Cassino Memorial

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         Of the 49,261 members of the Commonwealth forces who died in the fighting in Italy, nearly one-tenth have no known grave.   4,054 names are recorded on the Cassino Memorial.   The Memorial itself, situated within Cassino War Cemetery, consists of pillars of green marble which rise approximately five metres on either side of an ornamental pool and a formal garden. The names are inscribed on these pillars.

     On the walls above the stairways that lead up from the main road to the Cemetery, the following words, in English and Italian, are inscribed:

1939-1945

     WITHIN THIS CEMETERY STAND MONUMENTS WHICH BEAR THE NAMES OF SOLDIERS OF THE BRITISH COMMONWEALTH AND EMPIRE WHO FELL IN THE ASSAULTS UPON THE SHORES OF SICILY AND ITALY OR IN LATER BATTLES TO FREE ITALIAN SOIL AND TO WHOM THE FORTUNE OF WAR DENIED A KNOWN AND HONOURED GRAVE.  AROUND THEM ARE THE GRAVES OF THEIR COMRADES WHO DIED FIGHTING IN THESE PARTS TO OPEN THE WAY TO ROME AND THE NORTH.  

     The Allied campaign in Sicily and Italy during the Second World War lasted from early July 1943 to the beginning of May 1945. The name Cassino will long be associated with some of the fiercest fighting engaged in by Allied armies in all those 22 months. During the battles that were waged here in the early part of 1944, Cassino, about half-way between Rome and Naples, at the lower end of the Liri Valley was completely destroyed, as was the Abbey of Monte Cassino, on its dominating hill above the town.

     On July 10, 1943, the landing on the Sicilian coast of an Allied force comprising the American Seventh and the British Eighth Armies marked the first breach in Adolf Hitler's European fortress. The conquest of Sicily was completed in 38 days, the 1^st Canadian Division having played an important part in the Eighth Army's operations. On September 3, British and Canadian troops landed unopposed in the "toe" of the Italian mainland; and six days later a large American-British invasion force assaulted the Salerno beaches south of Naples. Italy capitulated, and German armies took over the country.

     Slowly the Allied forces battled northward. On the Adriatic coast the Eighth Army broke the German Winter Line in November, and during Christmas week in some of the bitterest street fighting of the war, Canadian infantry and armour drove crack German troops out of the battered coastal town of Ortona. In the following spring the Eighth Army crossed the peninsula to join the American Fifth Army in an offensive to capture Rome. American and Commonwealth divisions forced the strong Gustav Line between Cassino and the sea, and on May 23, 1944, Canadian forces breached the formidable Adolf Hitler Line. American troops entered Rome on June 4, and the enemy fell back to the prepared defences of the Rimini-Pisa (or Gothic) Line. In September, the two Allied Armies smashed their way through the Gothic position, the Eighth Army's assault on the Adriatic flank spearheaded by the 1^st Canadian Corps. After a winter of making little progress across the muddy flats south of the Lombardy Plain, the 1^st Canadian Corps moved to Northwest Europe. In the spring a renewed offensive by the American and British armies cleared the northern Italian plains and brought the surrender of nearly a million Axis forces on May 2.

Dan Billany

Roll of Honour Index

Billany Family Historical Data/Index  

Dan Billany's Web Site

Lost Chapel Publications

Note:  As far as can be determined, this branch of the Billany Family ceased in a continuing direct line to Cave-kids Clan2000 ancestry on the death of Fred Billany in 1977.   No living person is listed above.

The above data is amended/extracted from the PRO/ Census,VRI and NBI Indexes and FHL British Microfiche files from Parish Registers of Beverley and associated Kingston-upon-Hull parish registers, East Yorkshire (1558-1901)Comonwealth War Graves Commission  www.sbc.ac.uk  www.hullcc.gov.uk/kingstonpress   MOD Records Office, London Gazette  Imperial War Museum Department of Documents www.worldsocialism.org and general records from history, acknowledged accordingly. All in the Public Domain.

All photos belong to somebody who is not you so please don't use them without consent.   Some photos Copyright Shona Klien.   Some photographs courtesy of Hull Local Studies Library and www.aeservices.co.uk.   (Photos of Dan Billany and his family members courtesy of Jodi Weston Brake <jodi@jodi2.wanadoo.co.uk>)

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 Last update was : July 29, 2009 

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