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Italy
Dawn was breaking when we left the Infantry landing ship and found the Transport landing ship which C flight had almost finished loading. I was immediately accosted by Ernie Mc Lellan
‘Bill,‘ he called from the Motor bike he was dashing about on. ‘I saw Les buried over on the hill there, with the others. I’ve got to go now, but will you mend that motorbike, I hit a shell hole and the front tyre went down, I’ve had to borrow this one,’ and he was off.
I found the bike with a flat front tyre, lying near the shell hole and looked out Snowy Mc Pherson the vehicle mechanic to find me a new tyre and tube. We were old friends and it was nice to be back with C flight again. The only down side was that I was soon made aware that Captain Price was now in charge of all troops on the ship, which included a unit of an Engineering commando. Which shared the boat with us. I got the tyre and tube in and the wheel back in the bike, rode it aboard and lashed it near section C10’s truck
The boat was about to sail, as I found myself a place under a fifteen hundred weight truck on the deck and went to find the lads of my new section. C 11. I knew them of course Captain Carr who had probably saved my skin by knocking gunner Nut’s tommy gun down when he nearly shot me. I had always got on O K with him, but he was a friend of Captain Price, which made me a bit suspicious. Geordie
Lauchlan. A wild Scot from Stirling. Who had a good reputation as a rigger and a hard man. Sam Perry the gunner / truck driver and radio operator. A bit older than the rest of us. A steady ex school teacher from the black country who never swore, got drunk or visited houses of ill repute and after his look inside the hut near Enfidaville never willingly entered any dwelling. For some reason there was no proper batman available for Captain Carr. So ‘Mack’ McKenzie from Paisly was in the section to do that job. Mack mentioned previously for his adventure with the Gurkhas at Enfidavlle was not really a good batman. He’d had no training for it and was a general duties airman whilst all batmen were gunners. He was however a good team man. Had a sense of humour and some knowledge of things like first aid and cooking. He was O K in the section so it was no trouble to have him. I was once more in the state I was in for the Sicily invasion. Andy had packed his guns in the truck and loaded his motorbike in it as well as the Auster. Which was something of a feat of packing skill. It left me with no small arms other than a revolver. Which I must had scrounged from somewhere and no bike to ride. As once at sea the hold was out of bounds to all troops.
Captain Carr sorted me out as soon as he found me.
‘You did not get along with Captain Price Barwick,’ he said
‘That’s right Sir we did not get on,’ I admitted.
‘Well that has nothing to do with how we get on now,’ he said ‘we start from now, Is that alright with you?’
‘Yes Sir’ I said ‘It suites me fine.’
I moved my sleeping quarters to another truck on the deck when I discovered that the one I was under was loaded with explosives and went round C flight renewing old acquaintances. I was back with the lads I’d trained with.
The boat was a fairly new one, manned by Americans. This was I thought a good thing as it had the up to date comforts like iced water drinkers and quite good bunks, but I still slept out on the deck under a truck. It was where I felt more at home. I settled down to enjoy the few days ride from this port which I had not heard the name of to the landing beach which we now knew was a place called Salerno. I caught up with the gossip and was put in the picture about the torpedo incident. It seemed that the thing was thought to have been dropped from an aircraft and hit the ship just below where Andy McMeican was standing. It blew him way out into the water. A long way from the ship, from where he could be heard yelling for somebody to fetch him out. Captain Carr dived over the side and swam out to him and held him up till a boat got to them. It says something about Captain Carr that he and Andy had never got on. In fairness Andy was not a good mechanic, he had never really got down to learning the job and I don’t think he was a very good team man either. I had heard him moaning about Captain Carr, but I bet he glad to see him that time.
The torpedo did a lot of damage and injured and killed quite a few blokes. I think it was a royal Navy boat, as the crew got it to safety. They may have beached it, but probably got it into the small port where I joined them.
I found out many years later that Captain Carr had his airoplane out of the truck and assembled and flew along the coast to find another ship. Which happened to be this one. The lads must have worked day and night to get reloaded onto it. My old rigger Les Webb they told me, had been manning his Bren gun on the deck and was killed by a small piece of shrapnel. Which hit him between the eyes. The foresight of his gun was also neatly sheared off and I managed to get that onto the truck. I forget how, but we used it for anti aircraft work when we had the hundred round pan on. As the hundred round pan sits between the foresight and the back sight on the Bren gun. you just have to fire on tracer.
Ernie McClellan drew me into conversation about the second day out.
‘You aint got a bit to take ashore this time have you Bill?’ he said.
‘No I shall get a ride in the truck’ I said.
‘Well I’ve got a spare and I can’t ride two, so how about you take one ashore for me?’ he asked.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘Norton 16 H, I sort of got it from a R E M E unit’, he said.
‘Is it alright?’ I asked ‘waterproofed and all that?’
‘I couldn’t get it waterproofed ‘ he admitted ‘because it’s a bit unofficial like.’
It was his way of saying he’d pinched the thing. I was not happy about this, but we were old boozing mates and I did like to have my own transport. I still think I must have been suffering from some sort of mental complaint because I agreed to take it on knowing full well that there was no chance of even getting down into the hold to have a look at it first.
I settled down to appreciate the pleasure of life on a landing ship. American food was great for a change, the iced water a treat after Africa and Sicily, the sun shone down on our efforts, the sea smooth as the proverbial and I was back with my old mates. We had signals to say that the beach landing we were joining was not going as well as it should have, but was holding and that the bridgehead was almost two miles deep and ten miles long, but dominated from high ground which the enemy held. No change there then.
I found out years later that one of the members of the Engineering Commando on the boat with us was a bloke I knew well from Olney. It would have been nice to have met and wrote home to tell our folks we had met up, but we didn’t.
