大象传媒

SALERNO

It was getting dark as we reversed our trucks aboard the Tank Landing Craft, or L.C.T. for short. This was filmed by the people making the news reel. On completion of the loading we set sail in a northerly direction, we could see the display from the active volcano Stromboli as we sailed into the night. On such a wonderful night, as indeed are most nights in these southern parts; the sky appeared like velvet, studded with diamonds, that seemed to gently sway, to and fro; as seen from the open deck where most of us were lying down to sleep. The ship ploughed on through a gentle swell. A never to be forgotten experience.
I did not sleep very much. In the morning as dawn began to lighten the sky, breakfast was served from a galley on the deck. It was not very appetising, but I suppose it was quite good in the prevailing circumstances.
As the L.C.T. approached what we were later to know as the Gulf of Salerno, Seafires from an aircraft carrier were flying overhead. The carrier and other naval ships could just be seen shrouded in the early morning mist; as were the hills inland. The gunfire was now very noisy; but above the sound a voice came over the ship鈥檚 tannoy and we were ordered to go down to our vehicles and to prepare to disembark.
With doors wide open the L.C.T. nudged onto the beach. The first truck off struck a land-mine. It was not one from our unit. As a result of this we backed off and tried again, close by, this time. We were able to drive out through the water and just off the beach, where enough waterproofing could be taken off, to allow us to drive inland.
The convoy formed and drove off with Bren guns manned, towards Monte Corvino air field, but soon had to do an about turn as we were told we were heading through the front line. Some of us tried to turn round in an innocent looking field but it was unbelievably boggy and it was with some difficulty that we managed to extricate the vehicles. Returning to near the beach-head we now settled for a field in front of a battery of 25 pounder guns which were firing most of the time. In the circumstances Geordie Gregory and I thought it expedient to dig ourselves a foxhole, which we camouflaged with maize, as this was growing in the field, and put the nets over the truck as well.
Not having slept much on the L.C.T. and having been lulled to sleep by the sound of the guns, I had a really sound nights sleep, to be woken up in the morning by Geordie Gregory all dressed for action and with the rather hurt words: 鈥淗ave you been asleep here all night!鈥� When I said: 鈥淵es,鈥� he told me the unit had been out all night forming a defence line as the Germans were on the point of breaking through to the beach. Fortunately, the defences had held.
After a breakfast on the 鈥楰鈥� rations, coffee and tinned ham and egg; we moved into a large apple orchard to use as a base. There we unloaded some of the trucks so that they could be used for transporting fuel etc. at the landing strip. This had been allocated to us, by the river Asa; which the army engineers were busy clearing and levelling with bulldozers and scrapers and burying dead buffaloes. The strip was already stocked with five gallon cans and forty gallon drums of 100 octane petrol awaiting the arrival of the Spitfires. The original plan called for them to be operating from the beach-head within forty-eight hours of the initial landings, but they were delayed somewhat as the German artillery in the hills; with a commanding view, were firing over the strip at the beaches; and so the Spitfires had to operate from Sicily nearly 200 miles away with overloaded tanks, that is until the American Air Force General ordered them that they had to take the risk and operate from the beach-head.
About this time the American Battle Cruiser and The British Battleship, 鈥榃arspite鈥�, were badly damaged by German radio controlled bombs.
When the Spitfires did land after having to make a very tight circuit, the first two did not make full use of the strip and ended in a canal at the seaward end. We did not expect them to be staying overnight thinking they had only landed to refuel and were surprised when they pulled the jettison and dropped their long range 90 gallon fuel tanks on the grass after parking up.
But now we could get on with the job for which we had been trained which was very satisfying, namely refuelling, rearming, servicing, and changing the oxygen bottles in the rear fuselage. The underside of the plane my engine fitter and I had been given to look after was caked with oil and dust from Sicily so we gave it a good wash down with 100 octane petrol.
Back in the orchard it now being September, the apples were ripe. The vibrations in the air when the guns were fired caused quite a lot to fall to the ground. They made a welcome addition to our diet.
