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Suddenly I received a gesture from a military god: I was ordered to drive urgently through the mountains to the west coast and go to a small beach south of Salerno. Purpose and location: top secret. There I boarded a waiting torpedo boat, rakish and sinister. It was there to carry General Montgomery to his first meeting with the beleaguered General Mark Clark, behind enemy lines and on the other side of the Salerno beachhead. It was just the two of us, at sea with a Royal Navy crew from Malta.
We set off flat-out, engines roaring, in a big arc around the enemy-held coast, watching for German E-boats which I was told we could probably out-run. I was comforted by my belief that nobody was going to risk the life of Britain’s only victorious General, without a very good reason.
After four hours pounding through a calm sea without sighting another craft we came in to shore, transferred to a waiting DUKW – and there on the beach was Mark Clark, tall and gaunt, with Major General Gruenther and his staff. ‘Mighty pleased to see you, General,’ he told Monty – and as Fifth Army seemed about to be thrown back into the sea, we could believe he meant it.
His headquarter tents were alongside a rough airstrip hacked out of the scrub where fighters continually took-off and landed. Signs by the road said: ‘Aircraft Have Right Of Way.’
After his discussion with General Clark for a couple of hours, General Montgomery and I returned to our torpedo boat to race south for another four hours, hoping the E-boats had not yet been alerted.
Helping the Fifth Army to get established on shore and out of trouble, was to be General Montgomery’s Italian swansong before he left to prepare for the Second Front in Normandy.
I sat with him as we bounced through the Tyrrhenian Sea, hoping we were unheard and invisible. In fact this ultimate torpedo boat had a resonant roar that filled the dark sky, and a churning wash that fell back, pounding, towards the horizon. It seemed determined to advertise its presence.
As we ate ‘the unexpired portion of the day’s ration’ I began to appreciate how American senior officers with little or no battle experience found Monty impossible. He always knew he was right – and indeed he usually was, though diplomacy and tact were virtues with which he was unfamiliar. He did not work with people, he told them what to do. He was fond of his boss Field Marshal Alexander, but found him a limited and weak Commander: ‘The higher art of war is beyond him. I’m under no delusions whatsoever as to his ability to conduct large-scale operations in the field. He knows nothing about it. He’s not a strong Commander and is incapable of giving firm and clear decisions as to what he wants. In fact no one ever knows what he does want, least of all his staff. He doesn’t know himself. The whole truth of the matter is that Alexander has got a definitely limited brain, and doesn’t understand the business.’
A less straightforward observer would not have been as honest about his ‘very great friend’ and Commanding Officer.
I remembered that in Sicily General Patton’s Seventh Army was fighting alongside our Eighth as we landed, but during the campaign the Generals never met – which might explain why each ran his own private war. This Alexander accepted. The Eighth was struggling up the east coast against newly-arrived German divisions while Patton’s army ushered the Germans into a happy escape around Etna. Both Commanders were prima donnas – though after that it was hard to detect any similarity in thought or action.
In the Mediterranean and later in France, even the affable Supreme Commander General Eisenhower – who had never commanded men in battle – usually found Monty’s infallibility hard to take.
As shipmates running the E-boat gauntlet for eight hours, Monty and I got along happily. This I believe was mainly because I told him what he wanted to hear. My thoughtful contribution was usually ‘Yes, Sir.’ That always went down well.
Although he was not chatty, and too correct to go into details, it was apparent Monty, like Alexander, was not much impressed by his new allies. The confusion on the Salerno beaches, the near-shambles when plans began to go wrong, the lack of aggressive spirit shown by Headquarters staff … few recent experiences had escaped the cold eye of the British perfectionist.
After sandwich, bun and apple, he went aft to stare at the waves whipping by – and doubtless to plan future battles; I went for’ard to watch out for the black silhouettes of hungry E-boats intent upon the war’s biggest prize.
We arrived at the quiet beach we had left twelve hours earlier; the whole hazardous operation had been completed by the RN without a shot or a torpedo being fired, and Monty + 1 were both safe. After that adventure, our careers diverged. He went on to liberate western Europe, to be created a Viscount and a Field Marshal with a chestful of honours. I went on to capture the HQ of the German SS and get Mentioned in Despatches; small beer – but at least we both lived through it all…
Stimulated by the concern of Generals, the advance guard of the Eighth Army fought its way some 200 miles north in 13 days to relieve the hard-pressed Fifth, allowing them to push-on towards Naples – which General Clark was anxious to be seen liberating. Against weakening German resistance, commandos and paratroops stormed the mountains to the northwest of Vietri which commanded the defile through to Naples. The enemy withdrew, the beaches were saved, the bridgehead secure – so far.
