I had put up my pup tent against a bank surrounding a field. I lay in bed and wondered if the helmsman’s face was still showing white through the wheel house and where was that man Edgington? Sometimes known as Edge-Ying-Tong (the last two words were to become a song that came third in the Hit Parade of the late 1950s).
Edgington was even now speeding through the night in a traffic jam as the whole battery were homing in on our position, and they would be with us in dribs and drabs throughout the night. I listened and I could hear the first dribs arriving, followed by the drabs.
“Where’s the cookhouse?” could be heard.
Food! This bloody army were food mad!
A posh voice: “The cwook house is over theaire and there’ll be a hot meal in halwf an hour.” Now I’d already had my dinner, my watch said 11.50, it was very late, I was tired, warm and comfortable and I wasn’t hungry…nevertheless at 12.30 am I find myself in the queue. Ahead of me is another stomach on legs, Kidgell! The nearer he got to the serving table the more silent and tense he became. When there was only one man to go, Kidgell would go dead silent, sweat would appear on his brow, you could see him repeatedly swallowing the excess of saliva that was mounting in his mouth and nearly drowning him, then!…It was his turn! There was nothing twix him and the bubbling, steaming food containers, his trembling hands would hold out his dixies, he would crouch forward like a sprinter in the blocks, his eyes would extend from his head like organ stops. The moment the last drop of gravy from the cook’s spoon had finally fallen into his tin, Kidgell would Start eating immediately as he walked to a spot to sit down. By the time he got there he’d finished the main course and was into the duff. This gone he would gallop to the back of the queue hoping to get ‘seconds’.
If he thought he was going to be recognised, he would put his tin hat on and keep his head well down to hide his face. What gave him away was his dribbling, drooling and shaking hand when he got near the grub; he earned his title, ‘the famine’.
“I reckon,” said our cook, “if he got to a field of wheat first, the locusts wouldn’t stand a bloody chance.”
Another Day at San Marco
“Gandhi’s legs,” Edgington reads aloud from a soggy Daily Mirror rapidly becoming an antique.
“What about Gandhi’s legs,” I said.
Out here in Italy there had been no news of Gandhi’s legs since we landed.
“It says here,” Edgington continues, “Gandhi’s legs are the thinnest political legs in the world.”
“Rubbish,” I said. “My mother has the thinnest in the world. She has legs like old pipe-cleaners.”
“Ah but she has non-political thin legs, we’re talking about political thin legs.”
“My mother voted Labour—she walked to the polling booth. Of course her legs are political.”
Fuller sticks his head in our tent.
“We’re moving.”
“Moving?” I said, “I can’t feel a thing.”
“There’s not enough mud here,” chuckled Fuller. “The Major is reccying for a quagmire.”
“When?” said Edgington mournfully.
“Tomorrow. 0600.”
“Why do wars always have to be so bloody early—it’s always 0400, 0500—0500!! What’s wrong with 11.30? Eh? Who feels like fighting at bloody dawn? A man is much braver at 11.30!”
I left him raving in his damp tent as I went to man the No. 22 wireless set that kept us in contact with RHQ. It was 20.30. I went to relieve Ernie Hart, who was dutifully asleep on his set with headphones on. With true camaraderie I left him there and went back to bed. I am awakened at midnight, by an enraged Hart.
“Look at the time—you were supposed to relieve me at half-past eight!”
“I did but you was a-kip—wasn’t you? I didn’t have the heart to wake you.”
The staccato rat-a-plan of rain drops on the canvas roof as the deluge started.
“Do I have to get up?”
“Yes, you bloody well do—it’s 11.20—you’ve got five minutes to do—”
Bugger. I sat at the set for five minutes. I called RHQ to test the signals.
“Hello, Dog Easy Fox—Dog Easy Fox—Able Baker Charley calling—over,”
“Hello Able Baker Charley Dog Easy Fox—answering. Hearing you strength nine-er, strength nine-er—over.”
“OK, Dog Easy Fox—over and out.”
I twiddle the dial till I get AFN Naples. It’s Artie Shaw!! He’s playing ‘The Blues’. He is really a more elegant player than Goodman though Goodman was nearer to real Jazz. Birch—bleary-eyed, coughing, comes to relieve me.
