The bombardment of Monte Cassino began promptly at 9:25 a.m. on the morning of 15 February 1944. According to British General Henry Maitland Wilson, ‘142 flying fortresses dropped 287 tons of demolition bombs of 500 pounds and 66 and a half tons of incendiary bombs of 100 pounds, they were flooded by 47 B-25 and 40 B-26 which launched 100 tons of high explosive bombs.’ American General Mark W. Clark, tallied an even greater number of 255 Allied bombers (including B-17 ‘fortresses’), which dropped 576 tons of explosives. Taking shelter in various parts of the abbey, many perished or were injured during the waves of attack. The following day, while the bombing continued from 150 aircraft, a group of approximately 40 souls (children, sick and wounded) surfaced from beneath the rubble. Despite repeated artillery fire, they slowly made their way down the venerable mountain along a mule path to a Red Cross station. Led by their abbot bearing a seventeenth-century crucifix, the procession of survivors ‘took the way of the hills towards Monte Cairo and descended into the valley somewhere near Piedimonte’. Fearing for the abbot's safety, the Germans sent an ambulance to escort him first to their headquarters at Castel Massimo, before eventually transporting him to Sant’Anselmo in Rome the following day.