Original subtitles

Narrator: Italy.

The ancient abbey of monte cassino is one of the most important and

Spectacular monuments in europe.

But this dramatic landscape conceals hidden scars.

From the bloodiest and most ferocious land battle in western europe.

World war ii was fought on vast landscapes across the planet.

Marty (over radio): Where we're going, we don't need roads.

Narrator: But the evidence of that war is disappearing fast.

Pete: That is one of the coolest things I've ever seen in the water.

That's it.

Man (over radio): Congratulations.

Narrator: Now, technology expert pete kelsey...

Pete: I've gotta scan this.

Narrator: And military historian marty morgan...

Marty: Oh my god, look at this view!

Narrator: Are using 21st century technology to strip away the present and reveal

The buried secrets of world war ii.

This time, will a mountain ridge reveal the secrets of a bloody siege?

Marty: How could anybody survive this?

Narrator: Can cutting edge technology uncover the truth about one of america's worst

Military disasters?

Pete: You are walking into a hornet's nest!

Narrator: And the destruction of an iconic abbey is revealed as never before.

Marty: Oh god. This is total war!

♪ ♪

Narrator: The apennine mountains in central Italy.

Steep, rugged and wild.

The allied campaign in the winter of 1943 to capture this ground from the

Germans should have taken just a few weeks.

Instead it became one of the most protracted and bloody conflicts of the

Second world war.

Fought in some of the harshest terrain on earth.

(gunfire and explosions)

In early September 1943,

170,000 allied troops had stormed beaches

In southern Italy,

And began to fight their way north.

The allies made rapid progress...

Advancing 250 miles in just twelve weeks.

More than 75 years later,

Technology expert pete kelsey and war historian marty morgan

Are retracing the allies' route through central Italy.

Marty: This is route 6.

This is the road to rome.

And in September 1943, this thoroughfare was critical to allied strategy in Italy.

Pete: What was the allies' objective?

Marty: The objective is to get to rome.

And they hoped that by liberating rome they would score an important

Psychological victory.

Narrator: The fascist dictator mussolini was under arrest.

Italy had joined the allies, the germans were suddenly over-stretched.

Rome and victory looked certain.

But a few months later, there were some 55,000 allied casualties.

And much of the country lay in ruins.

What went wrong?

How did the allied advance against a broken enemy turn into such a brutal bloodbath?

Pete and marty are heading to the place where the allied advance came to a deadly halt.

The medieval hillside town of san pietro infine.

With a population of 1,500 people, san pietro sat on the slopes of monte sambucaro,

Overlooking route six.

On December 7th 1943,

2,400 men of the us army's 36th infantry division advanced on san pietro...

Like any other town on their route through Italy.

But this time it was different.

In ten days of fighting, there were over 1,200 american casualties.

Gi's called the flat ground outside the town, 'death valley'.

What happened here that stopped the allies in their tracks?

Much of the town is overgrown with foliage.

To look for clues hidden in the landscape, pete launches a drone.

It's equipped with state-of-the-art remote sensing technology

Called lidar.

Man: Are we good?

Pete: Yeah, you're clear up.

Narrator: Using its on board laser capability,

Pete will produce the first ever three-dimensional digital model

Of san pietro infine.

Pete: What we really wanna do is make the invisible visible by

Removing all these trees.

Narrator: Lidar can penetrate foliage to reveal man-made structures beneath.

Pete: We're probably gonna see things that haven't been seen in 75 to 80 years.

Narrator: While the lidar team continues their survey,

Pete and marty head up into the town to look for

Other clues to explain why the allies got bogged down in heavy fighting here.

Marty: Ammunition box.

Pete: German?

Marty: No, british, but world war ii.

Right here we have some vestiges of the german occupation of san pietro.

These would have been used to form, a road block, by putting the two big blocks in the

Middle of the road way, and you've got an effective obstruction.

All it would take would be one automatic weapon, somewhere down the road there,

And nobody can get anywhere near them.

Here follow me.

Watch your head.

Germans would occupy a space like this and set up a mortar battery.

Pete: Wow!

Marty: So, the mortar battery is here completely concealed from view.

Pete: Right.

Marty: Capable of throwing the rounds out through where the roof used to be,

And you have suddenly a source of punishing firepower that you're gonna have a

Heck of a time finding.

Narrator: Pete and marty have made some intriguing discoveries,

But they've found nothing unexpected.

