Whicker’s War and Journey of a Lifetime

The fate of the Salerno landing hung in the balance for some two weeks. A major factor in the outcome was the supporting firepower of the big naval cruisers offshore, and the dropping into the Beachhead on two successive nights of two regimental combat teams from the tough US 82nd Airborne Division. This operation, though sadly delayed, was probably the most successful airborne operation of the war, and swung the battle.

At a time when most things were going wrong, the British army faced that most unusual and wretched event: a mutiny, in which British NCOs were sentenced to death.

Some 700 reinforcement troops had arrived by LST from Naples. They sat down on the beach and refused to report to their new units. All were desert veterans of the 50th Northumbrian and 51st Highland Division who had learned they were going straight back into the line to fight – and not with old comrades and officers they respected, but with new divisions. Worse, some Scots were going to non-Scottish regiments. They all believed they had been promised home rotation with their original units.

It was not until the Commander of X Corps, the popular Lieutenant General Richard McCreery, went to the beach that the majority were persuaded to obey orders, though 192 still refused and were later court-martialled. The NCOs who led the rebellion were sentenced to death, but were soon given the chance to redeem themselves by returning to duty in Italy, with suspended sentences. They did not suffer the ultimate penalty. However, the Salerno mutiny remained a permanent stain on the honour of the Army, and is not mentioned in the Official War History.

All this time I was with the Eighth Army as it moved up the Calabrian toe of Italy. There were two coastal roads, both so narrow there was little room for the two divisions in action – the 5th up the west coast, the 1st Canadian to the east. Only one brigade at a time – sometimes one battalion – could get into the front line of the toe, to fight. It was a geographical gift for German demolition experts; one blown bridge could hold up an army for as long as its ruins could be defended.

After facing the 16th Panzer Division north of Termoli, the Eighth captured the vital Foggia airfield complex, which opened-up southern Europe to Allied bombers and allowed close air support within minutes. At the River Sangro, General Montgomery issued another of his calls to action which always sounded to me like an invitation to cricket: ‘We will now deal the enemy a colossal whack…’ It was his last battle before he returned to England to prepare for the Second Front.

Some Russian officers under General Vasiliev were visiting the Front and, surprisingly, were familiar with Monty’s terminology, but old Eighth Army hands were unprepared for Major General Solodovnic. He had last been seen in Africa in the more casual uniform of a War Correspondent reporting for the TASS news agency. He was not bemused by Monty’s sporting appeals – indeed had a habit of putting haughty Brigade Majors on the defensive: ‘I suppose you’re one of the Upper Classes?’

On September 8 ’43, the day before the Salerno landing, Italy had capitulated and become a co-belligerent, ostensibly on our side. The conquest of Sicily had knocked Mussolini off his perch, and Italy out of the war. Having as a neutral enjoyed the flattering attentions of both sides, the Duce had delayed his declaration of war too long to claim any significant share of Hitler’s blitzkrieg spoils. The Germans overran France so quickly, the Italians contributed so little – and Mussolini had waited 280 days, until June 10 ’40, before declaring war. He could make few appeals at the armistice table. His demand for Nice, Tunis and Corsica received little sympathy from Hitler, who had once complained bitterly: ‘The Italians never lose a war. No matter what happens, they always end up on the winning side.’ He was right again – but the chastened Mussolini saw it another way: ‘Nobody likes a neutral.’

After the surrender of Sicily the Italian King and Government had been anxious to get rid of their Duce. He was eager to show it was not his fault that Fascism and much of Sicily were in ruins, with more to come. In an attempt to avoid the war spreading north through Italy, the diminutive King Victor Emmanuel III – who had brought Mussolini to power in 1922 – belatedly demanded his resignation and replaced him by Marshal Badoglio. After that bloodless coup the Duce, more confused than angry, accepted his dismissal, and they parted amicably.

A few months later he was rescued from house arrest at Gran Sasso on the highest peak of the Apennines by glider-borne paratroops led by Hitler’s personal commando, Colonel Otto Skorzeny. Mussolini was then reinstated by the Führer for a brief spell in the twilight zone of doomed Dictators.

