Despite having some of the trappings of a history book, Winter at Monte Cassino is solely a work of imagination. It is constructed around an utterly fictitious memoir, written by a fictitious U.S. Army lieutenant, and then edited half a century later by an equally fictitious editor. Although it seeks to be respectful of the actual events around which its imagined happenings revolve, and at no time to distort their most important characteristics, it should not be viewed as a reliable chronicle of those events in even a populist, far less an academic form. Readers familiar with the Italian campaign will recognize that liberties have been taken with the dates of some of these events, and with the geographical features of that part of Italy in which they occurred. In the latter case, this is particularly so regarding the novel’s description of the south end of the Liri Valley and its river structure. Informed readers may question the ease with which the novel’s characters are permitted to move between these geographical points, and the honest answer is that in reality they could not have. But then historical reality and dramatic convention rarely make wholly comfortable bedfellows, and in the case of this work it is the reality that has compromised. That fact alone is sufficient to make this an example of fiction-writing and not of history-writing.
Nor does Winter at Monte Cassino seek to make any learned contribution to our biographical understanding of the historical personages who appear in its pages. Novelists are permitted the luxury of speculatively delving into the minds of men and women in a fashion with which no real historian should be comfortable. Such delving however in turn disqualifies their writing as being historically reliable. Again though, even where it has occurred here, no pejorative distortion of any historical person’s behavior or attitude has been intentionally engaged in. In particular, to the extent any of them have been made to say or do things of a controversial nature, the author has confined their words to things they were heard to have said or wrote, and to actions they were witnessed by others to have taken.
The novel also includes amongst its characters not just the well known military personages involved in the Italian Campaign, but also a number of other correspondents, news reporters, and soldiers who at the time the events of the novel took place were far from household names. Some of them later wrote about their experiences in Italy too, but not of course within the context of the events this novel recounts. In spite of that, some of them have been given fictitious significance here however, as to varying extents all of them influenced the heroine’s decision to answer the call to adventure Monte Cassino Abbey’s safety came to represent in her life.
All this being said however, the boundary between where this work’s factual basis ends and its authorial imagination takes over, is not intended to be completely clear to anyone unfamiliar with this period of history. Indeed it even seeks to provoke those who think they are familiar, to question where the author proposes that boundary actually lays. But then, is it the right and proper province for even ‘real’ historians to decide where ‘what did happen’ ends, and ‘what absolutely couldn’t possibly have’ begins? This author suspects it is not, and in some respects this novel is an attempt to demonstrate that.
In researching the factual background to this work the author has consulted many histories and biographies that deal with it in whole or part, and many ‘real’ memoirs written by its military witnesses. Should the reader be interested in pursuing that background further, he or she is encouraged to read the following, works, all of which the author found thought-provoking, if not in every case convincing:
Bloch, Herbert. The Bombardment of Monte Cassino (February 14-16, 1944). Montecassino, 1979
Blumenson, M. Bloody River: The Real Tragedy of the Rapido. Texas A&M University Press: College Station, 1998
Blumenson, M. Mark Clark. Congdon & Weed: New York, 1984
Clark, Lloyd. Anzio: Italy and the Battle for Rome – 1944. Headline Publishing: London, 2006
Clark, Mark W. Calculated Risk. Enigma Books: New York, 2007
D’Este, Carlo. Fatal Decision: Anzio and the Battle for Rome. Harper Perennial: New York, 1992
Ellis, John. Cassino: The Hollow Victory. Aurum Press: London, 1984
Hapgood, David and Richardson, David. Monte Cassino. Congdon & Weed: New York, 1984
Gooderson, Ian. A Hard Way to Make a War: the Italian Campaign in the Second World War. Conway: London, 2008
Graham, Dominick & Bidwell, Shelford. Tug of War: The Battle for Italy 1943-45. St. Martin’s Press: New York, 1986
Parker, Mathew. Monte Cassino: The Story of the Hardest Fought Battle of World War Two. Hodder Headline: London, 2003
Senger und Etterlin, Frido Von. Neither Fear nor Hope. George Malcolm (trans.) Presidio: Novato, 1989
Truscott, Lucian K. Command Missions. Dutton: New York, 1954
Trevelyan, Raleigh. Rome ‘44: The Battle for the Eternal City. Easton Press: Norwalk Connecticut, 1981
The author also consulted the primary and secondary reminiscences of a number of civilian correspondents who covered the Italian Campaign. Some of the experiences that their works recount are intentionally made to resonate within the pages of this novel. To the extent any of these ‘resonances’ cross the boundary into unwelcome literary plundering, the author apologizes to those correspondents or their families without qualification, and will, upon authorized request, delete them. These works are:
Bourke-White, Margaret. They Called It “Purple Heart Valley”: A Combat Chronicle of the War in Italy. Simon and Schuster: New York, 1944.
Kershaw, Alex. Blood and Champagne: The Life and Times of Robert Capa. Macmillan Pan: Oxford, 2003
Mauldin, Bill. Bill Mauldin’s Army. Norton: New York, 2000
Pyle, Ernie. Brave Men. Henry Holt: New York, 1944
Sevareid, Eric. Not So Wild a Dream. Atheneum: New York 1976
Sorel, Nancy Caldwell. The Women Who Wrote the War. Arcade Publishing: New York, 1999
Whicker, Alan. Whicker’s War. Harper Collins: New York, 2009
Finally, and regardless of his protestation that this is not a work of history-writing, the author must probably also admit his hope that should the reader chose not to consult any of the above histories or reminiscences, by reading this novel he or she will still understand a lot more about what actually happened at Monte Cassino in February 1944 than had they read nothing at all.