The fact that some of our best Generals were being taken away from the theatre and returned to England in preparation for Overlord, the invasion of Normandy, may have had something to do with our apparent lack of direction. Generals Eisenhower, Montgomery, Bradley and Air Chief Marshal Tedder left for London, along with several veteran British and American formations.
Remaining in Italy, General Alexander then had seven Eighth Army divisions and thirteen Fifth Army divisions: five American, five British, two French and one Polish. Kesselring had 18 divisions.
The Italian surrender brought total confusion to Government offices from Rome to Brindisi – the temporary capital. Calls to the Italian War Office from military headquarters all over the country asked whether they should fight the Germans or not? They were answered by junior staff: ‘Sorry – there’s no one here.’
Very soon there was someone there: the German army. Within a week it had disarmed 56 Italian divisions, partially disarmed 29 others, and captured those 600,000 soldiers.
A supporting army fighting behind the lines would have made an enormous difference to the balance of the war but the Italians, never anxious for battle, received no orders or encouragement from us.
Their Navy, always professional, swiftly sailed away from Italy to escape the Germans, as agreed in the armistice terms. Four battleships and six cruisers surrendered in Malta and were greeted with full military honours by the Royal Navy. The Luftwaffe expressed its fury by bombing and sinking the Admiral’s flagship, the cruiser Roma, with the loss of 1400 men.
On July 19 the US Air Force had hit the Rome railway marshalling yards. The decision to drop 1,000 bombs on the outskirts of the Eternal City was taken by the combined Chiefs of Staff because the two vast yards were the hub of all rail movement between north and south Italy. This Allied attack spread considerable public panic. The USAAF bombed Rome again on August 13, and next day the Italian Government declared Rome an Open City. Three weeks later Italy surrendered, and two days after that the German Army occupied Rome – Open or Closed.
King Emmanuel’s Government was transferred to Salerno. In Feb ’44 the Allies returned authority for the whole of southern Italy to the Italian administration. There were then three Italys: Southern Italy, occupied by the Allies; Central Italy, which remained under German rule until the summer of ’44; and Northern Italy which until April ’45 was the theatre of the struggle by Allies and partisans against the Fascists of the Salò Republic, and the Germans.
The role of Italians in this confused struggle for liberation is usually dismissed. In fact from September 9 until the end of the war, 72,500 military and civilians were killed and 40,000 wounded. There were believed to be some 360,000 partisans and patriots fighting with little direction, but most of them on our side.
Definitely on our side, thank goodness, were the Goumiers – a little-known group with considerable impact. Our armies were well-equipped in almost every way, with one surprising omission: apart from the Gurkhas of the Indian divisions, we had no troops trained in mountain warfare – unlike the Germans, who had an LI Mountain Corps.
An odd exclusion this, as we were fighting our way up a chain of 800 miles of Apennines, from the Straits of Messina to the Alps, by way of everywhere. This great mass of mountains bisecting the centre of Italy always seemed to cut through the heart of our battle lines of fighting soldiers – some of whom had probably never seen a mountain until they faced a towering range soaring up to 9,000 feet. Putting townsfolk to fight through such majestic scenery must have slowed our advance – certainly it made supplying troops dug into the skyline a task sometimes even beyond mules.
General Alphonse Juin, commanding the Corps Expéditionnaire Français in the international Fifth Army, trumped everyone by introducing the Goumiers – 12,000 formidable fighters recruited from the Berber tribes of North Africa’s Atlas mountains, with French officers and NCOs. He launched them across the trackless peaks and savage hills west from Ausonia. Preferring mules to jeeps, knives to rifles, and used to far more serious mountains, they saw the Apennines as foothills through which they moved as to the manner born.
