Chapter 13
Chapter 13: The Volturno And After The Crossing Of The Volturno
The River Volturno was the first major physical obstacle encountered in our northward advance. This fast-flowing river ran into the sea twenty miles north of Naples. A few miles beyond it was the smaller River Savone. Fifteen miles beyond that was the more considerable River Gariglione overlooked by high mountains. In between these rivers, just to add variety, flowed a number of canals. The last three weeks of October found the Division engaged in hard fought battles, with both sides supported by murderous artillery fire, to establish a crossing over the Volturno. The front covered by Seventh Armoured Division lay between that of 56th Division on our right extending to the city of Capua, and that of 46th Division on our left extending to the coast. Before us was the river, six feet deep and fringed with thickly overgrown banks up to fifteen feet high in places, and swollen by rains to a width of over two hundred feet. The approach to the river banks was by way of a flat valley, criss-crossed by canals and ditches and open to observation from houses and trees on the far bank.
The Germans chose the ideal defensive obstacle of the Voltumo to mount their first determined stand since Salerno. They blew up all the bridges over the river, including one at Capua that had been constructed by the Emperor Hadrian.
As our forward troops approached the Volturno, the artillery was usually in action close behind the advancing infantry. We were frequently under fire from enemy artillery giving us a taste of our own medicine: the taste was not an agreeable one. It became our invariable practice to dig trenches — slit trenches we called them — as soon as the guns occupied a new position. Everyone set to with pick and shovel, digging energetically until the trench was at least two feet deep, or preferably three. This was deep enough to crouch in (or to lie flat on the floor of the trench if it was not too crowded) as soon as we heard the whistles that heralded the arrival of enemy shells. The standard trench could accommodate in this way the three men who dug it. Passing visitors who dived for cover were unwelcome, though one could hardly turn them away.
Paddy kept a Battery diary, with a record of each gun position complete with map reference, in case we should ever re-occupy it. He gave each position a name for ready identification, usually by reference to some local feature. ‘Position Dead Horse' that we were to occupy in Normandy, was self-explanatory. In the Volturno battle, one memorable site was ‘Position Too Near’, close behind the leading troops, and - as we were to discover — under direct observation by the enemy. Scarcely had we got the guns into action and dug our slit trenches before we were greeted by salvoes of shells neatly straddling the guns and the command post. They were fired from a German gun site not very far away. It was my first experience of being under direct bombardment. I was unsure of the proper behaviour of an officer under these circumstances. Obviously while we were firing our guns every man had to keep to his post whatever the danger. Between the intervals of firing what was one supposed to do when a loud bang followed by a shrill whistling gave its lethal warning? My question was soon answered by Major Steve, the Battery Commander, who was visiting the gun position. He observed, as we heard a particularly ominous whistle, “I think a slit trench is indicated”, and took a flying dive into my trench. I followed suit as the second salvo came whistling through the air. Major Steve was a small man, and there was room for us all.
We were still crouching in the trench when Bombardier Busby drove up in a three-tonner from the supply echelon, bringing fresh boxes of ammunition. There was a lot of noise going on but Busby was utterly oblivious of our plight until he noticed that the whole troop was sheltering in slit trenches. Busby was a regular soldier, not one of nature's quicker thinkers, but he became aware that all was not well. A look of bewilderment spread over his rugged features, turning to outraged disbelief when a shell landed a yard from his right foot, embedded itself in the soft ground — and failed to explode.
Major Steve gave the order to withdraw to what we hoped might be a safer position from which we could still support the leading troops. We vacated site ‘Too Near’ at a speed that would have done credit to any troop performing in the Royal Tournament. We suffered nothing worse than minor wounds to a few gunners, thanks to the high proportion of dud shells fired at us by the Germans. Almost certainly we owe thanks, and some of us our lives, to the sabotage of slave workers from occupied Europe forced to manufacture shells in German factories.
