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Monte Cassino

The former Commander of the Allied Air Forces in the Mediterranean in 1944 repliles.

Editor's Note: Lieutenant General Ira C. Eaker was Commander in Chief of the Mediterranean Allied Air Forces in 1944; consequently the mission against the abbey of Monte Cassino was carried out by his bombers.

The Allied drive toward Rome had stalled. Was the destruction of a historic monastery justified in an effort to break the German line and get the campaign moving again?

Halfway between Naples and Rome, on a mountaintop and visible for miles, stands the Benedictine abbey of Monte Cassino, serene and benign, apparently indestructible.

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