Citations Fallschirmjager Rgt. 4 “Green Devils” – Monte Cassino

2 x citations to Fallschirmjager Regiment 4 member

nicknamed the“Green Devils”.

Monte Cassino wounded

EK 1 Rimini area

Out of stock

2 citations to Oberjager Hans Bengelsdorf.

He was a member of the 13./Fallschirmjager Regiment 4 wich was part of the 1. Fallschirmjager Division. The Regiment were nicknamed the “Green Devils” by its opponents.

The 13. Kompanie was the Granatwerfer Kompanie of the Division.

From 1 Februari 1944 onwards the 1. Fallschirmjager Division was arrived in the Monte Cassino area with the FJR 4 being deployed in and around the monastery on top of the hill.

Third Cassino Battle

The third battle began 15 March. After a bombardment of 750 tonnes of 1,000-pound bombs with delayed action fuses, starting at 8:30 and lasting three and a half hours, the New Zealanders advanced behind a creeping artillery barrage of 746 artillery pieces.

Success depended on taking advantage of the paralysing effect of the bombing. The bombing was not concentrated—only 50 percent landed a mile or less from the target point and 8 percent within 1,000 yards—but between it and the shelling, about half the 300 paratroopers in the town had been killed. The defences rallied more quickly than expected, and the Allied armour was held up by bomb craters. Nevertheless, success was there for the New Zealanders' taking, but by the time a follow-up assault on the left had been ordered that evening, it was too late: defences had been reorganised, and more critically, the rain, contrary to forecast, had started again. Torrents of rain flooded bomb craters, turned rubble into a morass, and blotted out communications, the radio sets being incapable of surviving the constant immersion. The dark rain clouds also blotted out the moonlight, hindering the task of clearing routes through the ruins. On the right, the New Zealanders had captured Castle Hill and point 165, and as planned, elements of the Indian 4th Infantry Division, now commanded by Major General Alexander Galloway, had passed through to attack point 236 and thence to point 435, Hangman's Hill. In the confusion of the fight, a company of the 1/9th Gurkha Rifles took a track avoiding point 236 and captured point 435, while the assault on point 236 by the 1/6th Rajputana Rifles was repelled.

By the end of 17 March, the Gurkhas held Hangman's Hill (point 435), 250 yards (230 m) from the monastery, in battalion strength (although their lines of supply were compromised by the German positions at point 236 and in the northern part of the town), and whilst the town was still fiercely defended, New Zealand units and armour had gotten through the bottleneck and captured the station. However, the Germans were still able to reinforce their troops in the town and were proving adept at slipping snipers back into parts of the town that had supposedly been cleared.



3 Fallschirmjager with a mortar or “granatwerfer” in the Cassino area.

 

19 March was planned for the decisive blow in the town and on the monastery, including a surprise attack by tanks of the 20th Armoured Regiment working their way along an old logging road (the "Cavendish Road") from Caira to Albaneta Farm (which had been prepared by engineer units under the cover of darkness) and from there towards the abbey. However, a surprise and fiercely pressed counter-attack from the monastery on Castle Hill by the German 1st Parachute Division completely disrupted any possibility of an assault on the monastery from the Castle and Hangman's Hill, while the tanks, lacking infantry support, were all knocked out by mid-afternoon.

In the town, the attackers made little progress, and overall the initiative was passing to the Germans, whose positions close to Castle Hill, which was the gateway to the position on Monastery Hill, crippled any prospects of early success.

On this day Fallschirmjager Obergefreiter Hans Bengelsdorf got wounded for the first time and was awarded the Wounded Badge in Black at 14 April 1944 in a hospital in Koningsfeld.

Fallschirmjager taken POW in March 1944 in the Cassino area.


After he was released from the hospital and was medically fit he returned to his old unit and old Kompanie.

The 1. Fallschirmjager Division fought during the second half of August at Pesaro, Cattolica and south of Rimini with the task to hold the British troop out of the Po valley.

On 1 Oktober of the same year he was awarded the EK 1 signed by Generalleutnant Heidrich (stamp) the commander of the 1. Fallschirmjager Division.

Good light used condition, folded.

The black & white photo’s are not part of this product, are shown here for reference only and were taken from the web.

code: B23228