In the next few days several of the Regiment were killed or wounded by shellfire at our gun positions. Officers on forward reconnaissance or manning the O.P.'s were even more vulnerable. Steve was killed while on a forward reconnaissance in his jeep: Chris North was killed at his O.P: Bill Tacey was taken prisoner in an ambush.
At another gun position close up to the Volturno we were being shelled intermittently. One of my despatch riders, Lance-Bombardier Collier, rode up to the command post. As he got off his motor-bike, a shell exploded nearby and a jagged splinter hit him in the neck. I sent for the M.O. as Collier collapsed with dark red blood gurgling from his throat. Paddy Martin arrived with his ambulance within minutes.
“Is there any hope for him?” I asked.
“Afraid not. It's gone through his jugular”.
Collier died in the ambulance soon after. I observed with interest how soldiers reacted to the frequent shelling. Some were obviously frightened, virtually everyone was uneasy and on edge, a few remained outwardly calm. I was somewhere around the middle of the range. Reactions did not seem to depend on whether you were a regular soldier or on how much fighting you had been through (I was later to share a tank in Normandy with a very experienced and gallant officer who showed distressing signs of stress when under fire). One of my comrades in Don Troop, Bombardier Crisp, seemed completely without fear. He was rather older than most of us, perhaps in his mid-thirties, had been a fruit importer in civilian life, and was very unmilitary in his appearance and bearing. Once, after a bout of accurate shelling by the enemy I emerged from my slit trench to find Crisp sitting on the ground outside the trench, reading a book with apparent unconcern. I don’t think he was putting on an act. I never met anyone else with the same equanimity under fire.
Meanwhile the infantry were actively patrolling to locate the best point for a river crossing. They found a suitable place on the Grazzanise loop, where an exposed enemy salient projected into our lines. The battle plan provided for 5 RHA and our sister regiment 3 RHA to bring down a heavy creeping barrage to cover the infantry crossing. This was one of the rare occasions when the line was static enough to warrant a set-piece plan. All forty-eight guns of the two regiments brought down simultaneous fire on the first of the infantry objectives and increased the range progressively as the leading troops advanced. No passable tank ford had been found because of the steepness of the banks so the Queens’ Infantry Brigade bore the brunt of the fighting until the banks could be shovelled away to permit one of our tank squadrons to ford the river. A Sherman squadron of the 4th CLY (County of London Yeomanry) had been waterproofed for this purpose.
The battle raged, with little respite for the artillery, throughout the 12th and 13th October. By the end of the second day, our troops were firmly established on the far bank, having successfully beaten off the inevitable counter-attacks. Once the bridgehead was consolidated we were ordered to withdraw from our gun positions and to cross the Volturno by means of a bridge constructed by the Royal Engineers so that we could resume our advance. (Half a century later I learned from my friend Christopher Milne's autobiography that he had been in charge of the bridging unit, which had been heavily shelled while they were building the bridge).
Withdrawing the guns was easier said than done. Torrential rain had reduced the ground to a quagmire. The guns of Don Troop, after firing several hundred shells apiece, had sunk down to their axles. Our vehicles began to sink into the mud as soon as they tried to pull the guns. I called up the recovery unit of our LAD (Light Aid Detachment of the REME), but attempts to winch out the guns were unavailing.. I jumped into a truck that was still on dry land and drove back to the nearest village behind the lines. I found the offices of the Podesta, which I took to be the local authority. Within the offices sat a group of sinister looking men with heavy drooping moustaches who looked as if they were auditioning for a film about the Mafia. I explained in my rudimentary Italian that the advance of the Allies was being held up by the depth of the local mud. The local farmers used oxen to pull their ploughs through the muddy fields:
“Bue, Bue!” I demanded.
The Podesta offered instant help. Probably they thought I was going to shoot them for co-operating with the Germans. Within minutes I was leading a convoy of oxen and their minders towards my bogged down guns. The gun crews greeted the arrival of the convoy with profound scepticism and some unseemly mirth. Their scorn turned to wonder as the oxen, harnessed in pairs to each gun, put modern technology to shame. Within two hours my 25-pounders were standing on dry ground, muddy but unbowed.
