Whicker’s War and Journey of a Lifetime

The flat farmland seemed deserted, yet I could hear sounds of battle … After some miles I was beginning to suspect the Seven Hills of Rome must be just around the corner. Then at a road junction before the River Moletta some Sherman tanks were hull-down behind a fly-over, firing over it. The supporting 1st Battalion of the Loyals had been held up by enemy fire. Snipers’ bullets hissed past as we watched the shelling they had called down on to enemy-held houses.

That was to be the limit of our advance upon Rome. I did not foresee we had walked into a death trap and would be fighting for our lives for eighteen desperate weeks.

The Germans’ reaction had been swift and almost overwhelming. As usual, they were surprised but not panicked, though Hitler – always keen on other people fighting to the death – was taking our assault landing personally. He appreciated the propaganda impact of such an invasion and his reaction would resonate from the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht in Berlin to the beaches of Anzio.

Reserve divisions were rushed-in from around Italy and Yugoslavia, paratroops flown in from France. By midnight Kesselring had assembled 20,000 men around Anzio, with many more on the way. Artillery positions had been established 3,000 feet up in the Alban Hills, dominating beaches and port. This was not going to be another walkover for us – indeed it became one of the most desperate and costly campaigns of World War II, and a near-disaster.

Hitler, braced for the fall of Rome and cataclysmic battles in Russia, knew that for the Allies a bridgehead defeat would be a frightening reminder that the Wehrmacht could still prove invincible. It would show the world that an Allied Second Front could be thrown back into the English Channel. It could force the delay or even the cancellation of D-Day.

He repeated in his Order of the Day that there must be no surrender: ‘Fight with bitter hatred an enemy who conducts a ruthless war of annihilation against the German people …’ He was evidently determined that the Wehrmacht should defend Rome with the fatal obstinacy displayed at Stalingrad. ‘The Führer expects the bitterest struggle for every yard.’ This would threaten the destruction of the Eternal City.

If Hitler was displeased with the battle so far, it was as nothing compared to the carefully suppressed anger of Churchill when the initial success of the combined operation he had encouraged was frittered-away by inexperienced or timid Generals. The isolated Anzio pocket of the US VI Corps was not racing to relieve the Fifth Army at Cassino, as planned, or driving triumphantly up Rome’s Via Veneto, but was itself trapped, besieged and liable to be pushed back into the sea.

It was an ill-planned operation which Churchill had rescued from the official graveyard of discarded military adventures. He had secretly believed the bridgehead might exorcise the ghosts of another disastrous landing: Suvla Bay in Gallipoli, 1915, which cost him his portfolio at the Admiralty. He afterwards admitted, ‘Anzio was my worst moment of the war – and I had most to do with it. I did not want two Suvla Bays in one lifetime.’

That evening we were still held up at the flyover, so I went back to Peter Beach to look for my sergeants. As I arrived, another hit-and-run fighter-bomber came in. Suddenly out at sea the air shuddered and against the darkening sky a sheet of orange flame spread across the horizon. A bomb had hit the destroyer Janus, which exploded and sank in 20 minutes with the loss of 150 men. The flame died quickly, leaving only an angry glare against the night sky.

As one of the attacking aircraft roared away over our heads, Bofors shells hit its tail. Every man on the beach was cheering as it crashed and exploded – but it was poor exchange for a destroyer and so many lives.

We did not know it at the time, but the drive for Rome, the Alban Hills and Cassino had not even been contemplated by our Commander, a grizzled and amiable American known as Corncob Charlie. A bespectacled artilleryman who enjoyed the poetry of Rudyard Kipling, Major General John Lucas was 54 but seemed as old and benevolent as Father Christmas – though less active.

The Germans knew far more than we did about what was happening, because in a major stroke of luck one of their Allied prisoners was found to be carrying a copy of the entire Shingle Plan. This instantly confirmed Kesselring’s conviction that Lucas would not even attempt to cut his supply lines with Cassino.

He had ordered every unit to dig-in and consolidate – when they could have driven unopposed into the surrounding hills and cut Kesselring’s communications to the south. General Mark Clark cancelled the use of the US 504th Parachute Regiment along with the jump by an airborne division on to Rome Airport. The whole operation became stagnant, with commando raids discouraged and all effort concentrated upon defence. Fifty thousand troops were not enough for an attack, it seemed; we had to dig-in and await reinforcements. The Germans, meanwhile, had eighteen divisions south of Rome and were anxious to use them.