Negotiating a change of sides for Italy during the war had been trickier than surrendering. A secret armistice negotiated by the captured British General Carton de Wiart had been signed, but the Italian Field Command was not informed. It did not know what to do so ended up, in the Italian way, by doing nothing.

Unfortunately at that moment Allied command was also indecisive and at Salerno, almost overwhelmed. Instead of ordering the Italian Army to turn and fight the Germans as planned and dropping a division of paratroops on Rome Airport, the Allies threw up their hands, ignored the new situation, cancelled the airdrop – and continued slogging up Italy as though nothing had happened.

For weeks the Germans had been expecting their ally to defect, so with their usual fast reaction seized Rome and rounded up the 600,000 obedient Italian soldiers who had remained in their camps and not gone home and changed into civvies. Instead, they went into cattle trucks and off to German labour camps.

Curiously, Whitehall now reacted in an Italianate way. When their prison camp guards packed up and went home most British POWs had planned to scatter and take to the mountains, but a War Office Brigadier, a Deputy Director of Military Intelligence, ordered them not to break-out of their camps. So within 48 hours half the British POWs in Italy also found themselves under German guard and on their way to prison camps in Germany.

The only decisive action in the whole theatre was taken by Vesuvius, which erupted for the first time in 38 years and then grumbled on for weeks under giant incandescent candles and angry plumes of fire and rock. The naval Commander-in-Chief issued an admiring statement: ‘The Naples group of ports is now discharging at a rate of 12 million tons a year. Vesuvius is estimated to be doing 30 million tons a day. We cannot but admire this gesture of the Gods.’

Suddenly I received a gesture from a military god: I was ordered to drive urgently through the mountains to the west coast and go to a small beach south of Salerno. Purpose and location: top secret. There I boarded a waiting torpedo boat, rakish and sinister. It was there to carry General Montgomery to his first meeting with the beleaguered General Mark Clark, behind enemy lines and on the other side of the Salerno beachhead. It was just the two of us, at sea with a Royal Navy crew from Malta.

We set off flat-out, engines roaring, in a big arc around the enemy-held coast, watching for German E-boats which I was told we could probably out-run. I was comforted by my belief that nobody was going to risk the life of Britain’s only victorious General, without a very good reason.

After four hours pounding through a calm sea without sighting another craft we came in to shore, transferred to a waiting DUKW – and there on the beach was Mark Clark, tall and gaunt, with Major General Gruenther and his staff. ‘Mighty pleased to see you, General,’ he told Monty – and as Fifth Army seemed about to be thrown back into the sea, we could believe he meant it.

His headquarter tents were alongside a rough airstrip hacked out of the scrub where fighters continually took-off and landed. Signs by the road said: ‘Aircraft Have Right Of Way.’

After his discussion with General Clark for a couple of hours, General Montgomery and I returned to our torpedo boat to race south for another four hours, hoping the E-boats had not yet been alerted.

Helping the Fifth Army to get established on shore and out of trouble, was to be General Montgomery’s Italian swansong before he left to prepare for the Second Front in Normandy.

I sat with him as we bounced through the Tyrrhenian Sea, hoping we were unheard and invisible. In fact this ultimate torpedo boat had a resonant roar that filled the dark sky, and a churning wash that fell back, pounding, towards the horizon. It seemed determined to advertise its presence.

As we ate ‘the unexpired portion of the day’s ration’ I began to appreciate how American senior officers with little or no battle experience found Monty impossible. He always knew he was right – and indeed he usually was, though diplomacy and tact were virtues with which he was unfamiliar. He did not work with people, he told them what to do. He was fond of his boss Field Marshal Alexander, but found him a limited and weak Commander: ‘The higher art of war is beyond him. I’m under no delusions whatsoever as to his ability to conduct large-scale operations in the field. He knows nothing about it. He’s not a strong Commander and is incapable of giving firm and clear decisions as to what he wants. In fact no one ever knows what he does want, least of all his staff. He doesn’t know himself. The whole truth of the matter is that Alexander has got a definitely limited brain, and doesn’t understand the business.’

A less straightforward observer would not have been as honest about his ‘very great friend’ and Commanding Officer.

