Roderick Macdonald’s adventures with British glider troops was the first time any war correspondent had joined an airborne invasion. They would later honour him with the right to wear their red beret.
Roderick Macdonald’s final despatch from the battlefields of southern Italy relayed the monumental news on the front pages of newspapers across Australia on May 19, 1944.
Marking the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Monte Cassino, where the Allied forces suffered 55,000 casualties during a bloody four-month campaign, was Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, the head of the UK’s armed forces. Sophie, the Duchess of Edinburgh, laid a wreath where more than 4000 Commonwealth soldiers are buried.
Towed from North Africa by night in a wind of almost gale force, his glider landed in a crisscross of German searchlights and a torrent of tracer bullets and shelling. They crashed badly, which severely bruised and shook the crew, and sought shelter beside the Syracuse Bridge. They then advanced, carrying their own wounded.
Macdonald’s story was featured on the front pages of some of the English-speaking world’s greatest newspapers. He’d had narrow misses before. In Burma, he had a hairbreadth escape from capture by the Japanese. In Africa, he was once halted just in time while driving about 50km/h towards the German lines. Later, in Sicily, he received head injuries when his car collided with an army truck.
“Are ancient and beautiful monuments and works of art by masters worth preserving at the cost of soldiers’ lives?” Macdonald had asked in a despatch that week. “It has become apparent since that day on the Italian front when we saw the last hours of the great Cassino Abbey, its chapels and ramparts crumbling under hundreds of our bombs, that not everybody agrees with the principle of military necessity justifying their destruction.
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