Marty: We've got a village completely in ruin, we have maybe a mortar position and

Two anti-tank barriers and that's it.

There's not really anything explaining why the battle of san pietro lasted

As long as it did or cost as many lives as it did.

Narrator: To continue their quest they head toward what was once san pietro's

Grandest building the 'brunetti palace'.

Marty: This is incredible! Pete: Wow!

Narrator: Eye witness accounts tell us that german soldiers turned this

Building into their military headquarters.

Marty: Can you punch into the village?

Pete: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Narrator: The first ever 3d survey of san pietro infine is a revelation.

Marty: Oh my gosh, look at that.

Pete: When you remove the trees,

The devastation just sort of jumps right out of that model.

Narrator: The results show that 98% of the town was wiped out.

Marty: That's almost complete target coverage.

Pete: Unbelievable!

Narrator: But who destroyed san pietro so comprehensively and why?

Pete and marty think the answer may not lie in the town itself but

In the landscape around it.

So they change tack, and head up into monte sambucaro.

A 4,000-foot high mountain, directly behind san pietro.

This mountain top must have been strategically important.

But can they find evidence the germans were up here?

Marty has met up with military historian damiano parravano

To scour the slopes for signs of military activity.

Damiano: Marty!

There's a clear german emplacement here! Look at this.

Marty: Oh, really? Damiano: Really.

Very well-preserved.

Marty: Oh my god, yeah, look at that!

Damiano: Incredible!

Marty: And we walked right up on it and didn't even know it.

This is what they call a 'sanger'.

In an environment where you can't dig in,

You simply just pull up stones and create

An improvised fighting position.

Damiano: Yeah.

Marty: What an extraordinary find.

Narrator: But the sanger appears to be the only sign of the fighting up here.

The might of the german army is proving elusive.

So...

Pete: Starting engines...

Narrator: Pete takes to the sky.

Pete: I'm doing a drone-based 3d photogrammetry survey of this ridge line because you

Can see the entire liri valley.

Narrator: Convinced the germans must have occupied the high ground above san pietro,

Pete hopes high-resolution photogrammetry can capture further signs of military

Activity here on the ridge.

Back in the brunetti palace,

Pete and marty examine the results.

Pete: Oh yeah, oh yeah.

Oh you've gotta love photogrammetry!

Narrator: Pete's survey reveals features it was impossible to

See from the ground.

Marty: Oh! See, that is that stone protective position,

They call it a 'sanger'.

Narrator: But the sanger isn't the only military feature on the mountainside.

Pete: Oh yeah!

See this rectangular position right there?

That is the artillery position on the reverse slope.

Narrator: They've discovered a german artillery emplacement still on the

Mountain with a forward observer in the sanger in direct contact with the gunners

Hidden behind the ridge.

Pete: Let's zoom out, see! See, I knew it!

There are artillery positions and these sangers along this whole ridge line.

Narrator: But the germans weren't just on monte sambucaro,

Records show they also held monte lungo.

From both these mountains german observers could direct devastating artillery fire

Down onto allied troops in the valley below.

Pete: God, what a nightmare!

Marty: No wonder they called it death valley.

Pete: Yeah.

Narrator: Us artillery fought back,

Bombarding german positions on the mountain ridges,

And in san pietro with more than 200,000 shells, leaving the town in ruins.

But the destruction of an entire town begs a chilling question.

What happened to the people of san pietro?

Marty: How could anybody survive this?

San pietro infine

Was devastated in a bloody 10-day battle.

98% of the town was destroyed.

So what happened to the inhabitants?

Pete: Yeah, san pietro was just devastated.

Narrator: But the lidar results also reveal some intriguing features.

Pete: You go up this ravine....

What are those?

Narrator: A series of strange hollows in the cliffs behind the town.

Marty: Are those caves?

Pete: We should have a closer look at that.

Marty: Yeah, what's that all about?

Narrator: To find out, pete and marty have met up with local

Historian maurizio zambardi.

Maurizio: When the germans arrived in the town,

They wanted all the civilians evacuated.

So, many escaped and took refuge in caves.

Narrator: These caves aren't natural, they're man-made.

Maurizio: See these marks?

Each one of these is the mark of a pickaxe.

The civilians from the town excavated the caves using pickaxes and

Then threw the earth out into the valley.

Narrator: Entire families sheltered here in freezing conditions

For weeks at a time.

