“Shall I come up and help?” said Fildes.
No, I need no help, I am the complete wireless technician. I give another Tarzan call to verify it.
A wet officer from 17 Battery appears at the bottom of the tree. He explains to Fildes that he is to pass on a shoot for Major Jenkins. Fildes explains that this is not possible until the aerial is up. The officer can hear swearing issuing from the tree behind him because Milligan has ripped the knee of his battle dress. It’s letting in the cold mountain air, something his London-bred knees are not accustomed to. The officer is Lieutenant Pascoe, young, slim, very refined. He could hear a very unrefined voice from behind a tree saying, “Fuck all this, if it doesn’t work this bloody time, I’m packing it in.”
I have managed to tie the aerial to the top of the tree. “Throw the antennae up, Alf.”
Using Olympic-style javelin throws, Alf manages to hit me on the chest.
“Can you tell the man up the. tree that the shoot has to go through at 1430 hours?” says Lt. Pascoe.
Fildes shouts up the message. Milligan is unaware of the officer’s presence, and replies thus:
“They’ll be fucking lucky.”
I give one more Tarzan call. On descending I was confronted by a smiling Lt. Pascoe.
“Did you leave Jane up there?” he said.
“Oh hello, sir,” I said. “We’re having trouble with the aerial.”
“Yes, I heard you having trouble.”
We immediately tried the strength of the new aerial; it’s no better. As it is a prearranged shoot with no adjustment of ranges, it goes through on morse. The target lay on the rear crest of Limata Grande.
“What’s so important about that?” I asked Lt. Pascoe.
“Nothing. It’s a registration shoot for future reference.”
With that he demands tea.
“Yes, sir,” I said and demanded cigarettes.
He gave us one each. Tea concluded, he took his leave, wandering off left towards where his transport was hidden. We hear a ‘Heloooooo’ from further down the slope. Was this the spirit of Arcadia? There, amid the greenery we see a clutch of muddy gunners in various stages of climbing. They are Bombardier Syd Price and his merry ration carriers.
“Come down here,” he calls.
“Why?”
“Because we can’t get up there.”
“If we come down there where you can’t get up from, we’ll be down there as well not being able to get back up here where we are now.”
“It’s yer bloody rations, take ‘em or we’ll eat ‘em here.”
A desperate situation. Alf and I slither down the hillside. Rations are rations and we’ll do anything to get them. Along with them we find “Two bloody great batteries for the wireless.” We manage to get the rations up, but the weight of the batteries is too much, so we leave the things on the mountain. Syd Price puffs his pipe as he and his ‘porters’ slither backwards down the mountain.
“When are we going to be relieved?” I asked as a parting question.
“Use a tree,” he calls.
We are alone again in our little heaven in the clouds. A small group of silent Infantry men are leaving their position. They pass us in silence. We’ve had a belly full of wireless.
“Let’s pack it in,” I said, “I feel a bit feverish.” I bed down and Fildes prepares an evening meal. I had fallen asleep before he served it.
Drill instructor at the low port.
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 1943
ALF FILDES’ DIARY:
Still up here on the hill but rather enjoying it.
MY DIARY:
FEEL BETTER THIS MORNING. COLOSSAL DOWNPOUR OF RAIN. EVERYTHING DAMP AND SOGGY, ESPECIALLY ME.
I awoke to the roar of rain on the canvas roof. Six o’clock! What’s the matter with me? It’s this Army habit of ‘early’, it was catching and now I had been affected. It will take years of post-war training to get back to normal. I make the morning tea and wake Fildes, who is lying on his back sucking air in through his open mouth.
He opens his bloodshot eyes, for ten seconds the brain doesn’t register; I hold up his chipped brown mug with the steaming tea, a soppy grin spreads across his face and a clutching hand takes the tea.
“Oh, good luck,” he says, sips it, and screams as he burns his tongue.
“So what’ll we do today?” he said.
“Nothing.”
“That’s all we’ve bloody well done since we’ve been here.”
“Yes, it’s a serial.”