It was a lot quieter on the far side of the Volturno as the Germans began their withdrawal to their next defensive position. On one afternoon of comparative peace — it happened to be my twenty-third birthday — I was asked to take my turn at the O.P. I passed a few hours on top of a haystack near the enemy lines uncomfortably aware that Chris North had been killed a few days before in a similar situation . My signaller made himself comfortable at the foot of the haystack. In front of me stretched an apparently peaceful rural scene. Two villages one to the right of my field of view and one to the left were well within the range of my guns. The villages were Francolise and Sparanise, names that sounded as if they came straight from a Verdi opera — a couple of sinister conspirators perhaps, or a pair of courtiers on the fringe of the main action like Rosencrantz and Guildernstern. Through my binoculars I could see some enemy transport around Francolise, and after two ranging shells I brought down three rounds of gunfire and scattered the vehicles. No other signs of activity had developed by the time that darkness fell and I returned to the gun position.
THE LAST PHASE
The Germans now began their retreat to the line of the Garigliano, staging only a few rearguard actions to slow the advance of our tanks. However, to the flank they mounted a determined resistance on Monte Massico where they were supplied through a railway tunnel. The artillery took no part in the close fighting to clear Massico Ridge, apart from some of our gunners who were drafted to help with supplies to the infantry. They found themselves lugging heavy loads up the mountain on dark nights in bitterly cold driving rain. They considered this no task for trained artillerymen, and made clear their disgust in lurid language when they returned to the regiment who were by now living in comparative comfort.
In early November we drove across the coastal plain, facing nothing worse than sporadic shelling, and occupied the small town of Mondragone. On the edge of the town was an enormous canning factory surrounded by miles of tomato fields, owned by the firm of Cirio's, world famous for their canned tomatoes and puree. A voluble Italian was holding forth to a crowd at the factory gates, presumably advocating the distribution of the stocks to the local populace. One of our regular sergeants, no doubt accustomed to similar situations during his service in outposts of empire, identified him as a ‘fucking agitator’. My conciliatory intervention saved the agitator from summary arrest or a worse fate. We simply drove past him into the capacious factory and established our headquarters in one of the warehouses.
During the next few days, much of Cirio’s stock found its way mysteriously into compartments of our vehicles, and even into individual kitbags. Long afterwards, and in other countries, tinned tomatoes from Mondragone would still be adding welcome variety to our official rations. Unaccountably, one of our three ton trucks was later found to contain an upright piano, which the driver claimed to have been presented to him by a grateful Italian. It had probably been ‘liberated’ from the Cirio works canteen. The enemy, or sometimes — regrettably — the local population, indulged in looting. British troops never looted, but we sometimes liberated the odd piano. By extension, and with greater irony, the term was applied to whole towns freed by the advancing Allies even if the towns had been completely flattened in the process. Liberation was not always a lot of fun for those who were liberated.
The main forces of the Division now kept well back from the Garigliano and the forbidding mountains beyond it. The intervening plain, which was under observation from the mountains, was only lightly patrolled. It was obvious that nothing less than a major set-piece attack would secure a bridgehead across the Garigliano. In the event, with winter fast approaching, the crossing was deferred to the spring of 1944 by which time we were a thousand miles away.
The news reached us, first by rumour, then by official orders, that we were to be relieved by the 5th Canadian Armoured Division, and were then to return home. We were under no illusions: the reason for sending us home could only be to retrain for the invasion of France. But there were undeniable attractions in the prospect of being out of action for a few months and seeing our families again.
The Divisional History records:
“Vehicles were handed over to the Canadians, somewhat to the surprise of the latter, for some of the vehicles had been with the Division since the previous February, when they had been obtained second-hand from 4th Indian Division. Several thousand miles, mostly over open desert, had not subsequently improved them..."