They had very little food.

And there was no clean water.

Maurizio: These are the people of san pietro.

This is a woman who is crying in desperation, after losing everything;

Her home, her family, her loved ones.

This is my grandmother.

Marty: That's your grandmother?

Maurizio: Yes.

Her name was marianna pirollo and this photograph was taken right here in these caves.

Pete: That's amazing marty: That is incredible, isn't it?

Pete: How many people were in these caves?

Maurizio: About 500 people; one third of the town's population.

Pete: What's that? 500?

Marty: 500 people.

Narrator: No-one has ever surveyed these caves digitally before.

So, for the first time, pete is recording them using a hand-held lidar scanner.

Pete: So, thousands of times per second, this device is sending out a laser beam,

And taking really, really accurate measurements of everything it sees.

And ultimately what we'll have is a really accurate

3d model of this whole system of caves.

Narrator: Pete hopes the results will help to illuminate what life was like

For the people forced to live here.

Inside the brunetti palace,

Pete and marty examine the results.

Pete: Check this out.

Marty: Oh, it did well, didn't it?

Pete: It really did. Marty: Yeah, look at those.

Narrator: The model clearly shows a system of more than a dozen caves.

160 feet end to end, they extend up to 25 feet back into the cliff face.

But the model also provides a chilling glimpse of the conditions inside.

Pete: Get your head around this,

The numbers work out to about 18 inches square per person.

Marty: Per person. Oh my god, they're crammed in like sardines!

Pete: Yeah.

Narrator: According to contemporary accounts, the town's inhabitants excavated

Separate caves to begin with.

But that changed after they witnessed a terrible tragedy.

Maurizio: Artillery shells exploded in front of the caves.

People were buried inside.

So they decided to link the caves together with an internal passageway so people

Could escape if it happened again.

Narrator: Finally on December 17th 1943,

The allies drove the germans off the mountain tops

And out of the town.

By the time the 10-day battle for san pietro was over,

300 civilians had been killed.

American soldiers were astonished to see surviving townspeople

Emerge from the caves.

Sick and malnourished, they looked like ghosts.

Marty: I'd like to say that I could understand the experience that these people

Endured in these caves.

But I can't.

There's never been a moment in my life where I was forced to retreat into

A cave simply to survive.

But then you also see this one quality of the human spirit that they

Could come out of that experience,

Confront the destruction of their village, and still find reasons to smile.

That's human spirit.

And this experience didn't conquer it.

Narrator: But if the gi's of the 36th infantry division thought that taking san pietro

Infine was tough, it was nothing compared to what they were about to face.

In their next engagement with the enemy two entire regiments would be

Virtually wiped out.

Pete: That is absolutely chilling!

You are walking into a hornets' nest!

The us army's 36th infantry division has taken the

Hillside town of san pietro infine.

The division is back on the road and heading north along route 6 toward rome.

Marty: After allied forces capture san pietro,

The curtain drops on one drama but it's about to lift on yet another drama.

Because then they have to move onto the next objective.

And the next objective is the liri valley.

Narrator: Seven miles west of san pietro lies the liri valley;

Strategically important because the road to rome runs right through it.

Blocking the allies' path is a river called the rapido.

Dug in on the opposite side is a heavily-armed german division.

On January 20th 1944,

6,000 us infantrymen mount an amphibious river assault.

The two-day battle here ends with nearly 2,000

Casualties and one of the worst defeats

For the us army in the second world war.

So serious that a congressional inquiry is convened to look

Into what happened.

Why did the assault across the rapido end in a massacre?

To find the answer,

Pete is helping remote sensing expert doctor richard dowdeswell to

Launch a robotic boat.

It's equipped with underwater mapping technology called multi-beam sonar.

Pete: And what kind of range, how far can you be from the base station?

Richard: Two kilometers, line of sight.

Narrator: Pete wants to conduct the first ever survey of the section of river.

Where american soldiers attempted their assault 75 years ago.

Richard: Okay, thanks.

Narrator: He's hoping the results might help to explain why it failed.

Pete: Richard, what is this robot gonna do?

Richard: On the bottom of the boat there's a sonar sensor.

So this is going to send out a sound pulse into the water.

That's going to bounce off the banks of the river, the bottom of the river.

Pete: So a three-dimensional very accurate model of the river bed?

Richard: Yeah.

Pete: Oh, amazing! Why don't I give you a hand?

