Yesterday we went to Monte Cassino on our way to Rome. A friend once went there to find the grave of his grandfather, who fought and died with the Maori battalion. He said it bought a tears to his eyes. Our trip from Sorrento to Rome means it’s only a 30 minute detour so we have decided “lest we forget” and we go to say a Karakia and pay our respects.
It is unimaginable in our today’s world that all these young people went half way around the world to die fighting on a hillside in Italy. We walk the rows and read each of the 457 New Zealand names.
We are at the commonwealth war graves cemetery and there are over 4000 graves here. 290 of them are graves of unknown soldiers. The graves of Canadians and Indians seem to go on forever and then there are the Scottish and Irish and English and South African and probably others. The Polish lost so many men they have their own cemetery. The fern sits proudly on the New Zealand graves and I still can’t believe we didn’t change our flag when we had the chance. It’s instant in terms of belonging. The two graves below sit outside of the rows of fellow kiwis, in amongst the air forces, and their country of origin is clear.
You can see the monastery on the hill in the distance that they finally conquered at unimaginable cost. We drive to the top and it’s like driving up a mountain road to Cardrona or Mt Hutt, steep, narrow and windy. The monastery has a 1500 year old history of presence and community and it ]was bombed so heavily that it was unrecognisable. It looked simply like a gigantic pile of rubble with the odd bits of structure sticking up here and there and yet they have painstakingly rebuilt it. It is quite amazing.