All good things come to an end as the saying goes and there we were on the run up to Green beach. I was one of the few blokes on board who had done this before so perhaps I was one of the first to find alarm bell ringing in my head as we got close and I heard the engines go off. On the Sicily landing I had been on a similar boat manned by the Royal Navy. They kept the engines running right up to the beach and crunched the thing ashore onto the rocks, which we had to negotiate to get off. This beach looked like real nice soft sand and now we were wallowing about, yards away from it with dead engines.
I heard afterwards that Captain Price was on the bridge at the time and went hairless. As was the right thing to do. He demanded that the thing be backed away, taken out to sea and brought in again. This time under power. He then set somebody up beside the skipper with a Tommy gun and orders to shoot the bastard if he stopped the engines too soon next time. I think he picked Paddy Burns for this job, as it was just the sort of thing he would enjoy, blowing a Yank in half.
I meantime, found myself looking at a beach from the side of a ship, which was side on to an enemy shore. I was not happy about this, as it is about the worst situation you can get into on that sort of job. And then out of the clouds came a Macchi single seat fighter, with German markings, going like hell through the mass of ships. Popping off at as many as he could get a bead on, he went past us about fifty yards away. I cursed my luck at not having my Bren to hand, but consoled myself with the fact that I was right in front of and below an anti aircraft Oerlikon, manned by the Americans. When no noise came from this thing I looked into the gun position to see all the crew laying down on the floor.
At this point Captain Price came along the deck toward me. I swear there was steam coming out of his ears’
‘Barwick.’ He roared ‘why was that gun not firing?’
‘Because all them Yanks was laying down Sir,’ I said. Standing to attention.
‘You can fire an Oerlikon, can’t you?’ he bellowed.
‘Yes Sir’ I said, ‘I can fire and Oerlikon’.
‘Then make sure the bloody thing fires next time,’ he snarled as he stamped off, glad to have given me a bollocking in front of a load of useless Yanks and looking for somebody else to have a go at.
I moved up to the opening of the gun turret and stood there watching the gun crew stand up sheepishly, as I deliberately undid the catch of my revolver holster to assure them that I was not taking a bollocking for them again. Even if I had to shoot them to get at their gun.
Well we did come up to the beach for another go. This time we did touch the sand before the boat stopped, but there was still quite a bit of water sloshing about as the ramp went down and I found my way down into the hold and Ernie’s Norton.
My heart sank at the sight of it. He must have pinched it off a scrap heap. I unlashed it and pushed it to the top of the ramp, turned the petrol on and tried to start it. There was almost no compression. The brakes didn’t work and the tyres were worn out. I got it started and looked around from the top of the ramp. There was a bod standing there not doing much so I got him to hold the thing back while I revved the engine as hard as it would go before yelling to him to let go so I could use the flywheel inertia to bounce me out of the water. What this bod was doing, hanging about on a landing ramp at a beach landing I’ll never know, but I was glad of his help as I careered down into the water, hit it and kept the throttle open to bounce out as the engine died on me. I was on the beach with a dead motorbike. The yanks have a saying.
‘There are two types of men on an invasion beach. Dead men and ones that are going to die.’ It’s one of the things they got right. It was essential to get away from there. I pushed it a bit further up the slope and kicked it. But the water had got well into the thing. Ernie McClellan had got off early and was away, but Paddy Burns followed me and stopped. We found a bit of rope and he gave me a tow to the assembly point. I was with my section and we could get going getting the Auster out of the truck and assembled. We went for it and got the plane ready for air test and first operation in about twenty minutes and by then Mack had a cuppa ready.
My priority then was to sort out my Tommy gun and motor bike. Neither were in really good shape, but after dumping McClellan’s Norton near his truck I could get on with it. I never saw that Norton again, which was good news.
We hit the ground running as they now say. Captain Carr used the air test to do a recce, we got our slit trenches dug, but I crashed out in a drainage ditch as it was made of concrete. I put a sort of bed in the bottom and got a good nights sleep, but when I moved the bed a dirty great snake slithered away. I don’t know enough about the things to know it were a dangerous one or not. I had other things to worry about at the time.
The bridge-head we held was still a bit precarious and proving difficult to break out of. There had been talk of getting off it, but at this stage I think it was being held confidently enough. We, section C11, moved out of the flight to a position which the Americans had held and Geordie and I soon found a big dump of American rations. We filled all the space we had in the truck and then realized that we could not use the thing like that so we drove back to C flight and found Q Eddlestone.
‘We’ve got a problem,’ we told him.
‘Why? he asked so we told him
‘That’s not a problem boy, dump all you can spare just here I’ll deal with them,’ he said. He was chuffed, I think perhaps he was having trouble with supplies of food.
Once we got settled again I noticed that there was a cable running up the side of a large silage tower. I followed it up into the sort of room at the top which had obviously been used by the Americans as an observation point because they had left their usual array of litter about, but up near the wall they had also left their field telephone. A posh thing built into a leather carrying case. A much better tool than our Don Five sets. It had a handle to drive a generator to ring the bell at the phone you called. Our sets only buzzed the buzzer.
I picked up the handset and wound the winder. Nothing happened. I did it again and got no reply, so I disconnected the terminals and slung it over my shoulder for the climb down. Geordie not to be outdone also found a way of winning one of these sets. From then on we could always make ourselves heard when we rang somebody, but more of that later.
We were really busy from there on. Captain Carr was in the air continuously and we had to keep him going with food and drink and the aircraft topped up with petrol. He suddenly found himself firing what the navy calls a monitor. This is a great big ship with an impressive mass of really big guns. I think they were fourteen inch and fired a shell weighing a ton and a half. Flat bottomed and shallow draughted this boat could come right in close to the beach and throw shells many miles inland. The Captain tried a ranging shot or two and decided that the royal Navy did not understand his firing orders. He had to be got down to the beach to be taken aboard to explain what he wanted. It was to do with his angle of sight corrections. The Navy did not understand how to correct for the fact that the target was up in the hills, many hundreds of feet above sea level and that there was a formula to allow for this in the Artillery, as their targets were almost never at the same altitude as their guns.