Narrator: No-one has conducted a systematic search

Of the battlefield like this before.

While pete starts to survey a 300 foot section of the river,

Another team sets to work in the adjacent field.

A group of metal detectorists are searching the battlefield on the

American side to see if they can find any evidence of the fighting.

Damiano: Oh!

That's shrapnel, yes.

And it's definitely from an artillery shell.

This area around the river was continuously bombed, shelled.

Narrator: Contemporary accounts tell us that as

Us troops attempted their assault,

They came under heavy artillery bombardment.

But how many german artillery positions were there?

And where were they dug in?

Armed with a battlefield map from 1944,

Marty is searching the riverbank on the opposite side.

Marty: This is it.

Oh my god, look at this!

Narrator: He's beginning to understand how tough a

Military objective the rapido was.

Marty: Yeah! I'm exactly where I think I am.

Right here at the bend in the river, two machine gun positions.

One just here.

One up a little bit to its left flank.

One machine gun aiming this way, the other machine gun aiming that way.

And look, the machine gun here,

Straight out over the flat plain that the men of the

36th division had to cross before they could even make it to the river.

Narrator: But the two german machine gun positions

At the river's edge were just the tip of a

Massive defensive complex made up of multiple lines of machine gun,

Artillery and mortar entrenchments.

Marty: So, the two weapons that were right here were only just the beginning of the

Withering fire that these men were going to be exposed to.

It's a miracle that anybody survived this!

Narrator: From across the river,

German weapons teams had created 'killing zones'

For us servicemen trying to cross the river.

But heavily defended enemy emplacements were nothing new.

Allied troops had overcome german positions like this many times before.

Pete thinks there must be another explanation for the rapido massacre.

The vessel beams the sonar data back to base control;

It's processed to start building a 3d model

That could explain why the assault failed.

Back on the american side, one of damiano's team has made another discovery.

But they must exercise extreme caution.

Damiano: So when we do these kinds of activities,

We have to be really careful.

Narrator: In the past,

They've uncovered live ammunition and hand grenades.

Damiano: This area is full of unexploded ordnance.

Investigating why, in January 1944,

The river rapido was the site of a military disaster.

Pete: Ah, james, any data?

James: Yeah, just looking at the first results now.

Pete: Oh, yeah!

Narrator: Pete's convinced there must be something in the anatomy of this

River that can explain why the us army failed to take it.

Pete: Oh, it's great! And in 3d!

This is why I love sonar!

James: Yeah. Pete: Instant gratification!

Narrator: Back on the american side...

Damiano: Wow!

Narrator: Damiano has made another remarkable discovery.

Damiano: That's the fuse of an mk2 american hand grenade.

That's incredible.

It means that they used hand grenades here, just close to the river.

And this is what survived after so many years.

Narrator: After searching the fields for just one hour,

His team has found seven military artifacts.

Showing that the battlefield is still littered with evidence of the fighting.

Eyewitness accounts speak of multiple crossing attempts over two nights.

But the us 36th infantry division failed to establish a lasting bridgehead,

And in the process, took more than 2,000 casualties.

Combining the results of his river and land surveys, pete now thinks he knows why.

Pete: For me, the answer is here in the data.

Narrator: Using the first ever 3d model of the battlefield he can piece

Together what happened.

Pete: The approach to this river; it's wide open, there's no cover.

Narrator: The fields on the american side of the rapido were exposed

They were muddy and heavily mined.

Pete: You get up to this river, it's in effect a ditch that's 60 feet across,

About 10 feet straight down.

Narrator: But it's the sonar results that reveal the key to the mystery.

The rapido had almost vertical banks,

Often as high as 6 feet.

With a steep incline down into water that was just above freezing.

And had a uniform depth of between 8 to 12 feet.

Pete: So any poor guy who goes in the water doesn't have a chance.

It's over his head.

And it's bloody cold and it is moving really fast.

If you even get across at night,

You've got to go 10 feet up the other side and

Then back into no cover.

Marty: And look what was waiting for them.

Narrator: On the other side, us assault troops ran right

Into the german main line of defense.

Barbed wire, minefields and a barrage of enemy fire.

Pete: That is absolutely chilling!

You are walking into a hornet's nest!

Marty: Well to me, it all boils down to one simple point.

This proves that the german military that fought the second world war was

Excruciatingly effective.

