大象传媒

More about Rome later however. The Corporal returned and I went back to Caserta to learn that I was going home to England on leave. How glad I was to be going back after such a long time. We went by train to Calais and thence across the Channel to Dover and then home.

While we had been fighting in Italy we had earned the name of 鈥淭he D Day Dodgers鈥� from Lady Astor. Needless to say on the carriage from London to Birmingham we had chalked 鈥淪ix D Day Dodgers from Brum鈥�. But we were glad to be back and I thoroughly enjoyed life. The four weeks leave came to an end all too soon and back I went to Italy, but as I knew what was in store I didn鈥檛 mind. I recommenced work at Caserta, but after a little while I heard the good news that the office was closing down and we were moving to Rome permanently.

How good it was to get back, and to take up again the pleasures I had experienced previously for only a short while. Once again the joys of the open air opera concerts, pictures, and the Alexandra Club where my pal and I spent most of our spare time. We played table-tennis and billiards and drank innumerable cups of tea and ate the same quantity of cakes and sandwiches. When the winter came the open air operas finished and we began to go to the Opera House.

I have many memories of these, but I will only mention two. The first is of the final scene of the Opera 鈥淪ampson and Delilah鈥�. In the Bible story you will remember that at the end Sampson calls on God for a final amount of strength and he breaks the pillars and the building collapses. I wondered if they would try to do this on stage and my word they did. At the very point that the music built up to a wonderful crescendo the actors moved to the front of the stage and as Sampson pulled at the pillars they broke and the scenery came tumbling down. It was so well done that the men responsible came onto the stage to receive well-earned applause.

The second memory I have of is an example of the Italian temperament. Although
Gigli is considered the Tenor there was another and his name was Giacomo Lauri Volpi and these two came together in an Opera with the well known Baritone Laurence Tibbett. In addition the opera was to be conducted by a young American. A problem arose at the first performance over an encore. When the tenor had finished 鈥淟a Donne e Mobile鈥� the audience, led by the usual Italian Cheer Leaders, asked for an encore, but the American conductor was not prepared to allow this, at least not until a lot of commotion had been caused. It was stated that there would not be an encore at the second performance later in the week, to which I went. My pal and I went to this looking eagerly forward to excitement. Sure enough it came but ended in triumph for the Italians as the encore was once again performed. Actually it is rather difficult to see why 鈥淟a Donne E Mobile鈥� was encored as it is not all that spectacular.

Of course I went to orchestral concerts as well and in the summer these were given in the open air at the Basillica de Masenzio. These were excellent but one of the outstanding was when Yehudi Menuhin played two violin concertos, one by Beethoven and the other by Pagannini. This concert was attended by the Mayor La Guardia.

I also visited St. Peters several times, and always found something of interest. Many of you have, no doubt, seen pictures of this marvellous place. The courtyard is very impressive with its beautiful fountains and wonderful pillars around either side. In between the three rows of pillars there is enough room for a horse and carriage to drive, and in the courtyard in front of each of the pillars there is a certain place where you can stand and only see the front row. Inside there is too much to describe, but among the outstanding things is the statue of St. Peter which has one of the toes .perfectly smooth where it has been kissed away by Catholics who have visited St. Peters. Then in the knave are indicated the lengths of famous churches and cathedrals all over the world.

One of the many interesting visits I made was with a party organised by the American Red Cross to the Swiss Guards inside the Vatican. We went inside the City and were shown round the Guard quarters and Armoury, and several interesting places inside. Then after tea, provided by the Red Cross, we were treated to a lantern slide show showing us places were we had not been able to visit. Several of us were able to obtain autographs of the particular guard who had taken us around.

Then one day I went to the famous Catacombs on the outskirts of Rome. This was very eerie but memorable, down below ground we went and .passed along corridors cut out many years ago. We each carried long wax tapers which lasted until we came up again.

The statue to Vittoria Emanuel is affectionately known as the 鈥淲edding Cake鈥� and is a colossal thing. The horse is hollow and it is possible for six people to sit round a table inside and eat a meal.

There are many places of interest in Rome for the sightseer, but unfortunately with all these things right in my grasp for such a length of time I failed to take advantage and had only a week left in the end to visit them. The Borghese Gardens are wonderful and a whole day could be spent at the Forum.

However, all good things come to amend and I had to return to England, in one sense rather regretfully. After a leave I stayed at the R.A.S.C. depot at Beeston Castle in Cheshire awaiting a final posting. Here we understood that people due to demob would be posted to a unit near to their homes, but I think they got my address wrong as I finished up on Salisbury Plain.

It was rather ironical that for some time in Rome I had seen plenty of the Poles as
they won all the table-tennis competitions held on Saturdays at the Alexandra Club. Now I went to a Polish resettlement camp at a remote village, which I don鈥檛 think you will find on the map called Figheldean, near Amesbury.

I was fairly competent on a typewriter, but I thought I would keep that quiet and my first job was Storekeeper, a job I would have given my right arm for earlier on. But now that I had such a post I had no stores. Then I moved into the office and spent some time amending Army Regulations but got fed up in the end and started typing. This kept me quite happy until I was finally demobbed.

Summing up, you may think that there has not been much mention of Religion in my army life, well that is because God didn鈥檛 mean so much to me when I joined up as he does now, and consequently I was not fitted to resist temptation. I remember at Edinburgh I joined the lads who went to the Church of England service as I was christened in the Church of England. But I noticed what a lot of people eagerly joined the Methodists and then I learned that after their service they had tea and cakes. This must be part of the Methodist rituals.

We did have Communion services during action however, and it was during those quiet moments with the noise of the battle around us that we were for once close to God and I realised his existence. I think that the first and last verses from a poem called 鈥淐hrist in Flanders鈥�, all about the 1914-18 war, sums this up.

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