“You’re five minutes late,” I said in Lance-Bombardier voice.
“Sorry, Bomb. I couldn’t find me boots.”
I climb out the truck, he puts on the headphones. He listens. “This isn’t RHQ,” he says.
“Yes it is,” I said. “If you wait till the end of the tune you’ll hear the Lt.-Colonel Scorsbie announce the next dance.”
“Look, Bomb,” he says patiently, “why not help shorten the war, hand in your stripe?”
“I can’t, it covers a hole in my sleeve.” As I walk back in drenching rain, I see a red glow in the Northern Sky—it gets brighter and brighter, then darkness followed by a low rumbling of a distant explosion. Some poor swine might have been killed in that, I thought, and then I thought, fuck ‘im, and went to bed. My blankets are damp and cold. I don’t know how we didn’t all die of pulmonary ailments, perhaps I was dead—perhaps we were all dead, and this was hell. Of course! That’s it! We’re all dead! I shout into the night, “Good news, we’re all dead.”
I’d asked my father for Players—but no! I get Passing Clouds! Why? Because he’s a snob— at his officers’ mess he had made it clear that he would never drink inferior wine, smoke inferior tobacco—the reason was he was skint. Gunner White thought their flat Turkish shape was due to pressure in transit, and proceeded to roll them until they were round. I am smoking in the dark, the roar of the rain wonderful! It drowns out all sounds except a ghastly yawn from Edgington’s tent.
“Harry—that you?”
“Just a minute, I’m putting my jaw back.”
“You still awake?”
“Just.”
“I wonder what it’s like in London now.”
“Don’t make me homesick.”
“I bet all the night clubs are open…some of the big bands will be still playing. Ambrose, Lew Stone, all that lot, they go till three in the morning…you ever been to a night club?”
There’s no reply—he’s unconscious, I must hurry and catch him up.
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 1943
Very cold. “We must be high up,” Edgington is announcing.
“Why must we be high?” I enquire, because we were sitting down.
“The rations, that’s why.”
“What about the Russians?”
“Rations! You silly Gunner, rations. Haven’t you noticed that in addition to our ration we now get little round vitamin pills?”
“I thought they were concentrated Plum Puddings to save shipping space.”
For the millionth time we are in the back of a lorry lumbering through a muddy cold landscape, winter black trees line our route like dying sentinels. I trace our position as we progress. The town we are passing through is Teano! I tell Edgington, “This is where Garibaldi invented spotted biscuits and reunited Italy for King Emanuel the umpteenth.”
“I am thrilled,” says Edgington.
“It was Garibaldi that caused the Bourbons to flee over the Rocky Alps.”
“Ah, thereby hangs the phrase, a Bourbon on the Rocks.”
Groans. We have halted. “Look what I’ve rescued.” Vic Nash has come to the tailboard of our lorry. He holds a small wriggling black puppy; this was to be christened Teano, and was to become part of the Battery. We stroked him, petted him, gave him a bit of cheese and handed him back.
“Hide him from Driver Kidgell, won’t you?” I said.
&
nbsp; “Why?”
“Because he’ll eat him.”
Vic Nash giggled, the pup is furiously licking his face, so it can’t have long to live.
“Get mounted,” calls an important voice from up front.
“Get stuffed,” comes the reply.
We move off in fits and starts, the lorry starts, we have fits. Climbing continuously on a secondary road between Teano and Rocamanfina about 1000 feet up. We sing a ditty oft sung in boring circumstances:
The good old Duke of York
He had ten thousand men
He marched them up to the top of the hill
And he marched them down again.
When they were up they were up
And when they were down they were down
And when they were only half way up
They were Buggered!
Good evening Friendssssss! Ching!
We are on a mountain road with a gradient of one in four. We halt. “Dismount!” We climb out. On the right side of the road is a Church, semi-Gothic style. Just behind it is the Vicarage. The road opposite flanks a high bank with several footpaths leading up to a cave set in a sort of browny-red sandstone.
“That’s it,” says Bombardier Fuller, riding up on his mo’ bike. “That cave; get all the Command Post stuff in there.”
