Whicker’s War and Journey of a Lifetime

The always surprising stoicism of the Neapolitans soon surfaced and the shops began to open for business, though with little on display. Neapolitan shopkeepers were of course cannier than those in other towns who, before remembering to put up their prices, sold their remaining stocks to eager Allied soldiers enjoying the benevolent rate of exchange. In Naples they waited weeks or months before emptying the storeroom and adding zeros to the price tags.

A few good harbourside restaurants around the famous Zit Theresa opened, with costly menus. They offered a good four-course meal with wine for 140 lire, or seven shillings. Only the military – or black marketeers – could afford such outrageous prices.

One private enterprise flourished as never before. Naples had long been known as the capital of major and minor thievery, a lifestyle stimulated by war. Now beneficent Allied merchant ships arrived daily with food and army supplies, their crews not geared to deal with mass and well-organised criminality which in a hungry lawless land had become woven into every life. It was calculated that one third of all supplies landed at this major port was instantly stolen, to reappear in the black market. So it was Christmas every day for the gangsters of the Camorra.

The emerging shopkeepers of the Via Roma were followed by the friendly Neapolitan signorinas. So effusive was their more private welcome that notices soon went up along roads into the city: ‘Dangerous type of VD in this area.’ We never discovered where the safe type was.

Public Relations settled happily into the Villa Ruffo on Posillipo Hill, a stately mansion overlooking the bay, with Vesuvius – the terror and the pride of the city – smoking peacefully in the distance. This was a spectacular setting of style and comfort amid the tarnished splendour of Naples, though our billet became unkindly known as Villa Rough-it. I would happily have roughed-it indefinitely, but needed to return to the Eighth Army, still trying to push north up the east coast of Italy, 140 miles away.

An unopposed landing by the 1st Airborne Division at Taranto had been followed by the liberation of Brindisi and then the major port on the ankle of Italy, Bari, a Fascist stronghold.

The ironies of life at a warfront when you’re living on a razor’s-edge between stiff-upper-lip badinage, and death – the injustice, the unfairness of it all – was underlined for me in this Adriatic port. We arrived in Bari just after the Italian surrender and found it untouched and, like Capri, quite indifferent to war.

We were particularly irritated by the many Italian Army officers in ornate uniforms strutting about the boulevards wearing their revolvers, and lounging in pavement cafés like the cast of a Drury Lane musical. We – the victors – had been fighting the Germans, sleeping in ditches and unable to bathe; now it was infuriating to find ourselves patronised and dismissed by defeated posturing pseudo-soldiers in this unscathed city, who had never heard a gun fire. What’s more, they also had to live-down a worse record than the Germans in their treatment of prisoners.

Much boorishness survived. The posh Hotel Imperiale refused to give a room to the Allied Tactical Air Commander in Italy, Air Vice Marshal Sir Arthur Coningham. This was unwise. The irate New Zealander promptly commandeered an entire floor for the RAF.

On the plus side, the shops in their city were still stuffed with goods that at our victor’s exchange-rate seemed encouragingly cheap: a pair of rare silk stockings and a bottle of Asti Spumante to go with them, 4s.6d each. Chanel No 5 as a going-away present – 15s. The rate at the top local brothel was seven lire – then less than tuppence and, I was told, usually worth every penny. None of these bargains survived the frantic inflation which arrived soon after as Italians chased the rate of exchange, and won.

Disregarding, in the main, such inexpensive distractions, the Eighth pushed forward up the east coast of Italy, attempting to relieve the pressure on the desperate Fifth.

A popular silver-haired public relations officer, Captain Sir Gerald Boles, reminded us how our warfront lives were ruled by luck. We would sometimes find ourselves working alongside our brother War Correspondents – civilians in uniform who were taken around in the Humber Pullmans of Public Relations by Conducting Officers. They were usually subalterns recovering from wounds or officers regarded as dispensable by their units. One was Sir Gerald and he, to put a fine point upon it, was allergic to lead. He was deeply anxious not to be killed – injured, even. In a charming and patrician manner he would shy away from the most distant explosion.

