OldsnptlFj
MAURICE RowDon
dosth
frmthte wik orchel choptar He
FORWARD To THE DEATH
enfrrsant death
Feb 4
20rs
2 m arus crypls I fowat h dlu Dean
W sun i Otoly
I Chopte by choptn
bit S0 tonfus u
Chpte tuelne
Seoms
do be m uinp


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
CONTENTS
Figs
Crater
Laughter
Apparition
Prayer
Shudder
Byzantium
Detonation
Hush
Unforsaken
Flames
Kamarad
Nerves
Defeat


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
FKS
One
e were dropped off at the Salerno beaches
south of Naples by an American landing craft
in the late afternoon, as close to dusk as
possible and in a calm sea silence and a soft still
warmth.
These beaches had been invaded by the American
Fifth Army some days before, on September 8 1943. And
I was to join my division here, a British division in
the American Fifth Army. It was an unexplained
surprise to be in an American army but we accepted
our sudden new surrogate identity as a promise of
adventure. We sampled their food on the landing craft
that brought us over the sea from the virgin white
and yellow sands of the Algerian coast. The trip was
smooth and unerring and we gasped at the turkey and
jam they scandalously deposited side by side on our
trays, without our ritual greens and gravy. This boat
was clearly another world, a quieter one than ours
(as belonging to great spaces perhaps). Who could
have expected that, leaving a Scottish port in a
crammed trooper ship and being escorted through the


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
our eyes on the destroyers and landing craft at
anchor, carefully watching over us. The hush
perplexed us.
We reached those beaches, in war dialect, on
D+8, that is to say on the 16th of September 1943,
namely eight days after the landing. I had the first
pip on my shoulder as a second lieutenant and would
be twenty-one on the 20th of this month. And I had a
photo of my girlfriend in my upper left pocket.
We reinforcements (told to keep our voices down)
went to our various assembly points. The captain who
welcomed me-with a nod as if we already knew each
other-was modest and pleasant. Then the moment we
had shaken hands he turned away as if to say we don't
need polite exchanges here.
I thought, All this hush business is part of a
military exercise. After all, we were allowed to walk
around, SO clearly we weren't cheek by jowl with the
enemy (that dread word). The gunners were grimy,
which I took as a sign that, being well behind the
forward lines, discipline was lax. But it seemed odd
to conduct exercises in a theatre of war. Of course
the army was capable of anything, its motto being, If


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
the men have time on their hands---fill it any way
you can. If necessary with drill.
Also the Germans would soon be out of Italy. We
reinforcements had already decided this in our
stifling bivouacs back in the Algerian desert close
to Philippeville. We said what use is Italy to Hitler
now-a narrow peninsula too cramped for fighting,
with hundreds of miles of coast ideal for allied
landings?
But this was where we were wrong. Italy is
mostly (right up to Bologna) a dense close
terrain-sudden hills and miniature chasms and rivers
galore-providing a surprise every fifty yards. You
only had to turn a corner and you were observed. A
terrain easy to defend and the very devil to attack.
If Hitler wanted to lay waste our armies at little
expense to himself, this was his chance. But we had
no idea of this. Nor (as it transpired) did our
commanders. Or rather, if they did, they never once
acknowledged it in their strategy.
And what was I doing in a war anyway? Like
everyone else I hadn't wanted it, didn't believe in
it. All we knew was that it suddenly started. We
found ourselves in it. Chamberlain's declaration of


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
war came to us like a decision made on the basis of a
whim---even his voice wobbled on the radio. He didn't
seem certain of it (and now we know why).
I remembered the recruiting interview I'd had in
a little Oxford room. The man opposite me was
disarmingly differential. Would I fight in this war?
And I realised before I spoke that I really
didn't know, I hadn't made up my mind. So when I said
Yes I was surprised at myself---at a decision I
seemed to have had no part in making.
But even as I said it I was asking myself an
impotent Why? And the answer came swiftly,
unambiguously: I was going into war because of the
Nazi concentration camps, because---as a Gentile---I
was horrified to see the Jewish civilization in
Europe about to be extinguished. It made it seem that
this war unlike all the previous ones was justified.
I saw corpses in the distance. They were close
to the wash of the waves. Exactly as they had fallen.
They were ours. Quickly I told myself that out of the
thousands of men that had disembarked on D-day these
dead were the unlucky exception.
As darkness gathered I walked up the sloping
beach to where the trees began. I could see a large


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
group of men standing together apparently silent. I
was curious. As I came nearer I noticed that a
brigadier was at their centre, addressing them. He
was talking in a low voice. I could see the red tabs
on his shoulders. I thought it remarkable that a
brigadier should be addressing Other Ranks man to
man. That was a lieutenant's or a captain's job, a
major's at most. At this point I became convinced
that this was a training camp well enough behind the
lines to allow for manoeuvres.
The Brigadier was saying in his careful murmur,
almost a whisper (we had to gather closer to hear
him) Jerry's just behind me, on the other side of the
road (a lane between trees ran a few feet behind
him). He said, You're going to stop him crossing this
road and whatever happens, chaps, you're not going to
move, understood? Whatever happens you don't move.
You stay where you are. There were nods in the deep
dusk.
I felt my girlfriend's photo in my left pocket,
over the heart. She was Viennese, the daughter of a
woman who had led a communist revolution in eastern
Europe and been released from prison by it. I
remembered the mother's soft patient voice. She had


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
steel-grey eyes but her softness overrode their
steely determination. She said fascism was the last
bastion of capitalism, and this war would destroy
them both.
I already had a nervous habit of feeling the
photo as if to assure myself that my past had really
happened. I remembered the joy we two had had-the
day-long laughter. It was a thing war couldn't
eclipse. Except that it had already done so. We had
said good bye, a final and sealing one, on a railway
station. She said, Being calm isn't everything. I
didn't know I was calm. I felt turbulent most of the
time. I think she meant dreamy---I was nearly thrown
out of cadet-officer training for it.
And now I needed her photo to be a lucky
talisman for me. I didn't care about the self-
deception.
The brigadier was saying to his men, Jerry might
try something tonight. Keep your wits about you. No
sleep, understood?
And since he was talking to infantrymen, not me,
a gunner, I could continue with my illusion that this
was a training camp and the Brigadier's hushed tones
a performance.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
I was certainly calm now, as he said those words
in the darkening dusk. Commendably calm. And in fact
next day I was told as much-by the Texans up the
hill.
I strolled back to my area where the fruit trees
were, the last of the day's bright sky lighting my
way. I began looking for somewhere to put my sleeping
bag for the night. I chose a soft leafy place right
under a plump fig tree, overlooking the fact that,
this far south, figs ripen early and fall from the
branches with a plop.
But when, breaking from the sky like a monstrous
hot breath, there came the sound of rushing like an
engineless plane crashing to earth, followed at once
by a thunderous metallic crash near by, I thought
perhaps this isn't a training camp after all, we
weren't far behind the forward lines after all.
As yet I couldn't tell the difference between
the monster 88mm. shell, which tore a crater in the
ground like a bomb from the air, and the small high-
trajectory mortar-bomb that burst very few seconds
after it was launched at close range (, for instance,
on the other side of that lane).


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
Another heavy one came over and another. And had
I been seasoned I might have thought that these were
the opening sallies of an enemy attack. But even now
I kept telling myself that of course some shells were
to be expected in a back area.
The small mortar bombs were preceded by a loud
thump when expelled from the cannon, followed almost
at once by the quick confined crash of their landing.
Thus they gave you no warning. You jumped into a
ditch or threw yourself flat for the loud high
breathless shriek of a coming shell but the mortar's
high trajectory meant, despite its low speed of
emission from the spout, that the little bomb came
down with one quick whack, So throwing yourself down
was already too late. And now they began arriving in
quick succession, bringing changes in the air from
warm to momentarily stifling.
Then darkness became complete in the Italian
manner---swiftly, a depth of darkness we had never
known in our over-populated islands. There was a lull
in the firing. At last we could hear the silence that
rightfully belonged to this beach and the olive and
fig trees, an exchange of whispers, it seemed.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
It was my first experience of Italy, a land at
that time still pristine, hardly touched since
medieval times, her slopes and copses and streams in
secret close liaison with the sky, a liaison I was to
live with for two years.
I felt drowsy. I slipped down inside my sleeping
bag, that little womb I was to carry unwashed to the
top of Italy and beyond. Night came and I blinked in
the dark.
By now even I knew that this was no rest area.
Oddly, it was the silence that convinced me, brought
the truth. And as I dozed a certain nervousness
gathered in me, a foreboding that made feathers
inside, though I still clung drowsily to the thought
that this war was an exercise, if a dangerous one.
The possibility of being trodden on by Germans
in the night didn't even occur to me (it was in
almost every other mind on that beach). Figs were
what gave me trouble. They plopped down on me. In
full autumn maturity, they made a thick little purple
pool, one of them on my brow. As for my new sleeping
bag the stains would remain its whole lifetime. I
picked myself up and stumbled with my kit to another
fig tree and there I fell asleep, as if moving had