I remember standing in front of vast wall maps at VI Corps headquarters in the catacombs of Nettuno, checking to see if there was any movement on the Front around Cassino. On a long horizontal map of Italy’s boot, sideways, there was a vertical line across Italy showing exactly how far the Fifth and Eighth had got in their struggle to advance. The Intelligence officer briefing me then turned and walked a few paces to one lone dot on the map miles ahead of the static front line. ‘That’s the Goums’ he said.
They were fighting alone, having left every other unit standing. These skilled and fearless tribesmen had one considerable disadvantage to outsiders – sometimes even to their own officers: an instinctive and barely controlled savagery. Goums would descend upon a friendly or an enemy village and rape everyone in sight: women, men, children, animals … Often they formed queues.
All this was standard – but not as we knew it. Italian peasants in villages through which they fought said they suffered far more in 24 hours of Goumier occupation than during eight months under the Germans.
They were a military success – though not if you were living in their path. Neighbouring units much preferred the old-style steady plod through the mountains; they admired the Goums’ natural skills, but few were at ease with them. Even on our side, they were not easy to like.
A PASSING GLANCE AT PARADISE… (#ulink_4a3b4786-09ed-59da-867c-653f91d5726d)
Capri lies three miles from the Italian mainland with a magnificent view of the Bay of Salerno and so a ringside seat at the war’s toughest and most dramatic assault landing. This dominant position was pointless because the island was just not interested in conflict. Apart from a couple of dormant antiaircraft batteries and a German radio station, it ignored any fighting anywhere, following a tradition of escapism established at the time of the Roman Empire.
For a passing glance at paradise, we landed by ferry at the Marina. A scramble of tourist-touts descended offering the regulation peacetime excursions around their miniscule haven, two-miles-by-four. The Blue Grotto? Up to Anacapri? The villa where Emperor Tiberius enjoyed various antisocial vices? The more innocent home of Gracie Fields?
Inland, the tiny Piazzetta remained brilliant and ridiculously theatrical, its little tables filling at noon with the surviving international smart-set, wartime edition, lured by the seductions of the island. Among such elegance were far more gaily-dressed women than men – who were younger and even smoother, with smaller wristwatches. It was the Roman Emperor Augustus who had first noticed the ‘sweet idleness’ of Capri, and it would take more than a world war to affect that balmy attitude among this blend of races untroubled by national ties.
The café chatter was full of happy laughter, though one subject was never approached: the War. I sensed it would be bad form to bring it up. There was a mild preoccupation with the shortage of bread which had to be brought across from the mainland, but at least there was plenty of cake, beautifully presented. Marie Antoinette would have appreciated the situation perfectly.
With some Correspondent friends I dined at the lovely home of a French resident. We had heard that an announcement of vital importance was to be broadcast from Radio Rome that evening, and were concerned. We were playing truant for a couple of days in paradise when we should have been at war, so were displeased that our cover was about to be blown. The prospect of some big story breaking while our backs were turned made us feel even more guilty. We waited anxiously.
Finally after much martial music the radio announced: ‘The Government of Marshal Badoglio … has declared war on Germany!’
‘My God’ cried our hostess, exasperated, ‘Is that all?’ She switched back to dance music. That was Capri in October ’43.
Later that night we again passed through the Piazzetta on our way back to reality. It was crammed with socialising Caprese, still refusing to pay any attention to the war, however close. They had chosen not to notice that a few miles north even their sort of civilisation was being saved by men in landing craft fighting and dying across the muddy Volturno River under a chill grey October sky.
* * *
As we all know, the Italians are a delightful race: good company, extremely stylish and rightly proud of their ancestors and their gorgeous country; but not even their greatest admirers would say that they were successful soldiers, these days. Even Mussolini noticed. After their surrender in Libya his son-in-law and Foreign Minister, Count Ciano, told him, ‘With an Army like ours we can only declare war on Peru.’ Unaccustomed to the truth, Mussolini stored that away.
In Rome, King Emmanuel had called a meeting of the Grand Council in July ’43 to remove Mussolini and replace him with Marshal Badoglio. Count Ciano was one of those who supported this dismissal. Six months later, after his rescue from hotel-arrest at Gran Sasso, a resurrected Mussolini did not choose to spare his favourite daughter’s husband when he was tried by a Tribunal in Verona and sentenced to death for ‘attempting to destroy the independence of the State … and giving aid and comfort … to the enemy.’ Ciano was executed by firing squad at Fort Procolo, outside Verona. He died bravely.