While escorting Correspondents around the Front in search of their stories, he refused to go anywhere near the fighting. ‘Might get the Humber damaged,’ he would explain, apologetically. ‘War Department property, you know.’

It was true that PR only had a few Pullmans left from the desert, and that some Correspondents were quite content to go along with his careful timidity and fight-the-good-fight only upon their portable typewriters; but the more gung-ho reporters would not be fobbed off by the gentility of ‘Sir Gerald and Lady Boles’, as Ted Gilling called him scornfully. They were missing all the action and the subsequent stories. After indignant protests from the Press it was decided that Sir Gerald had to go.

He was too endearing a man to humiliate by RTUing, by returning to his unit, so his seniors cast around for an acceptably safe job away from the Front where Sir Gerald could pursue a gentler life undisturbed by explosives. They finally decided to send him back to Bari. This port was then miles behind the Front, but a sufficient number of Correspondents were passing through on their way to Yugoslavia and the Balkans to justify the posting.

With touching relief he turned his back on the war, leaving his brother officers to get on with what could be quite a dangerous role – without, as it transpired, further casualties. Sir Gerald drove south and settled into a sea view suite in a comfortable harbourside hotel to sit-out the rest of the war peacefully in that tranquil unscathed city.

In a surprise Luftwaffe raid a few nights after his arrival, an ammunition ship anchored in the harbour outside his hotel suffered a direct hit. It exploded and sank, taking sixteen other ships with it. The blast was felt for 20 miles. Sir Gerald was blown through several walls, and into eternity.

I always enjoyed the ‘Sign Wars’ which could relieve the monotony of any journey. There were the useful warnings: ‘Dust Brings Shells’, the rather laboured, ‘If you go any further, take a Cross with you.’ Even the decisive, ‘Don’t be a bloody fool.’ Should you pass one saying ‘Achtung! Strasse liegt unter Feuer!’ it meant, roughly translated, You’ve come too far – turn round and get the Hell out of here.’

In another category there were those which gave units a chance to publicise their achievements, or get their own back. All Americans were keen on public relations – drivers were always being ‘Welcomed’ to some village or river crossing ‘by courtesy of’ a US Infantry regiment which was just doing its job. Often it seemed we were on Route 66 and would soon be offered a giant hamburger.

On one mountain road where as usual the Germans had blown every bridge, the first replacement had a large sign saying proudly, You are Crossing this Bridge by Courtesy of the US Fifth Army Engineers who Built it in 3 Days 14 Hours and 26 Minutes!’

At the next blown river-crossing the familiar British Bailey bridge had a small notice: ‘This Bridge was built by the REs in 9 Hours 42 Minutes’. Underneath in brackets and small print: (‘There is nothing unusual about this bridge’). They must have been the Sappers who invented Cool.

There was also the tantalising problem of naming defensive Lines – and the enemy had plenty. To infantrymen the war in Italy was one fortified German Line after another. Break through one and there was always the next, just ahead. Ford a river – and there’s its twin, behind an identical mountain. We had the Attila Line, the Caesar Line, the Bernhard Line, the Trasimene Line, the Barbara Line, the Olga and Lydia Lines, the Paola and Mädchen Lines … As the battle moved north it seemed the Germans were thinking more of home and the wife, even amid the big-time Gothic and Gustav Lines built for the Todt organisation by Italian prisoners.

A name had to be resonant, defiant, gallant and worth fighting for. So to restore the billing it was obvious that a major line should have been named after the Führer – heads were due to roll. The Adolf Hitler Line needed to be the most brave and steadfast of them all. This would please everyone back at Command in Berlin.

So fortunately when the formidable Gustav Line was breached, the Germans had just established a deeper defence running across the Liri Valley, near Pontecorvo and Aquino – at last, the Hitler Line!

This blocked any Allied movement along Highway 6 and up the valley. It was even more substantial than the Gustav and featured permanent concrete works, the turrets of Panther tanks buried in the ground at key points, and 75mm guns. Every defensive position was, as usual, cleverly sited.