They listened to his explanation of the formula, wined and dined him and returned him to the beach. From then on he could hit the targets. Now he could range the guns in the daytime and the boat could return at night and pump hundreds of huge shells into it. Very noisy and awe inspiring to watch the shells as they were pumped over us, going it looked ridiculously slowly as they climbed away over our heads, the phosphorous ones glowing like huge tracers.
Later it was said that five hundred enemy troops died in that shellfire. It must have been hell. I think the ship was called The Forrester or something like that. We were told she was a very old boat, but her fire-power was awesome. Captain Carr later flew over the target and the smell made him sick. And he was no chicken.
Quite close to us 3226 Servicing Commando R A F had a strip working. I think they got there with the first wave of the invasion and got some Spitfires flying. We had trained with them at Bottisham before we left England so we knew some of them. I think they had some problems with the Spits because for two days running one of their pilots baled out at a great height above us and came down slowly to land close to their strip. The kite also came close, but didn’t take long to get down.
One thing which I noticed, but did not at that time know how to deal with, was the animals which had been abandoned. There were dairy cows un-milked walking about with milk running from them. Some had been injured and of course there were dead ones. I at the time knew nothing of how to look after that sort of animal and in any case I’d very little time to spare.
It must have been at Salerno that I caught Malaria. I think our people chose the place because The Germans kept a very thin presence there because it was Malarial . We were told after-woods that because so many of the animals were killed the mosquitos, which normally went for the livestock went for us and became Malaria transmitters.
It seemed a long time before we broke out of that bridgehead, but we did and headed for Naples. I suppose it was essential that we got hold of a port The Captain got the plane down on the side of mount Vesuvious, from where we sort of overlooked Naples. It was not a good landing strip. Volcanos as I already knew did leave a messy sort of area. I was at this stage I think the Squadron expert on how to work a landing strip on a volcano. There was a tree stump by the side of this strip and with undulating and uneven ground, as well as unpredictable winds. The Captain had some difficulty missing the thing, so we got in touch with some Yanks who sent us a big caterpillar tractor driven by a big black soldier to whom we put our problem.
‘Where do you want it?’ he asked.
’Anywhere but there’, we told him, so he hitched a cable round the thing and just drove off with it till it was clear of our strip.
Somehow we got into Naples. Things were a bit dodgy there. We had been told.
‘ Mines’ they said ‘[been left in the sewers and could blow up at any time in any place’, but we only passed through and set off along the Appian way toward Capua. We stayed close to the coast in the area, which had been the Pontine marshes and one of the most malarial places in Europe. The Americans used converted bombers to spray the whole area with insecticide, which seemed to work. It still didn’t stop me from getting Malaria, which did not show itself for a long time.
I think Captain Carr was kept close to the coast because of his expertise in firing warships, as we now had the cruiser Spartan firing at land targets. This was O K until Jerry sent an airoplane with a controlled flying bomb, which sank her. I never heard any more of the monitor. The Spartan had six inch guns and had been very effective and accurate. On one occasion a German who had been given some field punishment decided to leave his mortar company and walked through the lines to surrender. When interviewed he agreed to pinpoint all the mortars if we agreed to eliminate them. The Captain was given this job and decided to hit them first with a twenty five pounder regiment, moving up to the four fives and finishing them off with The Spartan. I doubt if any of that lot survived.
It must have been after we lost The Spartan that we moved inland and about that time we heard that Captain Price had been killed. To my shame ever since, the news of his death disappointed me, as I realized that my feelings were of disappointment. Inside I had always cherished the thought that one day I would have the pleasure of slitting his throat and letting him run. Not a very edifying memory. There are some things that I do not recall with any pride.
I had my twenty first birthday about this time so it was October 1943. I remember it, as we had pulled up under a walnut tree close to a flax retting pool, which stank a bit. I saw one walnut on the tree and claimed it as it was my birthday It was also around here that the captain took off to work with his regiment, probably the Seventy-fourth Medium and was gone rather longer than we expected. He came back with a big grin on his face and an almost empty tank, so we got him to tell us his story.
He had been flying over some territory, which our army was advancing over, led by The Sixth Armoured Division in their Shermans. He was directing his guns on to targets the regiment gave him, when in making a turn at the eastern end of the salient he noticed some Tiger tanks working their way around The Sixth. He had no direct link with The Sixth, so he noted position, speed and direction, wrote it on a note, which he put in a message bag and flew over the tanks to get their attention. Knowing his methods I think they probably thought he was in the tanks with them.
Sure that they knew he was there, he threw the message bag down to them and then watched as one of them drove right up to it and stopped. Then another backed up to it, two more formed up in either side to box it in and then a bloke leaped out of one of them, grabbed the bag and dived back inside. He watched as they sorted out his message, turned east and went tiger hunting.
A few days later a Sixth Armoured div jeep rolled up at our strip. A major jumped out with our message bag in his hand and went up to The Captain.
‘I say old chap, is this yours?’ he asked.
They spent the next ten minutes or so drinking tea and sorting out radio wavelengths. After that I think it became a regular thing for the Armour to ask for an Auster when they were moving forward and as far as I know it was a sound arrangement.
I get a bit confused about what happened around this time. I know the weather was getting worse and we were moving slowly north to a point where we got held by a large, slow flowing river. I’m fairly confident it was The Volturno which runs through Capua where the bridge had been blown. It was around here that we were attached to a regiment of seven point two howitzers. These were I think firing across the river and being howitzers had a short range and fired big shells. The Captain as usual had to get as close as he could to head quarters which was right in the gun lines. He found a sort of field which was really a strip of agricultural land a few yards wide and about a hundred and thirteen of my paces long which we knew from experience was only just long enough to be practical.