Narrator: To understand the full horror of failed river assault,

Pete and marty are retracing the steps of the

36th infantry division 75 years ago.

Marty: The m2 wooden boats that they were using weighed over 400 pounds each.

In addition to that,

They had to cover almost two miles of open ground

Just to get down to the water's edge,

Carrying the boats all the way.

Narrator: Many of the assault troops were raw recruits with no

Previous combat experience.

Marty: So many of these men don't have experience launching small boats

Into raging rivers.

But that's exactly what they're about to have to do.

And they are also still taking casualties from enemy fire.

They get out into the water, the boats flip over.

And when men went into this water,

They sank like a rock, straight to the bottom.

Narrator: Those that made it this far found the current was

Fast and unpredictable.

(speaking in native language)

(speaking in native language)

Marty: God we're flying.

Pete: We're picking up speed!

Heads up! Head up!

Marty: You just don't stand a chance against this current!

There was one junior officer of the 36th division who started off the attack

With a company of 184 men.

And 48 hours later he was one of 17 survivors.

He later went on to say to the congressional inquiry that,

“if this wasn't mass murder, I don't know what is.”

Narrator: After the war, the inquiry concluded,

While the casualties are to be greatly regretted,

The commanding officer had exercised sound judgement in planning it,

And ordering it.

After three more days of heavy fighting,

The us 34th division finally crossed the rapido two miles

To the north where the river was fordable and less heavily defended.

The assault on the rapido was designed to be a diversion from a much

Larger allied operation...

The amphibious landings at anzio, 25 miles south of rome.

But as allied forces were driven back to the sea,

The anzio landings also ground to a halt.

And during February 1944,

Fighting on the road to rome escalated into a bitter war of attrition.

It culminated in one of the most infamous acts of destruction of the entire war.

The annihilation of one of the most spectacular monuments in europe.

♪ ♪

Narrator: Monte cassino and its magnificent abbey,

Tower 1,600 feet above the liri valley.

This was the allies' final strategic obstacle on the road to rome.

But the building that stands here today is a facsimile,

Constructed after the war ended.

Because in 1944 allied commanders took one of the most controversial

Decisions of the war;

They ordered the historic abbey to be destroyed.

On February 15th,

More than 200 bombers took off from foggia airfield.

In wave after wave,

They dropped more than 1,000 tons of high explosive and incendiary bombs.

(explosions)

In just four hours, the abbey was reduced to rubble.

The bombing triggered outrage.

Marty: One italian newspaper said that, "the allies bombed the abbey without any military

Necessity and with hatred for european civilization."

The new york times said that it was,

“the worst aerial and artillery onslaught ever

Directed against a single building."

Narrator: The germans had claimed they had no troops or weapons inside the building,

And that a 300-meter 'protection zone' had been drawn around

The abbey complex.

So if the germans weren't occupying the abbey, why did the allies destroy it?

To look for answers, pete begins a lidar scan of monte cassino.

He's certain there must be clues hidden in the landscape.

One thing is not in dispute.

In January 1944, the allied imperative was to capture the mountain top.

If the combined strength of 240,000 allied,

Commonwealth and american forces failed the

Liri valley and rome would be beyond reach.

135,000 german soldiers were determined to stop them.

For four months,

Monte cassino became the epicenter of the most ferocious european

Land battle in the second world war...

That saw 55,000 allied casualties.

Man (over radio): It was three days before they could be brought down for burial.

Narrator: The wounded were treated at a field hospital known as 'the doctor's house'.

It's still here.

And it's the ideal place to examine pete's results.

Pete: Let's bring in the drone-based lidar!

Isn't that cool?

Marty: That is amazing, look at that.

By stripping the trees away,

You're really providing an insight into the nightmare of this battle,

Because they have nowhere to hide.

Narrator: As allied soldiers attacked german positions,

The lack of cover meant their

Slightest movement was visible and instantly attracted enemy fire.

But this wasn't the only obstacle they faced.

The steep slopes on either flank meant there was only one route to attack

Along a narrow approach called 'snakeshead ridge'.

Pete: God help those guys who try to make an assault along that ridge line!

Narrator: Channeled into a column by the terrain allied soldiers on the ridge

Were an easy target.

Marty: They're sky-lined when they try to approach on 'snakeshead ridge'.

The enemy just dumps fire on top of them.

Narrator: The lidar shows how that monte cassino was yet another 'killing zone'.

