大象传媒

(Continued from A2501696)

[1944] Embarkation for Italy. It was very frustrating how you kept just missing people during the war. Dad was embarking at Alexandria one fine day when he heard a bellow off to the side, 鈥淥I! ERN!鈥� This turned out to be his old mate from Plymouth, Sid Braddon, moving as slowly down his gangplank as Dad was moving up his own. All they could do was wave frantically.

(9th September 1943 - Allied landings at Salerno, including Clark鈥檚 5th Army.) However, we know Dad was still in North Africa at this time, so although he was attached to the fifth Army he was almost certainly in one of the last movements of Allied troops into Italy. This would make sense since the Port Ordnance Detachments would have had the job of consolidating Base Depots in support of Advanced Depots.

[1944] Naples. Dad would rather have seen Plymouth Sound than the famed Bay of Naples any day. He wasn鈥檛 there for long, but his chief impression of the city is of a mixture of grandeur and extreme poverty.

This is echoed by an anonymous travel-guide writer nearly fifty years later;

鈥淧eople tend to love or loathe Naples. It鈥檚 a city of extraordinary vitality and theatricality in a beautiful natural setting. - - - It is also a filthy, raucous port of dilapidated buildings and squalid backstreets with screeching hawkers and urchin pickpockets.鈥�

At the time of the allied forces arrival in Italy some months before Dad got there, the picture was very bleak and moved one unknown poet to verse;

鈥淔or now the shoeless children brood
In sodden coats beneath some dripping arch
And lift their unwashed hands for food
To alien armies passing on their march.

The armies pass, and evening falls
On unsexed women and pride-broken men,
While crumbling mortar from the halls
Of outgrown power breaks loosely, now and then.鈥�

{C. Carter, Naples in From Oasis Into Italy, p114.}

(9th April 1945)

(War Diary entry No.1 POD, RAOC - Bari, 9th April 1945. S.S. Knoll completed loading with 190 tons Ord Stores. S.S. Pinzon continued to load, S.S. Flimston continued to discharge. An explsion [sic] took place at 12.10 hours today. From then there was no further work other than that of Rescue, etc.)

Dad used to tell the story of how one day in Bari the Yanks were, as usual, tossing primed ammo from hand to hand down the gangplank of a ship - the S.S. Empire Tern - when someone dropped something and the whole ship full of explosives went up. Dad and his hut on the quay were below the angle of the blast, but the winds rushing down the narrow streets killed people miles away. No doubt bits of ship and soldiers dropped on them too. Dad was patriotically playing pontoon at the time! It was of course absolutely forbidden for ammunition to be primed in transit, but 鈥渢he Yanks don鈥檛 care鈥�. In spite of the discrepancy in the name of the ship, it seems likely that this is the incident Dad remembered; unless of course explosions due to accidents while handling Ordnance Stores were common. That may have been the case, in spite of the carefully laid out instructions for handling such material in the Training Establishment of the RAOC lectures preserved at the Imperial War Museum.
Bari, according to the same anonymous guidebook writer quoted above, is 鈥淎 busy port with broad straight streets and a sweeping esplanade leading to a labyrinthine mediaeval town on the promontory.鈥� The blast must have had a devastating impact on the winding Mediaeval streets. Apparently in Roman times the poet Horace referred to 鈥渇ish-famous Barium鈥�, so one hopes the troops got some fresh fish while they were there

(28th April 1945) (Mussolini captured and killed by partisans near Lake Como)

(29th April 1945) Dad was among the crowds who witnessed the bodies of Mussolini, Clara Petacchi and entourage strung up on display in the Piazzale Loreto in Milan. Il Duce was arrested twice, and rescued the first time by a special force sent by Hitler, although he was never a serious force in the military or political situation afterwards. Dad remembered seeing the giant Italian partisan who led the group that recaptured him, one of the biggest men he鈥檇 ever seen.

Dad brought home an awful set of photos that were bought for half a bar of soap, which was a more certain currency at this stage than any money, and desperately desired by the Italians.

(4th July 1945) (Posted to No. 5 POD)

[1945]

Dad always claimed that he and the rest of an ammunition working party passed a German patrol in the dark just north of Anzio without either noticing. (No, I don鈥檛 know how he later found out!). This, it is claimed, happened quite often in all the confusion of advancing and retreating armies, and was used to good effect in The Longest Day.

[1945]

Back to the subject of FOOD. For a while Dad and Co. were billeted in a seminary just a few miles from Vesuvius. They were detailed to oversee a vast ammunition dump at Nola, but had no objection to being spoilt by the monks, who grew and raised their own produce and were happy to lavish wonderful meals upon these upright representatives of the liberating forces. The whole landscape around Nola was covered in 2-3 ins. of cement-like powder from an eruption of Vesuvius.

TALES FROM GREECE 1946-1947

I have several pictures of Dad with a dog named Fix. He was one of several Dad became attached to during the war, but they always had to be left behind. Fix was his favourite, named for a Greek brewery near Athens. The men used to drink FIX beer at half-time in football matches. Fix had a sad end as he went berserk and was shot. Anyone who knew Dad will realise how distressing this would have been for him.

For the rest, Dad's memories of Greece are a mixture of the political and the personal. There was, after all, a Civil War going on, which was the reason for the Allied presence in force. Dad arrived just after the hostilities and he and his mates were much taken by the slogans painted on every available wall; OXI (pronounced OKHI). This was the slogan of the Royalists and meant NO. They painted it up in defiance of the Communist E.L.A.S. (Ellenikos Laikos Apeletherotikos Stratos - Greek Popular Liberation Army. Full name and translation courtesy of George Baddeley). Of course, being obsessed, as we have seen, with food, the RAOC chaps assumed it was the Greek for OXO and joked 鈥渋t must be their staple diet".

On the subject of food, Dad had fond memories of Greek cafes - mostly of the OUZO & RETSINA.

At some point Dad bestowed his custom upon a watchmaker or jeweller; the receipt is preserved. Just decipherable are the words "For woman - Swiss made - guarantee for 10 years" This must have been for Mum but how long she had it I don't know. If the date 5.II.47 means 5th February, it was a very short time before Dad went home for good.

[1946] Back to the difficulties of meeting people - Dad's younger brother Reg was on a ship in Piraeus harbour at some point while Dad was stationed there, but Army Regulations prevented them getting together. Their elder brother Les managed to see Reg but he was an Officer so more was possible for him.

One final interesting thing about Greece was that due to inflation there were banknotes all over the streets. "Ankle-deep" according to Dad. The 1 DRACHMA note would have been so worthless as to be practically in minus figures. The 500,000 DRACHMA was hardly worth having, and you could kick your way through small heaps of 1,000,000 DRACHMA notes.

It was nearly time to go home!

(Continued in A2687006)

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