Section C11 was now a well co-ordinated unit. We knew our jobs and most of each others and could work well. It was still made up of three airmen , a gunner and The Captain. Mack the AC1 batman, was as I said before not the best of batmen. It was not his real job, but he was a good team man, mucking in on any job that needed doing. I think he was not doing a very good job on the captain’s small arms because The captain called us all onto a parade with small arms one morning and did a proper weapons inspection. I found out why when he finished because he dived back into his tent and brought out his revolver and tommy gun, presented me with them with a big grin and said I now had charge of his side arms. It was a sort of backhanded compliment. He wanted to be sure his guns worked.
We settled down to work with the howitzers. The weather was not so good, with a lot of rain, which flooded our slit trenches, but we still slept in them, as we were very close to the enemy and a bit exposed. The guns were about the noisiest I’d worked close to. They had a short barrel, which pointed upward, big wheels and a lot of heavy steel in the chassis. When they fired, a huge sheet of flame lit the area, there was a bang, which was almost too loud for the ears, which seemed to pick you up and drop you. The gun itself hurled itself backwards to a great pair of chocks, up which it ran, teetered on the top and rushed forward. Then the shell, about two hundred pounds in weight, screamed through the air like some enormous tyre shriek These guns were busy. The crew working like madmen to reposition and load and Geordie and I signed on the crew nearest to us, heaving on ropes to slew the thing into position.
The sergeant in charge was a big Irishman. I asked him what he was fireing and was told
‘Number five flashproof’ he said.
‘Flashproof?’ I queried.
‘Ah’ he said, ‘It’s got a bit damp.’
‘Does it ever jump the chocks?’ I asked.
‘Boy,’ he said, ‘I had one jump the chocks, run down the hill so far I had to send a bloke on a motor bike to find the bloody thing.’
At first we were not all that busy because the plane could not be flown in the daylight, being so close and exposed. The Captain would get away before it was light in the morning, stooge around picking out targets and land as it got light, so we could camouflage her’, do all that was needed and get our heads down.
This easy state of affairs did not last long. The landing strip was only just long enough and was growing some sort of clover like crop, which when covered with dew or rain was too slippy. We got away with it a couple of mornings and then he came in as normal, applied the brakes carefully, which stopped the wheels from rotating, but did very little to slow her down. She slid past Geordie and me and dropped, none too gently into the ditch which terminated the strip. The prop went bang, the exhaust stubs dug into the soft soil and the fuselage longeron buckled just behind the passenger’s seat.
We were from then on busy. The gun crew we had been working with, ran across. I think they were concerned for the Captain. He was alright, but it was handy to have them there because with a few words of instruction on where to lift they easily lifted the plane out of the ditch. The prop was only a ten minute job. The stubs no more then that, but the longeron was a bit more difficult. The fabric had to be stripped off, the kink forced out and then we had to get the services of a R E M E welder to braze a sleeve inside it and redo the fabric. It took most of the day.
The same thing happened the next morning as the field got wetter and more slippery. Our friendly gun crew now knew where to lift and the R E M E bloke knew what to do, but this was getting a bit much. Geordie and I decided we would do something about it and the next morning positioned ourselves carefully. As the plane came sliding past, we each grabbed a strut and hung on. Our feet had no more cohesion with the surface than the wheels had and we all landed in a heap in the ditch. This was a cause of great amusement to our friendly gun crew. Probably the best bit of entertainment they had had for a long time.
It became obvious that we could not work much longer from that strip. The longeron was getting real tatty and I was out of props. The situation was saved by the infantry getting across the river, the engineers throwing a pontoon bridge across and things were moving.
I think they got tanks across first and then guns and then of course The Captain. He had no trouble getting over. Airoplanes can cross rivers easily, but as soon as he was over he needed his mechanic and crew. My cue to cross over and find him. He’d dropped his map reference number down to us and I mounted my trusty B S A and headed for the bridge. I suppose it would be mid morning when I got to the thing. It looked a proper dodgy bit of kit, as I rolled down the bank onto the planks, which were already wet and followed the stream of trucks out onto the river. As we went across, it dipped and rolled as the trucks went over it. The pontoons were really just canvass boats which could collapse flat for transporting and they must have been leaking a bit as there were quite a few harassed engineers with petrol driven pumps pumping them out. There was no stopping or hesitating here, everybody just had to keep on going. With the planks moving about up down and sideways. With the weight of my guns, ammo and heavy boots the idea of swimming if I slid off was not really worth considering, but I made it and slithered the bike up the opposite bank. Then I was off to find The Captain.
From there on it was look after the Auster and get the site ready for the truck and the lads. My priority was petrol and food until the lads arrived, but they were not so far behind me.
Once the bridge-head was secure the engineers stuck a Bailey over the river at Capua and normal service was resumed. Supplies poured over the river and it was possible to move on again.
I think the next problem river was The Garigliano. This was not like the Volturno which flowed through meadows. Wide deep and slow flowing. The Garigliano was quite small fast running and not too deep. It bounced along the bottom of a ravine, which had steep cliffs on each side on which some trees grew. No doubt this would be a little wonderland in times of peace, but now with our army trying to get across and the German army trying to stop it, it was difficult to see it in that light.
I was never sure who got down our side, forded the river and climbed the opposite side. Probably the Indians. Somebody did and cleared a way for a Scammel driver with suicidal tendencies, to drive over the edge, crash to the bottom, drive through the water and wait at the bottom of the cliff for somebody to pull his winch rope up to the top and anchor it. To winch himself to the top. Once up his Scammel could be anchored and pull up the next Scammel. Two Scammels can winch up a tank and then another, as they take their turn.
As dawn breaks the tanks are moving out, guns are crossing, headquarters are across and the captain is looking for a landing strip near them. Captain Carr was always more concerned to get to the right spot, even if it was not much of a landing strip. He was not called Crasher for nothing, but he often did small miracles of landing and taking off from very unsuitable strips. My problem was to support him by getting there and as soon as I knew where he was I headed for the crossing site.
