioidea) leading to modern sea turtles was possibly "Desmatochelys padillai"from the Early Cretaceous. "Desmatochelys" was a protostegid, a lineage that would later give rise to some very large species but went extinct at the end of the Cretaceous. Presently thought to be outside the crown group that contains modern sea turtles (Chelonioidea), the exact relationships of protostegids to modern sea turtles are still debated due to their primitive morphology; they may be the sister group to the Chelonoidea, or an unrelated turtle lineage that convergently evolved similar adaptations. The earliest "true" sea turtle that is known from fossils is "Nichollsemys" from the Early Cretaceous (Albian) of Canada. In 2022, the giant fossil species "Leviathanochelys" was described from Spain. This species inhabited the oceans covering Europe in the Late Cretaceous and rivaled the concurrent giant protostegids such as "Archelon" and "Protostega" as one of the largest turtles to ever exist. Unlike the protostegids, which have an uncertain relationship to modern sea turtles, "Leviathanochelys" is thought to be a true sea turtle of the superfamily Chelonioidea.


title: Sea turtle

text: Sea turtles' limbs and brains have evolved to adapt to their diets. Their limbs originally evolved for locomotion, but more recently evolved to aid them in feeding. They use their limbs to hold, swipe, and forage their food. This helps them eat more efficiently.


title: Sea turtle

text: Below is a cladogram showing the phylogenetic relationships of living and extinct sea turtles in the Chelonioidea based on Evers et al. (2019):


title: Sea turtle

text: Sea turtles can be found in all oceans except for the polar regions. The flatback sea turtle is found solely on the northern coast of Australia. The Kemp's ridley sea turtle is found solely in the Gulf of Mexico and along the East Coast of the United States.


title: Sea turtle

text: Sea turtles are generally found in the waters over continental shelves. During the first three to five years of life, sea turtles spend most of their time in the pelagic zone floating in seaweed mats. Green sea turtles in particular are often found in "Sargassum" mats, in which they find food, shelter and water. Once the sea turtle has reached adulthood it moves closer to the shore. Females will come ashore to lay their eggs on sandy beaches during the nesting season.


title: Sea turtle

text: Sea turtles migrate to reach their spawning beaches, which are limited in numbers. Living in the ocean therefore means they usually migrate over large distances. All sea turtles have large body sizes, which is helpful for moving large distances. Large body sizes also offer good protection against the large predators (notably sharks) found in the ocean.


title: Sea turtle

text: In 2020, diminished human activity resulting from the COVID-19 virus caused an increase in sea turtle nesting. Some areas in Thailand saw an abnormally high number of nests, and Florida experienced a similar phenomenon. Less plastic and light pollution could explain these observations.


title: Sea turtle

text: It takes decades for sea turtles to reach sexual maturity. Mature sea turtles may migrate thousands of miles to reach breeding sites. After mating at sea, adult female sea turtles return to land to lay their eggs. Different species of sea turtles exhibit various levels of philopatry. In the extreme case, females return to the same beach where they hatched. This can take place every two to four years in maturity.


title: Sea turtle

text: The mature nesting female hauls herself onto the beach, nearly always at night, and finds suitable sand in which to create a nest. Using her hind flippers, she digs a circular hole deep. After the hole is dug, the female then starts filling the nest with her clutch of soft-shelled eggs. Depending on the species, a typical clutch may contain 50–350 eggs. After laying, she re-fills the nest with sand, re-sculpting and smoothing the surface, and then camouflaging the nest with vegetation until it is relatively undetectable visually. She may also dig decoy nests. The whole process takes 30 to 60 minutes. She then returns to the ocean, leaving the eggs untended.


title: Sea turtle

text: Females may lay 1–8 clutches in a single season. Female sea turtles alternate between mating in the water and laying their eggs on land. Most sea turtle species nest individually. But ridley sea turtles come ashore en masse, known as an "arribada" (arrival). With the Kemp's ridley sea turtle this occurs during the day.


title: Sea turtle

text: Sea turtles have temperature-dependent sex determination, meaning the developing baby sea turtle's sex depends on the temperature it is exposed to. Warmer temperatures produce female hatchlings, while cooler temperatures produce male hatchlings. The eggs will incubate for 50–60 days. The eggs in one nest hatch together over a short period of time. The baby sea turtles break free of the egg shell, dig through the sand, and crawl into the sea. Most species of sea turtles hatch at night. However, the Kemp's ridley sea turtle commonly hatches during the day. Sea turtle nests that hatch during the day are more vulnerable to predators, and may encounter more human activity on the beach.


