Memoires 04 (1978) - Mussolini, His Part In My Downfall, Page 2

  “That’ll make the bastards sit up,” says Sgt. ‘Jock’ Wilson.

  “I’d have thought,” I said, “it would have the opposite effect!”

  “Oh hello, Spike,” he says. “How you bin enjoying the sea trip?”

  “Well, Sarge, Yes and No.”

  “Wot do ye mean Yes or No?”

  “Well, Yes I am, and No I’m not, but mostly No I’m not, otherwise, Yes I am.”

  He frowned. “You’ll never get promotion.”

  Wilson was a Glaswegian, he was ‘Fitba’ (Football) mad, and his family at home were hard put to it to send him all the news cuttings on the Scottish Matches*.

  ≡ Scottish Matches = ones that won’t strike.

  SEPTEMBER 24, 1943

  REGIMENTAL DIARY:

  HMS Boxer landed first party on Red Beach, Salerno Bay at 0940 hrs.

  The ship touched the beach very gently, so gently I suspect it’s not insured. “Sorry about the bump, gentlemen,” said a chuckling Navy voice on the Tannoy. A cheer arose from the lads as the landing ramp was lowered. Another salvo from Warspite. At the same time an American supply ship starts to broadcast Bing Crosby singing ‘Pennies from Heaven’ over its speakers. To our right, over the Sorrento peninsula, a German plane is flying very high; pinpoints of high bursting Ack-Ack shells trace his path. Time 9.30. Sea calm.

  The Tannoy crackles. Another coughing demo? No.

  “Hello, is it on?—Hello, Captain Sullivan speaking.”

  “Give us a song, Captain,” shouts Gunner White.

  “Attention, will all men without vehicles, repeat, without vehicles, please disembark first?”

  “I think I’m without vehicles,” I said to Harry.

  “How about you?”

  “No, I haven’t got vehicles, but they might be incubating,” says Edgington, who is, now that the sea is calm, back to his cheery self; the roses haven’t come back to his cheeks, but he tells me they’re on their way. “They have reached my knees and are due in me navel area this afternoon.”

  The Tannoy: “Will men without vehicles disembark now?”

  “We’ve been spoken for, Harry,” I said as we trundle down the gangways to the ‘Floor’ of the Boxer. We were about to set foot on Italy. The jaws of the Boxer are opened on to a sunlit beach.

  “ I could never have afforded all this travel on my own,’” I say. “It had to be the hard way, World War 2. I’ve always wanted to see Russia, I suppose that would mean World War 3.”

  I don’t believe it, we were walking down the broad ramp on to the Salerno beaches, no bullets! no shells! and I didn’t even get my feet wet, as I leave my first footprint in the sand. I shout loudly “TAXI!”, and point in the direction it’s coming from. “The woods are full of them,” I add.

  We move in a milling throng on to the beach. I start the sheep bleating and soon we are all at it, much to the amusement of the seamen watching from top deck. The scenery by L/Bdr. Milligan: the beaches are a mixture of volcanic ash and sand, the colour of milky coffee, it stretches left and right as far as the eye can see. Strewn along the beaches is the debris of a battle that had raged here; an occasional German long-range shell explodes in the bay. There are no hits. The beaches vary from twenty to thirty yards deep. Back from this is a mixture of pines, scrub, walnut trees and sand hillocks mounted with Tuffa grass. Bulldozers have made clearways flanked by white ribbons denoting them mine-free. There is activity the length and breadth of the shores. Great ammo dumps are, as we watch, getting higher and bigger. Just inland, Spitfires are refuelling and about to take off from a makeshift airstrip. American Aero-Cobras are revving their engines, turning into the wind and taking off in the direction of Naples.

  We congregated by the sand hillocks, dumped our small kit and started to explore the area. Hard by was an American Lightning plane that had crash-landed half in the sea; a glimpse inside showed a blood-saturated cockpit. “He must be very anaemic by now,” said Sherwood. There are slit trenches everywhere, water bottles, helmets, empty ammo boxes, and spent-cartridge cases by the hundreds.

  “Must have been a hot spot,” said Bdr. Fuller.