There was no difficulty getting down to the bottom of the ravine. If you drive to the edge and then go over, you get to the bottom. Gravity does it. Then crash on through the water to the bottom of the climb out, where trucks are waiting their turn to be winched up. Here is a scene, which could be likened to hell if you had time to do that sort of thinking. Men are sweating and swearing as they struggle with ropes and cables. My problem was to get to the top and it being almost a vertical climb I looked around for a suitable bit of rope, tied it to the handlebars of my bike and when I got a chance, tied it to a vehicle that was on its way up. I doubt if the bloke in the truck knew I was there. On the way up I had a few moments to wonder what was in the thing and if it would all fall out onto me as I battled to keep the bike upright and not let the ropes end slip away. At the top while the driver was unhitching his tow. I let go the rope, left it hanging onto the truck and got going.
The captain was always glad to see me at times like this. He would be in the air looking for targets, checking where our troops were. Sometimes flying a senior officer into or out of the bridge-head and he would need more petrol and some assistance with the machine when taxiing as on this sort of move he would almost always be working from a pretty rough landing strip.
I think it was at the Garigliano crossing that there was some delay getting a bridge across the ravine and Geordie could not get across until the next day which meant I probably crashed out for the night under the mainplane or in a hole somewhere. Food was fairly easily scrounged probably from the Headquarters unit we were working with, but we were glad to see the truck turn up.
The rivers slowed everything down, but once across a lot of effort went into spreading out and getting the army across. And then as they came to strong points, mostly mountains, the army got held and as the weather got worse we had to find somewhere where we could get under some sort of cover. Our section was on a strip which overlooked a wide valley. For once we had a good strip, but we were a bit exposed and as the rain was heavy and regular there was some doubt if supplies could be got to us by the regiment we were working with. I think it was the Seventy Fourth Field regiment with their four fives and five fives who were dug in on the south side of a ravine, firing at German guns on the opposite side. They were always busy, but even Captain Carr could not find a landing strip right close to them. They brought our rations in a small truck. Warned us that they might not be able to get to us for a few days so they had brought double rations, then turned up the next day with the same story and again the next. We ate very well there.
Our position was a bit exposed, we got our truck and plane camouflaged as well as we could, but did feel a bit out in the open. It was here that the Germans must have decided on a different use for their M E 109s. Perhaps our air forces were too much for them as fighters. Here they used them in the ground attack role. They came along the valley right down low, popping off at anything they thought was a target. Geordie and I had had quite a bit of experience with the Bren gun. I had developed a sort of technique in Sicily and we had the advantage of our own troops along the valley, who always opened up at them, to warn us they were on the way. So we could be standing in a suitable position to let they have it as they came over us. The first one to the gun grabbed it and started firing while the next stood behind him to steady him. It was a bit dodgy, but we always had a go. Geordie always screaming invective at the plane.
‘Come down here and fight you bastard,’ was the main message he had for them. This overlooked the fact that the thing was over us at about fifteen feet and in danger of chopping our heads off with his prop. We almost always bounced a lot of tracer off his cowlings, but never knocked one down close to us. I can’t remember how many of these affrays we got mixed up in. We missed one as I heard the noise down the valley as we were seeing the captain out to take off. I went to him yelled,
‘Enemy aircraft overhead,’ and sprinted for cover, He followed and we all landed in a heap in the ditch just as they went over us. No time to get the gun working that time. I must have gone at some speed because I almost beat Geordie to the ditch
The weather got worse and it was decided to get C flight all together just a bit further back from the front and we assembled a few miles down the road from Venafero. About this time also Sam Perry got a posting to the education branch of the army, promotion to sergeant and was sent as the education officer to a detention centre. Which he wrote to us to tell us he hated. He was replaced by Jimmy Afflec a scouse who’s dad was a customs officer. Jimmy was a good driver, radio operator and team member Also at this time just before Sam left we went dashing off into the wilds of Italy with a crowd of Gurkhas. I am sure Sam was there because we found a sort of church which he being the schoolteacher told us was the church of St Frances as it was at Assisi. This was miles behind German lines and we very quickly dived back. I’m still not sure what happened.
Section C11 was now an experienced and crack section. We took possession of the downstairs room of a farm house where an old couple and their son lived. They were hanging on despite the war going on around them. It was a bit hard on them pushing them out of one of the biggest rooms in their house, but we tried to make it as easy for them as we could. The Captain and other officers took over another house and some farm buildings about sixty yards along from us. Mac of course had to be there on hand to look after the captain. We got our truck in close to the house and used the room to sleep in sometimes and store our gear, which left the truck more comfortable to sleep in so we did that sometimes.
The Captain started working with a field regiment who’s H Q was about two hundred yards in front of us. Half a mile round by road. He used the bike to go to see them. One morning he went off and came back having walked across the field.
‘The bike wont start Barwick’ he told me. So I packed a sort of kit of tools and went to find the thing parked against a wall of the building which was Regimental H Q. I tried it, found the Cush drive had come loose and sat down by it to take the screws out of the primary chain case. Just as Gerry decided to bombard the H Q. The chain case came off, the drive was bashed up tight, a couple of screws shoved in and I was away as the bangs became very menacing. I did a job on the thing when I got back to the section. Having seen no one the whole time.
I handed the bike in then for a fifteen hundred weight Dodge in desert Camouflage, so I knew it had to be a bit old and clapped out. It was not as bad as I expected. Very useful for stealing firewood. Most of which went to the old couple we now called Momo and Poppo and the son about eighteen, Antonio.
Then the Captain went back to The Seventy Fourth who were still up in the mountains. I had the job of driving him up there several times, it was a bit difficult, the road was unmade and wound up the side of the mountain in full view of Gerry in places. The regiment was often busy throwing shells across the ravine at German guns on the opposite side and with the rain and slippery roads I think my driving skills must have improved, as I never once drove over the edge. We never got blown away either which was just luck.
One morning I slithered the van into a hairpin, trying to get out of the way of a jeep which met us. I got it just clear as the jeep went past, its driver swearing loudly at us. His left-hand drive position meant that he was very close to The Captain who swore, just as loudly and skillfully back at him. As we drove on he turned to me with great big grin.
