大象传媒

All supplies for the troops who had landed on the Anzio Beachhead in January of 1944 had to be brought from Naples by supply ship, and being too large to dock in the port of Anzio had to anchor 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 sling 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 German 208mm railway gun called 'Leopold' but christened 'Anzio Anne' was at a railway tunnel just south of Rome some 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 hazzards of this task were made more dangerous by the hell bent driving of the black American drivers who would swing around the corners at breakneck speed. This led to part of their load becoming 'detached' and falling off.

On one occasion, being an Anti-tank gun tower driver, I had delivered my 6pdr. gun to it's designated site. I was instructed to return to F Echelon and upon arrival there was then to make up a party of 'Rubble Clearers' in Anzio. The shelling from Anne had beenrather heavy and the town on this occasionwas in a pretty bad state and the convoys had a lot of trouble getting through.

Our party of 'clearers' worked hard and made a path through for the lorries and they were able to get their loads to their dumps. On DUKW came hurtling around a corner and lost three or four cases from his load. Although there was no indication as to the contents of the case I could tell one of the contained bottles. Our pary picked up these four case and on return to F Echelon proceeded to open the cases.

My case contained a dozen bottles of Black Label Johnnie Walker whisky, another case was found to have four 7lb tins of fruit cocktail and the other two case held tins of Canadian streaky bacon.

We decided to share our good fortune with the rest of the regiment as far as we could and so three bottles of whisky were given to the Officer's mess and three to the Serjeant's mess, the rest wa sshared out among the boys of HQ Coy, the bacon went to our cooks and the fruit was very soondevoured.

After this I wa always to be known as 'Whisky Heaney' but my excuse was "They fell off the back of a lorry"

Brian Heaney. Sgt. 2nd Bn Sherwood Foresters

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