  At the bottom of a trench I spot a Scots Guard cap badge, several pieces of human skull with hair attached, and a curling snapshot of two girls with an address somewhere in Streatham. I put it in my paybook intending to forward it to the address. We come across thirty or so hurried graves with makeshift wooden markers. “Private Edwards, E.”, a number, and that was all. Fourteen days ago he was alive, thinking, feeling, hoping…If war was a game of cards, I’d say someone was cheating.

  We pause now for Gunner Edgington’s recollections of the landing which go like this (stand well back)…

  The scene as it met our eyes as we come up on deck very early that morning, with the ponderous old HMS Boxer leading the convoy and still some way off, the distant coast. It was barely dawn—mighty early—it was to be a fine day, though a touch of unaccustomed chilliness in the air. We had after all just come from North Africa—the sea calm, the elements indeed almost holding their breath—overhead the sky was fairly clear—but there, dead ahead of us was an awesome ‘Curtain up’ setting of Salerno, a name which meant nothing to us at this juncture. [It did to me, I listened to the radio. S.M.] An hour later, the sun having fought his way into his kingdom [my God he’s waxing lyrical. S.M.] the incredible sight of a beautiful flat broad sandy beach, fringed some way back by tall grass over low dunes. Behind that, a great half moon of meadow-land with here and there large wooded areas…a spot that in other times might have been a secluded quiet paradise of nature…and yet, here raged war! For, as far as the eye could see along the beautiful coastline, a veritable armada of ships stood hull-to-hull, their prows to the beaches, disgorging soldiers and endless waves of sophisticated war-making machines. The activity that swarmed in unbelievably unhurried fashion, reminiscent of Hampstead Heath and the fairgrounds at Easter, had, as its musical accompaniment, the roar of great guns, the incessant racket of powerful vehicles and the cheerful shouts of men with megaphones yelling leisurely instructions to us all. As the Boxer’s great jaws opened slowly to the wondering gaze of us all standing within, we saw to our left a Spitfire [I thought it was an American Lightning] brewing up, flaming and smoking hideously, and past it on a grassy fringe a very tall slim flagpole, from its very top almost to its base a broad strip of red cloth fluttering…Red Beach!!

  [Well done, Harry, I’ll take over now. There’s a cheque in the post.]

  We all stand well back far away from any work, and watch the confusion of unloading the vehicles. Officers and Sergeants are weaving back and forth saluting, shouting. “What are they doing?” says Edgington. “I think they’re trying to win the war,” I said. “Why?” he said. “I’m satisfied with it as it is.” Kidgell’s Scammell lorry is emerging from HMS Boxer. I ponder the logic that gives a driver five foot five inches a giant lorry to drive that necessitates him putting an orange box on the seat before he can see out. Gunner Devine has taken his boots and socks off and is paddling in the sea; an irate officer shouts at him, “Hey, you! What do you think you’re doing?”

  “I think I’m paddling, sir,” was the reply. “Paddling? This isn’t bloody Blackpool.”

  “I know that, sir, Blackpool’s in England.”

  “Get dressed at once and report to me!”

  The officer stormed off. Well, almost! In turning he hurt his ankle. Next thing the khaki God of authority is hopping up and down, holding the injured limb, his face contorted with pain. He sees before him a sea of smiling gunners.

  “You’re all on a charge,” he screamed.

  “I think that’s a fair ending,” said Edgington, grinning at the departing cripple.

  My God! Edgington was holding a mug of tea! How did he do it? He pointed to a tin brewing over a derv fire. Sgt. Mick Ryan comes across. He is dripping with sweat—was it fear of work?

  “Come on, youse bloody signallers!” he points to a Scammell and a jack-knifed 7.2
gun well down in the sand.

  We take the drag ropes and pull. The rest of the morning is a repetition of this. “Heave, steady,” etc. A naval officer in virgin-white uniform motors past in a jeep. He is tall, suntanned. He has the eyes of a man used to searching distant horizons, a handsome intelligent face and strong jaw and a mouth with the suggestion of a smile. The medals on his jacket told of his past heroisms. He was—how can I describe him?—a pain in the arse. Nice Lt. Budden is approaching.

  “Hands up all the men who want to go to war!”

  There is a massive negative response. He points at me.

  “You. Milligan.”

  This was victimisation!