title: Sea turtle

text: Larger hatchlings have a higher probability of survival than smaller individuals, which can be explained by the fact that larger offspring are faster and thus less exposed to predation. Predators can only functionally intake so much; larger individuals are not targeted as often. A study conducted on this topic shows that body size is positively correlated with speed, so larger baby sea turtles are exposed to predators for a shorter amount of time. The fact that there is size dependent predation on chelonians has led to the evolutionary development of large body sizes.


title: Sea turtle

text: In 1987, Carr discovered that the young of green and loggerhead sea turtles spent a great deal of their pelagic lives in floating sargassum mats. Within these mats, they found ample shelter and food. In the absence of sargassum, young sea turtles feed in the vicinity of upwelling "fronts". In 2007, Reich determined that green sea turtle hatchlings spend the first three to five years of their lives in pelagic waters. In the open ocean, pre-juveniles of this particular species were found to feed on zooplankton and smaller nekton before they are recruited into inshore seagrass meadows as obligate herbivores.


title: Sea turtle

text: Sea turtles maintain an internal environment that is hypotonic to the ocean. To maintain hypotonicity they must excrete excess salt ions. Like other marine reptiles, sea turtles rely on a specialized gland to rid the body of excess salt, because reptilian kidneys cannot produce urine with a higher ion concentration than sea water. All species of sea turtles have a lachrymal gland in the orbital cavity, capable of producing tears with a higher salt concentration than sea water.


title: Sea turtle

text: Leatherback sea turtles face an increased osmotic challenge compared to other species of sea turtle, since their primary prey are jellyfish and other gelatinous plankton, whose fluids have the same concentration of salts as sea water. The much larger lachrymal gland found in leatherback sea turtles may have evolved to cope with the higher intake of salts from their prey. A constant output of concentrated salty tears may be required to balance the input of salts from regular feeding, even considering leatherback sea turtle tears can have a salt ion concentration almost twice that of other species of sea turtle.


title: Sea turtle

text: Hatchlings depend on drinking sea water immediately upon entering the ocean to replenish water lost during the hatching process. Salt gland functioning begins quickly after hatching, so that the young sea turtles can establish ion and water balance soon after entering the ocean. Survival and physiological performance hinge on immediate and efficient hydration following emergence from the nest.


title: Sea turtle

text: All sea turtles are poikilotherms. However, leatherback sea turtles (family Dermochelyidae) are able to maintain a body temperature warmer than the ambient water by thermoregulation through the trait of gigantothermy.


title: Sea turtle

text: Green sea turtles in the relatively cooler Pacific are known to haul themselves out of the water on remote islands to bask in the sun. This behavior has only been observed in a few locations, including the Galapagos, Hawaii, Europa Island, and parts of Australia.


title: Sea turtle

text: Sea turtles are air-breathing reptiles that have lungs, so they regularly surface to breathe. Sea turtles spend a majority of their time underwater, so they must be able to hold their breath for long periods. Dive duration largely depends on activity. A foraging sea turtle may typically spend 5–40 minutes underwater while a sleeping sea turtle can remain underwater for 4–7 hours. Remarkably, sea turtle respiration remains aerobic for the vast majority of voluntary dive time. When a sea turtle is forcibly submerged (e.g. entangled in a trawl net) its diving endurance is substantially reduced, so it is more susceptible to drowning.


title: Sea turtle

text: When surfacing to breathe, a sea turtle can quickly refill its lungs with a single explosive exhalation and rapid inhalation. Their large lungs permit rapid exchange of oxygen and avoid trapping gases during deep dives.


title: Sea turtle

text: Cold-stunning is a phenomenon that occurs when sea turtles enter cold ocean water (), which causes the turtles to float to the surface and therefore makes it impossible for them to swim.


title: Sea turtle

text: Gruber and Sparks (2015) have observed the first fluorescence in a marine tetrapod (four-limbed vertebrates). Sea turtles are the first biofluorescent reptile found in the wild.


title: Sea turtle

text: According to Gruber and Sparks (2015), fluorescence is observed in an increasing number of marine creatures (cnidarians, ctenophores, annelids, arthropods, and chordates) and is now also considered to be widespread in cartilaginous and ray-finned fishes.


