大象传媒

This has been submitted by Mr Fred Walker of Grimsby.

The following narration is an account of a night spent amid the snows of an Italian winter during the Second World War.

FORWARD POSITIONS BY FRED WALKER

We stood around. Our hands gripped freezing weapons. Nobody spoke. Low down, on a bleak horizon, the last insipid rays of sunlight probed through a heavy blank of clouds. All around us the hills were covered in a blanket of white, a rugged platter for further snow. It would'nt be long before we moved out, up and over the ridge to our forward positions.

A strong wind came sweeping across, sending flurries of snow into our exposed faces.

Then the order came to move. In our white snow-suits we trudged forward. On the top of the ridge the wind seemed harsher. A few yards below the summit our slit-trenches were situated. In parts we were up to our knees in snow. Eventually we reached the trenches to find them partly filled with snow and ice. This is where we had to stay for twelve long, tormented hours. Front line positions.

I sat down on a heap of ice-covered earth. Despite having a great-coat beneath my snow suit I felt the cold strike through. Some sat opposite me. I did'nt know who it was and no words passed between us. The time went by. I doze and awoke with a start to find myself under a covering of white. It was one o'clock. Only five more hours to go and then we could once more enjoy the dubious comfort of shelter in a roofless building. Someone brought a bottle of rum to our tent. I drank some of it and I felt the mythical heat spreading around in my stomach.

The intense cold was creeping in again. I looked for my rifle. I found it under a covering of snow. I tried to think of something pleasaant, anything to draw my mind away from the surroundings, but it was no use. I kept dozing and then the cold would awaken me. I wondered about the others, men I had been with at Anzio, on the beach head and in the batle for Rome. There was an affinity between us. Some of us had been together since the breakout and then towards Florence and beyond, and now we were in the bleak, inhospitable Apennines. From somewhere far off a rumble of gunfire made a brief inroad on the silence, and beyond the hills a faint glow splashed the sky like a spurting match.

At last it ceased to snow and I saw lights amid the pregnant clouds, only a dirty grey light, but it heralded the dawn. I almost sobbed with relief. I climbed from the trench and with the others I went eagerly back below the ridge, to what we had been longing for throughout the cold, bitter night. A fire, a warm drink and some shelter. Once again I felt the blood coursing through my veins.

Some day I knew that this would be a distant, unhappy memory. To the people who read the newspapers it would be listed as 'Nothing to report from the Italian front'. But to us, the soldiers, it is something that can never be forgotten.