大象传媒

"This story was submitted to the site by the 大象传媒's Peoples War Team in the East Midlands with Donald Ropers permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions"

A little story on the lighter side of the 1949-1945 war.

I served in the Western Desert and Italy with a forward armoured Recce regiment.

The advance in Italy had ground to a halt and the regiment was ordered to park up the armoured vehicles and become foot soldiers to hold the line alongside the river south east of Florence.

At 5.30 each evening men and a NCO walked up a farm track to a large three storey house which was the local farmers or the local fascist leader鈥檚 house 鈥� it had been ransacked by the enemy before we got there. There was a deep ditch one side of the track which was full of water and each evening the enemy straddled this track with a couple of mortar shells and of course we dived into the ditch. All were wet through before we started, but it didn鈥檛 matter a great deal, it was summer and we soon dried off.

From the big house two men manned a forward OP in the bush overlooking the river, we could see the enemy on the other side, they obviously could see us. We did 2 hours on 4 hours off during the night.

Each morning we walked back along the track to our billets to the tune of the woody woodpecker song, the enemy had rigged up a tanoy system and played us out. I don鈥檛 know if you remember the song it starts 鈥淗a Ha Ha Ha it鈥檚 the woody woodpecker song鈥� then more Ha Ha鈥檚.

Whether it was played to mock us on reflection or whether it was their only record I never found out. Several came over the river and surrendered to us whilst we were there, when the advance started again the remainder were cut off and taken prisoner.

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