Chapter 11
CHAPTER 11: HOMS
I was now posted from Cairo to join 5 RHA at Homs, on the coast of the Libyan desert. I was put in charge of a 3-ton truck carrying reinforcements to other regiments who were to be dropped off at various points on the thousand-mile drive. We passed all the old familiar landmarks on the coast road from Sidi Barrani westwards. My Sikh driver had learned to drive in the flatter part of the desert. His first encounter with a gradient was at Halfaya Pass. The engine had been labouring and getting very warm in the afternoon heat, so he slipped gratefully into neutral as we approached the first hairpin bend at gathering speed. My urgent warnings persuaded him back into gear before we joined the overturned trucks below us with their wheels in the air like dead insects.
At Tobruk, once the scene of memorable battles and a desperate siege, we stopped by the sea for a swim. It was an idyllic setting. Naked soldiers, bronzed by the sun, disported themselves in the Mediterranean. The water looked clean and sparkling blue, despite the one hundred and four wrecked ships in the harbour. At Benghazi, where I dropped off some reinforcements, I treated myself to another swim. The water was clear: green rocks were visible ten feet down. I failed to straighten out after my unskilled dive, and came up with blood pouring from a head wound. A local Army doctor was found to put in a few stitches, and I was none the worse. After Ajedabia I was in new territory. We passed through the Marble Arch erected by Mussolini to mark the boundary between Cyrenaica and Tripolitama, the two provinces of Italy’s Libyan empire.
We drove on through a vast emptiness. By now I had shed my load of reinforcements. Painted signs on barrels directed me to the tents of my new regiment. I reported at regimental headquarters to the Adjutant, who directed me to another group of tents where I would find K Battery, where Paddy Victory would be my immediate superior. He was the CPO (Command Post Officer) of the Battery and I would be his assistant (Ack CPO). To my alarm I found him swathed in bandages covering every limb. He had succumbed to the ‘desert sores'that afflicted most of us in varying degrees. Every little graze or scratch turned septic and began to suppurate. The sores refused to heal, and had to be protected from the voracious and persistent desert flies. It may have been something to do with the absence of fresh food from the diet. Paddy feared that he might be sent back to base before the regiment saw its next action, which would obviously be in Italy. He had a traditional Irish quick temper, and was not in the best of moods. Later on, when his sores healed up, he proved a splendid officer to work with and we became close friends.
Although we described our location as ‘Homs’, we were in fact halfway between the small Arab town of Homs, and the modern city of Tripoli. The camp site was a completely featureless stretch of sand that seemed to go on for ever from east to west. To our north was the Mediterranean — I lived in a small tent five yards from the almost tideless sea. To the south there was a line of date palms a few hundred yards back from the sea: a few local tribesmen lived there with their goats. Beyond them, for hundreds of miles, lay the Libyan Desert and the Sahara.
Life at Homs was relaxed. Training was taken lightly after the arduous battles which the Regiment had fought in Tunisia. All troops were commanded to learn to swim, by order of General Montgomery. We hoped we would not be expected to swim ashore for our next campaign, but it was as well to be prepared. Anyway, I enjoyed my morning swim when I woke in the morning and just walked into the sea to freshen up.
A hundred yards from my tent was the K Battery Officers’ Mess where the dozen officers of the battery took our meals and passed the evenings. We made ourselves reasonably comfortable but did not exactly live in luxury. Supplies were short: soap and toothpaste were unobtainable, and the only drink in the mess was Angostura bitters. We had a battered wind-up gramophone and a single record. This had on one side the inappropriate ‘Dreaming of a White Christmas’, and on the other a sentimental melody called ‘Dearly Beloved' sung by Vivien Leigh. She had recently captured the hearts of the troops by singing it at an ENSA concert held in the Roman amphitheatre at Leptis Magna. I became heartily tired of this record, particularly the White Christmas (against which I have ever since harboured an aversion), while the desert sand did the record no good at all.
It was my good fortune to spend the rest of the war with 5 RHA. The regiment had a wonderful spirit of comradeship, forged in battle: a healthy scepticism about the ‘bullshit’ or ‘spit and polish' side of soldiering: and a pride in serving as a unit of the by then famous Seventh Armoured Division. The hierarchy of rank was worn lightly. More pervasive was a recognized aristocracy based on length of fighting service. At the apex of this aristocracy were the real veterans who boasted battle honours going back to the British Expeditionary Force in France and the Dunkirk evacuation. The Regimental Sergeant-Major RSM Millard had distinguished himself in the rearguard actions covering the evacuation. Next were those who had two or three desert campaigns under their belt. Then came the bulk of the regiment who had come out to Africa in time to deliver the fearsome artillery fire that had halted Rommel’s advance at ‘first Alamein’ in June 1942. All had been in action throughout the final desert advance from Alamein to Tunis. Though I had seen no action to speak of, at least I had served in the desert and ‘got my knees brown’. I found myself accepted into the fraternity with surprising ease.