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
done the trick. Even the feathers in my belly went
and my slumber was an expanse of stillness of the
kind you wake from suddenly but fresh.
At first light my division also woke
up-especially to the existence of us reinforcements.
We were conducted by runners to our various command
posts. These were still close to the sea, in earshot
of its leisured wash, but on higher ground. A major
told us in clipped tired tones that we could easily,
at any time, be pushed back into that wash. We were
hanging on by a tight strip of land, he said. It was
all that was left to us.
So it was true. This was war. The enemy was
breathing and watchfully close. My realisation
was-and I cannot explain why-a great turning point
in my life.
I was allocated to a troop-four guns under the
command of Captain H., a Yorkshireman of thirty or
more who walked with his feet splayed out and his
head forward as if greatly excited to be going
anywhere, even the latrine. He was beginning to bald


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
and I still see today his slightly buck teeth as he
laughs. He already had a family, SO was very grown-up
for the rest of us.
Our command post, set behind four twenty-five-
pounder guns, quickly became a little home, our warm
useless political discussions its heart. "Twenty-five
pounder' means a gun that sat between wheels with a
long barrel like any other long-distance gun but it
was, by comparison, light-it could be hitched to an
armoured carrier quickly, whisked away from a
threatened site with little ado. Its shell made a
shallow crater and only if you took its forward blast
at close quarters were you dead. The true deadliness
of the twenty-five-pounder lay in the fact that its
shells could be fired in great numbers and
simultaneously, across a wide front, creating not
only dead but great panic among the living. Yet it
was highly mobile too. Its breech could be loaded
very quickly and thus send shells into the air in
quick succession.
These murderous weapons operated in groups of
four, which were in the hands of a 'troop'. Each
troop had its separate command, with two or three
officers. There were two troops to a battery, and two


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
batteries in a regiment, SO that as a collected unit
you were worth sixteen guns, which was formidable
when you consider that there were two regiments in a
division, which made 32 guns. Thus the division, more
than the regiment, was the family you belonged to.
While too big a family to warm the cockles of the
heart it moved into attack as one unit, its parts
coordinated space-wise and synchronised time-wise, So
that it could make a large hole in the enemy line.
Not that we ever saw our divisional commander.
He was too busy with the intricate business of
supplying daily food, ammunition, clothing and mail
to the battle area from the rear 'B' Echelons. This
became especially hazardous when to had to reach
forward lines that themselves were on the move.
So we thought of ourselves as the 46th division,
the sister of 56th division, which together made up
the Tenth Corps. This Corps could thus call up the
fire of over sixty guns spread across quite a wide
front, and was capable of much disruption---to put
the screaming and the death mildly. But it did not
achieve a destruction comparable to that inflicted by
bombers in the air or by the enemy's 88mm. artillery
shell. So you might say that its bark was worse than


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
its bite, except that it bit often and deep. After
all, the explosive and the human have been in a
progressively grim brotherhood since the first one
came into being. The frightful sound, the smoke, the
shattered environs, increased its influence on the
mind the more it grew, until the insanity which
first found it necessary was lost to view.
But in the forward lines that insanity betrays
itself with marvellous candour in the form of
hallucinatory states and tremors of presentiment, in
a haunting unreality that is the most real thing you
have ever known, SO that far from experiencing
insanity as a state separable from you it has found
easy residence, locked al rms with a place already
within.
Still sleepy, I wandered away from our command
post up the hill to where Texan infantrymen huddled
in their hastily dug slit trenches. I stood talking
to them, looking down at their heads level with my
boots. It didn't occur to me that I made a perfect
target but it did to the Texans. They seemed
surprised by my presence, watching me from below, as
who wouldn't to witness a youth strolling about the
forward lines with all six feet of him exposed. They


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
told me, You British guys must have war in your
blood, look at you, it's like you're on holiday.
Charitably, they didn't tell me I was a bloody fool.
They knew I was a new boy. Yet I had already, quite
unawares, learned something. The evening before, I
had seen men throw themselves to the ground when an
88mm. came over. So now, when one fell pretty close,
I did the same, though it was still a kind of drill
for me, with a touch of tomfoolery. Then I stood up
again and the Texans went on gazing at me affably. I
was glad to be thought a pre-packaged soldier and I
listened to their soft, low, strangely consoling
Southern voices. I think probably none of them
survived. I was to meet them again just before that
last unthinkable hell of theirs.
Hell is bound to happen in a close terrain. A
sudden enemy machine-gun emplacement can spring up at
your elbow, you find yourself exposed to a lone man
whom you can't see but who can call up lethal fire on
you. The peninsula south of Bologna is SO cut across
by rivers and terraces and mountains and lesser hills
and hillocks that the defence of a carefully prepared
line is easy, while making a dent in that line is
perpetual hazard.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
So it was that these Texan youths stared up at
me, as if I were ancestrally guided. They saw that I
threw myself down for the close ones and just ducked
my head for swishes that denoted a safe trajectory.
So was it true what they said about me-that I had
war in my blood? They ought to have seen me a few
weeks later frantically scratching the earth with my
fingernails to make an instant man-size cave for
myself under such a rain of metal that only a miracle
could have intervened to save us. Which it must have
done.
From Captain H. I at last got a serious
strategic picture of what was happening. Our division
was in charge of Salerno the town, while the enemy
was still in control of several roads leading down to
the coast, i.e. to us. If they managed to storm one
of these roads in strength we would be pushed into
the sea after being cut off from both Salerno the
town and the rest of our division, just as the Texans
on our flank would be cut off from the rest of
theirs. In that case we would all be without supplies
of either ammunition or food (in that order of
importance).


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
Had I been experienced I would have grasped this
easily the moment I first waded onto that beach-you
simply don't have twenty-five-pounder guns sitting
among forward infantry unless you are in helter-
skelter retreat or, as in our case, caught in a
wedge. Shell-firing guns are never in the forward
lines, that is nose to nose with the enemy. When they
are in the forward lines it is almost the end. Such
guns must be well behind the lines. If I'd had just
the slightest experience I would have seen that we
were a hopeless case. A glance at those guns sitting
there with nothing but the sea to retreat to, this
over eight days after the first landing, would have
told me all.
Salerno was in any case ill-chosen as a landing
place. You could see why on the map. A big force
could be throttled just by the terrain, its exits
squeezed with ease. Our al rmy commander, Mark Clark,
wanted to pull out, as he later---because of the high
casualty rate-- -wanted to pull out of the whole
Italian campaign. Yet he proved to be the chief
instrument of the vast toll of dead and wounded and
shocked.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
The Germans held the dice all the way up the
Italian peninsula. At this moment the 16th Panzer
Grenadier division was directly facing us, its job
being to stop us thrusting towards the road to Rome .
The German commander-in-chief of Italian operations,
Field Marshal Kesselring, had already rushed three of
his divisions to our area, Hitler having told him on
August 22 (a fortnight before the Salerno landing) to
treat Salerno as 'the centre of gravity' for the
whole of the Italian campaign.
Nothing could have been cleverer. Hitler felt
he should perhaps (and it was still, for him,
perhaps) make full strategic use of a terrain that
could be defended economically but attacked only at
great cost.
He must have noticed, for instance, that in the
Salerno operation our two divisions, plus the 7th
Armoured division and an armoured brigade, were up
against at most four German battalions. And he
rightly concluded that he could perhaps prolong this
typical situation all the way up Italy.
After all, every metre of this terrain, offering
as it did lethal observation potential for the enemy,
required on our side keen eyes, nimble feet and much


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
savvy. And that had to be exercised at the lowest
levels of command. It meant our forward lines could
rarely be straight ones. A push in one place, if
unaccompanied by a push of the same depth on at least
one flank, would get you into a wedge like the one at
Salerno, if not surrounded.
We were aware of none of this. We didn't even
cotton on to it by slow degree, later. From our point
of view we were just trying to advance up a very
narrow peninsula and it depended solely on the
quality of our fighting and our good luck whether we
did it fast or slow. Therein lay our principal self-
disabling delusion, and the result was an unthinkably
high casualty rate.
The fact was that one man planned our every move
and he wasn't on our side. Even at this moment the
wily Kesselring was ordering his a: rmy to make a
teasingly slow 'disengagement' (as he himself called
it) from the Salerno area to the difficult river
Volturno, north of Naples, where the first big
casualty-toll was designed to take place. And Hitler
was paying attention to his every move, and the more
we entangled ourselves in Kesselring's traps the more
he was impressed by Kesselring as the right man to


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
run a long and bitter Italian campaign. Only this
persuaded him to stay in Italy at all---namely our
stupendous blindness to what was going on.
That was why nothing disturbed us reinforcements
as we waded onto this beach. And why the mortar-bombs
and shells that came over were not followed up with
an attack. For that reason alone I hadn't woken up
under the heel of a German boot.
Kesselring had a much better trap waiting for us
on the river Volturno. But our version of events was
that our naval gunfire and nearly two thousand air
sorties had kept the Germans off. Not that this
information came from higher up. It was simply how we
chose to think. We believed we were pushing Jerry
remorselessly towards the gates of Rome, and whenever
he fell back it was because we pushed him. All the
way up Italy we lulled ourselves with this daydream.
Strategy is another name for pre-empting the
enemy intention but we failed to adapt our modes of
attack to Hitler's sole intention of creating a
death-trap for us.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
All of a sudden, a week after we landed, there
was no further risk of our being pushed back into the
sea. Our forward lines moved north of Salerno,
leaving us gunners behind with our guns, that is some
kilometres in the rear, where guns belong.
Our forward lines 'broke through' to the road to
Naples on September 26th, / three days after the
Germans simply vanished from their positions in the
course of a night, leaving mined bridges behind them.
It was all of sudden peaceful on our beach. Our
battle cruisers looked like pleasure boats in the
calm waters.
We felt happily forgotten. The days, like the
Mediterranean, were balmy and sweet. We heard little
but the faraway boom of other guns than ours. The
fleet made a peaceful sight in the bay, the air SO
heavy with the special haunting hot scent of wild
thyme that I began to think that this peninsula war
might have begun to peter out already, just as, back
in Phillippeville, we had generously promised each
other it would.
We heard birds (always silenced by battle). At
night leaves stirred in the breeze from the sea. In a
characteristic Italian rhythm, the colder sea air of


