大象传媒

We did not know where we were going until we were entering Taranto Harbour, and what a lovely sight it was. Half of the Italian Navy was lying at anchor but before they had surrendered they had scuttled a few of their ships just outside the harbour. When we docked and went ashore the first thing we did was to brew up some tea and then we unloaded the ship with our supplies and gear. We settled down for the night and fell asleep wherever we could lie down.

The next morning we were taken to the railway sidings where we were allotted one cattle truck to every 30 men. We piled out kit at one end of the truck and then used the space left over to sleep in. After travelling for most of the day we eventually stopped at a place called Foggia which was a railway siding. By the look of it, the RAF had made a real mess of it as the railway lines were sticking up in the air just like corkscrews. We stayed for an hour or so and made ourselves some tea while we were waiting. In the meantime there was an American soldier on guard and when he came level with us we asked him if he had any cigarettes he could give us as we hadn鈥檛 had a smoke for days. The American replied that he didn鈥檛 have any cigarettes on him but the sergeant who was walking down the track might have some. When we asked the sergeant he said he had none but that in the nearby wagon were the American NAAFI supplies. He said he wouldn鈥檛 be looking in that direction and so we could help ourselves. He hadn鈥檛 gone 20 yards before a couple of the lads jumped into the wagon and started to throw boxes of stuff across to us. We found out later that each box contained ten days rations of food for one man. We opened one of the boxes to see what it consisted of. There were sweets, soap, a packet of soup powder, cigarettes, toilet paper and what I thought were oxo cubes so I ate one and about an hour later had terrible stomach pains. One of the other sergeants asked me what was wrong and I told him what I鈥檇 eaten. He laughed and said I鈥檇 just eaten rations for ten men.

As we were moving up the Adriatic coast, we could see traces of the damage done by the RAF on their bombing mission. We eventually stopped thenext day at a place called Termolie. We were only there for a few days when we had to go to a place on the west coast of Italy called Perugia Crosseto. The Germans had broken through the American lines and they could not hold them back but the Germans soon found out that it was their old enemy the 7th Armoured Division in front of them. It was not long before the Germans were retreating and we eventually handed the position back to the Americans and returned to Termolie.

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