After waiting until June 10 1940 to declare war on the Allies in a belated scramble for spoils, Mussolini, the man who (as we always said) made the trains run on time and drained the Pontine Marshes, the Duce’s speeches brandished Italy’s eight million bayonets. This was the usual bellicose nonsense from the balcony of Rome’s Palazzo Venezia.
In fact the Italian Army boasted about 79 divisions, though only nineteen were complete with men and arms, and most of the rifles were made in 1891 – even older than ours. Much of their equipment was imaginary, though they did have 1900 antiquated aircraft, and 400 3½-ton tanks. The German Tiger tank, at 57 tons, weighed more than 40 Rolls-Royces; the Italian pocket tank, a few Minis. No wonder Hitler was unimpressed. It was bad enough on our side of the scales: Shermans only weighed 35 tons.
Facing us when we landed in Sicily had been a massive Italian army – somewhere. In truth we hardly noticed it, for all its ranks were deeply nervous, had no idea why they were fighting and just wanted to go home and forget the whole uncomfortable business.
Naples had fallen on October 1 amid a clamour of urchins shouting at our armoured cars for food and hungry women offering themselves for a packet of biscuits. Following our bombings and German demolition, it seemed a dead city of shuttered shops. Even the high-pressure Neapolitan salesmen were out of action. The wide harbour was clogged by the wrecks of 130 ships, and the retreating Germans had blown-up and booby-trapped the city’s sewage and water systems. Typhus arrived instantly.
Naples has always had a tenuous and insecure grasp upon health and hygiene. Thirty years later, a cholera outbreak in 1973 was to reveal that the city had no sewers, yet was living contentedly around its beautiful but poisoned bay. The popular saying, ‘See Naples and die’ was meant to summon visitors to enjoy its ramshackle charms, but took on a forbidding significance with every passing plague.
General Mark Clark was displeased because he had planned a grand entry into the city when he would acknowledge the plaudits of welcoming crowds – a sort of curtain-raiser for Rome. He wrote in his Memoirs that there was little triumph in his journey through the deserted streets of ‘a city of ghosts’. He gave a Liberation celebration, but nobody showed.
The always surprising stoicism of the Neapolitans soon surfaced and the shops began to open for business, though with little on display. Neapolitan shopkeepers were of course cannier than those in other towns who, before remembering to put up their prices, sold their remaining stocks to eager Allied soldiers enjoying the benevolent rate of exchange. In Naples they waited weeks or months before emptying the storeroom and adding zeros to the price tags.
A few good harbourside restaurants around the famous Zit Theresa opened, with costly menus. They offered a good four-course meal with wine for 140 lire, or seven shillings. Only the military – or black marketeers – could afford such outrageous prices.
One private enterprise flourished as never before. Naples had long been known as the capital of major and minor thievery, a lifestyle stimulated by war. Now beneficent Allied merchant ships arrived daily with food and army supplies, their crews not geared to deal with mass and well-organised criminality which in a hungry lawless land had become woven into every life. It was calculated that one third of all supplies landed at this major port was instantly stolen, to reappear in the black market. So it was Christmas every day for the gangsters of the Camorra.
The emerging shopkeepers of the Via Roma were followed by the friendly Neapolitan signorinas. So effusive was their more private welcome that notices soon went up along roads into the city: ‘Dangerous type of VD in this area.’ We never discovered where the safe type was.
Public Relations settled happily into the Villa Ruffo on Posillipo Hill, a stately mansion overlooking the bay, with Vesuvius – the terror and the pride of the city – smoking peacefully in the distance. This was a spectacular setting of style and comfort amid the tarnished splendour of Naples, though our billet became unkindly known as Villa Rough-it. I would happily have roughed-it indefinitely, but needed to return to the Eighth Army, still trying to push north up the east coast of Italy, 140 miles away.
An unopposed landing by the 1st Airborne Division at Taranto had been followed by the liberation of Brindisi and then the major port on the ankle of Italy, Bari, a Fascist stronghold.
The ironies of life at a warfront when you’re living on a razor’s-edge between stiff-upper-lip badinage, and death – the injustice, the unfairness of it all – was underlined for me in this Adriatic port. We arrived in Bari just after the Italian surrender and found it untouched and, like Capri, quite indifferent to war.