title: Sea turtle

text: The two marine biologists accidentally made the observation in the Solomon Islands on a hawksbill sea turtle, one of the rarest and most endangered sea turtle species in the ocean, during a night dive aimed to film the biofluorescence emitted by small sharks and coral reefs. The role of biofluorescence in marine organisms is often attributed to a strategy for attracting prey or perhaps a way to communicate. It could also serve as a way of defense or camouflage for the sea turtle hiding during night amongst other fluorescent organisms like corals. Fluorescent corals and sea creatures are best observed during night dives with a blue LED light and with a camera equipped with an orange optical filter to capture only the fluorescence light.


title: Sea turtle

text: Below the surface, the sensory cues available for navigation change dramatically. Light availability decreases quickly with depth, and is refracted by the movement of water when present, celestial cues are often obscured, and ocean currents cause continuous drift. Most sea turtle species migrate over significant distances to nesting or foraging grounds, some even crossing entire ocean basins. Passive drifting within major current systems, such as those in the North Atlantic Gyre, can result in ejection well outside of the temperature tolerance range of a given species, causing heat stress, hypothermia, or death. In order to reliably navigate within strong gyre currents in the open ocean, migrating sea turtles possess both a bicoordinate magnetic map and magnetic compass sense, using a form of navigation termed Magnetoreception. Specific migratory routes have been shown to vary between individuals, making the possession of both a magnetic map and compass sense advantageous for sea turtles.


title: Sea turtle

text: A bicoordinate magnetic map gives sea turtles the ability to determine their position relative to a goal with both latitudinal and longitudinal information, and requires the detection and interpretation of more than one magnetic parameter going in opposite directions to generate, such as Magnetic field intensity and Inclination angle. A magnetic compass sense allows sea turtles to determine and maintain a specific magnetic heading or orientation. These magnetic senses are thought to be inherited, as hatchling sea turtles swim in directions that would keep them on course when exposed to the magnetic field signatures of various locations along their species' migratory routes.


title: Sea turtle

text: Natal homing behavior is well described in sea turtles, and genetic testing of turtle populations at different nesting sites has shown that magnetic field is a more reliable indicator of genetic similarity than physical distance between sites. Additionally, nesting sites have been recorded to "drift" along with isoline shifts in the magnetic field. Magnetoreception is thought to be the primary navigation tool used by nesting sea turtles in returning to natal beaches. There are three major theories explaining natal site learning: inherited magnetic information, socially facilitated migration, and geomagnetic imprinting. Some support has been found for geomagnetic imprinting, including successful experiments transplanting populations of sea turtles by relocating them prior to hatching, but the exact mechanism is still not known.


title: Sea turtle

text: The loggerhead, Kemp's ridley, olive ridley, and hawksbill sea turtles are omnivorous their entire life. Omnivorous turtles may eat a wide variety of plant and animal life including decapods, seagrasses, seaweed, sponges, mollusks, cnidarians, Echinoderms, worms and fish. However, some species specialize on certain prey.


title: Sea turtle

text: The diet of green sea turtles changes with age. Juveniles are omnivorous, but as they mature they become exclusively herbivorous. This diet shift has an effect on the green sea turtle's morphology. Green sea turtles have a serrated jaw that is used to eat sea grass and algae.


title: Sea turtle

text: Hawksbill sea turtles principally eat sponges, which constitute 70–95% of their diets in the Caribbean.


title: Sea turtle

text: There was little information regarding the sea turtle's larynx. Sea turtles, like other turtle species, lack an epiglottis to cover the larynx entrance. Key findings from an experiment reveal the following in regards to the larynx morphology: a close apposition between the linguolaryngeal cleft's smooth mucosal walls and the laryngeal folds, a dorsal part of the glottis, the glottal mucosa attached to the arytenoid cartilage, and the way the hyoid sling is arranged and the relationship between the compressor laryngis muscle and cricoid cartilage. The glottal opening and closing mechanisms have been examined. During the opening stage, two abductor artytenoideae muscles swing arytenoid cartilages and the glottis walls. As a result, the glottis profile is transformed from a slit to a triangle. In the closing stage, the tongue is drawn posteriorly due to the close apposition of the glottis walls and linguolaryngeal cleft walls and hyoglossal sling contractions.


title: Sea turtle

text: Sea turtles are caught worldwide, although it is illegal to hunt most species in many countries. A great deal of intentional sea turtle harvests worldwide are for food. Many parts of the world have long considered sea turtles to be fine dining. In England during the 1700s, Sea Turtles were consumed as a delicacy to near extinction, often as turtle soup. Ancient Chinese texts dating to the 5th century B.C.E. describe sea turtles as exotic delicacies. Many coastal communities around the world depend on sea turtles as a source of protein, often harvesting several sea turtles at once and keeping them alive on their backs until needed. Coastal peoples gather sea turtle eggs for consumption.


