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This story is taken from an interview with Robert Adams at the 2nd Batt RIR event, Campbell College, and has been added to the site with their permission. The authors fully understand the site's terms and conditions. The interviewer was Bruce Logan.
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After we landed in Sicily and … we had a very easy time in Sicily. The day we landed in Syracuse, and no opposition to our landing. We just waded ashore. And on from there. And we crossed the Straits of Messina into Italy. That was a fairly easy crossing too.
And I took part in the campaign in Italy. It was wild difficult country to operate in, because of the topography of it. And then eventually, after Cassino, it was steady advancement after that. We were held up very badly at Cassino for some months. And so eventually we crossed the frontier into Austria.

VE day … the war in Italy ended some days before the war in the rest of Europe. On the 2nd May. We set off that morning as usual, searching for mines on the road. And just over the frontier to Austria a few miles, and later in the morning we were told that the war was over. But by this time we knew the war was going to end, because groups of Germans were coming in with their hands up. Which is unusual for Germans. On the morning of 2nd May, there was large groups, large parties of Germans surrendered, and we just sent them back, pointed them back the way to go, and they went on back towards the frontier. And days after, also, we had just to carry on clearing mines. One day was the same as the next, as far as we were concerned.

We had to clear, but actually we were clearing areas where there weren’t any mines. You had to check it out, just the same. We actually penetrated about 25 miles, I think, into Austria before we turned back into Italy. It was a minor road we travelled up, heading towards a place called Klavenfurt. One day was the same as the next. We had to carry on with the job.

We went back into Italy, and I finished my service in Italy.

[was Italy just battle-scarred wasteland?]
Well, that was just about the size of it. Then, the Germans were always on top of the next hill. When you pushed them off it they retreated to the top of the next one. So we were always climbing up hills, and the casualties for the British Army were very severe. I think the worst part of the war for the British Army was in Italy.
I was quite impressed with the Italian civilians, especially the womenfolk, and the way they looked after their children. The women were very kind to their children.

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