The road that crosses the plain is called Rasta. The word amazes visitors. It simply means "road" in Hindustani.
Road -Rasta - Road, say the signs which, at the international crossroads of Cassino, must know how to speak all languages. Later, they will even speak Polish. But the word was so complicated that I forgot it.
The plain becomes marshy. The road will bump into a line of trees, at the foot of a small red house. It is cut there by a torrent whose furious water is heading towards Cassino. Is it the Rapido?
There is a man there, the only one on the plain. He emerges from a shelter covered in branches:
No, my... captain:it's the road.
The Germans, downstream, blocked the course of the Rapido and, in this strange country, the roads became rivers and the overflowing rivers, lakes. Framed by two high sprays of water, the van plunges into the torrent. The bed is hard, uneven, upset by shells, and there is a constant risk of falling into an invisible ditch. We are moving straight ahead.
Between two rows of dead olive trees, with jagged arms, we cross an immense swamp. It is a kind of synthesis of the aftermath of disasters. As far as the eye can see under the branches, stretch flooded fields from which emerge boxes of ammunition, abandoned equipment stirred up by the eddy of our passage.
Corpses of drowned mules shake their heads. Leafy twigs sway, half detached from the trees. This kind of dizziness seems to reach even the huge abandoned Shermans that obstruct our passage, monstrous shells lying on their sides, the turret open, a muddy caterpillar emerging from the swamp. The place is grim. We do not see the slightest human silhouette. We don't know where we're going.
Then the spell ends. The wheels of the Dodge come out of the water, the trees disappear. We have in front of us, close to touching them, the foothills of Monte Cassino. At their base, on the outskirts of the town of Cassino, a pounding of mortar fire raises rows of geysers of gray smoke. It looks like ostrich feathers stuck in the plain. The small castle della Rocca is standing on its peak, and its keep split in two remains the irreducible outpost of the German paratroopers.