Lucas did not think of Rome, he thought of Gallipoli, Tobruk and Dunkirk, of desperate defeat. In the first 48 hours our initial Anzio victory was thrown-away. This is where we needed the fire-eating fast-moving General Patton.

During the planning for Shingle, General Lucas had confessed to his diary his nervousness about the Anzio operation, ‘This whole affair has a strong odour of Gallipoli, and apparently the same amateur (Churchill) is still on the coach’s bench.’ When he risked voicing that opinion to the Allied Naval Commander-in-Chief Mediterranean, Admiral Sir John Cunningham, he got a sharp sailor’s reaction: ‘If that’s how you feel you’d better resign.’ He did not.

Even Lucas’s Commander, General Mark Clark, had warned him ‘not to stick his neck out’ the way he had (he said) at Salerno. He was telling Lucas to fight the battle as he saw fit, but it is incredible that such a cautious and unenterprising General should have been chosen to lead a daring operation demanding dash and drive. However, this advice may have been influenced by Clark’s determination to liberate Rome himself. He did not want some bemused subordinate arriving there first, after a lucky punch.

We had achieved surprise with our landing, so half the battle was won; but then the slow Allied exploitation and the intensity of the German reaction instantly recreated the equilibrium, and the attacking British and Americans fell back into the submissive posture of a besieged garrison.

The Germans were amazed we made no move; surely it was unthinkable that we should do nothing? With such cooperation they had little difficulty in containing us. Their reaction to our invasion became almost overwhelming: within days seven divisions had been rushed in to surround us, including Panzers with Tiger tanks.

British commanders were seething with frustration at their enforced inaction. Up in the front line I found Guardsmen brewing-up and their officers playing bridge, while awaiting orders. They should have been racing for Rome.

In Cairo, General Sir Henry Maitland Wilson (‘Jumbo’) who had just succeeded General Eisenhower as Allied Commander Mediterranean, made it clear to the Press – and to Kesselring – that he was going to defend, not attack. ‘If the Germans run true to style, as they always do’ he announced 48 hours after our landing, ‘they will counter-attack our beachhead.’ Thus he advertised our passive intentions to the enemy.

So all was not going well at Anzio. We had launched a major landing led by only two divisions, plus Commandos and US Rangers. At Salerno, with no surprise and no numerical dominance, we only just escaped being flung back into the sea, defeated. Clutching desperately at a landing beach an attacker initially needs total dominance, as General Montgomery well knew.

When Churchill first showed him the plan for Overlord, the Second Front in Normandy which he was to command when he left Italy, Montgomery’s immediate reaction was, ‘This will not do. I must have more in the initial punch.’ D-Day in Normandy was to be in four months’ time, and Churchill admitted, ‘After considerable argument a whole set of arrangements was made in consequence of his opinion, which proved right.’

Montgomery’s knowledge of the price we paid in Italy saved thousands of lives in Normandy. To escape such a stalemate the invasion planners could now demand greater strength for Overlord. They had learned the expensive lessons of Anzio.

From D + 1 even I could tell that if we were fortunate enough to hold on to our beachhead, we faced a long and desperate battle – so I requisitioned a large house overlooking the harbour. It was a substantial three-storey lump of a place and – I noted approvingly – strongly built. It stood high over the seashore in front of the coast road. The front line was only seven miles away. At a push we could drive – or swim – out of trouble.

From its wide terrace we would get excellent pictures of our shipping being shelled and bombed – and doubtless, sunk. It was an ideal place for a billet and tripod position – but on the other hand it was at the heart of the German artillery’s target area … I’d worry about that tomorrow.

From their observation posts in the Alban Hills enemy gunners could watch every inch of the beachhead, and look deep into our private lives. No man could move without being seen. Little wonder Corncob Charlie rarely left his HQ down in the caves of Nettuno.

In our barren seaside villa we too slept in the cellars until deciding that shells were preferable to rats, and moving back to the ground floor. Our rats were all fat and overconfident – and at a battlefront you knew exactly what they had been eating. Even upstairs I awoke one night to find an enormous rat staring at me across my feet. It was wondering what to do. I knew what to do. I reached for my bedside .38 and – hoping to miss my big toes – shot it.

That awoke the remainder of the unit who thought the Germans had landed. They were about to shoot-back through my door, just to be on the safe side …

Calm restored, Geoffrey Keating and I considered the drill, should the Germans ever come to call. We’d seen some tattered clothes in the garden shed and decided to wear these and head north for Rome, rather than attempt to get back to the Eighth Army through the German lines.