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
nightfall is drawn to the still warm mountains
inland, just as at dawn the chill mountain air rushed
to the sunlit and already warm sea. And this silent
and unobserved exchange repeated itself each day like
one long breath, an inhale at nightfall and an exhale
at dawn.
A bombardier rushed into our command post and
shouted, Bring your mugs, anything you can lay your
hands on. An infantryman had found a huge vat of red
wine and bored a hole in it. We drank and lazed
drunkenly and talked by the light of our oil lamps,
we wrote letters and I secretly touched my no-longer-
girlfriend's photo. I even showed it to Captain H.,
hoping that he saw her as my future wife, which might
magically, in the rosy haze of wine, banish the utter
impossibility of that.
We moved our guns north, troop by troop, each
convoy leaving separately. A certain care had to be
exercised in this operation because no one could say
for certain if the enemy hadn't left pockets of
resistance behind, as they had left mined bridges.
The Salerno beach when we looked back at it had
a drowsily alluring, never-to-be-seen-again peace.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
We went high into the hills and found ourselves in a
meadow high above the sea, cupped round with trees,
hushed in its own scented air. Through the trees we
could watch the tiny white-frothed waves far below.
They made a twinkling silver ripple in the vast blue
of the harbour, a blue I had never seen before, just
as I had never breathed an air haunted with pine and
elm and beech, with the sky yet another blue, SO deep
and domed and infinite, SO close, So unassumingly
true that I had to believe it false. I turned to a
peasant not much older than I and asked him with dumb
signs and grunts, Do you always have it like this?
And he nodded in that agreeable Italian manner
denoting utter bafflement.
Up here, in their own silence, there were pebbly
streams, virgin cool in the shade, winding through
young woods. I bathed in one, stood naked in the
middle. The water twisted and bubbled and chuckled
round the stones. I came to the conclusion that after
all war was an easy matter. I had seen photos of
sturdy brown-faced soldiers in North Africa from the
days of El Alamein and deduced from them a safe war
in which machines did the work.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
I strolled through the woods, read a book from
my little library, joked with the bombardiers, chewed
grass outside the command post, which was in a barn.
I watched the pigeons on the roof and the COWS
waiting by the entrance to be milked and the
peasant's family coming and going. There was slush at
the entrance and hot close wet-hay smells inside and
the occasional decisive stamp of a COW, shifting her
great flanks, and it was all a good-luck sign for me.
Of course such quiet (lacking as it does even
desultory intermittent shelling) betokens imminent
attack. The big pervasive silence is easily
recognised by those whose ears are attuned. I'd got
wind of a coming barrage---from our side---but not
how big it was going to be. I wasn't even clear about
what the word 'barrage' involved. And much less was I
aware that the size of a barrage is commensurate with
that of the battle timed to follow it. All I knew was
that we were on Stand By, and SO was the rest of the
division's artillery.
When dusk came, as I was wandering past the barn
entrance, Captain H. called to me sharply to stand by
for any emergency. I nodded, my hands in my pockets.
Shells and cartridge cases lay in tall piles behind


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
each of our four guns and the first shift of men was
standing to.
It was almost dark when he gave the order Take
Post through the Tannoy loudspeaker system. The
troopers ran out to the guns. This was five minutes
before the barrage was due. I was a little bored,
expecting nothing. A runner came to the command post
with a message to say that the infantry were on their
start line (those two words were later enough to make
me shiver with foreboding, and they still do,
somewhat).
Captain H. looked at me from inside the command
post-Stand next to the guns, he told me, be ready to
relay my orders if the Tannoy breaks down. I took a
megaphone with me and it seemed to amuse the gunners
(etiquette said that one only used the voice).
I heard a faint order Fire! from a field to our
flank, then it was taken up again and again until it
came from the loudspeakers behind me and the dark
starlit night moved and a swollen booming and
crashing chasm took the place of the sky, surging far
ahead and spreading in a wide fathomless sustained
deafening roar along the whole front and I started
awake at last, mouth open, stunned at the endless


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
blue and yellow flashes across the spaces with the
earth rocking and leaping and rumbling from the gun's
detonations and the night itself shaking. I stood in
this illuminated arc that surely was the world gone
mad in a last thunder of the universe and I began to
feel an exultation I had never known before, I let
myself go in this last hour of the universe such that
God must take notice, yes, there must even at this
eleventh hour be God to take notice.
The men were pushing the shells home with their
ramrods, tight-closing the steel doors of the breech,
standing back for the mighty spout to recoil and give
forth its demon flying death while the meadow all
round was lit by simultaneous flashes (taking kindly
to the light as meadows do). I was no longer a
spectator, I itched to be at one of the guns pulling
the hot lever with my lanyard after the sergeant's
order Fire!
But the silence afterwards, the way the leaves
and trickling of water returned to themselves and the
acrid cordite smell gave way to the hot scent of wild
thyme, and the way the trees stood placid and still
again, was a disappointment to me. What had it all
amounted to if everything became as it had been


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
bef fore, with the silence, into which all sounds die,
victorious? if nothing remains recorded?
I was yet to learn that to be at the receiving
end of a barrage like this one excludes exultation,
changing tears of joy to tears of sorrow. This sudden
silence was only for us. Not yet had I cringed from
their horrifying precipitate swoop to earth and heard
the screams, the ones of the living and the ones of
the dying.
Here, miles behind the forward line, we were in
little danger of retaliation. If it happened at all
it came after perhaps a day's delay, during which the
enemy would have calculated our map reference---with
a large margin of error.
Also those shells of ours were aimed at the
enemy's forward positions, which responded not to us
distant guns but to those directly facing them in the
form mortars and hand grenades and Sten guns.
But killing somebody is remote from a soldier's
mind. He simply defends himself. Faced by a strong
enemy you quickly learn that the killing is
reciprocal and the death in an enemy's last gaze is
your death too. Not a stunning truth-but one that
makes a soldier and is his real baptism of fire.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
The forward lines thus induce mercy. It is rear
troops whose thoughts may dwell on revenge, atrocity.
I knew I wouldn't be with the guns much longer,
that my real job was in the forward lines. I knew my
song would change. Very shortly my role would be to
guide these very shells to their destination. I would
be at the spearhead of attacks. I would find myself
in places where my own fire had fallen perhaps only
moments ago. And from this new position of death and
ruin I would direct further fire.
I would be in the forward lines but sometimes
(this I did not yet know, since it was never spoken
of) I must be prepared to find myself beyond those
lines, in enemy ones.
In a word I was to be a Forward Observation
Officer or F.0.0., as we called him. Or, in the words
of the army textbook, The Eyes of the Army.
And then these guns of mine and my command post
would become, being well behind the lines, a rest and
refuge for me. Their daily detonations-the shell
slipped SO easily into the breech, the hot lever
pulled to make the gun leap forward and try to fly
beyond the blocks that braked its wheels-would be
no more to me than fireworks on Guy Fawkes night.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
We were ordered to move the guns forward to a
town ten kilometres up from Salerno called Cava de'
Tirreni. The move was to be made in separate columns
SO as to create surprise. This was precisely what it
didn't do. Light as their shells were, our guns still
made a hell of a racket getting hitched up and set
down again. The Germans had just vacated Cava dei
Tirreni and it was obvious (though not for us) that
they had quickly taken up positions with a perfect
view of the valley in which our guns were to be put
down---within spitting distance of us, as it turned
out.
Captain H., under cover of night, put our four
guns down in a small valley flanked with steep vine
terraces, a short walk from the town. We did the
unhitching as quietly as possible. Then, after
putting out sentries, we walked stealthily back into
Cava de' Tirreni. We had taken over a big house on
the northern side. The idea in war is that you walk
into any house of your choosing. Its owners or
squatters make a quick bunk or retire to a deep


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
cellar. There is no unfriendliness about it because
civilians have little interest in being caught in
crossfire. If you move in fast it means, for them,
you will probably get out fast too.
This house had an atrium and a balcony looking
down on it, and it was this balcony that drew us
-really a large salon beneath yet another storey.
Most of the men billeted themselves down here. I
shared a tiny nursery room with another junior
officer who had freckles and surprised eyes. We took
it in turns to sleep in a child's cot, relieving each
other every few hours for guard duty at the guns.
Once I came in to wake him and as I was doing SO I
fell asleep slumped over him and we only woke up at
dawn. We got some very sharp words from above but
senior officers rarely came down on us hard, knowing
as they did that there were many battles ahead that
would do their own cowing.
To get to the guns one took a winding path that
couldn't be observed. Cava de' Tirreni (meaning the
quarry or mine of the Tyrrhenian seas, on Italy's
western coast) was tiny then-no four-lane highway
ran at its side, as now. Its humped houses appeared
to be piled on each other and it smelled the same as