‘That,’ he said, ‘was our Colonel we just swore at Barwick.’ Always one to count you in, was Captain Carr. We carried on, laughing up the hill.
Captain Carr had a dry sense of humour he came back from that H Q one morning having driven himself up to the regiment and told Geordie to get the plane ready while he came over to me.
‘Ah Barwick’ he started, ‘I’ve just volunteered you for a nice little job,’
‘Thank you Sir’ I said
‘You know the wrecked railway station, where you go to steal firewood.’
‘What me Sir? Stealing firewood, that wouldn’t be me Sir,’ I interrupted and was ignored.
‘Well you will be pleased to know that the line has been rebuilt right to it and it is now working. Waiting there now are some subalterns, just out from England and I said you would be delighted to go there and take them up to Regimental H Q.
‘Thank you Sir ‘ I said, ‘I’ll go see if I can find them’.
The road to the station was quite reasonable, I made good time through the rain to find this group of Officers standing in what shelter they could find.
‘Are you the gentlemen for the Seventy Fourth?’ I asked.
‘That’s right,’ one of them said.
‘It’s a bit rough,’ I explained, ‘there’s room in the cab for two if you like,’ as I helped them throw their nice new kit bags in the back. They looked like rookies with their clean uniforms and kit and they had ridden from somewhere near Naples in railway coaches, so they had had an easy journey. The rain eased as I pulled off the hard road onto the mountain track and started the climb. Just as the regiment got involved in another of its stonks. These stonks are self-starting. All is quiet until somebody sees something in the opposite side and throws a shell at it. They naturally return one or probably two and then they keep increasing the number of shells they throw at each other until there’s quite a battle going on. (Probably all for nothing.)
The road we were on had never been much more than a mountain track and getting a regiment up it and the heavy rain had done nothing to improve it. My Dodge was not four wheel drive. I had to gun it through some of the worst bits, so my passengers had a bit of a rough ride. Furthermore they had never heard real shell-fire before and the ones in the cab with me kept asking me what was going on. By this time I knew most guns by their bark and shells by the bang, so I was busy trying to explain when I heard the captain flying along the ravine.
‘ Look’ I said, ‘That’s my airoplane flying along below us.’ Captain Carr was doing his thing, flying along a hundred feet below us, between the two lots of guns firing away merrily at each other. I never have understood how he survived to become the brigadier. Which he did.
I dropped my passengers where I usually dropped the captain and told them where to go. They had never worked out how to address me, as I don’t think they really knew what I was. I was in normal army battle-dress with airforce insignia and an airforce hat. They settled for driver.
Christmas was coming up and we the squadron had been in action almost continuously since the Salerno landing. We were to be drawn out of action to rest and refit. As we were to move as a flight all vehicles were given a list of their loads except it seemed me and my Dodge. I left it till I was sure no one had given me a load and asked Captain Carr about it.
‘Ah yes Barwick’ he said, ‘your load, well we are moving to a farm near Capua and living in the farm buildings. It’s better than it sounds because they have large fireplaces. I want you to make sure your vehicle is loaded with firewood, as you seem to know where to find the stuff’.
I was now the chief firewood thief it seemed. I managed a load of broken railway sleepers. I think the squadron arranged to reserve the places we were leaving and were sure we would be returning there. So it was not too bad leaving Momo, Popo and Tony. We had become quite attached to them. Mack had proved himself with them when Momo noted that he did the first aid and approached him one day waving my pliers and pointing to a bad tooth she had. It scared Mac, but he took it all in his stride by cleaning out the bad tooth with cotton wool and then dosing it with iodine. It must have helped because she was quite pleased about it all.
We all arrived at the farm at Santa Maria la Fossa near Capua and it was a comfortable place though the extended family which lived there were a bit suspicious of us. I don’t blame them they had been treated pretty roughly by soldiers of all sorts. We left them alone. They were quite a large family who made a living from a herd of black buffalo-like cows. The sort with short flattened horns which looked awfully dangerous to me, but were handled by the kids of the family from the backs of rough little ponies with no saddles or bridles. The kids charged about on these, yelling and kicking the cows with their bare feet. Girls, boys, some very small, they drove into the herd pushing and yelling with complete abandon. I never saw one of them get hurt though I was convinced they would get killed every time I saw them.
We made ourselves at home and got to work on our equipment. It had been used and misused and needed a service. We were sent on leave, four days in Salerno village where the redcaps had been told to let us go mad and pull us in for our protection only so it was a bit like letting dogs off a chain that had been chained up for months.
It was here that I somehow found a girl to go around with in the day-time. Maria Guioliomelli was probably under sixteen, which meant nothing in Italy at that time. Sixteen was old enough to be married there. She was nice, quiet and it was plain from the first that sex was not on the agenda, but it was nice to have some female company even if we had a bit of a language problem. She showed me around the sights, which tourists were supposed to look at and we sat and had a coffee in the cafes and looked at the fishing boats. A pleasant two days, but in the evenings I was back with Geordie and the lads.
There was booze and women available in the evenings. Geordie and I went around together for three evenings, which involved us in a couple of fracas. The last one when we tried to gatecrash a dance which was preserved for the royal Navy and came up against their anti-gatecrash gang. After a bit of a scuffle I could see no future in this one and Geordie was too drunk to really cope, so I did the talking our way out of it bit, which resulted in an agreement to walk out peacefully. If I allowed two of them to get behind him and push him out.
This strategy would have worked O K if their Petty Officer, who had been hiding while fists were flying, suddenly decided it was safe to come out, rushed up to Geordie, now pinioned by his blokes, seized him by his lapels, leered into his face and said.
‘Now what are you going to do?’
Geordie of course showed him. He head butted him so hard it just about laid him out cold, he fell back and slid down a wall onto the floor with blood gushing from his mouth and nose.
The reaction of the navy lads to this was one of undisguised pleasure
‘That bastard deserved that,’ they told us, ‘You did a good job on him,’ they told Geordie, shaking his hand, ‘but we can’t let you in now or there will be trouble.’ So we had to leave with honours even as they say.