  “There must be some mistake, sir. I’m eighty-six and a cripple.”

  He points. “Over there, 25-year-old liar.”

  I clamber on to Sherwood’s bren carrier to be taken to a premature death. The carrier is overloaded, I perch on top. Budden sits in the passenger seat looking at maps. We roll across the sand hills; it’s not easy for me to stay on, so with consummate skill I fall off.

  “Stop being silly now, Milligan,” says Mr Budden.

  I remount. This time I jam myself between two kitbags. We reach a secondary road and—here comes the bonus—we pass the Temple of Neptune and Cerene, at Paestum, both looking beautiful in the sunlight. Strung from the Doric columns are lines of soldiers’ washing. At last they had been put to practical use. If only the ancient Greeks had known.

  What the ancient Greeks didn’t know was that L/Bdr.

  Milligan had fallen off again! I got back on. This time I removed the kitbags, I climbed into the hole and they lowered the kitbags on top, leaving my head and shoulders free. I had appealed to Sherwood to drive slowly past the Temples.

  “Wot Temples?”

  “You’ll never get another chance to see them close at hand,” I said.

  “You’re right,” he says. “You’ll never get another chance to see them again,” and he drove on.

  Mr Budden has heard all this.

  “Bombardier Sherwood is not of a scholastic mind, Milligan. He is a son of the soccer field. Had you said, ‘Slow down, Reading are playing the Mussolini Rovers’, I’m sure it would have touched a part of his English soul that is forever football boot.”

  We have cleared the sand dunes, the minor roads, and have turned left on to the Battapaglia highway going north. We wait to allow some of the vehicles to catch up with us. There’s no sign.

  “I suppose they’ve stopped to see the Temples,” grinned Sherwood.

  The houses that line the road were two-storey, square, whitewashed. Hanging on the walls were strings of tomatoes. People sit outside on simple wood and rush chairs. The women were mostly bare-legged, wearing black clothes and wooden-soled sandals. Some pretty-faced girls look from the windows. A short fat middle-aged balding man runs across the road and gives us a bunch of purple grapes. He smiles and shakes his hand in a friendly gesture. “Viva Englise,” he says. I chew grapes and spit the pips at the neck of Sherwood.

  Twenty minutes later our little convoy is complete.

  “We are to establish an OP, somewhere up there,” Budden points to the mountainous country ahead.

  I hated OPs; when they were quiet they were quiet, but when the shit was flying it was a dicey place. We pass several burnt-out tanks, mostly ours; that’s the trouble, Jerry had better tanks. We were trying to get away with superiority in numbers, very unfair on our tank crews. We never had any armour to match the Tiger, or the Jag Panther. The shades of night were falling fast as we went through Battapaglia past the ruins of the Tobacco factory that had been a bloodbath for both sides.

  18 Battery negotiating a difficult road near Sipicciano; note sergeant in foreground, hoping lorry will run over him.

  SEPTEMBER 24, 1400 HRS

  MY DIARY:

  TRAVELLING UP NARROW MOUNTAIN ROAD, FREQUENT STOPS TO LET FARM CATTLE GO PAST. MOUNTAINS EACH SIDE TOWERING OVER US, LIKE DAUMIER’s DRAWINGS IN DANTE’S PARADISE LOST.

  Not only is Dante’s Paradise Lost, but we are bloody lost. Lt. Budden is looking studiously at his map, the wrong way up.

  “It’s upside down, sir.”

  “I know that, I turned it upside down for a reason.”

  “Sorry, sir, only trying to help.”

  “If you want to help, Milligan, act like a Basenji.”

  Basenji? He’d got me. What was Basenji? A platoon of battle-weary soldiers are filtering past us to the rear. Their shoulder-flash reads QUEENS.

  SEPTEMBER 24, EVENING

  MY DIARY:

  OWING TO NON-ARRIVAL OF NO. 19 AND 21 WIRELESS SETS NO BATTERY OP CAN BE ESTABLISHED, ORDERED TO ‘STAND DOWN’.

  Now to let you have the boredom of the Official History of the Regiment.