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
all Italian war-time towns-sun-dried herbs and old
walls and wood smoke and sewage and chicory.
The vine terraces where we put our guns had a
greater beauty than they would in peace-time because,
as I see only now, their silence was SO war-deep,
devoid of the domestic clatter of normal times. And
of course this silence carried with it a foreboding
which enhanced even further the beauty. There were
mossy statues and young trees. There were also a
fountain and green garden benches where the women who
tended the vines used to sit. We started digging
ourselves in during the night but by dawn, that first
morning, we were only down a few inches. We
camouflaged the guns as best we could
The moment the sun put its first blinding tip an
inch above the horizon there was a swift hoarse
breathing in the sky and mortar-bombs crashed among
the leaves, their smoke rolling flatly away, hugging
the dew. Jerry must have been able to see the whites
of our eyes. Most of his first ones dropped near the
benches and statues. A splinter caught a young
Italian woman. She screamed frantically. Somehow her
screaming seemed to inspire the enemy and the bombs
spread to the terraces where we were and we began


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
scrambling up and down them, flung ourselves to the
wet earth and as quickly jumped up again as the
crashes came in clusters and the pungent smoke got
into our lungs. One of the men shouted down at the
woman Shut up! Shut up! in the illusion that she was
attracting the fire. He threw himself down close to
me and murmured, She's not hurt as bad as all that.
But I think she was screaming at her first
realisation that war killed and meant to do so.
I lost two men in that sacred green hollow. One
was my own signaller, too badly hurt to scream. We
got him into a hut and put him face down. He had two
deep holes in his back, behind the lungs. One of the
troopers asked him if he'd like a smoke and he
managed to raise his head. The trooper put a
cigarette between his lips and was about to light it
when the man coughed blood into it SO that it swelled
up and fell with a plop to the cement floor. Then his
head fell forward. And things were suddenly quiet and
he was dead. My face puckered up against crying in
that first compassion, you are crying for all the
future ones, whom you will not cry for, as well as
for this friendly creature who spoke to you not a
moment before SO that you still hear him and see his


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
particular way of smiling. He was a man I trusted and
he was to accompany me on my F.0.0. missions, we had
agreed about that. Just a glance and we seemed to
understand each other. No need for orders-he was
already there. This in your signaller is precious as
gold.
A peasant woman in black stood by the hut door
and moaned quietly to herself. The gunners trod about
respectfully, thinking. We cursed Jerry who had done
it because cussing gave us an outlet. The other
wounded man got it in the arm but it was a bad one
just the same and he was stretchered away to
hospital, and I think died later.
In the manner of soldiers we griped and belly-
ached. We asked how the hell could anybody have
thought of putting twenty-five-pounder guns into a
bloody soup-bowl like this, where we can't even fire
the sodding things. To fire out of that hole you
would need a vertical trajectory, the shit would fall
back on you. You have to be a madman to put artillery
into the forward lines where Jerry can just look down
on you etc. etc.
Afterwards there were boring hours. A death
isn't forgotten. It becomes part of that strange


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
assembly of dead men who have gone and live men who
might any minute go.
We sat in the balcony area overlooking the
atrium and I was asked to give a lecture. All because
I let it drop that I had been on the set of a film
called The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, which was
shot at the Elstree studios. They wanted to know how
a film was made. As all I remembered of that day was
hanging about for just one scene-shot in a few
inaudible moments-I had little to say. I would much
rather have talked about the theatre, how my mother
and father used to take me and my two brothers to the
working men's clubs when we were tiny. You saw the
top comedians in those clubs, on their way up. In my
mother's arms I began to know about timing and pace
and projection. But these troopers turned it down.
They wanted the big screen, the passive sanitised
dream.
I enjoyed strolling alone in Cava de' Tirreni's
narrow lanes. One morning I looked up at a window and
a man and woman were beckoning to me to come
upstairs. In sign language they were telling me to
push the downstairs door open and, stranger from
another land as I was, walk up. I waved back and


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
smiled and walked on because once up there, for all I
knew, I might disappear, then who would look for me?
I expect all the harmless couple wanted was to barter
for cigarettes, bully beef, sugar. In exchange
perhaps for eggs. Discreetly they might have
suggested a girl. I hadn't yet learned that Italians
were as straight as a die, even when crooked.
It was a restless period for us. I was impatient
to get my first F.0.0. assignment over and done with.
It would have been useful to get some gen (our word
for information) about this. But none came. It hadn't
figured in my training either. You could be trained
for surprise but not for the surprises when they
actually came.
I knew the bare logistics-you took three or
four men with you, including one or two signallers.
Your radio equipment had to be with you at all times.
This included batteries and, in very rare cases of
unusual proximity, a cable for direct wire contact
with the rear. Mostly you would have no chance of
recharging the batteries SO while you needed to be in
day and night contact with your command post back at
the guns you had to be economical in radio use. Your
firing orders had sometimes to go far beyond your own


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
command post to engage the guns of a whole brigade or
division, and the reply had to come back down that
hierarchy, So you needed plenty of juice. It was
after the word Ready had been passed to you from all
the assembled waiting guns that your final order of
Fire! went through and then, almost instantaneously,
you heard the baleful whirring of the shells above
your head.
The only thing you know as a novice F.0.0. is
that you will have to observe the country carefully
and consult your Intelligence map as you move across
it. But that isn't much of a training. So your state
of trepidation as your first F.0.0. assignment draws
near, like mine now, derived from utter bafflement as
to what to expect.
Obviously an F.0.0. must know something about
the enemy that faces him. After all, he must develop
SO to speak an intimacy with him. He must know what
kind of fighters these particular enemy regiments
are, and in what strength they are at the moment,
whether they are the 15th or 26th or 29th Panzer
Grenadiers or a Hermann Goring division or the 44 th
Austrian infantry (the most amiable of opponents).


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
Such a man can be a treasure for the infantry
since he carries about with him an invisible armour
shield in the form of quick and heavy support from
the rear. So the tendency of infantry officers was
therefore to treat him with awe if he was good and
amiably disregard him if he wasn't.
Once in a new position the F.0.0. must help
consolidate it with so-called SOS targets, which may
involve a firing programme lasting the whole night.
You communicate this programme, with its timetable
and intervals by radio, to your command post, having
already given your exact map reference in code.
There was one thing I looked forward to---being
my own master. I would be trusted or spurned for my
decisions alone. I even felt a need to witness war at
its demented heart. And for this the role of F.0.0.
seemed exactly placed.
Before you get your first assignment the eyes of
senior officers are on you sizing you up. The respect
of your gunners (very few of whom saw the forward
lines) is much enhanced if you go up, and it grows
the more you go up. The unlucky ones among them are
those who have to accompany you. But more unlucky is
that handful of men who become your favourites, the


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
kind of men who, try as they might, cannot help being
reliable. Never was there a better argument for that
devoutly observed military rule-never volunteer.
Likewise if the F.0.0. was good he was always in
demand. If he wasn't he stayed with the guns.
The French long ago had a more precise word for
the F.0.0. and that was le sentinel perdu. He is to
all intents and purposes a lonely (and frequently
lost) spy. Much of the Intelligence given to him
about enemy dispositions is likely to be wrong though
his life largely depends on it being right. But it is
impossible to have good Intelligence about forward
lines because they move SO fast, especially in close
terrains like those in Italy. So it is the F.0.0. who
keeps the map up to the latest date. The danger for
him is that being very mobile, with at most four men,
he can easily get lost, and in enemy lines, which
happened to me and mine more than once.
We entered Naples on October 1 1943, namely
three weeks after the Salerno landing. And these
weeks cost us 12000 casualties, 5000 of them


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
American, nearly 7000 British. And we were here
solely because Kesselring's new defence line was now
ready for us.
But at last we had an official fleshpot where we
could go for short leaves, even half a day. There
were whores galore in Naples and the chance of a
dance and Lilly Marlene being sung. The copper wire
laid by Fifth Army engineers for new telephone
systems at once disappeared. That hadn't happened
under the Germans because their penalty for stealing
copper wire had been death. There was a favourite
apocryphal story that the kids of Naples, in this new
lawless democracy, unscrewed the nuts and bolts of an
allied ship until one night it sank elegantly out of
sight.
I drove into Naples several times alone. I sat
in a tiny restaurant tucked into a side street with
the sun blazing through the entrance. I ordered
chicken but was aware after a few bites that it was
cat. Why did I order chicken after being told SO
often that it was always cat? The place became empty
and I started to talk to the proprietess in my poor
army Italian which always got the accents hopelessly
wrong-we called the Rapido river the Rapeedo whereas