We were particularly irritated by the many Italian Army officers in ornate uniforms strutting about the boulevards wearing their revolvers, and lounging in pavement cafés like the cast of a Drury Lane musical. We – the victors – had been fighting the Germans, sleeping in ditches and unable to bathe; now it was infuriating to find ourselves patronised and dismissed by defeated posturing pseudo-soldiers in this unscathed city, who had never heard a gun fire. What’s more, they also had to live-down a worse record than the Germans in their treatment of prisoners.
Much boorishness survived. The posh Hotel Imperiale refused to give a room to the Allied Tactical Air Commander in Italy, Air Vice Marshal Sir Arthur Coningham. This was unwise. The irate New Zealander promptly commandeered an entire floor for the RAF.
On the plus side, the shops in their city were still stuffed with goods that at our victor’s exchange-rate seemed encouragingly cheap: a pair of rare silk stockings and a bottle of Asti Spumante to go with them, 4s.6d each. Chanel No 5 as a going-away present – 15s. The rate at the top local brothel was seven lire – then less than tuppence and, I was told, usually worth every penny. None of these bargains survived the frantic inflation which arrived soon after as Italians chased the rate of exchange, and won.
Disregarding, in the main, such inexpensive distractions, the Eighth pushed forward up the east coast of Italy, attempting to relieve the pressure on the desperate Fifth.
A popular silver-haired public relations officer, Captain Sir Gerald Boles, reminded us how our warfront lives were ruled by luck. We would sometimes find ourselves working alongside our brother War Correspondents – civilians in uniform who were taken around in the Humber Pullmans of Public Relations by Conducting Officers. They were usually subalterns recovering from wounds or officers regarded as dispensable by their units. One was Sir Gerald and he, to put a fine point upon it, was allergic to lead. He was deeply anxious not to be killed – injured, even. In a charming and patrician manner he would shy away from the most distant explosion.
While escorting Correspondents around the Front in search of their stories, he refused to go anywhere near the fighting. ‘Might get the Humber damaged,’ he would explain, apologetically. ‘War Department property, you know.’
It was true that PR only had a few Pullmans left from the desert, and that some Correspondents were quite content to go along with his careful timidity and fight-the-good-fight only upon their portable typewriters; but the more gung-ho reporters would not be fobbed off by the gentility of ‘Sir Gerald and Lady Boles’, as Ted Gilling called him scornfully. They were missing all the action and the subsequent stories. After indignant protests from the Press it was decided that Sir Gerald had to go.
He was too endearing a man to humiliate by RTUing, by returning to his unit, so his seniors cast around for an acceptably safe job away from the Front where Sir Gerald could pursue a gentler life undisturbed by explosives. They finally decided to send him back to Bari. This port was then miles behind the Front, but a sufficient number of Correspondents were passing through on their way to Yugoslavia and the Balkans to justify the posting.
With touching relief he turned his back on the war, leaving his brother officers to get on with what could be quite a dangerous role – without, as it transpired, further casualties. Sir Gerald drove south and settled into a sea view suite in a comfortable harbourside hotel to sit-out the rest of the war peacefully in that tranquil unscathed city.
In a surprise Luftwaffe raid a few nights after his arrival, an ammunition ship anchored in the harbour outside his hotel suffered a direct hit. It exploded and sank, taking sixteen other ships with it. The blast was felt for 20 miles. Sir Gerald was blown through several walls, and into eternity.
I always enjoyed the ‘Sign Wars’ which could relieve the monotony of any journey. There were the useful warnings: ‘Dust Brings Shells’, the rather laboured, ‘If you go any further, take a Cross with you.’ Even the decisive, ‘Don’t be a bloody fool.’ Should you pass one saying ‘Achtung! Strasse liegt unter Feuer!’ it meant, roughly translated, You’ve come too far – turn round and get the Hell out of here.’
In another category there were those which gave units a chance to publicise their achievements, or get their own back. All Americans were keen on public relations – drivers were always being ‘Welcomed’ to some village or river crossing ‘by courtesy of’ a US Infantry regiment which was just doing its job. Often it seemed we were on Route 66 and would soon be offered a giant hamburger.
