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15 October 2014
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Army Service in England and Italy Part 2

by frankhealey

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Contributed by听
frankhealey
People in story:听
Frank Healey
Location of story:听
Italy
Background to story:听
Army
Article ID:听
A8977729
Contributed on:听
30 January 2006

To say the least this was not very welcome news since I had hoped that I might be
sent to France, where at least I knew the language and might therefore be quite useful.
St Anne鈥檚, on the other hand, was notorious as the last stop before being put on what
the army called a 鈥渂anana boat鈥 from Liverpool bound for the Middle or Far East. In
due course we embarked at Liverpool on the Dutch liner S.S.Vollendam, which, the
steward cheerfully told us, had twice been torpedoed, but appeared to have made a
miraculous recovery.

We left Liverpool and joined a convoy in the Atlantic. This proceeded almost to the
Azores and then doubled back at night and passed through the Gibraltar Straits.
Rumours began to spread about our destination, according to some it was Burma, to
others Cairo, and to others Naples, recently liberated from the Germans. At first we
kept close to the North African shore, firmly in Allied hands, Then gradually the
Vollendam began to veer left and the convoy split visibly, part of it turning left,
obviously to Naples while the rest went straight ahead to places further East. At that
point the other ranks, assembled on our deck watching the manoeuvre, gave a
spontaneous cheer, such was the dislike of Far-Eastern postings.

Once landed at Naples and having got over the sight of Vesuvius which had quite
recently erupted and still had a large smoke plume hanging over it, we were met by
the pungent and unexpected aroma of horse and mule manure, continental tobacco,
and garlic, Arriving from England we were to be constantly surprised by the way the
Italians ,and indeed the German army, were dependent on horse and mule transport.
Although I obviously did not know it at the time this was to be the start of a stay of
nearly two-and-a-half years in Italy, some of the most formative years of my life.
At first I was posted to GHQ Signals, based in the old Royal Palace of the Kings of
Naples at Caserta. This was undoubtedly important work as we were the
communications hub for the Central Mediterranean Command with direct links via
high speed morse to London, Cairo, North Africa and even beyond, but not at all what
I had expected and boring beyond belief. Leisure and cultural opportunities were very
good, however, as the Naples Opera House, the San Carlos, was already up and
running, numerous museums and galleries were open and there was a thriving Three
Arts Club, run I believe by the Army Education Corps. Even a short leave in Rome
did not make up however, for the tedium of endless shift work running a monster 24
hour-a-day telegraph and cipher office. However important the work and however
friendly and supportive my brother officers were in the mess I resolved to ask for a
posting to a more active unit. I found myself transferred to the 6th Armoured
Divisional Signals , then somewhere in the area of Rimini and waiting to be sent
forward for the crossing of the Senio River, the last real line held by the enemy
on the eastern side of the Italian peninsula.
After heavy bombardment the Germans at last gave up the river line and began to
retreat hastily across the plain of Lombardy, hotly pursued by, among others, the 6th
Armoured Division. Events moved very rapidly after the river crossing and I have
memories of endless columns of tanks and other vehicles driving through clouds of
red earth dust created by the shelling of previous days. I am not sure now how many
days it took us to reach the river Po but just as we had done so and were about to
settle down to bivouac for the night alongside our scout cars we were roused again
with new orders. This time we were to proceed at once to move via Treviso towards a
line Vittorio Veneto 鈥 Klagenfurt; In other words we were to move towards entering
Austrian territory. The end of the war could well be in sight now.

For reasons which will soon become obvious my recollections from this point are
rather cloudy and disjointed. I remember passing through a euphoric Padua, where we
were greeted as liberators and ladies stuck flowers in our caps and then moving on by
roads so congested with military vehicles that orderly progress was impossible.
Somehow in the confusion we became separated from our unit convoy and I set out in
our Daimler scout car with my driver to try to catch up with them. For some miles all
was well and we were able to follow the divisional signs which the military police
had planted until suddenly , without warning, there was a loud crump, apparently
from behind us. The driver shouted 鈥淚 can鈥檛 hold her, Sir鈥 and the next thing I
remember was seeing bright sparks, whorls of light and flashing stars just as they
show in comic strips.When I came to I was in a tented field hospital run by South
Africans who told me that the war in Italy had been over for two days.