We struggle and strain with all that bloody stuff we’ve carried so many times before. Edgington has developed the oriental carrying posture, balancing a battery on his head. We all copy and march Indian file up the slope chanting, ‘Sandy the wise, Sandy the strong’.
“How long is this going to last?” he says.
“With time off for good conduct by the time you’re eighty-three the future is yours.”
Lieutenant Budden hoves to. “Has anyone seen Mr Wright?”
“Yes, sir,” I said, “I saw him yesterday.”
He looks at me in despair and says, “Can’t you take anything for it, Milligan?”
Out of politeness I asked where the guns were.
“They’re in the woods somewhere.”
“Where are the woods, sir?”
“Ah! That’s another question.”
“Get the vehicles off the road and under cover.”
We walk around muttering, “The woods are full of ‘em!”
The lethal voice of Major Jenkins is penetrating the air. We drive up the slope and on to a small muddy plateau with numerous trees. We follow a small trail to the high bank. Under the trees we camouflage G truck.
“Jerry’s been shelling the area, better dig in,” says Bombardier Deans.
Dig? One thing I don’t dig is digging. I’m not the first to spot the possibilities of sleeping in the church.
I move my kit in that evening. In the aisle is a catafalque mounted on a trestle. The catafalque is all black velvet with a great black cloth to cover the whole thing. What the hell! It looks great inside, so I make my bed in it. If I get killed in the night, I’m all ready. Great fun, I am asleep in my catafalque, Bombardier Trew comes in to wake me up for my spell of duty. He is unaware of my macabre resting place. Gradually I arise from my box with the black velvet cover over my head. I let out a terrible howl and Bombardier Trew screams ‘ ‘Ghosts’ and runs for his bloody life, and I find him gibbering in the Command Post to Lt. Budden.
An OP has been established on Monte Croce. Not again! Rain!!! Where does the stuff come from??? There’s to be a big attack on Monte Camino, it’s the 201 Guards Brigade to do the dirty work. I can’t lie here, I must do something to help the war effort. I do. I go to the cookhouse for dinner. What’s this I hear? That hungry bugger Kidgell, he’s been having one dinner here, then running across to the American Battery next to us and scrounging another. He must have hollow legs.
“The attack goes in tomorrow night,” so speaks Major Jenkins, who for once has deemed to tell us what’s happening. I am on Command Post duty up till 11.30. Mr Wright is duty officer. In between firing he reads the Daily Express. At 1100 hours the thing called Edgington comes in, it carries a mug ahead of it.
“Good news,” he says, he looks very merry, he should, there’s been a rum ration and he’s had his and a little more. “I’ve got yours here.” He poured a measure into my mug.
“A Merry Christmas to you all,” I said.
He empties a pocket full of chestnuts, soon they are roasting on our fire, and splitting open with a little bang. They taste delicious!!
“Alf Fildes is feeling groggy,” he tells us. “He’s got a sore throat so has gone to bed in the back of his truck.”
There is nothing like a 15-cwt truck for a sore throat. Vic Nash is coming on duty. “Oh my poor guts,” he says.
“He’s got the shits! Keep away,” we all say and cringe in the corner.
The guns report difficulty with the platforms, mud is making it increasingly difficult; each time they fire, the gun slithers in a circle. We can hear the swearing from the Command Post. But it’s imperative they keep going as the attack is about to go in, they need help up there, so the back-breaking work of manhandling the guns back on target continues.
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 1943
ALF FILDES’ DIARY:
Typical Sunday morning, people going to church opposite. Plenty of firing last night, and church has lost a few windows. After breakfast a dozen ME’s came over and made trouble but left us alone, they made for the main road.
Before the first mass we have to hide our beds—and make ourselves scarce.
I am walking to the cookhouse through a conglomerate of American foxholes and guns. The Yanks sound their air-raid alarm. It’s noisier than the raid. Americans start running in all directions. I didn’t. It was highly unlikely the planes could spot us in this heavily wooded position. They roar over the top of us, and later we heard machine-gunning and bombing somewhere down the Rocamanfina Road. Along with Edgington we explore the Church Annexe and find a piano in the vestry. Soon Italians in Church can hear distant Cole Porter tunes.