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
it is accented on the first syllable as in 'rapid'.
We did the same with 'Taranto' and 'Brindisi', both
of which carry their emphasis on the first syllable.
And no doubt if we had ever wanted to talk about the
Medici we would have made the same mistake (most
Anglo-Saxons still do). But it was our rule and no
Italian dared correct us.
The proprietess was a large young body with
black curly hair and an easy sisterly manner. She
asked me if I was lonely and I smiled, refusing this
offer to bed down with her. I told myself that I
didn't find her attractive but in fact I was afraid
of a dose of clap. Also we were warned not to
separate ourselves from our clothes, ever, not in
Naples at this present half-starved time.
She and I sat with our elbows on the table
gazing into the blinding light of the entrance and I
found in myself a resolve that I would one day mak ke
this country my own (which I later did). I left her
some cigarettes, which were considered gold.
A few days later I sat with five other officers
in a barracks on the city's outskirts, the sea silver
and flashing far below, the light failing.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
The Battery commander said, We shall have to
decide who is going up with this one. I held my
oreath, my heart beat faster, I gazed at the wall and
held the leg of the table. The day had been one of
those autumn days that lazily replay the earlier
sweltering season and raise the Italian's voice and
give him a special easy walk.
Not many days after that I sat once more in an
officers' conference, this time in a room with a
parquet floor and tall windows high above the deep
still blue of Naples harbour, lightly ruffled with
white-flecked waves, where our battle cruisers looked
like clever intricate toys. The windows gave on to a
balcony from which a grateful evening breeze wafted
in, then spent itself until the next one, in an
hallucinating rhythm I had never known a hint of in
my former life.
No sounds came up to us, SO removed were we from
city and sea. The captain who had welcomed me at
Salerno with a gruff but solicitous nod, Captain
Maugham, said he thought I should go up in the next
show, being the freshest among us. The major smiled
at me and said he agreed it was time to break me in.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
I smiled too but I was mortally afraid. Yet
excitement went with it, even increased it. I was to
stand out, perform, perhaps earn better smiles-more
earnest ones. It is wonderful what human association
does for us, being able to render sane and even
orderly what our trembling limbs know to be
otherwise.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
CRATER
TNQ
ost of the 13th day of October 1943 I leaned
against a warm haystack facing South. There
were flat fields all round and a breeze
intermittent like a series of broken sighs that
breathed a message to me I couldn't decipher-whether
warning or solace. I was alone, reading a novel about
a man of twenty-one (just right) who was deeply in
love, and how his love, after a long time of anguish,
was requited. And since it was thoughtfully written,
taking me back to a style of speech I would never
hear again (everything pre-war was now a remote
never-never land), the words melted in nostalgically
with the scented autumn day and the hush that the
sound of bees and flies only made deeper.
The silence brought a fear that awakened
suddenly and died again, as if these fields knew what
lay ahead, this very night. It made me look up from
the pages and as quickly sent me back to them. It
merged with the words I was reading-with the hero's
horror that he might not be loved by the girl. And


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
this in turn helped that southern hush to be
valedictory.
Now and then and I gazed at Vesuvius in the far
distance sending its straight white volcanic smoke
unresisted into the blue. It curled very slightly at
the top with such a leisurely and domestic air. Like
any curling smoke you might see. There wasn't a gun
to be heard, not in the remotest distance. Yes, when
an attack has been prepared, and the enemy is waiting
as you are waiting, with death in mind, all the trees
and grasses join in.
We were to make a bridgehead over the river
Volturno, a name which suggests currents that turn in
on themselves-volto with its idea of turning round,
turno that of returning. And it was the river Field
Marshal Kesselring had chosen for us to break our
heads on (his words). But wait---this river was also
useful for him in SO far as it gave him time to
prepare an even stronger line further north. But wait
again---this stronger line would give him time to
prepare a truthfully impregnable line which whole
divisions, whole corps could decimate themselves to
the point of self-disbandment (and did), thus
breaking both head and heart.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
Thankfully we knew nothing of this but even if
we had we would have rejected it. As a soldier you
have to believe that your enemy is confused and
surprised by your every approach.
I was to assemble with my four men at infantry
battalion headquarters in a pre-arranged area south
of the river Volturno. I was to await dusk there and
the time appointed for the opening barrage from our
side. The moment this barrage ceased I was to go
forward and make contact with our attacking infantry
company at its start line.
Those were my orders and I didn't have the
experience to see that they didn't make sense.
Clearly my permission to move was too late, being the
moment when the company assigned to me would be
committed to battle. The order thus put me far behind
the start line---into the tail, not the spearhead.
Which meant that I would spend the crucial first
stage searching for my infantry commander. Without
him I had no job or place to go. Without me he had no
retaliatory power against the flak.
Not only that but our army too was
inexperienced. This was the first set-battle of the
Italian campaign. The Salerno operation, having been


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
a mostly defensive action (landing stores and
equipment under fire), offered no lessons for what
was coming up.
Jerry was in some strength now-three divisions
faced us and were particularly lively on our sector
because the main Naples-Rome highway passed just
ahead.
I was there with my men at the appointed time. I
remember young woodland---good cover. We stood
together, my men and I, five of us, waiting in the
dying light. The barrage from our guns started up to
the second, a huge mounting thunder from behind us,
followed at once by the screeching of shells arching
overhead into enemy lines. The earth trembled because
we weren't a great distance from the river and we
fell into the usual pre-battle elated illusion that
such a shattering orchestra must leave not a yard of
enemy earth alive. The fact is that, especially in
close terrain, the enemy pops out of his holes at the
first lull and starts lobbing the stuff back. And
that would be happening within moments.
It was ten o'clock and dark before my signallers
and I got the order to move and we advanced in single
file, keeping to one side of a broad crowded causeway


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
between the trees. Then as soon as enemy shells began
falling close we started running, trying to get to
the ditches which we knew to be just short of the
river. Stupidly I had eaten a late meal and started
vomiting as I ran, turning my head to one side SO
that my tunic and map-case wouldn't get soiled. As we
ran the enemy launched its fearsome Nebelwerfer or
Organ Grinder mortar bombs right where we were SO
that hot breaths of suffocating cordite rushed into
our faces. Clattering enemy machine-gun fire opened
up from the river, presumably on our men trying to
cross.
A mine-detector outfit went ahead of us as
always, laying white tape down as a safe guide for
us. Infantrymen were losing contact with each other,
calling out to each other between the deafening
bursts, afraid of losing touch. Everyone was dazed,
some men were just wandering here and there, others
were on the ground and calling for the stretchers or
just screaming, sometimes a man would dash for the
ditch at the side of the causeway as if he had
decided to do no more running.
Something was going very badly wrong. There were
more men running towards us than there were with us,


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
in fact growing masses of infantrymen all running in
the wrong direction, away from the line. We were
bumping into them and for the life of me I couldn't
understand how men running away from the line could
be obeying orders of any kind. They were calling out
to us, You can't go up there! I dashed over to one of
them and grabbed him by the arm-Where are you going?
He shouted, You can't get through! Thinking I might
have mistaken the route I shouted back, Where's the
river then? and he said as he ran on, Back there,
there's all hell up there, you can't get through!
Stretcher bearers were rushing past us-it
seemed a whole army was on its way out of the line.
My four men were waiting for my order and I shouted
into the shattering noise Come on! and we started
running forward again.
We were quickly in the thick of it. The
Nebelwerfers were concentrated here. A Nebelwerfer
puts six bombs at a time into the air and their
trajectory makes a terrifying howling noise like a
vast barrel organ in the sky which turns into a dense
hungry roar close to your ear as the bombs crash to
earth from their almost vertical trajectory.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
There was such a thick wall of detonation and
tracer bullets and darkness and men bumping into each
other that all you could do, once you were close to
the river, was run from one deep 88mm. crater to the
next until you found an empty place to throw yourself
into, elbow to elbow as the screams of the wounded
came over, that terrible Help! Help! Help!, that
imploring scream to the enemy guns to Please, please
stop! And then the shouts of the stretcher bearers,
Give us a hand you blokes, for christsake help! but
the only thing that happened in our brains was let it
not be me, let it not be me, and when at last we
managed to scramble down into a crowded crater and
throw ourselves down I found myself scratching
frantically with both hands into the freshly scorched
soil, trying to make a hole for myself of all
grotesque idiotic things but knowing how crazy it was
didn't stop me doing it, I was clawing the hard black
earth with nails all too frail and I knew I was doing
it and how crazy it was and that didn't stop the
hands from doing it and I swear my men on either side
of me were doing the same. I saw my actions SO
clearly, stood away from myself because these were my
last moments on earth---that was how it was for me


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
and every other man in that crater and the screeches
of Wailing Winnie over our heads and that ghastly
angry hot descent of the bombs shattered our last
hopes and, as always for the soldier, made us doubt
afterwards that we did get through and weren't in a
new deadly life that contained a trick that made it
seem life when it wasn't.
And simultaneously we were listening to the
stretcher bearers and I was thinking urgently should
I take my men and help with the stretchers but that
would mean running back, wouldn't it, running away?
And because these were our last moments on earth our
thoughts were sharp and clear and intensely
observant, I was aware of my men on both sides of me
and how they were living these last moments too and
they like me were silent and like me they had their
eyes closed and I was sure they too were scratching
crazily into the earth because you never do anything
individual, not at the extremity of extremities.
How long we were in that crater, how and when we
got out, even whether the mortar bombs and shells
were still falling when we jumped up and ran, even
whether we ran, I cannot recall and never did recall,
not even right after.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
All I know of that night was being in the crater
in our last moments and then, as in a dream that
jumps whole hours in a flash, I am standing in the
first dawn light at the river's edge, a few inches
from a handsome German officer with thick black hair
who is saying in English with easy confidence, In
Rome for Christmas? You won't be there for months, if
ever.
My Company commander was standing just to the
left of me and all of us listened to the German
diffidently, disappointed that our success in
breaching the river should excite this clear-spoken
well-meant smiling ridicule, and we believed him not
because we were gullible but because in such
extremities one knows the truth, and this was the
truth. It was indeed many months of mostly useless
costly struggle through mud and cold, in strategic
positions that spelled disaster, before we reached
Rome depleted and worn out.
Perhaps it is this preliminary dying that you go
through in your last moments which turn out not to
have been your last---perhaps it is this that induces
amnesia. Perhaps amnesia is a thankful device to
expunge how you got out of that crater SO that you