I recall the story of an enthusiastic newly arrived officer who, during a lull in the fighting, had suggested to the drivers in his troop that they should carry out maintenance of their vehicles. “Maintenance!”, one driver was heard to grumble, “I got the bloody truck from Alamein to Tunis without any bloody maintenance, didn’t I?”. Maintenance was something you did in barracks. In war, when your truck broke down, you mended it.
TIME OFF IN SORRENTO
In mid-November 1943, bereft of our guns and most of our vehicles, we drove south from the battle zone to billets in the Sorrento peninsula. There we had to await the shipping that was to take us home to Britain. Just as in South Africa on our way out to Egypt, the waiting period lasted a month. However our month in comfortable billets in the village of Piano di Sorrento was a good deal more agreeable than our stay in a Durban warehouse. Moreover, our next trip was to take us back home rather than to the cauldron of the Western Desert. Morale was high, aided by ample quantities of the excellent local vintage Lacrimae Cristi.
In the month before Christmas the weather was mild and wet. For two days every week the rain poured down continuously. The other five were extremely pleasant. Our village, Piano, was three or four miles outside the town, on a hillside terraced with groves of ripening oranges. I was billeted in a comfortable house of which I have no clear memory, but I do recall the officers’ mess in which we spent many convivial evenings. The house was owned by two friendly old ladies: we dined in a large room looking out over the orange groves. By the window there was a grand piano with a beautifully embroidered silk cover.
We gave the troops an easy time with the minimum of formal parades. To keep fit we went on route marches, including a stiff climb to the top of a neighbouring mountain. I marched my troop eight miles for bath parade, which we took in the Roman Baths at Castellamare di Stabia on the road to Naples. I had been able to take a bath in my billet, so while the soldiers were bathing I waited in a local bar. There I ate fresh walnuts and drank brown vermouth, a very satisfying combination.
For me, the high point of the month was a two day visit to Capri, just evacuated by the Germans. My companion was a fellow subaltern, Michael Barstow, who came from a regular army family though he was not a military type himself. He had a quiet voice and a gentle, self-effacing, manner. His father had been a colonel on Montgomery’s staff in England. Monty insisted that all his staff officers should go on long cross-country runs. On one of these, Colonel Barstow was struck down by a fatal heart attack.
Mike was a most agreeable companion. Together we enjoyed the unique experience of strolling around the beautiful island without a tourist in sight. Before the war it was getting pretty crowded: since the war there has scarcely been standing room on Capri. The islanders were overjoyed at the departure of the Tedeschi, particularly as the evacuation took place without any fighting. They welcomed us with open arms. Special bottles of vintage wine and spirits, concealed in cellars during the occupation, were unearthed for our delectation. Mike and I walked the length and breadth of the island and tramped up the nine hundred and ninety-nine Roman steps to Anacapri. We gazed on the Faraglione rocks, and took a rowing boat to the Grotto Azzuro. Here the Emperor Tiberius (known as Timberio to the Capresi) used to disport himself with young boys and girls when he wasn’t hurling people from the cliffiop.
The 1887 Baedeker informs us that the Blue Grotto can be visited by light boat hired from the Marina Grande. The authorised fare for the return trip was one and a quarter lire (a lira was about a shilling) per person, but few boatmen would undertake the trip without an additional fee of one or two lire:
"Visitors must lie down in the boat on entering— the entrance is three feet high... The effect of the blue refraction of light on every object is indescribable, and at first completely dazzles the eye. Objects in the water assume a beautiful silvery appearance. One of the boatmen usually offers to bathe in order to show this effect, and is sufficiently rewarded with one lira though he generally makes the exorbitant demand of two to three"
Baedeker was rather obsessed with the exorbitant demands of the Italians. Our boatman took us there free of charge, though he did not demonstrate any silvery bathe. We disembarked at the foot of the cliff, where a lone fisherman indicated a path to the top and advised us that the walk would take us a ‘mezzorina’ - a little half-hour.