Major Keating, my CO, was a most unusual man. A devout Catholic and bon viveur, he had an extremely high threshold of pain, which could be disconcerting. He just did not seem to notice when violence or death was approaching. He had arrived in Egypt to run Montgomery’s Army Film Unit and, indifferent to General Rommel and the Afrika Korps, began cheerfully swanning around the desert as though gate-crashing other Units’ parties, blithely unconcerned about any battles going on around him. This of course meant he was never injured and survived to win an excellent Military Cross.

He never touched drink – though it might have sustained such a perilous lifestyle. One afternoon after the war Susie, a mutual friend, rang me at BBC Television Centre to say they had just got married … This was another surprise. I had a table at Prunier’s that evening so invited them along, if they had no plans.

Looking through the wine list for something interesting with which to toast his bride, Geoffrey settled for a cider, assuming it to be the softest of drinks and better with fish than a coke. After several country ciders he moved unsteadily towards the marriage bed, and from then on his life and social consumption changed direction. He never looked back – and his wife never forgave me.

At Anzio I went with him around our front-line positions and suddenly noticed that, while we were driving in his open jeep along an embankment, laughing and chatting, we were on the dreaded Lateral Road where nothing else moved. I remembered tanks rarely ventured along it in daylight because of heavy enemy artillery fire and German machine guns with sights locked-on to any movement.

We were looking for a Company HQ. There was no other traffic. Then I saw a few soldiers in the dugout positions below us. They were moving at a crouch or lying looking up at us as we drove happily along, an apparition in a no-go area. Just before the firing began, I realised we were not travelling sensibly.

Needless to say Geoffrey’s reaction to possible death and destruction was so indifferent and outrageous that we emerged unscathed and drove on, still finding something or other funny; doubtless my growing panic.

I found out afterwards that Geoffrey would go to sleep in his dentist’s chair during treatment. By then I had registered one firm Unit rule which saw me through the war: separate jeeps.

The bridgehead solidified along 16 miles of coast and about seven miles inland – say just over 100 square miles. I’ve known bigger farms. Some 20,000 Italian civilians had been shipped back to Naples, leaving Anzio a small and desperate military state and a throwback to the Great War days of static warfare, shelled all day and bombed all night. There was no hiding place at Anzio.

On most warfronts there is a calm secure area at the rear where the wounded can be taken, where units rest when they come out of the line and Generals may sleep comfortably. On the bridgehead there were no safe areas. You were never out of range.

Indeed soldiers at the front would sometimes refuse to report minor wounds which might mean they would be sent back to a field hospital – and so into the heavy artillery target area. Provided it was not a major battle they often felt more secure at the front, where the war was personal and the percentages could more easily be calculated.

Keating and I invited a number of friendly War Correspondents to escape from the barren Press camp next door and join us in our more substantial villa, which in our days of bombardment had already been recognised as Lucky. They included one of the Rabelaisian characters of our war, Reynolds Packard. In peaceful days he had been Rome Correspondent of the Chicago Tribune, and with his wife Eleanor had written a well-tided book on Mussolini, ‘Balcony Empire’. He was knowledgeable, sociable and excellent company but had, we discovered, one foible liable to render him untouchable – even in our Mess.

The villa’s sitting room, where we played poker and sometimes even worked, overlooked the sea and so faced away from arriving shells. It was always pleasantly crowded and noisy enough to discourage the rats, so this was where we set-up our camp beds each night. Reynolds, a portly funny figure, was a notable non-teetotaller and so able to sleep through most bombardments. His only lack of social grace was revealed when he woke in the night and needed to urinate. In the unfamiliar darkness he would struggle out of his bed – and pee wherever he stood.

He had been campaigning too long in open country, sleeping in too many fields without the benefit of indoor sanitation and his behaviour pattern had become lax, not to mention disgusting. Not too many people wanted the bed space next to him.

Such a reaction to a full bladder might be acceptable in a foxhole or on a beach, but was less welcome in our new Mess. After the deluge a chastened Packard would face fury in the morning. He could not deny the offence because the evidence was all too obvious. He was always horrified and full of remorse, blamed demon vino and swore it would never happen again. Next night, it would.

In the early hours we would awake to the sound of running water hitting the tiles. The first weary automatic move in the darkness was to lean down, rescue shoes, put them in the dry zone on the end of the bed, and go back to sleep. In the morning, an uproar of protest, another furious inquest and more craven apologies. The distasteful procedure was in danger of becoming normal.