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
may carry on this life not half-crazed or wandering
in your mind for the rest of your days. And suddenly
the German officer is there, a friend, talking
without emphasis in this bountiful dawn silence, and
his very voice is a balm.
A few feet before us was the swollen fast river,
the opposite bank deserted except for four English
soldiers lying side by side, faces down as if gazing
into the earth, in perfect order and neatness, their
tin hats undisturbed, their weapons under them, in an
identical shared death. They must have jumped to the
bank close together and in that jump gone down in one
burst of machine-gun fire. For several days they
stayed there, clean and obedient.
Apparently our division had been given not only
the most intensely defended but the most exposed part
of the river to tackle. On our left flank was our
sister division, and on their left were the
Americans, presumably the Texans we had known at
Salerno. Our sister division, the 56th, hadn't got
across.
I couldn't work out, in that dawn, why my
Company commander was still on the southern shore
when the opposite bank was already in our hands. I


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
expected a bridgehead to be something you could see
right away. But Bailey bridges have to be loaded and
transported. Engineers to build them have to be
available. And building a bridge in daylight,
especially in the first vulnerable hours after a
battle, would be suicide.
For the moment there was only the tired dawn
silence that follows a rough night. Both sides are
taking time off to lick wounds. A cup of char
reassured us, the steam blew up into our faces with
each breath.
We were lucky because the Nebelwerfer or Wailing
Winnie, fearful though it sounded, was also
inaccurate. Its bombs dispersed over a large area and
they took more seconds to land than other mortar
bombs. Their terrifying chorus in the sky was thus
achieved at the expense of accuracy. Their aim was to
create extreme panic. This they achieved in the case
of an entire battalion of the US 34th division. They
scattered and it was a whole day before they
reassembled. No cowardice was involved. They just
thought it was something other than war and was
coming out of the sky-the frightful Secret Weapon
constantly promised by Hitler. By far the greater


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
number of casualties in battle come from shock and
are called non-battle casualties because wounds do
not figure, SO there was reasoning behind Wailing
Winnie.
Of course mortar bombs that fall inaccurately
still fall, and they fell among us, just short of the
river. Machine-gun fire, not these bombs, was the
nemesis of the men trying at that moment to cross the
river.
We all believed, as men in the first world war
did, that the shell that got you had your army number
on it. The idea reassured and terrified in equal
measure.
That bridgehead was at the cost of a thousand
casualties in one night.
As for our sister division it was pinned down by
shellfire. Its Ox and Bucks battalion disguised
themselves as peasants but the moment they broke
cover to approach the river they had 80 casualties in
a few seconds. They tried to cross in boats but most


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
of these were at once destroyed, this time with 40
casualties.
Really the American Fifth army was in no
position to cross that river. Its divisions only had
boats enough for one battalion, namely two companies
of about sixty men each. And that was hopelessly
inadequate for a whole front.
I never learned how the men I saw running away
from the line that night re-joined their units, or
if they did. To my mind they were deserters and would
have been rounded up as such. You just can't rejoin
your unit a whole night late. There were no officers
among them as far as I could see. Which made
desertion even more likely.
In fact, though we didn't know it then, the
Fifth army had a desertion problem. The 'Naples
stroll', as it was called, started about this
time-some Americans just walked out of the line and
went to town. Mark Clark sensibly accommodated
himself to this by organising rest areas close to the
line, to which the tired and shocked could be sent.
You could hardly throw men into prison for suffering
the results of the pressure you were putting on them,
such as tackling water without something to float on.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
The British were less wise. We now know, as a
result of the publication (in 1994) of the courts-
martial of that time, that 197 soldiers mutinied 'at
Salerno'. 179 of these were put in prison for a year
or SO while the ringleaders were given five years.
They mutinied because their officers had told them
they were going from North Africa not to Salerno but
Sicily, where there was no fighting. The men were
already battle exhausted and considered this a
calculated lie which exposed their officers as unfit
to lead. I never heard of any mutinies on the Salerno
beach. It would have been difficult to mutiny and get
arrested within earshot of the Germans. So I am
inclined to believe that those men I saw running in
the wrong direction were those who were court-
martialled.
The fact that we heard no more of those men
meant nothing. No battle events were ever, in my
memory, discussed afterwards. Also we were used to
disappearances. Soldiers, in groups or singly, were
posted off constantly. There was never a better
application of the divide-and-rule axiom. Unwanted
elements could be dissolved into thin air. And this,
by the law of war, is how it has to be. The comfort


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
of being in an army is its delegation of moral choice
to staff officers remote from scrutiny, which helps
one sleep at night, it being the case that what the
eye doesn't see the heart doesn't grieve after.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
Laughter
he weather changed and I was back with the
- - guns. We found ourselves camped out behind
thick hedges in a mist of warm rain under a
reluctant low lazy sky. The sunshine was SO dazzling
it made the thick rain clouds a white fluffy sheet,
and our gun site, within its green walls, began to
feel immune to war, especially as sounds were muffled
too.
You never heard So much laughter. Laughing was
the most of what we did, it being one of the many
unknown things about battle that it stirs laughter
pure and spontaneous. It isn't in spite of the dying
or the beckoning death, nor is it a defence against
the screams.. Laughter is an accessory to both, just
as in the funeral wake the dead are present even as
you drink and sing, they being the silent


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
provocateurs of this unexpected joy. We were children
again, Captain H. no less than the rest of us.
Army commanders were astonished at SO much
laughter in the forward lines and I think they put it
down to grit, which it had nothing to do with. Army
commanders are remote from their armies because they
have to deal with the big scenario and turn it into
individual actions on the ground, and they don't
laugh about the dead. It makes them cautious and
strangely it makes them reckless, and there was in
our particular army commander something of the
latter, and that didn't promote laughter.
We were awaiting orders, meaning we could pass
the day as we chose. The guns were snugly camouflaged
and out of action. The distant boom of big artillery
was muffled, spread out comfortably, conferring death
on others-and on us a sense of reprieve.
For me 'the guns' were already another way of
saying safe haven. They were pinpointed sometimes by
enemy artillery but on the whole shells fell wide of
us, though not always SO wide that we could forget
them.
Our all-day and sometimes all-night firing
programmes were no more disturbing to me than the so-


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
63 (ol
called dags with which we recharged our radio
batteries. Their engines were going all night and
made a deafening noise, and some of us (I was one)
liked to put our beds close to a dag in order, of all
things, to sleep soundly. That way, too, you wouldn't
hear the rush of the shell that had your number on
Captain H. and I got hold of a bottle of gin and
began drinking close to my bivouac one late
afternoon. I passed out and woke up twenty-four hours
later with my bivouac collapsed over me and my legs
outside. I thought the dusk was the previous dawn. I
only woke because I was starting to suffocate.
Captain H. must have tripped over my bivouac pegs as
he staggered away, unless he pulled them out for fun.
We had a laugh afterwards and resolved never to touch
gin again. But we didn't ask ourselves why we had
drunk to unconsciousness. Sometimes we talked about
Churchill---how we of the Struggle against Fascism
had put him where he was---hoisted on our sole
shoulders (his own party would never have put him
there) he was at our beck and call, leased from the
'reactionaries' solely for the duration of the war.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death 6962
The thought that Churchill was acting entirely on his
own never once occurred to us.
We sat and drank numberless sobering mugs of
char and I had a letter from home saying 'Well son we
had our windows blown out today'. I never wrote home
any but the vaguest footnotes to my present life
since I didn't wish to suggest heroics to people
under nightly bombardment from the air, without
choice of fight or flight, no medals posthumous or
otherwise, no extra rations or rest periods or worst
of all any personal encounter with the enemy, who
remained at a great inaccessible height and were
hated because their deaths could not be seen. I heard
from my parents that Len, my middle brother's closest
friend, had fallen from the sky over Germany, with no
time or perhaps strength to activate his parachute.
We got wind of another show coming up-a wopper
this time. We were again to punch a hole in the enemy
defences but this time our armoured division would
'pass through' it (an expression that took on, in
the course of the Italian campaign, a certain tragic
drollness).