We roll up the back flap of the truck and sit looking out at the rain-drenched mountainside, which gradually disappears into the mist of the downpour.
“I haven’t heard a sound this morning,” said Fildes. He peers round the back of the truck. He is checking his patent water catchment. This is a hole with a piece of canvas placed in it.
“It’s full,” he said.
It seemed lunatic to be catching water in weather like this but we need it to wash in, saving our Jerry can of clean water for drinking. Silently, a dripping soldier appears.
“17 Battery,” he announced. “We’ve come to relieve you.” He pointed down the mountainside to his truck on its side. “We can’t get it up any further,” he said.
“Did you put chains on?”
“No, its bad enough wearing battle dress.”
“The truck.”
“We had everything on, it’s took us two hours to get that far.”
He pointed to the truck on its side.
“Look, it’s impossible for us to get our truck down, and you can’t get up, so it’s pointless you staying here.” He nods agreement.
Poor bugger collects his belongings from his truck and disappears down the hill with the driver.
That night, out of sheer boredom I read my Army paybook.
“Interesting?” says Fildes.
“Incredible, says I was born in a tree.”
We off with the light, and lie back smoking in the dark. The rain continues; fancy, right now Churchill will be sipping brandy and smoking a cigar.
NOVEMBER 26, 1943
It was like a spring morning. “I don’t believe it,” said Fildes. “The sun.” It changed everything, colours once brown were now green, green, green. Today I would shave. Today I would organise my life anew. No more slobbed in bed all day, today I would do things. What those things were I didn’t yet know, but it would be ‘things’, the first ‘thing’ would be breakfast. I build a fire and soon make the bacon sizzle. The smell is wafting through the morning air. A string of mules accompanied by Cypriot attendants come from the left and pass slowly by. They are a little amused seeing us in nothing but socks, boots and shirts. Fildes is shaving.
“Marvellous what the sun will do,” he says.
He whistles in between strokes of the blade. I will do the shave ‘thing’ after the breakfast ‘thing’.
“After this I’m going to have a look over the hill ‘thing’ at Jerry’s positions,” I declared.
“I’m beginning to wonder how long we’ll be up here,” said Fildes. “It’s been four days now, we were only supposed to be here for twenty-four hours.”
Someone in the valley below is trying to attract our attention with a mirror.
“I wonder what they want.”
“We better switch on the set,” said Fildes.
We get through and the message is “Come in. Position being closed down.” We take our time. I stroll to the top of the mountain ridge for a last look, a marvellous view meets the eye, 1,000 feet below us is the great Garigliano plain, with the snow-mottled Aurunci Mountains on the far side of the river. To the left is the Gulf of Gaeta. In the distance at the curling point of the bay is Gaeta itself. Even as I watch, a great plume from an explosion starts skywards, Jerry carrying out demolitions. Why can’t I get a fun job like that? The last of the infantry are leaving their foxholes, and wearily making their way back down the mountain.
“The line’s moved forward,” say
s a tired-looking Corporal in answer to my question.
“You never see many of ‘em smiling or laughing,” reflected Fildes.
“They’ve got bugger all to laugh at. I mean what do you say, “Cheer up, Charlie, we’re being mortared’, or ‘Cor, talk about a laugh, we were shelled all night and ten of us was killed.””
Boooommmmm. Another explosion in Gaeta.
“There won’t be much of the bloody place left,” said Fildes.
Boooommmm!
“Christ, they’ve got it in for that place.”
“Wish we had some binoculars,” said Fildes.
“Can’t you hear without them?”
Oh what a lovely sight! Spitfires with American markings, so there was something of ours that they were using, usually it was us borrowing from them; they fly in threes, at about 10,000 feet, then suddenly go into a dive towards the foothills across the Garigliano; soon they are shrouded in flack. We hear the Spits’ cannons going, then they shoot straight up from the dive, alternately turning left and right from their target, then coming in for a second run. They repeat this three times then turn away and race back for our line, climbing as they do. We just sit and watch it as though we were at the Palladium, “Encoreeeee, bravoooooo.”