I decided that the last night I was going out with a different gang and let Geordie do his own thing on his own. I had a much more peaceful evening which ended with about half a dozen of us drinking in a private house, where the house owner had a good supply of booze, which he and his wife dished out to us. Perhaps he was ripping us off, but certainly not badly. To us just being in a house where a family lived was a well appreciated change. We drank till late and it was time to go when someone, probably a Taffy, started singing Bless this house. I was standing near to the Italian bloke who was acting as an interpreter for the Padrone and could hear him telling him the words. I don’t suppose it was such a classical rendering, but by the time we finished our host was in tears. Italians are emotional.
‘No,’ he said, ‘you can not go now without drinking another bottle, which he and his wife shared with us.
On the walk back to the billet I drew the attention of my companions to the riot squad doubling away to a fracas somewhere.
‘That lot,’ I said confidently,’ is on its way to collect my mate Geordie,’ and I was right. They brought him back to the billet full of admiration for the sergeant with who’s help he had cleared a brothel.
‘Thon man could aye fight,’ he said.
And then it was Christmas. I got a fire going of which I could be proud. Two great lumps of railway sleeper in a V in the corner of the fireplace, which was just a corner of the building with a smoke shield over it to get the smoke up the chimney and another almost whole sleeper standing above the Vee. It was too hot to get really close.
There was Christmas fare in plenty even though the cooks had let the tinned turkey boil dry and a couple of tins had exploded. Our officers served the meal, as is the tradition in the Air Force. It really meant they joined in the eating and boozing which went on till late evening, when some of the less boozy types went to their beds leaving some of us surveying the mess of bottles, mugs, scattered chocolates, mars bars and all that sort of thing. Which had been sent out to us and I thought of them kids in the house.
Somebody noticed that I was putting things in my pocket and quizzed me.
‘Hey what are you up to?’ sort of thing.
‘I’m going to play Father Chrismas,’ I said and soon there was a small gang of us standing at the big heavy door of the house. There were noises of conversation coming from inside and a chink of light, so I gave the door a good thump which caused instant silence, so I gave it another which caused some scuffling before the door was opened cautiously. I am not a patient man. Never was and the action was a bit slow for me, so I pushed the thing open and went in, with the others following, to find ourselves in a rather large room with a big table in the middle and a big tub close to a fire at one end.
It was a bit dull, as there was only one oil lamp. The adults of the family, quite a few of them, were lined up opposite us across the table and were obviously suspicious of our intentions.
‘Dove Bambinos,’ I demanded. This being almost my full Italian vocabulary
‘Nienty Bambini,’ one of them said.
‘This conversation had about exhausted my patience, so I repeated the question and threw a hand-full of goodies on the table.
Kids came out of the cracks in the wall. They perhaps had not seen English goodies before, but they soon got the idea and then it was a case of mums, dads, aunts and uncles trying to maintain good order, as they tried to make themselves sick.
Now was the time to crash the fags and stand a tin of fifty on the table. The ice now broken the old chap called for wine to be served and they then got back to what they had been doing before we turned up. This fascinated me. They had this big wooden tub in front of the fire into which they broke what looked like sour milk, but had obviously been properly prepared. The old man now called for water to be poured over the curds, moving the mix around gently with a large stick whilst calling for alternatively hot and cold water to be poured in, until he had just the right amount of water at just the right temperature. Then quite quickly, the curds seemed to separate from the water and he skillfully tipped the tub, worked the curds into large flat cakes which he picked out and handed to some of the women. Who somehow got them onto straw mats and transferred them onto shelves high in the room.
In those days I had no idea of how cheese was made, but that was obviously what they were doing and of course, the reason for their herd of cows. Reluctantly we wished them a happy Christmas and made our way back to our bullets. It was much nicer after that. We got a wave from them as they went about their work and more important to me, a big grin from the kids as they did their dangerous tricks with the herd.
It was a wet winter that year and almost impossible to make headway with the war, but the army used its time getting into position for the break in the weather. We returned to our old place with Momo and Popo and got as comfortable as possible with C flight back in their old digs. Geordie and I had a bit of a scare a retrospective one this time. We as always got situation reports which covered our part of the front and this particular one reported the capture of a patrol of Germans which had been sent out to blow the bridge which linked us to Capua. I think it was the one over the Garigliano. With Germanic thoroughness they had written a report of their operation as they went along and one part said they had come close to a spotter plane with it’s guards sleeping under the wing and discussed whether they should blow it up or not. As the bridge was the more important target they had decided against and got picked up some miles further down the road. Geordie and I looked at each other and said hey that was us. We slept a lot lighter after that.
About this time a couple of military police called at the flight with a small rather unhappy looking Italian an old chap, who insisted that he was Greek. Probably something like the fortieth generation Greek, but Greek he insisted. The redcaps told Captain Laird that they had caught him trying to break through the lines to get to Rome where his family were.
‘He’s harmless,’ they said, ‘but he’ll be dead if he tries it again so hang on to him and let him go when you get to Rome’.
Georgio then became part of C flight. They found him some blankets and a bed and he settled down in the cookhouse to help the cook. Snowy Mc Pherson took it upon himself to look after the old chap and he soon got to understand some English and acted as an interpreter when needed.
The war settled down into a sort of dead-lock where each side threw a few shell at each other when they thought they had a few to spare. Gerry decided to give us a disturbed night one night. We had chanced it a bit and gone back to our bunks in the truck, which was tight up to the farmhouse wall, but still vulnerable to shellfire. Gerry signaled his intention around 1800 hours with five shells altogether along the road between us and C flight. 2000hours and bang, bang, bang, again so that we knew what was going to happen. We still decided to kip down in the truck and dive for cover as the times for the shells came up, but well, once down in the blankets it didn’t work out quite like that. We all woke up right on time. a couple of minutes before the bangs.