On one mountain road where as usual the Germans had blown every bridge, the first replacement had a large sign saying proudly, You are Crossing this Bridge by Courtesy of the US Fifth Army Engineers who Built it in 3 Days 14 Hours and 26 Minutes!’
At the next blown river-crossing the familiar British Bailey bridge had a small notice: ‘This Bridge was built by the REs in 9 Hours 42 Minutes’. Underneath in brackets and small print: (‘There is nothing unusual about this bridge’). They must have been the Sappers who invented Cool.
There was also the tantalising problem of naming defensive Lines – and the enemy had plenty. To infantrymen the war in Italy was one fortified German Line after another. Break through one and there was always the next, just ahead. Ford a river – and there’s its twin, behind an identical mountain. We had the Attila Line, the Caesar Line, the Bernhard Line, the Trasimene Line, the Barbara Line, the Olga and Lydia Lines, the Paola and Mädchen Lines … As the battle moved north it seemed the Germans were thinking more of home and the wife, even amid the big-time Gothic and Gustav Lines built for the Todt organisation by Italian prisoners.
A name had to be resonant, defiant, gallant and worth fighting for. So to restore the billing it was obvious that a major line should have been named after the Führer – heads were due to roll. The Adolf Hitler Line needed to be the most brave and steadfast of them all. This would please everyone back at Command in Berlin.
So fortunately when the formidable Gustav Line was breached, the Germans had just established a deeper defence running across the Liri Valley, near Pontecorvo and Aquino – at last, the Hitler Line!
This blocked any Allied movement along Highway 6 and up the valley. It was even more substantial than the Gustav and featured permanent concrete works, the turrets of Panther tanks buried in the ground at key points, and 75mm guns. Every defensive position was, as usual, cleverly sited.
Then suddenly in January ’44 the significant Adolf Hitler Line was renamed the Senger Line, after the Commander of the 14th Panzer Corps responsible for the defence of Monte Cassino, Lieutenant General Fridolin von Senger und Etterlin.
The reason for that urgent name change was not too subtle. Someone had read the runes – and the future was uncertain. A defensive line liable to be humiliatingly breached by Allied armies – or even worse, ignored (remember the Maginot Line?) could not be allowed to go down under the name of the Führer. Generals had been executed for less. Fridolin would doubtless be more amenable, so he was in the charts for a few weeks. He must have been thoughtful and accommodating for he tried to save the Abbey of Monte Cassino, was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford and reportedly disliked Hitler.
That name change was fortunate for some, and just in time. The Senger Line crumbled – indeed General Clark became concerned lest its quick penetration by the Eighth might lead to a sudden dash to Rome. He would much rather see his own Fifth Army held down and savaged than have the Eighth triumphant on his Road to Rome …
I missed much of the fun and games of Naples and Bari because in that bleak winter the Army was being decimated, not by Germans but by jaundice.
This spread through all ranks and did far more damage than high explosives. First it made you feel like death, while you still looked fine. Then you turned bright yellow and felt fine, while looking like death. It was a confusing and unpleasant plague.
I was carried by ambulance many uncomfortable miles from the snow-covered mountains of central Italy, south to Bari – to experience the first flight of my life. It was not stylish. I was in the middle of a stack of stretchers in a packed Red Cross DC3 which flew back to Catania in Sicily, then on to Tunis. After this an ambulance train took me across the border to Constantine in Algeria and finally, a truck on to hospital to start treatment. By then I was almost well again.
Strange that the first of the many millions of airborne miles I was to cover around Whicker’s World during my lifetime should have been endured lying flat on my back. Now of course you pay extra to travel like that.
STRUGGLING TO GET TICKETS FOR THE FIRST CASUALTY LIST… (#ulink_79e38e96-ec1f-56e4-9196-3550469d749f)
The Anzio Experience has remained with me, mainly because I never expected to live through it. One retains a proprietorial attitude towards any hazardous expedition experienced totally, from planning to victory. Having invaded Sicily and then the mainland of Italy, I’d had two lucky invasions and was hoping the next assault landing would complete my quota: Third Time still Lucky.
I had worked my way back to the Front line from the hospital in Algeria, three or four countries away, and rejoined AFPU on the east coast of Italy just in time for the unit Christmas party. This was as jolly as could be, considering our billet: the Vasto Theological College.