German troops also held the neighboring hills.

Marty: These areas are also dumping fire onto the approaches to the abbey.

Pete: With no place to hide, none!

(gunfire)

Narrator: Even with artillery and air support,

Allied attacks along the mountain top

Failed time and again.

For four months, they could not take monte cassino.

As casualties escalated,

Allied commanders became convinced that german observers were using the abbey

To direct fire onto targets across the battlefield.

Marty: And this is what causes them to confront one cold reality and that is,

If they're ever gonna get out of the liri valley,

They are going to have to destroy this incredible,

Historical, religious and cultural icon.

Narrator: But what allied commanders didn't foresee was that bombing the abbey would

Have unintended consequences.

Marty: Oh god! This is total war!

Narrator: In February 1944, allied commanders in Italy took one of the most

Controversial decisions of the second world war to destroy the iconic

Abbey of monte cassino.

But bombing the abbey had disastrous consequences.

Over 200 civilians sheltering inside and 40 allied troops on the

Mountainside were killed by mistake.

Man (over tv): Und nach der zertorung durch die

Anglo-americanische luftgangster!

Narrator: The devastation was a coup for nazi germany's propaganda machine.

The abbey's destruction was supposed to open the way for the allies

To seize the mountain but as a result,

The fighting escalated...

And continued for three more months.

What went wrong?

To investigate, the team have sourced hundreds of wartime photographs.

And stitched the images together to create the

First ever 3d model of the abbey as it was immediately after the bombing.

Marty: Oh, my gosh!

Narrator: It shows the destruction was near absolute.

Marty: This is total war.

And total war doesn't care how historically and

Religiously significant a building is.

Narrator: The model reveals why the fighting escalated after

The abbey's destruction.

By bombing it,

The allies had turned a box-shaped building into a multitude of

Defensible positions; that german soldiers could occupy with impunity.

They were soon reinforced by the elite 1st parachute division and ordered by hitler

To hold their ground at all costs.

It was now a fight to the death.

But the allies prevailed.

On may 18th 1944,

They overcame the final obstacle on the road to rome

And captured monte cassino.

But how did the allies make the decisive breakthrough

To win the battle?

Looking for clues in the landscape,

Pete and marty examine the 3d model again.

Marty: Can you just show me that spot up there by caira?

Because do you see that track?

Pete: I do. Marty: Is that a modern road?

Or is that something that was there in 1944?

Narrator: To find out, they locate the path,

And with military historian damiano parravano,

They follow it as it ascends uphill from the valley floor,

Behind monte cassino.

Damiano: Hey guys! Look at this!

A bakelite cap from a british hand grenade.

Pete: Grenade? Marty: Oh yeah.

This is from the number 69 demolitions grenade.

And this is a cap from the fuse housing.

When you were ready to use the weapon, you unscrewed it and discarded it.

Pete: Wow.

Narrator: It's an intriguing find.

But why were the allies doing demolition on the mountainside?

A few feet further uphill, pete finds another clue.

Pete: Hey-hey-hey-hey.

You see this?

Clearly a linear feature.

This is a retaining wall.

Classic road construction.

And where would this material have come from?

You can either haul it all up this road...

Or you take it from here.

So this really vertical slope right here,

This is man made and clearly probably shot with tnt, with explosives.

So all this material removed here,

You can use in the road bed and you can use on this retaining wall.

And everything about this says it was engineered to carry a lot of weight.

Narrator: Pete's found evidence of one of the most extraordinary feats of

Engineering of the second world war.

In February 1944, allied sappers used demolition explosives to blast this road

Out of the mountainside.

Constructed over 10 days,

And named “cavendish road” it allowed allied tanks

To outflank the germans.

A maneuver that led to final victory.

On June 5th 1944, just two weeks after taking monte cassino,

The allies finally liberated rome.

A giant leap towards ending the war in europe.

But as pete and marty have discovered,

Victory on the road to rome was achieved at enormous cost.

Marty: Here, you have 1,051 reasons to study the battle of monte cassino.

1,051 lives that were cut short by it.

And this is only one of the dozens of world war ii

Military cemeteries on italian soil today.

You can tell that the spirits of these men reach

Through the decades to inspire people still living

Today because there are flowers and memorial candles.

And these men are here to teach us a lesson.

All we have to do is stop, and listen.

♪ ♪

Captioned by cotter captioning services.