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
Having secured the northern banks of the river
Volturno we were now to face Field Marshal
Kesselring's Gustav or Winter line, which he was even
now preparing for us. To protect his busy engineers
he began building a makeshift line (the Bernhardt)
which stretched from Minturno on the Mediterranean
coast across a range of peaks called the Aurunci, SO
we would first have to hop this lesser hurdle.
It was these peaks we were now invited to
tackle. Anyone could see that we were neither trained
nor equipped for mountain warfare but Kesselring had
devised the trap and it seemed our destiny to adapt
ourselves to his design, in other words walk smack
into it.
The Aurunci went east towards the centre of the
Italian peninsula and stopped abruptly and briefly at
the narrow defile in which was contained the road to
Rome. This was called in dull military phrasing
Highway 6 and it was accompanied by the enchanting
Liri river, which gave its name to the defile.
Thus the road to Rome could be overseen from
formidable heights---which also presented a deadly
insurmountable natural barrier to any commanders bent
on frontal assault, as ours were.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
This was not all. On the other (eastern) side of
the defile there was another range of peaks almost as
formidable. And even this wasn't the worst news.
Within touching distance of the defile, SO to speak,
there lay a smaller but steep hill and on this
sprawled, in the sweetest manner, a slumbering
medieval town called Cassino which thus looked
benignly down not only on the mouth of the defile
with its precious road to Rome but on the plains that
stretched before it in a southerly direction. This
town was the central nut of the Gustav Line, a nut
snug and smug for its defenders, with wriggling lanes
and humped houses clutched together in a centuries-
old solitude, but a nut which even if you destroyed
it stone by stone and tile by tile would remain---
indeed assert itself infinitely---as the nut too
deadly to approach, and beyond human powers to
infiltrate.
And not even this was enough. The sleepy nut was
accompanied, even dominated, by a greater and more
imposing and especially reinforced one that covered
the summit of the hill and would require an arsenal
of nutcrackers to break it, yet was just as sweet as
Cassino, indeed the origin of her sweetness-more,


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
the very cause of her lazy presence here, being no
less than a vast abbey dedicated to Saint Benedict,
its founder, and built to serve its spiritual end by
resisting foreign invaders from the south, a Keeper
of the Vatican's Southern Gate, SO to speak.
And this abbey's windows gazed down on the plain
before it SO frankly that it must put a shiver down
the spines of any infantrymen trying to cross in
front of it, and later it did. In fact the whole
ensemble of that hill serenely begged us to throw
ourselves at it and if necessary break heads and
hearts on it, and in the hardest of winters, and the
stupefying thing is that this was precisely what we
did.
And all this hardly twenty miles north of the
river Volturno. By the time we crossed that river the
enemy's Gustav Line had already been fully manned,
its supply lines (always difficult on heights)
secured. Our first trip wire, the Bernhardt line that
lay in front of it, stretched along the Garigliano
river in its Mediterranean reaches to its tributaries
in the east, the Liri and the Rapido, close to
Cassino. Namely a defence position set there by


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
nature with such deft attention to detail that the
Benedictine monks were no more in need of arms than
archangels were.
Often they weren't even there. Once they were
absent for a century and a half, SO confident was
this place that one look at it from below would
discourage attack.
Only one man decided to do So and he was turned
back by a dream in which St. Benedict spoke to him
advisedly. So there you were-- -a spiritual stronghold
that only atheists in the deepest sense would, and
did, try not only to attack head-on but destroy for
ever.
No wonder St. Benedict his temple in such a way
that even if it was destroyed would become all the
stronger for it (and this we witnessed it do).
It was now November, a decisive month for us all
in that Hitler decided, having observed the success
of Kesselring's disengagement-when-ready policy, to
give him full command of Italian operations. And not
only this. He undertook to increase Kesselring's
strength with what remained of Rommel's army in North
Africa.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
Hitler made his decision on November 21st 1943,
just as we were preparing to move up from the
Volturno area.
This time it wasn't a matter of crossing water
without boats. We were now to fight in mountains with
no mountain equipment, no adequate clothing, not even
special rations. Polyglot as an army we might be the
uncrackable nuts before us required not mass but
prowess. And this was something missing from allied
guidance at the political top-and therefore at the
bottom where we foot soldiers were.
The Big Show was to take place between December
15th 1943 and 15th January 1944, and to prepare for
this we moved fifteen miles up from the northern
banks of the Volturno to a tiny hill-top town called
Sessa Aurunca, which took its name from the Aurunci
mountains that placidly gazed at it across a valley
of flat green land.
From Sessa, as we came to call it, you had a
bird's eye view of that range's foothills, with the
broad Garigliano, the Gustav Line's watery protector,
running before it and reduced from our point of view
to a curling thread of mirror.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
It was a cosy town, cobbled and clean. And that
mountain barrier north of us became familiar, being a
pleasure to watch for its mists and changing degrees
of colour and shade.
With SO much leisure and the heavy rains that
had been predicted we also came to know our hosts, we
tasted home-cooked food, exchanged bully beef and
cigarettes for eggs and, in the case of us officers,
took over their best rooms. The houses that lay on
each side of the narrow main street were ours, just
as if we were the town's elected administrators.
Strictly speaking there was a non-fraternity
rule between us and them. We were to look on Italians
as ex-fascists and ex-enemy, and to be watchful of
our speech in their hearing. An ar rmy booklet warned
us that, while a people of great affability, they
could on occasion be treacherous.
What the booklet didn't tell us was that
Italians had fraternity planted in them at birth,
whatever disprezzo or malicious aforethought lurked
in them. In Sessa betrothals were discussed, the
marriages to take place when it was all over. Kisses
and smiles were exchanged and anything more secret
was presumably snatched in remote corners of the


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
cellars because of the presence of elders and us
commissioned officers. We officers only heard
reports-the girls were at first hesitant with us and
only began coming up to us in the street and passing
the time of day with us when they saw we didn't bite
and were exactly like those vile Germans, namely cosy
and cheerful and humane. You could see the relief on
their faces.
Among the tantalising cries of joy that came up
from the cellars in Sessa Aurunca there was sometimes
the busy hushed sound of commercial transaction. The
Italians were hungry.
Since we led a healthy life in the open, eating
like pigs, you would have thought we officers might
have suffered from this daily prevalence of women and
the lack of them in bed. But the genitals were
strangely non-combatant. We put it down to 'the
bromide they put in your tea'. Only later in the
brothels of Egypt and Beirut and Palestine during our
first rest period did we use the contraceptives we
were supplied with (which you could explain by the
fact that we took tea out).
In that little town of Sessa I felt sad to be an
officer. I rarely saw my men unless they were on


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
duty, So deep were they in surrogate family life.
And, though nothing was said (in the army nothing is
said about almost everything), a second lieutenant
came quickly to realise that he must never become
loquacious with Other Ranks or join in their pranks
and peccadilloes. I sat in my room yearning for the
laughter I heard coming from the cellars. And my men
told me their adventures (that was the right conduct
for an officer-to listen).
I still preferred to be an officer, though. I
wanted to lead because I felt that in a dangerous
spot I could bring things to a good conclusion. I
thought that under someone else's guidance my
instincts would dry up, I might be dragged into
someone else's slowness of response.
One of the bitterest aspects of losing my
signaller at Cava de' Tirreni was that I felt
responsible for his death. Had I not been SO helpless
a novice I would have briskly shouted my men to
cover, and shown them where that cover was. And in
the Volturno attack I had led my men into hell (at
the double)-not that there had been any choice but I
still taxed myself with this unjust idea. It was the


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
beginning in me of the guilt that goes, for better or
for worse, with self-training.
I hoped earnestly that my signaller's death
hadn't been an omen for the future-that I didn't
carry a magnet in my pocket that would attract fatal
enemy fire (this was how I described it to myself). I
hoped the men I chose for my missions wouldn't look
askance at me as the one who took them by a nasty
turn of fate into the thickest shit of all. And of
course I feared this in myself too. It just seemed to
me that the omens SO far weren't good. It was a tic
of worry I was never without.
One morning I walked down to the foot of Sessa's
steep hill in the bracing early sunlight. Here, in a
small group of houses at Ponte Ronaco, which bridged
a little rivulet from the Garigliano, we had put our
guns and installed a kind of command post. The guns
were under camouflage nets and out of use.
And suddenly I turned and saw a close school-
friend of mine walking towards me with his
characteristic slim-lipped smile as if about to
laugh. He said, I saw your name in an officer-list
and thought I'd drive over and see how you were. We


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
stood gazing at each other, confused, rather shy. I
remembered how he used to spend his days listening to
Wagner on scratchy records and reading the plays and
prefaces of George Bernard Shaw in a church-house
belonging to his future in-laws in the Hampshire
hills. He and I had found our first loves in the same
village, at the same time. It was surely the most
marvellous of bonds at this moment.
We watched a dog fight high above us. The two
planes dived and circled spraying bullets at each
other. There was the muffled whine of their engines
and the tiny-toy echo of their machine guns. The war
was rendered cosy for a moment as we stood there,
quite as if Sessa's steep hill was one of southern
Hampshire's.
This war had brought Gordon and me a lot of
good. We would never have seen the Hampshire hills at
the age of seventeen had we not been evacuated from
London because of the bombing. It gave us our first
taste of wholesome air and silence. For the first
time I started doing well in exams. They got me to
Oxford. And Gordon got to Cambridge. His first love
was already his wife. Of course he knew my girlfriend
K. and I pulled out the photo. He looked at it with


