Timeline Thursday 18 May 1944

Events on Thursday 18 May 1944 3

• 1944 Battle of Monte Cassino Four assaults break the Gustav Line Allied forces made four major assaults on the German defensive position anchored on Monte Cassino. The Allied bombing of the historic abbey in February remains controversial. Polish troops finally raised their flag over the ruins on 18 May.
• 1944 Deportation of the Crimean Tatars Soviet exile of an entire people The NKVD deported the whole Crimean Tatar population of around 190,000 people to Uzbekistan and other regions within three days. A large share died from disease and starvation in the first years of exile. Crimean Tatars call the event Sürgünlik.
• 1944 – 2001 W. G. Sebald (1944-2001) Died 14 December 2001, aged 57 Sebald was a German writer, long resident in England, whose genre-blurring books such as The Rings of Saturn and Austerlitz mixed travelogue, memoir and history around themes of memory and the Holocaust. He was often named as a future Nobel contender. He died in a car crash in Norfolk.