said beachhead lasted for nine days. The Hermann Göring Panzer Division fought in General Hube's XIV Panzer Corps beside 16th Panzer and 15th Panzergrenadier divisions, fighting hard but being progressively pushed back by the Allies under heavy naval and air firepower. The HG pulled back into Naples, where it held on tenaciously until finally giving up the devastated port on 1 October, withdrawing to positions on the Volturno-Termoli line. In this new positions, the Hermann Göring and the 15th Panzergrenadier put up a spirited defence, gaining essential time for the main defences of the Gustav Line to be prepared. This defensive network ran from Gaeta on the west coast to Ortona on the east, with its western end blocking the Liri Valley - the gateway to Rome. The retreating Germans employed highly successful delaying actions: sappers destroyed bridges, mined roads and demolished buildings while infantry, artillery and panzers fought stubborn rearguard actions. Those measures ensured the Allied advance to be slow and costly, gaining time for the arrival of winter and the stabilization of the front. With the coming of the autumn rains the bulk of the HG was then pulled back to rest in new reserve positions around Frosinone. Elements coming mostly from the Flak and Panzer-Artillery regiments remained at the front and were involved in heavy winter fighting until relieved in January 1944. Art treasures of Monte Cassino With the Allies pushing further north, the ancient Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino was facing almost certain destruction of countless priceless treasures; its strategically dominanting position as the western anchor of the Gustav Line would necessarily place the abbey amid the heavy fighting for the possession of the terrain. The commander of the division's repair workshop battalion, Oberstleutnant Julius Schlegel, approached the abbot to offer his assistance in transporting the treasures to safety in the Vatican. A cultured man endowed with great artistic feeling, in the interwar period Schlegel had run a bookshop in Vienna, his hometown. After much persuasion and with the sounds of battle drawing ever nearer, the monks agreed to Schlegel's offer, and the division's vehicles were used to secure the works of art, including paintings by Leonardo da Vinci, Titian and Raphael, and the remains of Benedict of Nursia, before the attack on Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome. In this way they escaped destruction in the Battle of Monte Cassino. Over three weeks the HG trucks made