大象传媒

All supplies for the troops who had landed on Anzio beachhead in January 1944 had to be brought from Naples by supply ship, and being too large to dock in the port of Anzio, anchored in the bay.
A convoy of DUKWs (amphibian 6 wheeler trucks) would drive down the beach and out to the ships to be loaded by rope slings with all the food, ammo, fuel and all the other items that were necessary to keep an army in action supplied. This meant a constant stream of these lorries coming out of the sea, up the beach and through the town of Anzio to their dumps.
A German208mm railway gun called @Leopold' but christened 'Anzio Annie' was at a railway tunnel in Ciampino sme 35 miles away started firing on the beachhead in early February and everyone was in range of this formidable weapon but the town of Anzio took the brunt of the attacks.
To keep the streets free for easy passage of the DUKW convoys anyone not engaged in the front line would be called upon to do rubble clearance. The hazards of this task were made more hazardous by the driving of the black American drivers who would swing around the corners at break neck speeds. This led to part of their loads becoming 'detached' and falling off.
On one occasion, being an anti-tank gun tower driver, I had delivered my 6pdr gun to its designated sight. I was instructed to return to F Echelon and upon arrival there was sent to make up a party of rubble clearers in Anzio. The shelling from Annie had been rather heavy and the town on this occasion was in a pretty bad state, and the convoys had a lot of trouble getting through.
Our party of clearers worked hard and cleared a path through for the lorries that then got their loads to the dumps. One DUKW came hurtling around a corner and lost 3 or 4 cases from his load. Although there was no indication as to the contents of the case I could tell that one of the cases contained bottles. Our party picked up these cases and on return to camp at F Echelon proceeded to open the cases.
My case contained a dozen bottles of Blacj Labe Johnnie Walker whiskey, another case was found to have four 7lb tins of fruit cocktail and 2 other cases wrere Canadian streaky bacon.
We decided to share our good fortune with the rest of the regiment as far as we could and so 3 bottles were given to the Offices Mess and 3 to the Sergeants Mess, the rest was lobbed out to HQ company, the bacon went to our own cookhouse and the fruit was very soon demolished. After this I was to be known as 'Whiskey heaney' but my excuse was 'They fell of the back of a lorry'.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.