title: Sea turtle

text: To a much lesser extent, some species are targeted for their shells. Tortoiseshell, a traditional decorative ornamental material used in Japan and China, comes from the carapace scutes of the hawksbill sea turtle. Ancient Greeks and ancient Romans processed sea turtle scutes (primarily from the hawksbill sea turtle) for various articles and ornaments used by their elites, such as combs and brushes. The skin of the flippers is prized for use as shoes and assorted leather goods. In various West African countries, sea turtles are harvested for traditional medicinal use.


title: Sea turtle

text: The Moche people of ancient Peru worshipped the sea and its animals. They often depicted sea turtles in their art. J. R. R. Tolkien's poem "Fastitocalon" echoes a second-century Latin tale in the "Physiologus" of the "Aspidochelone" ("round-shielded turtle"); it is so large that sailors mistakenly land and light a fire on its back, and are drowned when it dives.


title: Sea turtle

text: Beach towns, such as Tortuguero, Costa Rica, have transitioned from a tourism industry that made profits from selling sea turtle meat and shells to an ecotourism-based economy. Tortuguero is considered to be the founding location of sea turtle conservation. In the 1960s the cultural demand for sea turtle meat, shells, and eggs was quickly killing the once-abundant sea turtle populations that nested on the beach. The Caribbean Conservation Corporation began working with villagers to promote ecotourism as a permanent substitute to sea turtle hunting. Sea turtle nesting grounds became sustainable. Tourists love to come and visit the nesting grounds, although it causes a lot of stress to the sea turtles because all of the eggs can get damaged or harmed. Since the creation of a sea turtle ecotourism-based economy, Tortugero annually houses thousands of tourists who visit the protected beach that hosts sea turtle walks and nesting grounds. Walks to observe the nesting sea turtles require a certified guide and this controls and minimises disturbance of the beaches. It also gives the locals a financial interest in conservation and the guides now defend the sea turtles from threats such as poaching; efforts in Costa Rica's Pacific Coast are facilitated by a nonprofit organization, Sea Turtles Forever. Thousands of people are involved in sea turtle walks, and substantial revenues accrue from the fees paid for the privilege.


title: Sea turtle

text: In other parts of the world where sea turtle breeding sites are threatened by human activity, volunteers often patrol beaches as a part of conservation activities, which may include relocating sea turtle eggs to hatcheries, or assisting hatching sea turtles in reaching the ocean. Locations in which such efforts exist include the east coast of India, São Tomé and Príncipe, Sham Wan in Hong Kong, and the coast of Florida.


title: Sea turtle

text: In the oceans, sea turtles, especially green sea turtles, are among the very few creatures (manatees are another) that eat sea grass. Sea grass needs to be constantly cut short to help it grow across the sea floor. Sea turtle grazing helps maintain the health of the sea grass beds. Sea grass beds provide breeding and developmental grounds for numerous marine animals. Without them, many marine species humans harvest would be lost, as would the lower levels of the food chain. The reactions could result in many more marine species eventually becoming endangered or extinct.


title: Sea turtle

text: Sea turtles use beaches and sand dunes as to lay their eggs. Such coastal environments are nutrient-poor and depend on vegetation to protect against erosion. Eggs, hatched or unhatched, and hatchlings that fail to make it into the ocean are nutrient sources for dune vegetation and therefore protecting these nesting habitats for sea turtles, forming a positive feedback loop.


title: Sea turtle

text: Sea turtles also maintain a symbiotic relationship with yellow tang, in which the fish will eat algae growing on the shell of a sea turtle.


title: Sea turtle

text: The IUCN Red List classifies three species of sea turtle as either "endangered" or "critically endangered". An additional three species are classified as "vulnerable". The flatback sea turtle is considered as "data deficient", meaning that its conservation status is unclear due to lack of data. All species of sea turtle are listed in CITES Appendix I, restricting international trade of sea turtles and sea turtle products. However, the usefulness of global assessments for sea turtles has been questioned, particularly due to the presence of distinct genetic stocks and spatially separated regional management units (RMUs). Each RMU is subject to a unique set of threats that generally cross jurisdictional boundaries, resulting in some sub-populations of the same species' showing recovery while others continue to decline. This has triggered the IUCN to conduct threat assessments at the sub-population level for some species recently. These new assessments have highlighted an unexpected mismatch between where conservation relevant science has been conducted on sea turtles, and where there is the greatest need for conservation. For example, as at August 2017, about 69% of studies using stable isotope analysis to understand the foraging distribution of sea turtles have been conducted in RMUs listed as "least concern" by the IUCN.