Then suddenly in January ’44 the significant Adolf Hitler Line was renamed the Senger Line, after the Commander of the 14th Panzer Corps responsible for the defence of Monte Cassino, Lieutenant General Fridolin von Senger und Etterlin.

The reason for that urgent name change was not too subtle. Someone had read the runes – and the future was uncertain. A defensive line liable to be humiliatingly breached by Allied armies – or even worse, ignored (remember the Maginot Line?) could not be allowed to go down under the name of the Führer. Generals had been executed for less. Fridolin would doubtless be more amenable, so he was in the charts for a few weeks. He must have been thoughtful and accommodating for he tried to save the Abbey of Monte Cassino, was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford and reportedly disliked Hitler.

That name change was fortunate for some, and just in time. The Senger Line crumbled – indeed General Clark became concerned lest its quick penetration by the Eighth might lead to a sudden dash to Rome. He would much rather see his own Fifth Army held down and savaged than have the Eighth triumphant on his Road to Rome …

I missed much of the fun and games of Naples and Bari because in that bleak winter the Army was being decimated, not by Germans but by jaundice.

This spread through all ranks and did far more damage than high explosives. First it made you feel like death, while you still looked fine. Then you turned bright yellow and felt fine, while looking like death. It was a confusing and unpleasant plague.

I was carried by ambulance many uncomfortable miles from the snow-covered mountains of central Italy, south to Bari – to experience the first flight of my life. It was not stylish. I was in the middle of a stack of stretchers in a packed Red Cross DC3 which flew back to Catania in Sicily, then on to Tunis. After this an ambulance train took me across the border to Constantine in Algeria and finally, a truck on to hospital to start treatment. By then I was almost well again.

Strange that the first of the many millions of airborne miles I was to cover around Whicker’s World during my lifetime should have been endured lying flat on my back. Now of course you pay extra to travel like that.

STRUGGLING TO GET TICKETS FOR THE FIRST CASUALTY LIST…

The Anzio Experience has remained with me, mainly because I never expected to live through it. One retains a proprietorial attitude towards any hazardous expedition experienced totally, from planning to victory. Having invaded Sicily and then the mainland of Italy, I’d had two lucky invasions and was hoping the next assault landing would complete my quota: Third Time still Lucky.

I had worked my way back to the Front line from the hospital in Algeria, three or four countries away, and rejoined AFPU on the east coast of Italy just in time for the unit Christmas party. This was as jolly as could be, considering our billet: the Vasto Theological College.

On that Adriatic sector I joined one of the best divisions in the Eighth Army, the 78th ‘Battleaxe’ Division which had fought its way here from Medjez-el-Bab in Tunisia and was now being replaced in the line by an old partner, the tough 1st Canadian Division. To capture the gaunt mountain town of Ortona they faced the entrenched 1st Parachute Division, most disciplined and feared of Kesselring’s armies. It was the battle of champions.

The Canadians took over the Front on the evening of December 20 to fight amid the freezing ruins. In bitter struggles lone houses were captured and surrendered and recaptured. Only the piles of dead were changed. They were still fighting there on Christmas Day. The Paras brought up flame-throwers with a 60-yard range which they used in attack and defence through the ruined town.

The Canadian answer was to call in Sherman tanks as close-support wherever the narrow streets allowed, and six-pounder anti-tank guns that shot through or demolished ancient stone walls.

In this grotesque Christmas battle with its stark backdrop, it took the Canadians eight desperate days to capture Ortona. By then both sides were exhausted. The last Paras were finally cleared out on December 28, though for days afterwards Canadians were killed or maimed by the mines and booby-traps they had buried in the ruined homes of that desolate mountain town.

The capture brought that offensive to an end. The Army was tired, weakened by losses and could see no military objective ahead except – on the other coast – the major prize of Rome, but that was in the path of the Fifth Army. On the Adriatic we had fought ourselves to a winter stalemate.

Then an urgent message from AFHQ sent me jeeping through the mountains to Naples yet again – following the action. There I learned I was to command cameramen covering the landing of 50,000 British and American troops behind enemy lines, south of Rome. The intention was to cut Highway 6 and the railway supply-lines to the Monte Cassino front where German paratroops were still resisting strongly, to trap Kesselring’s Tenth and Fourteenth Armies, and finally to liberate Rome.