Fildes starts back for the truck. “Come on, Milligan, we don’t want to get stuck in the dark.”
While we are up here on this hill, there had been excitement in the valley. The officers’ mess had caught fire! We couldn’t stop laughing. Officers off duty were in bed when the conflagration started. They were seen in their pyjamas hurling buckets of water (filled by their batmen, of course), and Major ‘Looney’ Jenkins was seen to rush in and from the smoke and flame hurl his possessions to safety, where Gunner Pills (who hated him) was seen to throw them all back in again. What remained of Jenkins’ kit was a sorry incinerated mess, his appearance on parade next morning was a joy to behold; in a charred hat, smoke-blackened battle dress, and his right arm in a sling from burns, he had the gall to enter in Part 2 Orders ‘Injured in Action’. I remember I penned an ‘Ode’ to the occasion in the style of McGonagall, I didn’t preserve it but it went something like this:
Ohhhh ‘Twas in the month of November
In Nineteen Forty Three
That the officers’ mess caught fire,
Oh dearie dearie me.
And into that terrible fire
Major Jenkins did rush in
To save his precious possessions,
His wig, his teeth, his gin.
But as he threw his treasures out
Gunner Pills committed a sin,
For as fast as the Major threw them out
He threw them all back in.
On parade next morning,
Our names on the roll to check,
Major Evan Jenkins appeared
A charred and tattered wreck.
If only he had stayed inside
And been burnt to a cinder,
He’d have given us all a laugh
Much bigger than Tommy Trinder.
Whistling merrily, we pack all our gear and prepare the descent. The ground was like grease, Fildes drives down at one mile an hour, engaging four-wheel drive. I have to walk ahead and scout out the least dangerous bits, gradually the gradient became more acute. The truck starts to slide down with a gathering momentum. All I could think of saying was “Goodbye, Alf, I’ll tell the missus.” Alf doesn’t want to die. He remembers an old bus-driver’s trick. He puts the truck into reverse, and the counteraction of the wheels slows the vehicle up and it gradually comes to a halt. He looks out the cab and grins.
“Cor bloody hell, I want more money for this job.”
“That was brilliant! Brilliant, do you hear me, Fildes! I won’t let this go unnoticed…you see, by tomorrow morning you’ll be on the honours list and an extra egg for breakfast, a present from a grateful nation, god bless you, young Alf, you and your see-through underwear. England isn’t finished yet…it’ll be finished tomorrow.”
Together we gradually slither down the hill, and with perfect timing arrive back as Bombardier Deans is making coffee.
“It’s the men from the hills,” announces Nash.
“Yes, we bring good tidings, Jerry is blowing up Gaeta.”
Fildes has raced to the battery office and returned with mail.
“You always get more than anyone else, Milligan.”
“Well, you unimaginative buggers only write to one bird, I wrote to ten; you’re paying the penalty for monogamy.”
I am drinking Deans’ coffee and luxuriating in my letters. Ah! Romance! Darling I love you, Dearest, my Darling, Darling Terry, Darling, darling, darling, good luck to them all I say! Alf is depressed, one of his kids is ill with scarlet fever. Fancy being a child in this war, shortages, fathers away, might get killed, bombs, and scarlet fever on top.
“They’re only going to give forty-eight hours’ leave in Naples,” Jam-Jar comes in with the news. There is a stunned silence. “Didn’t you hear?” repeats Jam-Jar, removing his tin hat, leaving the lining on his head. “Leave…” he starts to spell it out. “L-e-a—”
“Alright, alright, we heard,” I said. “Me and my friends are in a temporary state of shock. We’re not used to such announcements.”
“Naples,” says Deans looking up ecstatically.
Fildes isn’t enthusiastic. “Forty-eight hours? That’s no bloody good, it’ll take us half a day there and hack, all we’ll get is an afternoon and a morning, what can you do in that time?”
“I should imagine, if you have the right addresses and you’re quick, you could get in ten shags, three Litres of Vino and a ton of spaghetti,” says Nash.