On my turn of guard duty, in the early hours of the morning it became quite eerie. (I was alone as the other airman had failed to turn up and our unit were asleep, scattered all over the orchard, on the camp site.) I heard this rustling sound in the thick undergrowth at the edge. There was no reply to my challenge. So with my Sten gun at the ready I waited and peered into the darkness. Eventually, I made out the shape of a cow wandering about!
While in the orchard we also played host to a soldier of the Hampshire regiment who had lost his unit for a couple of days. There was a lot of machine gun fire and the clatter of tank tracks as they manoeuvred about, then on two successive nights allied paratroops were dropped as reinforcements.
The squadrons of 242 Wing, which were in our care, were responsible for flying high cover and dawn patrol; and Tank Trap Taylor had his hands full rousing the lads who were scattered round the orchard from their sleep; his persuasive words in the dark being met with exhortations to 鈥�****鈥� off, etc.. Anyway we did always get down to the airstrip and get the squadron airborne. Then it was a case of setting about the 5 gallon cans of 100 octane petrol. They had a very rough seal over the cap made of steel which required a hammer, screwdriver and a pair of pliers to remove same, our fingers and hands were pretty sore by the time we had opened a few hundred or so. We poured the contents into a dustbin then pumped it into empty forty gallon drums in the truck using one of the two German refuelling trailer pumps, which we now had and this enabled us to rapidly refuel the Spitfires when they returned.
Tomato soup courtesy of the local fields (where tomatoes were growing in abundance) along with breakfast was sent down to the flights. We were now back on the standard British army 8 man compo packs.
As taxiing to the end of the strip produced clouds of dust which would cause rapid engine wear, some of us were required to sit on the wing, hanging on to the cannon, to enable us to remove the temporary dust filter from the air intake before take off.
We witnessed an American bombing raid by Liberators on a German position not far inland, they just flew in formation and released all their bombs together producing a massive dust cloud.
After some days we learned that the 7th Armoured division were ashore and that the bridge head was secure, then one evening we heard Churchill鈥檚 broadcast saying it had been a close run thing and how near we had come to being pushed back into the sea. It is strange how we on the spot did not know until then how bad the situation had been.
Eventually, the squadron鈥檚 own ground crews arrived by air and our unit moved south through the ruins of the rail junction of Battipaglia, American engineers had constructed a replacement bridge over the river using massive squared timbers.
In the new location we dispersed in the almond woods which surrounded a farmhouse; Geordie Gregory, Roy Bennett and myself setting ourselves up in a flysheet on the end of someone else鈥檚 tent. To add a little comfort, with the aid of some long stakes from a tobacco field at the edge of the woods, my ground sheet and some string, I made myself a bed.
Around the area were several brewed up German tanks. One in particular was still smouldering away with the bodies inside producing a rather nauseating smell, especially noticeable at breakfast time when we were eating our biscuit porridge.
It was decided that the unit would put on a concert in the large barn come stable come farmhouse, the family living at one end in the upper part. First of all the two dead horses which the Germans had shot had to be dragged out, our W.O. Parker playing a leading role in that operation. We next cleaned out the manure and decorated the walls with distemper which we had salvaged from a bombed out shop in Battipaglia; rigged up a stage and hung it round with some sackcloth; and the show was on; it ran for two nights, a neighbouring unit being invited on the second night.
One of the acts by one of our sergeants was supposed to be a fisherman on a river bank attending his rod and at the same time with his shorts down attending the call of nature; and of course Vic. Cole, our cook, giving his rendering of songs from musicals, like 鈥楧esert Song.鈥�
The barn come concert hall came in very useful one night, when we had an electric storm with fantastic green lightning and heavy rain which washed us out of our flysheet tent.
It was now harvest time for the almonds and the farm people came through the woods, the men with long poles which they used to beat the branches, bringing down the nuts whilst the women came along behind picking them up.
Some of us had a night out from the camp by truck to the town of Salerno where we sampled the vino and vermouth, the latter I found very sickly.
Three of us, who were drivers, were detailed to load up the left over cans of fuel from the air strip and deliver them to Capodachino (Naples Airport) on the far side of the town. We did this on various days. On the journeys we passed along the beautiful part of the coast that lies between Salerno and Amalfi and into Naples: which was a stark contrast, it had been badly bombed especially around the docks and marshalling yards, and the stench of death could be smelt as we passed along the rubble strewn streets. There were also some banners strung across, one in particular saying in large letters: TAKE IT HOME WHOLE NOT IN HOLES.
