- Contributed by听
- derbycsv
- People in story:听
- Walter Bull
- Location of story:听
- Anzio
- Background to story:听
- Army
- Article ID:听
- A4297683
- Contributed on:听
- 28 June 2005
This story was submitted to the People's War site by Linda Freeman of Radio Derby CSV Action Desk on behalf of Walter Bull, and has been added to the site with his permission.The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.
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The 14th Battalion Sherwood Foresters was raised in 1940 at Markeaton Park in Derby.
It was a beautiful sunny day, May 28th 1944, when my unit, the 14th Battalion Sherwood Foresters, started the 'Breakout' from Anzio beach head with the objective of capturing a strong point of the Germans called the 'Factory'.
The first thing we encountered, as the first troops went forward, were German personnel mined traps, one being two dead Germans on stretchers who had mines attached to them such that when moved they would have created casualties. The advance took the line across the Mussolini canal which was the front line at that point. We came to the first canal bridge (which was exactly the same as those across our own canals at Weston on Trent) the middle of which had been blown out.
We then left the shelter of the canal bank and came out onto open fields. The nearest cover being three or four hundred yards away, I would ask you to consider the feelings of all of us when approaching in broad daylight the finest army the world had ever known.
We had got roughly half way across the field when the intelligence officer I was with (I being an infantry signaller with the wireless set whose job was to immediately convey messages to the rear when prisoners had been taken as to potential enemy strength), said "I think we ought to drop back to the canal bridge".
We turned round and had gone no further than seventy or eighty yards when the German artillary started their STONK (shelling).
This inflicted, due to the lack of cover, our first casualties which were to continue until we reached and took our objective i.e The Factory.
One of the first men into The Factory was Sergeant Eric Newbury who Melbourne (and others of course) will remember used to keep The Melbourne Hotel.
A brief amount of resistance was encountered which was quickly extinguished and at this point this episode concluded. This was the first step on the advance to Rome which we subsequently captured on the 4th of June.
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