I never discovered exactly what had happened that night on the road to Treviso, other
than that the scout car finished up against a tree. Neither my driver nor I knew and
nobody else, in the euphoria of victory, was prepared to take the trouble to find
out.We were simply written off as casualties. From that time began a long procession
from hospital to hospital all the way down Italy to end up in Rome, including my first
ever flight, on a stretcher, in a USAAF Dakota which was forced, I remember, to skirt
round a violent thunderstorm. After a week or two in bed in Rome, at the Ospedale
Militari I was let out in the afternoons as 鈥淲alking wounded鈥 with my fractured arm
in a sling, a patch on one eye, and an impressive limp. I was thus able to visit the
sights and sites of Rome in detail and at leisure, without the present day throng of
tourists. Unfortunately, due to its neutral status, we were not allowed to visit the
Vatican,so that, to this day, I have never seen the Sistine Chapel. It was on one of
these walks through Rome that I first saw newspaper headlines and posters (by then I
could read Italian passably well) saying that as a result of the atom bombs Japan was
surrendering.

My immediate reaction was one of surprise that there was so little excitement in the
streets around me but then I realised that Italy had no close concern with events in the
Far East such as as we or the Americans had. They had quite enough to do to rebuild
their own country and institutions. My next feeling was of relief for all those troops
who had been in the ships of our convoy which had gone straight ahead and not taken
the left turn towards Naples. In fact the ending of the war brought very little change in
my regime. As autumn approached my injuries gradually healed although my
fractured humerus had to be reset twice . My exploration of Rome had become a
regular daily routine with frequent evening visits (for which a special late pass was
needed), to the open-air opera in the Terme di Caracalla. There I was privileged to see
and hear the great Gigli himself as well as other lesser stars. At first I was astonished
at the popularity of the opera in Italy and particularly impressed that mounted
carabinieri were needed to control the crowds seeking admission to these events.
Enthusiasm on hardly less a scale, no doubt aided by remarkably cheap concessionary
tickets, was also shown by all ranks of the Allied forces who turned up in great
numbers, as they had done at Naples and elsewhere at less famous venues.
Understandably, perhaps, their reactions did not always match those of the Italians,
especially as regards a sense of humour, which occasionally generated a little friction.
One incident I have always remembered happened during a performance of Bizet鈥檚
鈥淐armen鈥. Gigli was, I think, singing the part of Don Jose. He , with real pathos and
petulance, answered 鈥淣o!鈥 when ordered by his officer to return to barracks. This
clearly struck a note with which other ranks could empathise, immediately showing
their approval with shouts and applause which not only astonished civilians in the
audience but also threw the singers themselves off balance for several seconds.

After the cultural delights of Rome I was sent to a rehabilitation unit at Ostia
Moderna. This was housed in the grandiose and bombastic buildings, mostly
unfinished, which had been intended to house a great exhibition of Fascist
achievements for 1945 (I think) and which clearly never took place. From there I was
able to visit the ruins of Ostia Antica, then only partly excavated from the silt of the
mouth of the Tiber. The day I went there was no one else, not even a custodian, in
evidence and I had the whole place to myself, an impressive but quite eerie experience
as I almost expected to meet Caesar himself round any corner. Certainly to me it
seemed to outdo even Pompeii as a place in which to feel to be in the very presence of
the ancient Romans.

By late September 1945 I was sufficiently recovered to appear before a medical
review board who merely asked me if I felt well enough to be able to jump fully
equipped off the back of a lorry at 15 miles per hour. Not having the slightest idea
whether I could or not I replied 鈥淵es!鈥 and was certified fit to return to my unit, then
stationed near Villach in Austria. I duly arrived there a week or so later after endless
train journeys, only to find that they were about to move back to Udine in Italy, which
we did the next day. After a short stay in Udine we moved back to Padua for the
winter, with the possibility of much appreciated week-end leave in Venice. Later we
moved on to Trieste and the Venezia Giulia but by that time the war was becoming a
memory and we were simply waiting for the demob train to take us home. When I did
get to the demob centre, again in Austria, the officer in charge proved to be an old
school friend from Leamington Spa, while the staff sergeant to whom I handed in my
revolver and other bits of military hardware happened to be the same man who had
been my platoon sergeant when I first reported for duty at Leicester racecourse four-
and-a-bit years earlier. As Thomas Hardy might have said : 鈥淟ife will have its little
颈谤辞苍颈别蝉鈥.

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