With Geoffrey Keating I drove out to Castellammare, the port across the bay from Naples where most of the armada was assembling, to place sergeant-cameramen with units in the first wave of our assault. We had to negotiate with the senior officer commanding the loading of the invasion fleet, because as usual there was not space for everyone who needed to go, and although we saw our role as important it was hard to compete against fighting units, gunners or ambulances.

To jolly the Colonel along, Keating suggested that I take a few personal pictures of him in action – gentle harmless flattery. Pleased with such attention he became more amenable, and subsequently agreed to most of our requests for space and accommodation.

It was curious to be so eager to join an expedition that offered applicants the probability of injury or death as the reward for success. It felt like struggling to get tickets for a First Night, when the winners would probably end up in the first casualty list of permanent Losers.

Afterwards Geoffrey said he would get my pictures developed. I explained that, as usual, I had no film in the camera. We could not take pictures of everyone we met, and it was doubtful whether we would ever see the Colonel again. This was a bit naughty, but practical; we could not burden our hard-pressed Developing Section with social shots not for publication. ‘Red-hots,’ we called them, and they never amused our shy colleague Len Puttnam – father of Lord Puttnam-to-be – who ran the developers and coped manfully with our output.

Geoffrey, more experienced than I, said ‘Fatal mistake. Now you’re going to run into that Colonel everywhere, for the rest of the war. You’ll always be making excuses.’ He was right – so I never did that again.

On January 21 ’44 an armada of 374 ships sailed out to sea, then turned to starboard and steamed north. This was Operation Shingle. We had a fair idea where we might be going because Neapolitan spivs on the Via Roma and around the docks had been selling postcards of Anzio, a place of which I had then never heard.

The weather was perfect, the sea smooth – but we knew German radio had been discussing an Allied landing behind their lines. We prepared for another Salerno bloodbath.

At nightfall troops on our ship wrapped themselves in blankets and tried to sleep on deck. In the wardroom, officers played poker for ridiculously high stakes, trying to get rid of cash. Just when there was no need for money I could not stop winning, of course – so landed with pockets bulging with lire which took months to spend. It was the first (and last) time I have faced that problem.

Our vast armada came to anchor off the small resort and port of Anzio – just as the Neapolitans had forecast. As we dropped anchor in a crisp dawn, braced for enemy reaction, I went below decks for my guide book, to learn that Anzio had been a flourishing commercial city in 490 BC and was the birthplace of the Emperor Nero and the home of Caligula. I do like to know where I’m invading.

Viewed from the deck of our LST at dawn it seemed a pleasant little fishing port bordered by low-rise blocks and villas along the coast, and some substantial patrician homes amid the pines and sand dunes. It had already been damaged by our supporting fire – and much worse was to come.

Along the coast, neighbouring Nettuno looked older, with wine caves at its heart – soon to be taken over by VI Corps as a secure HQ, with life-saving cellars attached. Caligula had wanted to turn Anzio into the capital of the Roman Empire, and Popes and nobles followed his enthusiasms. The fall of the Roman Empire led to Anzio’s decline for centuries, until the 1700s when Cardinal Antonio Pignatelli, returning by sea from Naples to Rome, sheltered from a storm in Nero’s old port and believed his life had been spared. He promised if he became Pope he would rebuild the place – and was a man of his word.

So Anzio had its ups and downs. Unfortunately, I arrived in time for a major Down. After our landing the port area was shelled and bombed by the Germans, night and day for four months. At least it became famous, once again.

To get here during the night our massive fleet had sailed past the Gustav Line and in the distance, Monte Cassino, which now lay 80 miles behind us. The harbour was suddenly busy with warships. Barrage balloons tethered to the larger craft floated protectively above our armada. Destroyers cut through the fleet, laying thick black smokescreens. Further out to sea big cruisers moved ponderously around in semi-circles, rocking as their thunderous broadsides supported our landing.

