the voyage to Rome. Then, an Allied radio broadcast accused troops of the Hermann Göring Division of looting the abbey. Given Göring's reputation as a plunderer of Europe's art treasures, the suspicion was reasonable. Also, Schlegel had not informed his commander, Generalleutenant Paul Conrath, of the operation and the colonel's unauthorised use of military assets (vehicles and men) on a non-military matter, without direct relation to the war effort, could have resulted in his court martial and even execution. A detachment of Waffen-SS Feldgendarmerie (field police) was dispatched to the abbey with the intention of arresting the "looters", and had to be persuaded by the monks that Schlegel was helping them - not robbing them. After Schlegel admitted to General Conrath he was using 20 trucks for purposes unrelated to advancing the war and explained why, Conrath consented to the operation. Now with the full backing of Conrath, the remaining treasures were transported to safety (including the sacred relic of Saint Benedict). In gratitude, the monks of Monte Cassino held a special mass and awarded Julius Schlegel an illuminated scroll certificate in Latin which reads: Conrath is described by a rather idiosyncratic translation of "Leader of a tank division" into Latin as Dux ferreae legionis. In July 1944, Lieutenant Colonel Schlegel was wounded in an air raid in the Bologna region, losing one foot, and thus ending his participation in the conflict. Nevertheless, he was arrested by the Allies after the war on charges of looting, and held in prison for over seven months before the personal intervention of British Field Marshal Harold Alexander. By saving the art treasures and the library as well as the construction plans, the reconstruction of the destroyed monastery was later possible. Schlegel was found by Pope Pius XII in the early 1950s and invited to a special audience. There is also a memorial plaque dedicated to the Austrian at Pokornygasse 5 in Vienna, and a memorial not far from it in Wertheimstein Park in the Vienna district of Oberdöbling on a natural slope towards the Danube Canal. Further fighting in Italy As the Allies kept pushing against the mountainous defences of the Gustav Line, the HG left the reserve and moved south against the British 8th Army on the Garigliano River. On 22 January 1944, the US Army landed at Anzio and Nettuno, north of the Gustav Line's western end, taking the Germans completely