大象传媒

LENTINI

The army having now captured the Lentini complex of airstrips and landing grounds to the east of Catania and Mt. Etna meant that our unit moved up there, arriving in the afternoon. There was a lovely full moon that night and I decided to sleep on top of the canvas tilt of the truck, it made a very comfortable bed, supported by the tubular framework, but I had not been up there long before I heard the sound of aircraft and the flares began to appear in the night sky; in other words we had an air raid. So I got down rather smartly underneath the back-axle of the truck with Monty, one of our cooks. Somehow word got around that one of the bombs had failed to explode and Monty went to have a look which seemed rather foolhardy, I stayed put. On his way back, as he neared the truck, another wave dropped a load of anti-personnel cluster bombs. I could hear shrapnel striking the truck accompanied by a horrible smell of explosives and lava dust which was two or three inches deep. Monty got back underneath the truck and said he had been hit. Soon he was in terrific pain kicking his legs on the under side of the truck. I managed to pull his clothing up off the wound and have a look by the light of matches; he had a hole about three quarters of an inch in his abdomen and was bleeding profusely, and all I could do was to put my field dressing over the wound. All the time I could hear liquid running out of the truck 鈥� we discovered next day it was water not petrol, as I had thought. Eventually, our medical orderlies arrived and also an ambulance. (The medical orderlies had been treating some of the other wounded.) I have heard how badly wounded men shout for their mothers, Monty, a large well built chap did just that. He was given a shot of morphine but sadly he died on the way to the field dressing station.
He was buried the next evening along with others, some from an anti-aircraft unit. I was asked if I would like to attend but I did not feel up to it and declined.
Some of us spent the rest of that night in an olive grove some distance from the trucks. The next day we found that my truck had shrapnel holes in the radiator. My shorts were soaked in blood and when I tried to get a new field dressing I was told I should have used Monty鈥檚, so I had to make do with a shell dressing which was left over.
When we went to the airstrip the next day we found that practically all the Spitfires were riddled with shrapnel holes. So we set to, cleaning, and patching up the ragged holes where practical on some of the planes; and stripping and cannibalising the remainder. We spent a week or two on this. The weather was extremely hot and the duralumin on the wings was almost too hot to touch with the bare hands. Some of the Sicilians came round to the area where we were working with carboys of Vino on their backs and we could have a mess-tin filled for a shilling; maybe it was not a very good idea to drink it in the heat of the day, but it tasted good! We also had tea and biscuits sent up to the strip. Some of the older members who had served in India called this midday snack 鈥楾iffin Time鈥�.
Back at the campsite some of the locals also came round selling eggs, saying: 鈥淯no Dodici, una Shilleeng Sicasapence鈥�, gesticulating with their hands at the same time. Occasionally, I fried my eggs in my mess-tin with some bacon fat - over a small fire made from twigs which were like tinder. The biggest difficulty was eating the food, as the flies were in thick swarms and had to be fought off, but some usually got onto the food before it reached the mouth.
Some time at Lentini was spent in looking after Spitfires on 鈥榠nstant readiness鈥�, we also took care of a Walrus Amphibian seaplane.
Anti-malarial precautions were now the order of the day, or rather night when we had to wear long trousers and apply repellent cream to our face and wrists. Yellow Mepacrin tablets were issued with the evening meal with an N.C.O. supervising to make sure that we took them.
Sanitary arrangements now consisted of a triple seater over a hole dug in the ground without any screening: at times this was rather embarrassing when we were thus seated and the occasional Sicilian women passed by, probably not to them, as they were less inhibited about such matters. We were lucky as regards washing at the Lentini location, on returning from the airstrip of an evening we could strip off and wash in a small stream that flowed close by, although soap was in short supply.
One rather disgusting episode of our stay there, was when a woman from the town set up business in a little hut near the camp for the deprived, depraved and the unwary and some of the lads queued for the dubious pleasure.
A barber also did a brisk trade and I ended up with an unintentional all over haircut. I was none too pleased as my hair was just recovering from a similar one on the troop ship. Of course he had been operating on the German soldiers not long before.
Geordie Gregory, who was a mate of mine and on our truck, took charge of the unit gramophone for a spell. It was supplied as comfort for the troops. One particular record that was played was called 鈥楳oonlight Cocktails鈥�. The words were: 鈥淢oonlight cocktails underneath the trees, we鈥檒l remember things like these鈥�, which all sounded refreshing: but alas we had no cocktails under the olive trees!
One thing that I occasionally thought about was how our soldiers and the German soldiers, for their part, could fight and die in such a hot a sticky humid heat.

The war moved on, and for a time we seemed to be left behind. Not for too long, as our C.O. Flt. Lt. Fairbairn called us together one day to tell us that there was a possibility that we would be flown into Rome airport when Italy itself was invaded; so that air cover could be provided if the Italian forces would change sides and come in with the Allies. One of our not so bright members included this information in his letter home. This was picked up by one of our officers carrying out censor duties, so we were all promptly paraded for a lecture on security and careless talk.
Toward the end of August we loaded up our trucks once again and set off for the port of Milazzo on the north coast of Sicily. On the way we stopped for the night in a walled enclosure close to the lower slopes of Mt. Etna, the ground was three or four inches deep in a floury volcanic lava dust.
In the morning we had to refuel from spare jerry cans of petrol which we carried with us, unfortunately for me, one of the lads on our wagon had put a can with water beside them, with the result that I poured some in the tank before I realised; removing the drain plug I got most of it out, but the engine started cutting out in the mountains in the vicinity of Randazzo and I had to drop out of the convoy and clean out the carburettor. Later our Dispatch Rider met me and escorted me on to our new camp site in some woods; the next morning I was able to drain the remainder of the water from the tank after it had settled.
It had been a spectacular journey crossing several great ravines by Bailey Bridges erected by the Royal Engineers to replace those destroyed by the retreating Germans. There were also lots of German land-mines stacked on the sides of the road at various places.
We were now lined up in rows alongside an American unit, who in the evenings, in the moonlight, would entertain us with their singing of the real cowboy type songs to the accompaniment of their guitars. They also tried out some of our bully beef and biscuits which they much appreciated as a change from their much richer types of food. Some of them also wanted to buy our hunting knives to no avail. It was whilst waiting at this staging area that we discovered a large black locker on our truck. After we removed the lock we found that it contained lots of tinned rations, which we believed the Sergeants had put aside for their mess later on, so we helped ourselves to some of the choicest items. Our favourite were the tins of best bacon rashers which we fried on Geordie Gregory鈥檚 primus stove. There were two grades of bacon, one must have been tinned by war profiteers as it was fatty bacon rolled up in paper which was difficult to disentangle.
American 鈥楰鈥� rations which were to see us through the first days of the impending invasion of Italy were now issued to each man. They were a real novelty to us, consisting of three packs per day per man, that is a breakfast, dinner and tea pack with suitable items for those particular meals. As we had a plentiful supply of bully beef and biscuits, we couldn鈥檛 wait and sampled quite a few of them there and then.
The oiled silk and plasticine had now to be looked out as we set about waterproofing the vehicle鈥檚 engines, ready for the next amphibious operation.

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