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This story has been written onto the ´óÏó´«Ã½ People’s War site by Callington U3A — Meg Bassett — on behalf of Mr A M Wilkie, my deceased uncle, who donated his memoirs to me.

Onwards to Jesi and Caiazzo in the West where we were billeted in an old Italian Army barracks. I cannot recall the date when our O.C. delivered a speech telling us that the Royal Artillery’s heaviest barrage since El Alamein was in progress against German paratroopers on Monte Cassino. We heard the rolling thunder in the distance.

One night in sentry duty in the village I was nearly shot by a Yank with an itchy trigger finger. Fortunately, his brilliant flashlight enabled him to see me in time. We lit cigarettes and compared family snaps by its light. He had only been overseas for three weeks. We both wondered what the enormous red glare in the sky could be. Next morning I discovered the red glare we had seen was Vesuvius in eruption at 11.00 p.m. on 11th May 1944,

We moved on to Castelmare, where caves and ditches were full of dead bodies, with the attendant, and now familiar, stench. We built Bailey bridges at Senegailia, Mercerata, Cattolica, Arezzo and Caserta (where the roof blew off our billet during a howling rainstorm, leaving us soaking wet, cold and very miserable — until the Army broke out the rum ration). Two days later we began night bridging, using two jeep headlights so supply light for the operation.

Later still I was transferred from Perugia to a staging area near Leghorn, where we were informed we were no longer under 8th Army command, but were being ‘posted to Europe’ travelling the Gold Flake route which ran from Leghorn to Marseilles where we would receive fresh orders. On arrival there we were told that we were destined for Germany, and so it was on through Lyons and to Amiens before crossing Holland, and into Germany.

Extract from the memoirs of ex-Sapper Alastair Mackenzie Wilkie 1904664

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