I remembered that in Sicily General Patton’s Seventh Army was fighting alongside our Eighth as we landed, but during the campaign the Generals never met – which might explain why each ran his own private war. This Alexander accepted. The Eighth was struggling up the east coast against newly-arrived German divisions while Patton’s army ushered the Germans into a happy escape around Etna. Both Commanders were prima donnas – though after that it was hard to detect any similarity in thought or action.

In the Mediterranean and later in France, even the affable Supreme Commander General Eisenhower – who had never commanded men in battle – usually found Monty’s infallibility hard to take.

As shipmates running the E-boat gauntlet for eight hours, Monty and I got along happily. This I believe was mainly because I told him what he wanted to hear. My thoughtful contribution was usually ‘Yes, Sir.’ That always went down well.

Although he was not chatty, and too correct to go into details, it was apparent Monty, like Alexander, was not much impressed by his new allies. The confusion on the Salerno beaches, the near-shambles when plans began to go wrong, the lack of aggressive spirit shown by Headquarters staff … few recent experiences had escaped the cold eye of the British perfectionist.

After sandwich, bun and apple, he went aft to stare at the waves whipping by – and doubtless to plan future battles; I went for’ard to watch out for the black silhouettes of hungry E-boats intent upon the war’s biggest prize.

We arrived at the quiet beach we had left twelve hours earlier; the whole hazardous operation had been completed by the RN without a shot or a torpedo being fired, and Monty + 1 were both safe. After that adventure, our careers diverged. He went on to liberate western Europe, to be created a Viscount and a Field Marshal with a chestful of honours. I went on to capture the HQ of the German SS and get Mentioned in Despatches; small beer – but at least we both lived through it all…

Stimulated by the concern of Generals, the advance guard of the Eighth Army fought its way some 200 miles north in 13 days to relieve the hard-pressed Fifth, allowing them to push-on towards Naples – which General Clark was anxious to be seen liberating. Against weakening German resistance, commandos and paratroops stormed the mountains to the northwest of Vietri which commanded the defile through to Naples. The enemy withdrew, the beaches were saved, the bridgehead secure – so far.

The fact that some of our best Generals were being taken away from the theatre and returned to England in preparation for Overlord, the invasion of Normandy, may have had something to do with our apparent lack of direction. Generals Eisenhower, Montgomery, Bradley and Air Chief Marshal Tedder left for London, along with several veteran British and American formations.

Remaining in Italy, General Alexander then had seven Eighth Army divisions and thirteen Fifth Army divisions: five American, five British, two French and one Polish. Kesselring had 18 divisions.

The Italian surrender brought total confusion to Government offices from Rome to Brindisi – the temporary capital. Calls to the Italian War Office from military headquarters all over the country asked whether they should fight the Germans or not? They were answered by junior staff: ‘Sorry – there’s no one here.’

Very soon there was someone there: the German army. Within a week it had disarmed 56 Italian divisions, partially disarmed 29 others, and captured those 600,000 soldiers.

A supporting army fighting behind the lines would have made an enormous difference to the balance of the war but the Italians, never anxious for battle, received no orders or encouragement from us.

Their Navy, always professional, swiftly sailed away from Italy to escape the Germans, as agreed in the armistice terms. Four battleships and six cruisers surrendered in Malta and were greeted with full military honours by the Royal Navy. The Luftwaffe expressed its fury by bombing and sinking the Admiral’s flagship, the cruiser Roma, with the loss of 1400 men.

On July 19 the US Air Force had hit the Rome railway marshalling yards. The decision to drop 1,000 bombs on the outskirts of the Eternal City was taken by the combined Chiefs of Staff because the two vast yards were the hub of all rail movement between north and south Italy. This Allied attack spread considerable public panic. The USAAF bombed Rome again on August 13, and next day the Italian Government declared Rome an Open City. Three weeks later Italy surrendered, and two days after that the German Army occupied Rome – Open or Closed.