Packard’s momentary forgetfulness in the darkness of a strange room was not excusable – though perhaps understandable to those living on a war front where the niceties of civilised life could fall away. After some months campaigning in the field and living basically I committed a graceless mistake myself, which still haunts me.

We had been advancing slowly through Tuscany and sleeping rough; but once Florence fell some old friends invited me to a welcome party in their magnificent apartment on the Lungarno, overlooking the river. During that elegant evening in the sunlit drawing room I remember needing to stub out my cigarette. Seeing no ashtrays in the salon, I dropped it on to the deep-pile carpet and punctiliously ground it out with my toe – as one would.

As I turned to continue the conversation I had an uneasy feeling something was not quite right … but could not recollect what it might be.

It was not until later that night when my hostess upbraided me – ‘I saw you’ – that I was struck by the vast distance between surviving on a hillside, and living amid glowing Renaissance treasures. I had become one of the brutal and licentious. I paid in flowers, shame and guilt.

The free spirit of Reynolds Packard was even less socially acceptable, but eventually threats of expulsion began to wear him down, or dry him up. After a couple of weeks struggling with him and with the strengthening Wehrmacht now surrounding us, we were becoming familiar with the death-defying routines of life in an encircled battlefield – the deep daily depression that appeared each dawn. So Geoffrey and I decided it was time to attempt to be more social and civilised. Some warriors’ relaxation would improve morale: we had mugs, a few glasses, we had whisky, gin and local vino; we even had American saltines and processed cheese. All told, our first party was indicated – the kind of promising social adventure that could make Anzio just endurable.

The one imperative for such a gathering was of course female – beyond price and almost impossible to discover in such a war zone. Almost, but not totally. The vast and impressive US 95th Evacuation Hospital had just established its dark green marquees with big red crosses, and the more secure stone squares covered with tarpaulins, along the coast-road to the south. It was decided that I should approach the Matron and offer her nurses the freedom of our Mess for one evening. Such an hospitable international gesture was the least we could do.

Making Matron see the good sense of this project was not easy, even at Anzio – particularly at Anzio – but fortunately even in those days celebrity had become a strong selling-point, and American War Correspondents were national names. Hollywood made films about them, wearing trench coats and Holding the Front Page and being gallant. Before the pleasantly businesslike Matron I dropped the famous names that were sleeping on our floor – though excluded Packard, just in case the word had got round. When I later drove triumphantly across to the hospital reception, there waited half-a-dozen jolly off-duty nurses and Red Cross girls evidently quite ready to raise our spirits and briefly escape their endless and harrowing lines of casualties.

They piled happily into the jeep and we returned to our Mess, to find it tidily rearranged, bottles opened expectantly – and the tough swaggering Correspondents surprisingly shy. We passed an excellent evening, discussed everything except the war, drank everything available, and much appreciated the company of pleasant young women in their fatigues and make-up who had made an effort to become glowing replicas of peacetime party-goers. During the evening the spasmodic shelling was so commonplace it hardly interrupted conversation. Packard was on his best behaviour, being suave in a world-weary WarCo way. You would never have guessed.

We planned future escapes for them, said our farewells affectionately, and I drove them back to the 95th Evac … where in stunned horror we confronted havoc and disaster. A damaged Luftwaffe aircraft about to crash-land had jettisoned five antipersonnel bombs across the hospital’s tented lines. These killed three nurses and a Red Cross girl in their Mess tent, along with 22 staff and patients, and wounded 60 others. The place became known as Hell’s Half Acre.

THEY DIED WITHOUT ANYONE EVEN KNOWING THEIR NAMES…

Anzio and Cassino were planned as the twin military pinnacles of our Italian campaign; instead they became tragic examples of Allied Generalship at its most disastrous.

After the US VI Corps had enjoyed a classic and almost uncontested assault landing on the Anzio beaches, General Lucas decided that his 50,000 men – plus me – should dig-in and wait indefinitely for reinforcements, before considering any attack. This condemned us to a probable Dunkirk, or at best a struggle for survival amid the dead hopes of a Roman liberation. The Anzio landing had been intended to end the Cassino deadlock but instead of riding gallantly to their rescue, we now hoped someone would come and rescue us.

At the other end of this comatose Allied pincer movement, an even more disastrous international decision was taken by Field Marshal Alexander, supported by Generals Freyberg and Clark. In four hours, 239 heavy and medium bombers of Major General Nathan F. Twining’s Mediterranean Allied Strategic Air Force dropped 453½ tons of bombs on the glorious Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino. Each Flying Fortress carried twelve 5001b demolition bombs.

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