A Priest appears, he is not hostile, and stays to listen, I think his name was Father Alborghetti. He too took over the piano and then sang arias from La Boheme, Tosca, in a quivery ecclesiastical voice. We’re all having fun! “Aren’t you glad we’ve liberated you?” I said to the priest.
I do an all-night stint in the Command Post in promise of all day off. It’s bloody cold, and in between Fire orders we all crouch over the brazier. The six o’clock news from the BBC is good. Kiev in Russian hands after a terrific advance. I’m so broke I could do with an advance myself. We are playing pontoon for matchsticks. Rumour that a Gunners’ rest camp has been established somewhere on the Sorrento peninsula, is it true? Guns continue to fire through the night. The fight for Monte Camino continues, it’s a bloody affair. I write some letters home.
Nov. 9, 1943
Dear Dad,
Nothing much to report except World War 2. Is it still going on where you are? It’s winter here, lots of mud, and very cold especially in the mornings, so the balaclava and gloves you sent are very useful. Writing this in a cave, so we haven’t come far from Neanderthal man, have we? There’s always rumours of ‘going home’, one look at this mob and you’d realise we’re all going home. Thanks for the three Life magazines, one reads and re-reads them over and over again and they are usually passed through gunner in the Battery. I’m desperately trying to think of any news, and there isn’t any. Read Beachcomber in the Express, he explains it all. I’m here and you’re there, and every day is much the same as the previous. The conversations are food, sex, and after the war, sometimes its war, food and after the sex. I’ll have to close as we’re about to start sending deliveries of steel to the gentlemen of the Third Reich.
Love to all
Your Loving Son Terry
PS: The Major tells us we must win the war because we’re British.
Capt. Leo Milligan walking home to Orchard Way, Wood-hatch, Reigate, Surrey, 1942-3, while second-in-charge of RAOC depot, Reigate. Now we all know.
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 1943
What’s this? Edgington has made an incredible find. A free-range harmonium! It’s in the Vicarage and the priest says we can use it, so the morning is spent playing jazz; as a mark of respect I play my trumpet muted, Alf plays guitar and the priest and his lady cleaner sit and listen a bit amazed, jazz under Mussolini had been banned as decadent; well, the music wasn’t, but we certainly were. It was an unusual morning, the priest giving us an unexpected blessing before we departed.
“What was he doing then?” said Edgington.
I explained. “It’s a blessing.”
“What good does it do?” he said.
“Well, it’s supposed to be a solemn occasion on which he, as a minister, fortifies your soul by sprinkling holy water over you.”
“It only made me bloody wet,” said Edgington.
Grim news of the fighting on Monte Camino, the Guards are attacking but Jerry has reinforced his position with 1st/104 Panzer Grenadiers, and fighting is raging all over the peak.
Sgt. J. Wilson, Bdr. Sainsbury and gun-crew filling in football coupons, Monte Santa Maria, apple orchard position, November 17 1943.
NOVEMBER 10, 1943
MY DIARY:
MUCH THE SAME. BAD WEATHER. WENT INTO THE VILLAGE OF TERRA CORPO, IT’S ALMOST IN RUINS. WE ARE TRYING TO GET A PHOTO TAKEN OF OURSELVES BY AN ‘ITI’ PHOTOGRAPHER, HE SAYS ‘DOMANI’ (TOMORROW). HE SAYS THAT EVERY DAY, TOMORROW TAKES A LONG TIME TO ARRIVE IN ITALY. WEATHER RAIN, SLEET, WINDY.
Just up the road before the village are a few houses, one is occupied by RHQ. It is owned by a Doctor Fabrizzi, who was in the Abyssinian Campaign. We went there to play some music for the RHQ Signallers (who had invited us). It was a cosy large front room, nicely furnished, with a piano. We played some jazz, the Doctor, who looked like Cesar Romero, showed us photographs from the Abyssinian War, and a ghastly collection they were; they showed atrocities committed on Italian soldiers, which mostly meant emasculating them with a knife and letting them bleed to death. A Scandal! the wife of the Iti doctor fancies our MO, Dr Bentley (will he end up with his photo in the album?), and somehow they get down to Naples and spend a naughty weekend there. A touch of the Ernest Hemingways!