King Emmanuel’s Government was transferred to Salerno. In Feb ’44 the Allies returned authority for the whole of southern Italy to the Italian administration. There were then three Italys: Southern Italy, occupied by the Allies; Central Italy, which remained under German rule until the summer of ’44; and Northern Italy which until April ’45 was the theatre of the struggle by Allies and partisans against the Fascists of the Salò Republic, and the Germans.

The role of Italians in this confused struggle for liberation is usually dismissed. In fact from September 9 until the end of the war, 72,500 military and civilians were killed and 40,000 wounded. There were believed to be some 360,000 partisans and patriots fighting with little direction, but most of them on our side.

Definitely on our side, thank goodness, were the Goumiers – a little-known group with considerable impact. Our armies were well-equipped in almost every way, with one surprising omission: apart from the Gurkhas of the Indian divisions, we had no troops trained in mountain warfare – unlike the Germans, who had an LI Mountain Corps.

An odd exclusion this, as we were fighting our way up a chain of 800 miles of Apennines, from the Straits of Messina to the Alps, by way of everywhere. This great mass of mountains bisecting the centre of Italy always seemed to cut through the heart of our battle lines of fighting soldiers – some of whom had probably never seen a mountain until they faced a towering range soaring up to 9,000 feet. Putting townsfolk to fight through such majestic scenery must have slowed our advance – certainly it made supplying troops dug into the skyline a task sometimes even beyond mules.

General Alphonse Juin, commanding the Corps Expéditionnaire Français in the international Fifth Army, trumped everyone by introducing the Goumiers – 12,000 formidable fighters recruited from the Berber tribes of North Africa’s Atlas mountains, with French officers and NCOs. He launched them across the trackless peaks and savage hills west from Ausonia. Preferring mules to jeeps, knives to rifles, and used to far more serious mountains, they saw the Apennines as foothills through which they moved as to the manner born.

I remember standing in front of vast wall maps at VI Corps headquarters in the catacombs of Nettuno, checking to see if there was any movement on the Front around Cassino. On a long horizontal map of Italy’s boot, sideways, there was a vertical line across Italy showing exactly how far the Fifth and Eighth had got in their struggle to advance. The Intelligence officer briefing me then turned and walked a few paces to one lone dot on the map miles ahead of the static front line. ‘That’s the Goums’ he said.

They were fighting alone, having left every other unit standing. These skilled and fearless tribesmen had one considerable disadvantage to outsiders – sometimes even to their own officers: an instinctive and barely controlled savagery. Goums would descend upon a friendly or an enemy village and rape everyone in sight: women, men, children, animals … Often they formed queues.

All this was standard – but not as we knew it. Italian peasants in villages through which they fought said they suffered far more in 24 hours of Goumier occupation than during eight months under the Germans.

They were a military success – though not if you were living in their path. Neighbouring units much preferred the old-style steady plod through the mountains; they admired the Goums’ natural skills, but few were at ease with them. Even on our side, they were not easy to like.

A PASSING GLANCE AT PARADISE…

Capri lies three miles from the Italian mainland with a magnificent view of the Bay of Salerno and so a ringside seat at the war’s toughest and most dramatic assault landing. This dominant position was pointless because the island was just not interested in conflict. Apart from a couple of dormant antiaircraft batteries and a German radio station, it ignored any fighting anywhere, following a tradition of escapism established at the time of the Roman Empire.

For a passing glance at paradise, we landed by ferry at the Marina. A scramble of tourist-touts descended offering the regulation peacetime excursions around their miniscule haven, two-miles-by-four. The Blue Grotto? Up to Anacapri? The villa where Emperor Tiberius enjoyed various antisocial vices? The more innocent home of Gracie Fields?

Inland, the tiny Piazzetta remained brilliant and ridiculously theatrical, its little tables filling at noon with the surviving international smart-set, wartime edition, lured by the seductions of the island. Among such elegance were far more gaily-dressed women than men – who were younger and even smoother, with smaller wristwatches. It was the Roman Emperor Augustus who had first noticed the ‘sweet idleness’ of Capri, and it would take more than a world war to affect that balmy attitude among this blend of races untroubled by national ties.

The café chatter was full of happy laughter, though one subject was never approached: the War. I sensed it would be bad form to bring it up. There was a mild preoccupation with the shortage of bread which had to be brought across from the mainland, but at least there was plenty of cake, beautifully presented. Marie Antoinette would have appreciated the situation perfectly.

