The Gustav Line: The War Between Naples and Rome, on the Ground

The Gustav Line was the German defensive line that held the Allies south of Rome through the winter of 1943 and the spring of 1944. It ran across the whole peninsula, from just north of the mouth of the Garigliano on the Tyrrhenian coast, through the Apennines, to the mouth of the Sangro on the Adriatic. Naples fell on October 1, 1943 and Rome on June 4, 1944: eight months for 140 kilometers, most of it spent on this line. Almost all of it lies in the hills of southern Lazio, Molise and Abruzzo, and a visitor with a car and two days can follow it.

What was the Gustav Line?

It was the strongest of a set of positions the Germans built across the narrowest part of the peninsula, using the rivers and the mountains as the structure and adding bunkers, wire, mines and turrets sunk into concrete.

Three names are worth keeping straight, because signs and books use them interchangeably:

• The Winter Line is the whole system.
• The Bernhardt Line was the outer bulge in front of it, running over the mountains around Mignano and enclosing Monte la Difensa, Monte la Remetanea and Monte Maggiore. It was meant to delay the Allies, not to stop them.
• The Gustav Line was the main position, anchored on Monte Cassino and the Rapido and Garigliano rivers.
• The Hitler Line, later renamed the Senger Line, was the fallback a few kilometers behind it.

The Allies broke the Bernhardt Line in December 1943, then spent from January to May 1944 on the Gustav Line itself.

San Pietro Infine: a village left as it was

The single most legible place on the line is a village that was never rebuilt.

San Pietro Infine sits on the slope of Monte Sammucro, just across the regional boundary into Campania, on the old Via Casilina. In December 1943 it was fought over for ten days and destroyed. About five hundred inhabitants survived in caves nearby. After the war the survivors built a new village lower down and left the old one where it was.

What is there now is a hillside of roofless stone houses, streets that end in rubble, and a church with the sky in it, kept as the Parco della Memoria Storica. It was recognized as a national monument park in 2008, after the village received the Gold Medal for Civil Merit in 2003. There are seven installations along the route through the ruins, and in an old olive mill you can watch The Battle of San Pietro, the 32 minute documentary John Huston shot here with six army cameramen, following the 143rd Infantry Regiment of the 36th "Texas" Division. It was released in May 1945. The army had trouble with it, because it showed what the fighting cost instead of what it achieved, and it is still one of the least comfortable films made about an American victory.

For an American visitor this is the closest thing on the line to standing inside the newsreel.

Monte la Difensa, and the unit the movie was about

Above Mignano, the peaks of the Bernhardt Line are the ones the Fifth Army had to take before it could even reach Cassino. Monte la Difensa was attacked between December 3 and 9, 1943, in Operation Raincoat, by the 1st Special Service Force, the joint American and Canadian unit later known as the Devil's Brigade, in its first combat of the Italian campaign. They climbed a rock face at night to come in above the German positions, held by a veteran panzergrenadier division.

The mountain is a hike today, not a monument: a marked path from the Mignano side, a few hours up, with the remains of positions near the top and a view that explains the whole problem of this front in one look. Boots, water, and a weather forecast.

Monte Lungo, and the Italians who changed sides

At the foot of the same mountains, the military shrine at Mignano Monte Lungo holds 974 Italian soldiers of the war of liberation. On December 8 and 16, 1943, the Italian 1st Motorized Group attacked Monte Lungo alongside the American II Corps: the first combat of regular Italian units against the Germans after Italy changed sides. There is a small museum across the road. It is a quiet, rarely visited place that explains a part of the war most foreign accounts skip.

Cassino, the hinge

Everything on this line leads to the same place. Monte Cassino commands the Liri valley and the road to Rome, and it took four battles between January and May 1944 to get past it. The abbey, the town, the Polish, Commonwealth and German cemeteries and the Historiale museum are covered in our guide to visiting Monte Cassino, which is a full day on its own.

Thirty kilometers west, on the coast, the other half of the same winter was fought at the beachhead: our guide to Anzio and Nettuno covers the landing of January 1944, which was meant to unlock this line from behind and did not.

The Adriatic end

The line did not stop at Cassino. Its eastern half ran down the Sangro to the sea, where the fighting in the winter of 1943 fell mainly on British, Indian, New Zealand and Canadian troops, and where the Canadians fought street by street through Ortona in December. If your family's war ran on that side of the mountains, the route is a different one, along the Adriatic rather than up the Casilina.

Driving the line in two days

Day one, the Bernhardt Line. Start at San Pietro Infine early, when the ruins are empty, and allow two hours with the film. Then Mignano Monte Lungo, ten minutes away, for the Italian shrine and the museum. In the afternoon, either the walk up toward Monte la Difensa for those who want the ground, or the drive west to the Garigliano, where the line met the sea.

Day two, Cassino. The abbey at opening time, the Polish cemetery on the way down, the Commonwealth cemetery and the Historiale in the afternoon.

Both days need a car. The A1 motorway runs parallel to the whole route, with exits at Cassino and San Vittore, and the towns along the Casilina are five to twenty minutes apart. Rome is an hour and a half from Cassino, Naples an hour and a quarter.

What it feels like

Less than you expect and more than you expect. There is very little signage, hardly any of the ground is preserved as a battlefield, and most of the valley floor is now industrial. Then you stand in the ruined street of San Pietro, or on the shrine at Monte Lungo looking at the mountain, and the distance between one hill and the next stops being abstract.

Our history and memory days are built for exactly this, with the time it takes rather than a coach schedule, and our journey in Ciociaria spends a full day at the abbey of Montecassino. If you are following one person through this war, tell us the name and the unit in Design your trip and we will build the route around them.