“Shags!” Jam-Jar has a look of horror on his face. “Don’t you know Naples is the most Syphilitic city in Italy?”
“That’s nothing, we’ll make it the most syphilitic in the world!” says Nash with a sweep of his hand.
“Perfidious Albion,” says Jam-Jar.
“Vitreous China,” I reply.
“We’re going to look a bloody scruffy lot, we need a clean change of clothing.”
“Clothing,” I mocked, “we need a complete change of body, I smell like the inside of a Guardsman’s sock.”
So that I will be nice and fresh for the journey I’ve been put on Command Post from 2.30 in the morning till 5.30! Lt. Stewart Pride is on duty. No! he’s got malaria; I peer into the officers’ billet.
“Hope you feel better soon, sir.”
He looks up from his camp bed. “Thank you, Milligan,” and so saying downs half a bottle of whisky. He looks terrible and is sweating like a pig. Whisky. They all admitted that it was this fiery Scots anaesthetic that made them try for a commission. I get my head down early. At the dreaded hour of two twenty-five and three quarters, Alf Fildes wakes me. “Spike!”
“Ahhhhharggh—Arggh!”
“Your turn.”
“Arrrggg—Arrrggg Argg-er”
He stands over me, pulls the blankets off. “You’ll go blind,” he says.
In the Command Post Lt. Budden is talking to Bombardier Edwards. The night is a quiet one. Thirty-six rounds fired of harassing fire. I doze with my back against the wall. Towards dawn I fall off the box I’m on. The phone buzzes. “Command Post,” I say.
It’s the 8th Survey Regiment, or rather one of them. They give me a message that is all gibberish, I write down the string of figures and hand them to Lt. Budden.
“This must mean something to someone,” I said.
Budden takes the message, screws his eyes up, they appear to have a left-hand thread.
“Ahhh, at last, Deans,” he handed the message to him.
Deans takes it. “Ahhh yes.” he said.
From it they start doing sums, and drawing lines with protractors and set squares. I return to the dozing, and I fall off the box a second time. This way I pass the long hours till dawn.
It’s now Saturday, November 27.
I have to alert the cooks, so I
take my mug. Gently I wake May, for he is a cook, and therefore God. I help him find his boots and assist him to his feet, all the while saying, “Ronnie May is a prince among men, for his is the truth and the light and walks in the ways of wisdom.”
“You want some fucking tea, don’t you?” he said.
“Ahhh, the master can even read the human mind.”
I stick around as he starts up the field oven by throwing a lighted match into the dripfeed tunnel. Whoooosh. It ignites.
“Food, bloody food, that’s all this lot think of, all I am is a total slave to the intestines of this lot, how can a public schoolboy like me, with a future in the jewellery business, end up stirring porridge in a world war?” he moaned merrily as he placed dixies of water and food over the fire. He unrolls the bacon from their gold-tinted compo tins, and slops them into the dixie.
I get the first breakfast of the day. ‘G’ truck is silent with the sleeping Fildes, Nash and Deans. The camp is stirring, odd guns bark around the area.
Naples! I try to make myself look respectable, I have a good shave in hot water, and wash my hair; the removal of all that dirt leaves me light-headed and I have to sit down. God knows what will happen when I have a bath, it could mean a wheelchair.
‘G’ truck with its ‘tented’ attachment and Milligan’s terrible tent.
Basenji. Did it really mean non-barking dogs? The three-tonners are warming up, we are all getting aboard, it’s eighty miles to Naples, on these roads it would appear to be two hundred. By nine o’clock we are all packed in the back, by 9.30 we are still all packed in the back. Impatient swearing is emerging from the passengers, it gradually swells into a roar and then the chorus of “Why are we waiting, waiting fucking waiting, why oh why are weee waiting.” The ting was always, under my musical direction, hit loud and hard, “TINGGGGGGG!” the word reverberated around the gun position, cries from those left behind of “Take the bastards away.”
The lorry suddenly lurches forward, a great jeering cheer comes from the passengers and it continues as we jerk and slither down the secondary road.