After lunch of bully beef, biscuits and soup at the blitzed airport, we stopped in the town on the way back for a drink and got talking to an Italian who had lived in Glasgow. We also discovered a photographer in Garabaldi square and assuming a nonchalant pose had our photographs taken.
The unit now moved up to Naples and found some billets in a large building in the north east corner of the bay opposite the Island of Ishchia. In the scramble for bed spaces our trio found a nice basement room which came in useful when the bombs were falling; we also had the gramophone, one of the records was: 鈥淗ome, sweet home,鈥� hardly guaranteed to keep up our spirits.
It was a nice walk down to Naples taking in the view over the bay to Capri and Mt. Vesuvius.
Alas the Americans required the building for a hospital, I believe, so we were on the move to some villas in the Bella Vista area to the south of the city. The one I stayed in had a pool with a fountain in the hall, the floor being done in mosaic. We had one or two air raids whilst there, mainly on the docks.
I now began to feel unwell and could not stomach the food, especially the soya link sausages. I saw the M.O. who had been attached to us before we left Sicily. He gave me an extra sugar ration which helped for a bit, then my condition deteriorated and he diagnosed hepatitis or jaundice and I was sent into hospital near the airport. I had violent diarrhoea and vomiting and was in a very bad way. After a few days I was flown in an ambulance plane to Bari on the east coast, beside the sea for a couple of days. Then one night I was moved on a stretcher back to the airport to spend the night in what seemed like a warehouse.
The next morning along with others on stretchers we were loaded on to an American Dakota aircraft and flown down to Catania in Sicily, where I spent some more days and my twenty-first birthday on lemon water with bits of jelly in it. This was the main treatment. A few days there and I was put on another Dakota and flown across the Mediterranean to Tunis. Eventually I ended up in a convalescence unit, a Nissen hut, in some of the ruins of ancient Carthage. I was now feeling better and able to enjoy the African sunshine although there were frosts at nights; it now being late November.
During days out in Tunis I visited the Malcolm club named after the V.C.; and I was able to send home a box of fruit to Mum and Dad under a scheme that was running form there. We also had a meal in a French restaurant which consisted mainly of rice, using Francs.
I met up with Stevenson from Carlisle, one of our M.T. fitters at the Tunis transit camp where I had now arrived; he in turn had made friends with the Tasker twins also from Carlisle, who seemed to be on the permanent staff and running the camp. I did a spell with them issuing blankets and palliasse spaces in the tented camp, some of the aircrew straight out from England did not take too kindly to camping; complaining loudly when told where they had to sleep.
The food in the Transit camp was pretty basic but they did put out large basins of dates on which we could gorge ourselves. I now had problems with holes in my socks which I overcame by sewing some pieces in, which I had cut from the skirt of my mosquito net. The nights there were rather noisy with the monotonous beat of the native鈥檚 drums.
Steve Stevenson as we called him was posted back before me. However before he went, we got two maps on which we drew corresponding grids of the Naples area, he intending to write when he got back with our coded reference, but I too started on my journey back before I could hear anything from him.
My batch set out for Philippville in two Crossley trucks, at midday stopping for a meal and tea brewed up on a fire made from a petrol can filled with sand; petrol poured in and set a light. Lots of Arab children gathered round during the stop and some traders, one had a goatskin pressed full of dates and cut off large slices for those who wanted.
The first night we stayed in some bare buildings in the mountains and it was very cold trying to sleep on the cement floor, I was one of the few who had a blanket which I shared with one of the others. The next evening we arrived at another transit camp outside Philippville on the coast and it was warmer sleeping in the marquee on the sand. Another spell was spent here where the chief memory was of mandarin oranges and having a swim in a pool along the beach, before we boarded a Dutch troop ship to take us back to Naples. On board the messes were not very clean with a lot of liquid slopping about; the ships biscuits had weevils in and it was a relief to arrive back in Naples after a rough crossing and into another transit camp at Bella Vista at the foot of Vesuvius.

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