The sun shone brilliantly and the Mediterranean sparkled blue and purple. We walked along the clifftop to Axel Munthe's San Michele at Anacapri. The Story of San Michele, part autobiographical, part pure romance, was deservedly a best seller between the wars. Doctor Munthe had withdrawn to his native Sweden for the duration, but an obliging Italian male secretary showed us round the villa and the gardens with their classical statuary and spectacular views over the sea far below. The other island celebrity, similarly not in residence at the time, was Gracie Fields who had sacrificed her popularity in Britain by marrying an Italian actor. At her villa, down by the coast opposite Marina Grande, again there was a helpful caretaker to conduct us through house and garden. One scene near the villa remains etched in my memory sharp and clear: a boy by the seashore calling across a narrow azure bay to a monastery on the headland. “Salvatore!”, he called, his pure treble rising to the third syllable and then falling, “Salvatore!..."
Back in Piano it was my turn as Orderly Officer one night, the sole duty being to turn out the guard. Inevitably each battery had to mount a guard, though we may have doubted what we were guarding or who we were guarding it from. Anyway there was our 24-hour guard watching over us from an outbuilding above the village — and as there was a guard it had to be turned out, once by day and once by night. Dennis Wells, who had taken over command of the Battery after Steve's death, offered me a sheaf of marked cards — our method of ensuring a random time. I drew 2 a.m. for the night inspection. This seemed to me to argue for prolonging the evening's conviviality until well into the night. With this in view, I found myself contributing to the general merriment by composing a succession of vulgar limericks based on battle-familiar Italian place-names. A fair sample of my poetic inspiration ran:
“There was an old man of Ravello
Whose organ was purple and yellow.
It stretched from Salerno To Villa Litterno
With a horrible bend at Cancello.”
The names of the Italian towns were obligingly suited to the construction of simple rhymes.
By two o’ clock I had exhausted my muse, and my fellow officers retired to bed. Armed with a torch I found my way up through the orange groves to the guard post where the sentry on duty challenged me:
“Halt! Who goes there?”
“Orderly Officer. Turn out the guard!”
The sergeant and six gunners turned out with reasonable despatch and I duly inspected them.
“Guard, dismiss!”
I began to retrace my steps, or so I thought, switching off my torch and relying on the dim moonlight. The next thing I knew was that I was hurtling through space. It seemed a long interval before I hit the ground, fortunately bottom first, so I had time to reflect during the descent. I wondered whether I had simply fallen off one of the terraces in the orange grove and down to the next or whether I was falling down one of the deep ravines that intersected the groves. It proved to be only a twelve foot drop, the ground was soft, and I picked myself up none the worse except for a few bruises and the loss of my torch.
The moon was now hidden behind clouds. I was not at all sure whether I might be on a narrow ledge, with a further drop of uncertain depth a few inches away. I decided to summon help from the nearby guard. Their natural resentment at a second and unexpected disturbance was mingled with an unconcealed satisfaction at my predicament. After what seemed a long delay, they lowered a farm ladder, liberally coated with manure, that they had found in a nearby barn. I climbed up and regained my composure. I honestly do not think that the evening's conviviality had contributed to my misfortune. I never have seen very well in the dark.
At last three troopships were assembled in the Bay of Naples to take the Division home. I left Italy with mixed feelings. It was a lovely country inhabited by lovable people, but one hell of a country to fight in. Someone — it may have been Churchill — once referred to our offensive as an attack on the soft underbelly of Europe. What nonsense! Apart from the jungle warfare in the Far East, Italy must have been the toughest battlefield for the Allies in the entire war. Rivers and mountains provided ideal terrain for defence, and throughout the Italian campaign the defences were manned by high quality German troops. We could not have guessed it but we would have had a harder time if we had stayed to fight in Italy than we were actually to endure in the Normandy landings and the subsequent campaign in north-west Europe.
I sent this Christmas card home from Italy in December 1943. The battle honours cover only the North African campaign. Post, out and home, was irregular. A fond aunt sent me a birthday cake which arrived, after several months in transit, in no fit condition to be eaten.