In later years of campaigning I was to look askance at new arrivals in the regiment, (especially more senior officers) who through no fault of their own had been languishing in England until 1943 or 1944. I looked on them as a senior pupil, moving up the school, might regard the new boys. The dividing line seemed to be determined by service in the desert, which was looked on a sort of initiation rite.
The Commanding Officer of the Regiment, at that time a remote figure to me, since the Battery was the family unit, was the much decorated Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Gregson, a desert veteran. He was usually shy and hesitant in manner (but decisive in battle as I was to see later) appearing more like an academic than a soldier though he had no scholastic pretensions. Our Battery Commander, presiding over the mess tent, was Major ‘Steve' St. John, a man of slight build and gentle manners, who was always concerned — whether in training or battle — to ensure that his troops were well fed and adequately plied with hot tea. At this stage of the war the senior officers down to the rank of major were all regular soldiers, as were the warrant officers and most of the senior NCO's. Civilian recruits, especially those who had served in the peace-time Territorial Army, were beginning to move up the scale, providing most of the captains and subalterns.
While we were encamped on the Libyan shore, British and American troops began the reconquest of Western Europe. It started with the occupation of the obscure Mediterranean island of Pantelleria, followed by the invasion of Sicily. We played no part in this. The 51st Highland Division and the 50th Tyne and Tees Division represented the line divisions of the Eighth Army. No doubt they marked the lanes of Sicily with the HD and TT signs that had once decorated the Western Desert. They had small units of tanks in close support of the infantry, but no British armoured divisions were deployed.
It was said that the British Army in Sicily suffered more casualties from the unexpected depredations of malaria than from enemy action. For whatever action lay in store for us, we were being prepared to defeat the deadly mosquito by being dosed with large yellow pills called mepacrine. Their side effects included nausea and imparting an unhealthy orange hue to the skin. We held compulsory mepacrine parades at which the troops were obliged to swallow these unpleasant pills under the supervision of officers.
After the conquest of Sicily the Eighth Army prepared to cross the Straits of Messina to invade the Italian mainland at Reggio di Calabria. We were not summoned to join this campaign, so assumed we were being held back for some other seaborne operation. It was not difficult to guess our destination. Clearly the objective would be to capture a major port further up the Italian peninsula, but not so far up as to be out of range of air cover from Sicily. This pointed to an assault on the Bay of Naples, with a landing somewhere in the area of Salerno. And so it proved.
In August 1942 all the troops were given a briefing by the Divisional Commander, the genial General Bobby Erskine. It took place in the Roman amphitheatre of Leptis Magna. The acoustics were perfect: the General hardly needed to raise his voice. However, the Romans had inconsiderately failed to provide enough seating for a full British division, so we needed two briefing sessions of 8000 troops apiece. Erskine told us that we would come under command of the American 5th Army (the amphitheatre echoed with groans) under General Mark Clark, and that we would follow up a seaborne infantry assault on the beaches of Salerno. Security at the briefing was non-existent: within hours our plans must have been freely discussed in the bars of Tripoli. Certainly the Germans were well briefed in advance of the landings, and many British lives were lost in consequence.
It was a great disappointment to leave the Eighth Army. To be placed under the command of the Americans, who had not always distinguished themselves in the fighting in North Africa, was worse than a disappointment — to many of us it appeared an insult. Some units of the Division actually staged a mutiny, though this did not become public knowledge until after the war. In practice we were to have little contact with the Americans. We served in a British Corps of three divisions and encountered the High Command on only one occasion when General Clark paid a very brief visit to our gun positions. We were glad of its brevity because a general in a jeep decorated with stars is a more conspicuous object than we wished to have in our proximity.
By early September Italy was in turmoil. Mussolini had been overthrown in a coup (though he was later ‘rescued’ by a daring German raid). The new Italian government surrendered to the Allies. The Germans were confirmed in their scant respect for their Italian partners. They moved swiftly and ruthlessly to occupy the whole country, and manned the defences of the peninsula with troops of the highest quality.
Salerno Bay was surrounded by a ring of hills overlooking the beaches. Picked German troops were in position on those hills when our troops landed. During the week that we were preparing for the follow-up from the safety of the Libyan coast, our assault infantry and sappers were under constant artillery fire and were subjected to fierce counter attacks. The holding of the beachhead was touch and go. The master plan was to hold back the armour until the infantry had secured the beachhead: then we were to pass through the lines and pursue the enemy. I have wondered what the infantry thought of this as the battle raged around them and we prepared for a leisurely embarkation. The troops who survived must recollect the occasion as perhaps the first instance of the Germans claiming the best places on the beach, a phenomenon familiar to holiday makers in later years.