With some Correspondent friends I dined at the lovely home of a French resident. We had heard that an announcement of vital importance was to be broadcast from Radio Rome that evening, and were concerned. We were playing truant for a couple of days in paradise when we should have been at war, so were displeased that our cover was about to be blown. The prospect of some big story breaking while our backs were turned made us feel even more guilty. We waited anxiously.

Finally after much martial music the radio announced: ‘The Government of Marshal Badoglio … has declared war on Germany!’

‘My God’ cried our hostess, exasperated, ‘Is that all?’ She switched back to dance music. That was Capri in October ’43.

Later that night we again passed through the Piazzetta on our way back to reality. It was crammed with socialising Caprese, still refusing to pay any attention to the war, however close. They had chosen not to notice that a few miles north even their sort of civilisation was being saved by men in landing craft fighting and dying across the muddy Volturno River under a chill grey October sky.

* * *

As we all know, the Italians are a delightful race: good company, extremely stylish and rightly proud of their ancestors and their gorgeous country; but not even their greatest admirers would say that they were successful soldiers, these days. Even Mussolini noticed. After their surrender in Libya his son-in-law and Foreign Minister, Count Ciano, told him, ‘With an Army like ours we can only declare war on Peru.’ Unaccustomed to the truth, Mussolini stored that away.

In Rome, King Emmanuel had called a meeting of the Grand Council in July ’43 to remove Mussolini and replace him with Marshal Badoglio. Count Ciano was one of those who supported this dismissal. Six months later, after his rescue from hotel-arrest at Gran Sasso, a resurrected Mussolini did not choose to spare his favourite daughter’s husband when he was tried by a Tribunal in Verona and sentenced to death for ‘attempting to destroy the independence of the State … and giving aid and comfort … to the enemy.’ Ciano was executed by firing squad at Fort Procolo, outside Verona. He died bravely.

After waiting until June 10 1940 to declare war on the Allies in a belated scramble for spoils, Mussolini, the man who (as we always said) made the trains run on time and drained the Pontine Marshes, the Duce’s speeches brandished Italy’s eight million bayonets. This was the usual bellicose nonsense from the balcony of Rome’s Palazzo Venezia.

In fact the Italian Army boasted about 79 divisions, though only nineteen were complete with men and arms, and most of the rifles were made in 1891 – even older than ours. Much of their equipment was imaginary, though they did have 1900 antiquated aircraft, and 400 3½-ton tanks. The German Tiger tank, at 57 tons, weighed more than 40 Rolls-Royces; the Italian pocket tank, a few Minis. No wonder Hitler was unimpressed. It was bad enough on our side of the scales: Shermans only weighed 35 tons.

Facing us when we landed in Sicily had been a massive Italian army – somewhere. In truth we hardly noticed it, for all its ranks were deeply nervous, had no idea why they were fighting and just wanted to go home and forget the whole uncomfortable business.

Naples had fallen on October 1 amid a clamour of urchins shouting at our armoured cars for food and hungry women offering themselves for a packet of biscuits. Following our bombings and German demolition, it seemed a dead city of shuttered shops. Even the high-pressure Neapolitan salesmen were out of action. The wide harbour was clogged by the wrecks of 130 ships, and the retreating Germans had blown-up and booby-trapped the city’s sewage and water systems. Typhus arrived instantly.

Naples has always had a tenuous and insecure grasp upon health and hygiene. Thirty years later, a cholera outbreak in 1973 was to reveal that the city had no sewers, yet was living contentedly around its beautiful but poisoned bay. The popular saying, ‘See Naples and die’ was meant to summon visitors to enjoy its ramshackle charms, but took on a forbidding significance with every passing plague.

General Mark Clark was displeased because he had planned a grand entry into the city when he would acknowledge the plaudits of welcoming crowds – a sort of curtain-raiser for Rome. He wrote in his Memoirs that there was little triumph in his journey through the deserted streets of ‘a city of ghosts’. He gave a Liberation celebration, but nobody showed.