‘About time ain’t it?’ somebody would say.
‘I expect we ought to get our heads down,’ from another and
‘Are we going to then?’ from another bunk and then. Bang, bang, bang, and we were all instantly asleep again.
At six o’clock in the morning one of the shells hit the other end of the farmhouse. We could smell the cordite and rubble dust. It was my turn this time to get picked on.
‘Put the kettle on Bill,’ Geordie started it. Then Jimmy put his bit in.
‘Yes go on Bill, make a cuppa,’ he said.
‘You go and make one, ‘ I countered and this argument could have gone on for some time, but was interrupted by noises out side and a tap on the back door of the truck. A small voice called.
‘Are there any British troops in there?’
I thought for a minute, British troops hardly described this lot, but it would do for now and I called back.
‘Well yes mate,’
‘We’re being shelled out here,’ the voice said
‘Well you’d better come in then,’ I answered.
The logic of climbing into a truck with a canvass roof to avoid shellfire may evade any reader of this. It does me, but then, logical thinking is probably not my thing. Anyway the door swung open and about half a dozen big black Americans climbed in. Being black their faces couldn’t go white, but they tried. To be fair they had never been under fire before, having pulled into the field behind us that night and two of their number had been killed by the last salvo. It was time to make that brew of tea for which they seemed very grateful. An hour later and they were gone and Gerry had done his thing and given us the disturbed night he’d intended.
We didn’t see much of the Americans at this place, but one evening Geordie and I were drinking some of Popo’s vino and playing pontoon for lira, which worked out about the same as matchsticks, when an American came in and asked if he could sit in. He took in the situation and played as we had been doing with miniscule bets, sipping his vino and talking. For some reason another Yank found his way in. He had already had quite some booze, but we were easy and he joined the school. Very soon however he decided that he was a gambling man and started pushing the bets up until Geordie and me decided that we didn’t want to play for real money, it meant nothing to us and pulled out. This let Yank number one in and we watched as he took pounds in liras off Yank number two, who got more and more drunk and reckless with his money, which Yank number one took off him.
I had been drinking quite a bit and had to answer a call of nature, went to the door and opened it in the usual way. A little bit for a look and then shut it, slipped the bolt and,
‘Get your gun Geordie,’ I said
‘What is it Bill?’ he asked.
‘Dunno yet, strange bods in uniforms I don’t know,’ I said, getting my Tommy gun out. As Geordie grabbed his.
Now with guns and grenades handy, I opened the door again and looked out to see the yard full of uniforms milling around.
Before I could do anything more Yank number two barged out, completely unarmed into the middle of these bods with cries of
‘Climb on you some things,’ as they let him go through. Geordie and I watched to see it they shot or knifed him, or whatever and when they didn’t I said.
‘I’m going to get the Captain Geordie,’ and slipped away as unobtrusively as possible to get Captain Carr. He came along and it transpired that they were Italians fighting on our side and were looking for overnight cover. I never saw where the Yanks went..
The holdup on this particular front was a mountain called I think Monte Camino. The Gurkhas got onto it and got pinned down where they could not get supplies to them, except on ropes over open ground. We found out through a Sit Rep which stated that they could only get food up to them with boxes of Compo rations which happened to be in short supply just there. If any body had spare boxes of Compo rations would they hand them in. Then in capitals, in red and underlined. No questions will be asked. I think they got enough no bother. We had a couple we’d pinched which went in.
It was about this time that a D F C came through for Captain Carr. I think it was mostly for his work with anti battery work. He made a point of flying along the front to tempt Gerry to shoot at him, noted their position and returned the fire with whatever guns he had. A lot of guns sometimes and such accurate fire that after a bit he could not tempt them to fire even a rifle at him. An enemy order was captured later which forbade any movement or fire unless extremely urgent when the spotters were in the air. I got onto him about this procedure one day.
‘Strikes me as bit dodgy Sir,’ I said
‘Not as bad as all that Barwick,’ he answered, ‘When I see a gun fire I know what it is and therefore it’s muzzle velocity. I can estimate its range, then work out how long it will be before the shell gets to me and take evasive action to make sure I’m not where it explodes while I give its position to the regiment.’
I thought about this and still think it’s a way of pepping up ones mental arithmetic that I’d rather not use. I think also that his work with the tanks and the battle ships was taken into account. It should have been. In any event he was given command of B flight and we lost him.
About this time I found out a little more about Captain Laird, C flight Commander. I was sent to Flight headquarters for something. They had been pulled back out of range and some sergeant whom I had never seen before, yelled.
‘Are you Barwick.’
‘That’s me,’ I answered.
‘Well you’re on a charge,’ he said, ‘you missed the push rod guard tubes on the last inspection you did.’
‘Oh,’ I said ‘I don’t remember doing the guard tubes, have you got the schedule I signed?’
‘No’ he said, ‘but I shall find it,’ I had a think about it, I remembered the inspection I’d done. I’d sat down a hole and had to dive for cover a couple of times because Jerry had our position and sent a couple of air-bursts over. I’d lost a spanner through it. I decided to see what Captain Laird said and went to his office.
‘What do you want Barwick?’ he asked.
‘I’m told I’m on a charge Sir, I wondered if you know anything about it.’ I said.
‘Ah yes,’ he said, ‘a new sergeant, he told me about it, but it seems he can’t find the schedule you signed.’
‘I gathered that’, I said ‘It’s a pity because I’m pretty sure I didn’t sign for something if I didn’t do it.’
‘Are you sure about that Barwick?’ he asked ‘
‘Of course I am Sir,’ I told him.
‘Well I’d better find it then,’ he said, fetching it out from its hiding place. We went through it together, it was an old schedule, which had been replaced and no guard tubes were mentioned in it.
Captain Laird was annoyed. Not a good sign with a six-foot highlander with attitude.
‘I’ll deal with it Barwick,’ he growled and I made my exit. I never saw that sergeant again. I don’t know what Captain Laird did to him, but he disappeared.

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