´óÏó´«Ã½

This story was submitted to the People's War site by CSV/´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Nottingham on behalf of David Davison with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I will concentrate my memories on the events, which took place at Casino in Italy, during 1944. I can remember setting off from our base camp on March 22nd near Mount Vesuvius and at the time Vesuvius was experiencing an enormous eruption and I have very vivid memories (I haven’t seen anything like it since) of sky filling with smoke from Vesuvius, which must have been 20 or 30 miles away but it filled the whole of the Southern sky and it wasn’t just smoke but millions of millions of tiny smoke bubbles which created an extraordinary effect. It must have been pretty nasty for those directly beneath Vesuvius but from where I was it was very striking and at night you could see great red rivers coming down the side of the mountain.
I realise now that Casino had been such a strong hold in the German defence line that we had to concentrate an enormous number of men to prevail in that area. At least 6 weeks before the final battle, which focused on the monastery, my regiment and I were led by guides to our battle positions. Our guide, unfortunately, led us straight up the wrong way. We were going up and up the mountain, thinking we must be there soon, when suddenly shells began to fall and I saw to my horror that the guide began to lose confidence in his ability and he admitted that he had only been up the route once before and that was in the back of a lorry so he hadn’t seen the landmarks. Finally we reached our correct positions. I was in charge of mortars, which were very effective because they fired up over high and uneven ground. Ordinary guns would have been useless in the kind of terrain we were in. We set up our camp and I’ve got memories of climbing up the side of the mountain which was in fact a huge ridge which ran to the north of the monastery. There followed days of living in observation posts on top of the ridge, which commanded a wide view of the German positions. By day we sheltered in what we called ‘sangers’, which were old sheep pens made of stone and we had below us an underground cellar, which I rather think it was an offshoot from the great monastery. It gave us very good cover. By day, if the Germans saw us they would fire with the guns they had trained on the ridge. They had one particularly big gun which could fire well beyond the range of ours, which we used to call ‘Piedimonte’, after a village nearby on the German side —You knew when this gun had fired because you could see circle of smoke then you would hear a noise like an express train as the shell landed somewhere along the ridge. Once, they located my ‘sanger’ and I had to endure an awful lot of firing. Some of the shells expelled a nasty burning chemical but fortunately I was protected by the stone walls In between the gunfire it was an interesting place- being a bird watcher I used to see all kinds of rarities!.
I was at the end of a telephone wire and if I saw any action on the German side I would report to the chaps down below the map reference and it was their job to fire on the Germans as accurately as possible with the mortars. It was very satisfying work. I did once see a whole convoy bringing German equipment up on mules because they had their own distant units to supply and it was coming on to be dusk. So I shouted down the map reference but as luck would have it shellfire had cut the telephone wire. Such are the hazards! So I couldn’t deliver shells that time.
By the time I was fighting in the area around Casino, the allies had heavily bombed the monastery but it made no difference in my mind because the ruins gave the Germans even better cover. It’s a very dramatic building and commanded a complete view whichever way you looked. Wherever you moved in the valley the monastery was looking at you and at first you felt very uncomfortable but before long you got used to the fact that you could not keep out of sight. The days and weeks went by then we moved from there to the other side of the Monastery to marshy country, which was dissected by rivers. As what I now know to be the final battle date approached our commanding officers ordered a smoke screen to be put down so that we lived under a smoke cover and days went by when we rarely saw the sun. We lay up in this woodland, which was very beautiful waiting for the order to attack. As I was quite young I had never really noticed the onset of spring before but in this woodland area there were cuckoos and nightingales which sang like mad- they never seemed to mind gun fire. In fact, the more the artillery roared, the more they warbled!
Then in due course all the guns fired at once and we started to mount an assault. Now unfortunately my memory is not quite clear, I remember crossing a bridge, which had been very badly damaged by shellfire. My mortars were working away but it was hard work because when you fired, the force drove the base of the gun into the ground and it was marshy underfoot which made it very difficult to keep the guns going. But gradually we battled our way through the smoke then there was one glorious moment when the smoke cleared and we saw blue sky and up above the monastery flew the polish flag. The troops who finally occupied the monastery were the Poles. The Germans had held out extremely well and repelled the combined 8th and 5th armies for months but after taking Casino we were able to proceed onto Rome and then even further northwards.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.