~ Polish General Wladyslaw Anders comments on the situation at Cassino, March, 1944. I realised the cost in lives must be heavy, but I realised too the importance of the capture of Monte Cassino to the Allied cause.” “The stubbornness of the German defence at Cassino and on Monastery Hill was already a byword, for although the Monastery had been bombed, and the town of Cassino was a heap of ruins, the Germans still held firm and blocked the road to Rome.