title: Sea turtle

text: Additionally, all populations of sea turtles that occur in United States waters are listed as threatened or endangered by the US Endangered Species Act (ESA). The US listing status of the loggerhead sea turtle is under review as of 2012.


title: Sea turtle

text: In the Caribbean, researchers are having some success in assisting a comeback. In September 2007, Corpus Christi, Texas, wildlife officials found 128 Kemp's ridley sea turtle nests on Texas beaches, a record number, including 81 on North Padre Island (Padre Island National Seashore) and four on Mustang Island. Wildlife officials released 10,594 Kemp's ridley sea turtle hatchlings along the Texas coast in recent years.


title: Sea turtle

text: The Philippines has had several initiatives dealing with the issue of sea turtle conservation. In 2007, the province of Batangas declared the catching and eating of sea turtles (locally referred to as Pawikans) illegal. However, the law seems to have had little effect as sea turtle eggs are still in demand in Batangan markets. In September 2007, several Chinese poachers were apprehended off the Turtle Islands in the country's southernmost province of Tawi-Tawi. The poachers had collected more than a hundred sea turtles, along with 10,000 sea turtle eggs.


title: Sea turtle

text: Evaluating the progress of conservation programs is difficult, because many sea turtle populations have not been assessed adequately. Most information on sea turtle populations comes from counting nests on beaches, but this does not provide an accurate picture of the whole sea turtle population. A 2010 United States National Research Council report concluded that more detailed information on sea turtles' life cycles, such as birth rates and mortality, is needed.


title: Sea turtle

text: Nest relocation may not be a useful conservation technique for sea turtles. In one study on the freshwater Arrau turtle ("Podocnemis expansa") researchers examined the effects of nest relocation. They discovered that clutches of this freshwater turtle that were transplanted to a new location had higher mortality rates and more morphological abnormalities compared to non-transplanted clutches. However, in a study of loggerhead sea turtles ("Caretta caretta"), Dellert et al. found that relocating nests at risk of inundation increased the success of eggs and hatchlings and decreased the risk of inundation.


title: Sea turtle

text: Most sea turtle mortality happens early in life. Sea turtles usually lay around 100 eggs at a time, but on average only one of the eggs from the nest will survive to adulthood. Raccoons, foxes, and seabirds may raid nests or hatchlings may be eaten within minutes of hatching as they make their initial run for the ocean. Once in the water, they are susceptible to seabirds, large fish and even other sea turtles.


title: Sea turtle

text: Adult sea turtles have few predators. Large aquatic carnivores such as sharks and crocodiles are their biggest threats; however, reports of terrestrial predators attacking nesting females are not uncommon. Jaguars have been reported to smash into sea turtle shells with their paws, and scoop out the flesh.


title: Sea turtle

text: While many of the things that endanger sea turtles are natural predators, increasingly many threats to the sea turtle species have arrived with the ever-growing presence of humans.


title: Sea turtle

text: One of the most significant and contemporary threats to sea turtles comes from bycatch due to imprecise fishing methods. Long-lining has been identified as a major cause of accidental sea turtle deaths. There is also a black-market demand for tortoiseshell for both decoration and supposed health benefits.


title: Sea turtle

text: Sea turtles must surface to breathe. Caught in a fisherman's net, they are unable to surface and thus drown. In early 2007, almost a thousand sea turtles were killed inadvertently in the Bay of Bengal over the course of a few months after netting.


title: Sea turtle

text: However, some relatively inexpensive changes to fishing techniques, such as slightly larger hooks and traps from which sea turtles can escape, can dramatically cut the mortality rate. Turtle excluder devices (TEDs) have reduced sea turtle bycatch in shrimp nets by 97 percent.


title: Sea turtle

text: Light pollution from beach development is a threat to baby sea turtles; the glow from city sources can cause them to head into traffic instead of the ocean. There has been some movement to protect these areas. On the east coast of Florida, parts of the beach known to harbor sea turtle nests are protected by fences. Conservationists have monitored hatchings, relocating lost baby sea turtles to the beach.


title: Sea turtle

text: Hatchlings find their way to the ocean by crawling towards the brightest horizon and can become disoriented along the coastline. Lighting restrictions can prevent lights from shining on the beach and confusing hatchlings. Sea turtle-safe lighting uses red or amber LED light, invisible to sea turtles, in place of white light.