  Their (19 Bty) position lay at the foot of Monte Mango, and was approached by means of roads little better than mountain tracks, worse indeed than any encountered in Africa. Yet by evening after a day of feverish activity [see? they even make the poor buggers work with a temperature. S.M.] and some quite unprincipled borrowing of equipment (cigarettes, chocolate, etc.) they were in action, and were immediately given the attention of Stukas.

  Now Gunner Edgington recalls the first gun position.

  Action! Lights! Cameras!

  I recall travelling on one of the Scammells as we went into action. We travelled fourteen miles I remember ‘The Dean’* saying, yet we found out later the ‘bridgehead’ was only two miles in depth—it had been started just two weeks before, and though we didn’t know it then, Jerry was well advanced on the task of chucking us right out. One man, a certain Sergeant of our Battery by name of Michael ‘Bullprick’ Ryan, was to completely reverse the situation almost single-handed!

  We didn’t get moving till late in the day and then crept along an interminable, winding, tortuous course, until long after nightfall we came into an earth road between the giant trees of what seemed like a forest, except that they were set strangely in very orderly straight rows. There were smaller trees between them—apples?—lemons?—and running suspended along all of them, grapevines—all of them loaded with their fruit, fully ripe, for it was September.

  No light but Budden’s torch—everyone inhibited from *Bdr. Spike Deans any noise that was avoidable—a hissed instruction, and the driver swung his wheel, the huge vehicle grinding slowly into the vines tearing great lengths of them away. The torches showed great puddles of what seemed like blood in the soft ryecorn-sprouting earth.

  Trees—these giants carried masses of very fine walnuts—were dragged down by two Scammells arranged fan-wise to a particular tree with a powerful steel hawser running from one front winch-gear round the tree to the other’s front winch—a line of fire was cleared! Next morning, a raid—Spike and ‘Dook’, shaving, dive under a Scammell. Fire orders kept coming and kept getting cancelled. We could see Monte Stella through the trees—like a kid’s drawing of an alp—watched our infantry struggling on it—then the most incredible ‘shoot’ of them all—Mick knocked the top clean off it with two rounds, sighting through the barrel a 7.2 howitzer aimed like a pistol!! Suddenly a great ragged mob of Hun fighter planes interceded, surging over the nearest crest, bellying down right over our tree tops, cannons going, though whether at us I know not.

  19 Battery about to fire on Monte Stella, on which Jerry is perched. Man firing gun in off-white vest is Gunner Devine.

  The moment after firing; idiot photographer failed to capture shell exploding on peak. Note driver with steering-wheel of bus lorry—the rest was stolen by Italians

  Yes. I remembered being Stuka-ed, the evidence of this was a six-foot-deep trench at the bottom of which looking up white-faced and saying ‘Tell Hitler I’m sorry’ was Lance-Bombardier Milligan. What did Basenji mean?

  My slit-trench was in the angle of a farm-hut wall and a raised bank. All day Jerry 155mm shells were passing over our positions.

  “They’re after the 25-pounders in the field behind us,”
says Sgt. Ryan.

  “Behind?” I said, turning yellow. “Christ, we’re far forward for heavies.”

  “Forward?” he giggled. “We had bloody Nebelwurfers in this field this afternoon.”

  Ryan had excelled himself. In the absence of an OP he had aligned his gun on Monte Mango by looking up the barrel, elevating it a bit above that, and by God, he was actually dropping the shells right on target.

  I was surplus to requirements so I spent the afternoon writing letters, and eating handfuls of purple grapes that grew above my trench. I’d read about Conquerors partaking of the spoils of war. What I hadn’t read about was the terrifying attack of the shits that followed.

  Dear Mum, Dad and Des.

  We’ve been moved, I’m not allowed to say where. We had spaghetti for lunch. The lunacy continues and has every chance of becoming a way of life unless we stop it soon. Men are getting so used to wars that the Psychiatric wing of the RAMC are planning how to break the news to the men when the war is over.

  I am keeping well, we don’t go hungry in this war, the Compo Rations are very good, that’s if you get to the box first—this is the first day in this country, so I haven’t caught anything yet. I would welcome any books, periodicals and newspapers, preferably ones that say the war is over, and believe me the war is over…over here. I’m writing this in a hole in the ground, it’s convenient, because if you get killed, they just fill the hole in and sell it as a cemetery. That’s all the cheery news, will write again when the situation is a little less fraught.