On that Adriatic sector I joined one of the best divisions in the Eighth Army, the 78th ‘Battleaxe’ Division which had fought its way here from Medjez-el-Bab in Tunisia and was now being replaced in the line by an old partner, the tough 1st Canadian Division. To capture the gaunt mountain town of Ortona they faced the entrenched 1st Parachute Division, most disciplined and feared of Kesselring’s armies. It was the battle of champions.
The Canadians took over the Front on the evening of December 20 to fight amid the freezing ruins. In bitter struggles lone houses were captured and surrendered and recaptured. Only the piles of dead were changed. They were still fighting there on Christmas Day. The Paras brought up flame-throwers with a 60-yard range which they used in attack and defence through the ruined town.
The Canadian answer was to call in Sherman tanks as close-support wherever the narrow streets allowed, and six-pounder anti-tank guns that shot through or demolished ancient stone walls.
In this grotesque Christmas battle with its stark backdrop, it took the Canadians eight desperate days to capture Ortona. By then both sides were exhausted. The last Paras were finally cleared out on December 28, though for days afterwards Canadians were killed or maimed by the mines and booby-traps they had buried in the ruined homes of that desolate mountain town.
The capture brought that offensive to an end. The Army was tired, weakened by losses and could see no military objective ahead except – on the other coast – the major prize of Rome, but that was in the path of the Fifth Army. On the Adriatic we had fought ourselves to a winter stalemate.
Then an urgent message from AFHQ sent me jeeping through the mountains to Naples yet again – following the action. There I learned I was to command cameramen covering the landing of 50,000 British and American troops behind enemy lines, south of Rome. The intention was to cut Highway 6 and the railway supply-lines to the Monte Cassino front where German paratroops were still resisting strongly, to trap Kesselring’s Tenth and Fourteenth Armies, and finally to liberate Rome.
With Geoffrey Keating I drove out to Castellammare, the port across the bay from Naples where most of the armada was assembling, to place sergeant-cameramen with units in the first wave of our assault. We had to negotiate with the senior officer commanding the loading of the invasion fleet, because as usual there was not space for everyone who needed to go, and although we saw our role as important it was hard to compete against fighting units, gunners or ambulances.
To jolly the Colonel along, Keating suggested that I take a few personal pictures of him in action – gentle harmless flattery. Pleased with such attention he became more amenable, and subsequently agreed to most of our requests for space and accommodation.
It was curious to be so eager to join an expedition that offered applicants the probability of injury or death as the reward for success. It felt like struggling to get tickets for a First Night, when the winners would probably end up in the first casualty list of permanent Losers.
Afterwards Geoffrey said he would get my pictures developed. I explained that, as usual, I had no film in the camera. We could not take pictures of everyone we met, and it was doubtful whether we would ever see the Colonel again. This was a bit naughty, but practical; we could not burden our hard-pressed Developing Section with social shots not for publication. ‘Red-hots,’ we called them, and they never amused our shy colleague Len Puttnam – father of Lord Puttnam-to-be – who ran the developers and coped manfully with our output.
Geoffrey, more experienced than I, said ‘Fatal mistake. Now you’re going to run into that Colonel everywhere, for the rest of the war. You’ll always be making excuses.’ He was right – so I never did that again.
On January 21 ’44 an armada of 374 ships sailed out to sea, then turned to starboard and steamed north. This was Operation Shingle. We had a fair idea where we might be going because Neapolitan spivs on the Via Roma and around the docks had been selling postcards of Anzio, a place of which I had then never heard.
The weather was perfect, the sea smooth – but we knew German radio had been discussing an Allied landing behind their lines. We prepared for another Salerno bloodbath.
At nightfall troops on our ship wrapped themselves in blankets and tried to sleep on deck. In the wardroom, officers played poker for ridiculously high stakes, trying to get rid of cash. Just when there was no need for money I could not stop winning, of course – so landed with pockets bulging with lire which took months to spend. It was the first (and last) time I have faced that problem.
Our vast armada came to anchor off the small resort and port of Anzio – just as the Neapolitans had forecast. As we dropped anchor in a crisp dawn, braced for enemy reaction, I went below decks for my guide book, to learn that Anzio had been a flourishing commercial city in 490 BC and was the birthplace of the Emperor Nero and the home of Caligula. I do like to know where I’m invading.
