This letter had the effect of a bombshell in General Clark's headquarters because everyone knew that he had no equal in shaking people up.
On January 30, the American attack finally reached the heights northwest of Cassino. Colonel Van Eck's 7th chasseurs d'Afrique (tanks-destroyers), having disbanded two squadrons, had moreover taken Mount Marino, thus opening the road to Terelle.
And on February 1, at daybreak, for the seventh time, the general assault was given. The western spur of 862, hill 771, hill 700 are simultaneously attacked and, this time, taken. Two hours later, it was the turn of 915, then 875.
The entire Belvedere and Casale Abate were in French hands.
On February 5, 1944, the position of the Belvedere was definitively established:it cost 50% of the elements engaged in the regiment of Tunisian skirmishers alone. War-correspondent Pierre Ichac visits the bloody site, defeated at Hill 862, by Monsabert's division.
Disturbing and desolate landscape of the plain of Sant'Elia. Here, olive woods, calm, but full of batteries. There, houses that seem abandoned, with their gaping roof; but the smallest shed shelters a half-track or a jeep whose radio antenna is lost in the branches. Further on, in the bare plain, there is emptiness. There are only passers-by at night, only isolated cars hurrying through the mud. It is not one of the least paradoxes of war that these dead spots dotting the battle zone, so perfectly empty that the enemy himself, with a little audacity, would walk there for a long time, l weapon at the ramp, before meeting a living soul there.