大象传媒

I left Naples transit camp on 30 September 1944. The journey had been 'interesting'. When three 'tipper-trucks' arrived at the camp I wondered to what use they might be put. They were for us. The Pay Corps contingent from Algeria was divided between these. Officers and our R.S.M. had the privilege of riding in the cabs, the rest of us sitting on our kit-bags in the tipper. We travelled north. Some of the roads seemed to have been neglected since laid by the Romans.

We reached a scene of desolation. At first a few burned-out farmhouses, then a deserted village - roofless houses crouching around a church, its tower like a broken tooth. This was the overture.

As we crawled through the flattened remains of a town called Cassino we looked up to that mountain crest where were spread the remains of the monastery. On those mountain-slopes crack German troops had held up the Allied advance until bombed out of existence. Everywhere, on the approaches to the town, within it and beyond it, buildings and fields were sprinkled with 'Danger - mines!' signs in English and Italian. There were few civilians, a priest or two. Some looked at us with hatred, others with a kind of numbed indifference. There was no smell of death but a strong odour of disinfectant.

Later I would meet a soldier who had survived weeks in that hellish place. 'I'll tell you the worst of it. The one thing I wanted after being bombed, blasted and shot at was... a cigarette. But when the rations came up those bastards at Base had stolen them all - to flog on the black market.'

Beyond Cassino the road climbed sharply into the mountains, Italy's rugged backbone. We and our kit slid backwards. We halted, brewed sweet tea and ate our rations. Black clouds hooded the mountains; lightning flickered. The thunderstorm hit us half an hour later. Within minutes our tipper-trucks were awash. Fifteen minutes passed before we could pull off the narrow road. We climbed from our trucks with our sodden kit and waited while the drivers operated the tip-mechanism. Three waterfalls and then a re-embarkation (how accurate!) and we continued north.

We drove through village after village most of them wrecked and wretched, small towns in scarcely better plight. Some, however, were almost undamaged and shocked me, familiar as I was with the neat little German-Italian towns of the South Tyrol. These towns and villages were mere slums. They were not picturesque. They were vile ant-hills, worse by far than the Kasbah of Algiers, and inhabited by a filthy swarm of people on whose faces could be seen the stamp of poverty.

It was almost dusk when we reached the last crest and began our descent to the plain. There, far away, was sunlight and something which looked like a golden bubble: St. Peter's dome riding high over all. We were seeing Rome as many a conqueror had seen her, a great city, far off, flame-coloured under the setting sun. At our backs the blue Alban Hills where yet the lightning played amid the storm-clouds.

Less than an hour later our trucks reached a grubby village named Centocelle, some six miles from the walls of Rome. This was the location of No. 8 Command Pay Office. What now?

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