Red air raid warning flags flew almost permanently – yet we had some 2,000 aircraft in the theatre, the Luftwaffe only 350. Sometimes the RAF or the USAAF held off the attackers, but usually they got through to drop their bombs and hurtle away, low over the water.

The two Navies staged a useful diversion by bombarding Rome’s seaport, Civitavecchia, 75 miles further north. There they carried-out a fake landing so impressive that Kesselring ordered that all harbour facilities should be demolished immediately.

I went in with the 1st ‘White Triangle’ Division on to Peter Beach, just north of Anzio, a broad sandy expanse between sea and dunes stretching towards Ostia and the enticing target of Rome, a mere 33 miles away. The platoon I was landing with that sunny morning was confident and cheerful. The light return-fire had been spasmodic. They were all businesslike and, like me, beginning to feel they had done it all before and knew their way around a landing beach.

What they did not know, of course, was that during the next months at Anzio their division would lose 100 officers and more than 1,000 other ranks. Another 400 officers and 8,000 men would be casualties, or missing.

After our cheerful landing the division would lose 60 per cent of its officers, 50 per cent of its men, but as the warm water and soft clean sand of Peter Beach splashed up to meet our feet such a terrible future was, fortunately, unthinkable.

The US 3rd Division was landing on X-Ray Beach, south of Nettuno, where resistance was also light: the usual 88mm shells and air raids. Most of our early casualties were from wooden box mines hidden in the sand, which fooled the Royal Engineers’ metal-detectors.

I never lost my horror of mines, nor my admiration for the courage of the REs who went ahead and defused them by the thousand. The thought of sudden death springing up from the sand to grab and remove my vitals was an ever-present nightmare, as was the memory of regimental aid posts trying to cope with men without feet or legs who minutes before had been slogging cheerfully up the beach.

General Eisenhower recalled once telling the Russian Army Commander, Marshal Zhukov, of the intricate and extravagant devices introduced by the allied armies to clear minefields – like those great flails on the front of some British tanks. The jolly little ruler of the Red armies – perhaps the greatest Field Commander of World War II – found all those elaborate precautions time-wasting and unnecessary. The quickest and most effective way of clearing a minefield, the Marshal explained, was to assemble a battalion of infantry and order them to march straight across it.

That cruel order was not a comfortable recollection as we prepared to cover a hundred yards of smooth sand, and then the more threatening dunes. In any AFPU pictures of our troops landing on Peter Beach, I’m the one on tiptoe …

The first Germans we met on landing were the 200 who had been sent to Anzio to rest and recover from the fighting at Cassino. Most of them were asleep when they got a wake-up call from a different enemy. Once again we had achieved surprise. The Germans had expected an attack further north, where our feint went in. They were wrong again.

So were we. After a perfect landing in enemy territory, almost nothing went right. The roads to Rome and the commanding hills were open – but we did not choose to take them.

By the evening Major General John P. Lucas, Commander of VI Corps, had landed 36,000 of us, with 3,200 vehicles. He did not land himself until the next day, when he moved into his command cellar in Nettuno; and there he stayed.

I learned afterwards from Prince Stefano Borghese, whose Palace overlooked Anzio harbour, that the ominous approaching rumble of hundreds of ships’ engines out at sea had been heard long before our devastating support barrage began, but the German Harbourmaster thought it was his supply ships returning from Livorno.

After an hour ashore that invasion day my first courier left to carry back to Naples the exposed film we had shot. Our first mishap came when a bomb blew Sergeant Lambert off the quayside. He landed in the water still clutching his bag of film, but no serious harm was done. Just as in a battle zone when any aircraft landing you can walk away from is a good landing, so any naval episode you can swim away from is quite acceptable, in the circumstances.

We headed our preparatory dope sheets: ‘The Liberation of Rome’. Our cautious target was, Rome in ten days. I told my cameramen to hoard film stock for the excitement of bringing freedom to the first Axis capital. As soon as I could get my jeep ashore I started up the Via Anziate heading for Rome, with any luck, and those first triumphant pictures. We were some 60 miles ahead of the German army, which for some reason after all our backs-to-the-wall battles seemed rather hilarious. I resisted the euphoric desire to drive fast through the open countryside, singing.