Hold on to Peace - Image courtesy Ira Mitchell-Kirk

Hold on to Peace - Image courtesy Ira Mitchell-Kirk

Saturday 13 March 2010

Today in Rome

Approximately 4000 people have been evacuated during the removal of an undetonated 250kg bomb lying undiscovered near the railway lines for 66 years. How unstable will that be?

The Abbey on Montecassino remains to this day the one building that has taken the biggest tonnage of bombs in the history of all wars.

When the town of Cassino was bombed, an area of approximately 400 x 1400 square metres received an estimated 1000 tons of bombing. Historians have calculated that for every German defender in the town, 4 tons of explosive was used.

A beautiful town was reduced to rubble, tanks could no longer use the roads to proceed up the Liri Valley, and the town was still not secured by the Allies.

The legacy? Poverty, hunger, malaria thriving in the water-filled bomb craters, and a town rebuilt with post-war apartment blocks. In this once thriving, beautiful place only one stone building remains.

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