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
what I took to be momentary misgiving. Perhaps he
knew the truth, or thought I didn't.
The planes above suddenly broke from each other
and flew in opposite directions-two lives saved.
Gordon and I said good bye. I watched him drive away,
south. I discovered it wasn't lovely memories that
his visit filled me with. My memories had lost all
the warmth of the recent. That was the trouble. They
were simply images. As if, though they had happened,
they hadn't happened to me. That was what Gordon's
visit made me understand-you haven't got a past, it
happened but it extinguished itself. It no longer
needed me
Later that same morning a bombardier in my troop
came running over and said, I've just had a horrible
time. How's that? I asked him. It concerned a girl in
the village. They were in love with each other. She
was a lively girl with a romping manner and strong
thighs and a firm chin and provocative eyes. And
early that same morning they had kissed seriously for
the first time. And it had disgusted him. Her mouth
had tasted horrible, he said. Her breath was
abominable. His face wobbled with dismay. I listened,
shrugged. I knew her and guessed that the undrinkable


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
happened but it extinguished itself. It no longer
needed me.
Later that same morning a bombardier in my troop
came running over and said, I've just had a horrible
time. How's that? I asked him. It concerned a girl in
the village. They were in love with each other. She
was a lively girl with a romping manner and strong
thighs and a firm chin and provocative eyes. And
early that same morning they had kissed seriously for
the first time. And it had disgusted him. Her mouth
had tasted horrible, he said. Her breath was
abominable. His face wobbled with dismay. I listened,
shrugged. I knew her and guessed that the undrinkable
ersatz coffee and her half-starved state had
something to do with it. I gazed at the bombardier's
face wobbling with disillusion. He thought girls were
nice and fresh and stinks belonged to him. It
occurred to me that he hadn't seen action yet. He was
to do SO later. The girl had a wonderful bright
directness but he would have none of her. He was
lucky, I suppose, to have kept his Civvy Street
disgusts. They were due to be blown away.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
APPARITION
Four
n Intelligence picture of how the enemy was
feeling in the Aurunci mountains and on
wongre takir Atal
Monte Camino trickled down to us. They were
well-clothed for mounwain extremes and commodiously
dug in with regular
kitchens on secure supply
lines.
Madl
The same could never have befy said for us. It
lur
was one thing to send us up there in the winter but
another not to provide us with clothing to cope with
avalanches of rain and low temperatures. To cap the
folly the thing was called Operation Raincoat. Would
to God we had had them.
The story is that General Eisenhower ordered
special mountain wear back in October but it didn't
arrive until November. Not that its arrival changed
eaghh
mat S Not even by the end of December had it
LlII I I
reached us and by then our attacks were petering out
in attrition.
My map showed me that on the east side of the
peninsula the Eighth army under General Montgomery


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
was at this moment bogged down in rain and mud and
blocked by swelling rivers. His big attack on
November 20th (the day before Hitler gave Kesselring
full powers) ran into bad trouble, though he had five
times the strength, An men and munitions/ of the
Germans facing him. His a dance from the southern tip
3 a
of Italy had been
is in the extreme, which
Hitler took notel O
Montgomery complained that no
effort was made
establish contact between his army
and our Fifth, but even when there was plenty of
contact later, it altered nothing of a terrain that
was serenely indifferent to military protocol:
The Bigis Show opened on December 2 1944 with nine
hundred of our guns delivering over four thousand
tons of shells on peaks that stayed exactly where
far tte duiodsip 9 a pabbls itao. - Ale
they werek The normal margin of error in shell-
delivery was ESO much increased in mountainous
varyup
conditions by the Jair currents and changing
pressures. And the very thinness of the enemy line (a
few men in comman'd of a whole ridge) rendered map
references null from the artillery point of view.
Ridges are contested by soldiers within earshot
of each other,. and boulders big and small provide
ll cnhial
2 ali cruld we Lee Au I -
G aid
crifpl
tu doil
Cad le 3
ue hed uo idea (a, 5
0 ag
fneralls
tte uere
couptlel
idce
n Si
as do,
letally
hduy
4 7 e oure


Prilnish luidile-dan Bilhcdl uar i
NWS eue
andle Texau (measinp ca taloueee Jo e n
y Itie Jtw vue, tul it tpmds Stat& -
Called
TT a Mah
Ayy
Clade. hand Itei,
smuell
& tre
He Urole
oluses tr
stry 2
alliance E
AVa VG
ind %
Hufvar ite
NART73S BELoW
hur was seals cn coupluu L
rual Mexau de
Couhande 2 Ilalici SJurling
chode Jrt
wu I ac cliicve uuis i C
Hue jemi se
cores
the
Mak Claste,
disemyoh
cuhti
lad
Bs a
eucl
Mbney
Ar V hailp toee laue uogel Snice didél jet lluo
Ou lao
Gs a4 luglin oii MSOAL i Mxade, a
Ym culd neue cavince
tue
quoep
Jur fluek,
eue
neas usee. Secure lecak guita sips
they
urse
bo clire k 7o, n istrs 2
woodlus, Staefp hill dolder dips ttuc deeued to
hide qu eve fin He Mey: a1
INSERT 73'
Nottis tii, tywel
tle houn 2 relk
Retuee Cflac Ht. aud ue,
prp
becur we Jaw He wa
( ho L
realirp Itri i had sre Isla15 mt 2 a -
Ment we
U beiided 4
E S
tertarf Itu fnck Itec t Sovice lain
aHreerert i the Cwe
Aa turtt trA
tui had ho
tuyle
tho
lag
pou
iche
r crenla al cehir
Kid aunclve) 12movortg A su U m
flie liudu
capitilin po A . 2,
Ear
Toppy
Srapple aeg A f xisn
Po N


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
excellent cover. The shells found not earth but
stone, and did their worst in empty air.
The general picture was/this. Lying just north
Sena Auryhce
of us in our village/ and blocking the northern way
to Ogssino, was a vast lone rocky sentinel of nearly
1000 metres called Monte Camino. Nevertheless Guy two
divisions captuped it on December 3rd 1944 though
they didn't geta real foothoid for three gays, and
this foothold was shared by Germans.within inches of
them.
C t
As for the Aurupci range across the Garigliang
there was a much Haster assemb) YX of mountains- fuga
at 687 metres, Maio at 940 metres and then, if we
could have but jumped thése, a mild Padling of a
trifling/ thousand feet which offered a gentle walk
down to the Liri walley, namely the foad to Rome.
This was of course the narrow defité of whichr
Cassino nad a sports-arena view --the kernelof thé
nut we were-hoping toerack.
The first F.0.0. mission our battery sent up was
on the Aurunci range. And Captain H. was the chosen
officer. He went off with boyish good cheer. In the
next few days confused messages came down from him.
but never a map reference on which to fire, no doubt


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
because any bombardment of a ridge got our own troops
too.
One morning the Battery command post called me
to say that Captain H. must be relieved at once and
by me. I gathered my signallers and we put on as much
heavy clothing as we could get together and started
on our trek.
After crossing the plain and the Garigliano we
began to climb a series of winding paths, many of
them through woods and thus safe from observation.
The rocks that jutted out starkly white and grey on
either side of our path, the steepness of the woods
we passed through and the view when we suddenly
turned to look at the placid world far below, made up
a kingdom of heaven here and now fas Giordano Bruno
Very
said of this same landscape over a half a thousand
kkar
years agorland was roasted alive for A and other
divine attributions to material earth).
This was still ancient Italy, a last appearance
perhapsrand we the harbingers of her future
dissolution, 7 pehhabs.
It was by now a few days before Christmas. We
trudged from village to village with our kit, bending
forward the more as the path grew steeper. Loaded


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
donkeys stumbled ahead of us. We went from one
farmhouse to another, each looking dirty under its
snow. The rations we had weren't sufficient. The wind
came like a dart from the sea. We felt irritated and
childish. I insisted on setting my men a good example
by striding ahead of them but it probably exhausted
them unnecessarily. Leading is never a matter of
image. The silence grew as we rose, hugged all round
as we were by the trees.
I had a fit of embittered fury, which happily I
kept to myself, when I saw the legs of a dead German
sticking out of the ground. Why the hell wasn't he
buried? It didn't occur to me that he may but
recently have been blown into the air, already dead,
then half buried in the fountain of earth. And who
was there to see to burials on slopes inaccessible to
vehicles?
Once m CrR
We looked back/and saw the fields below Sessa
Aurunca and the plain further south to Capua, and I
thought I could see the Volturno hidden in low mist.
The men were lagging behind me and I petulantly
called down to them to hurry up, only because I
wished, as they did, to slow down. The youngest of
them, loaded as he was, strode up the hill and passed


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
me, forcing himself up just to give me a lesson,
which of course angered me more. I then hung back,
not caring. I was beginning to realise what a child I
still was. Yet it wasn't the child that filled me
with pouting anger and rebellion and sullen defiance
but the fact that I was still a learner of the tricks
of this deadly trade. I was inadequate.
As the air began to cool with the approaching
heights beyond the tree-line we cooled too and only
thought of what would greet us at the top, and if a
hot meal was on the cards.
We came at last to what must surely be the
summit. The steep slope above us, meeting the sky,
shone with boulders vast and small. Little popping
noises came from the ridge followed by A tiny drifts
of smoke-hand grenades lobbed over from the other
side. The slope was in the care of our hardiest and
most dependable troops, the Guards. We could see them
here and there behind makeshift shields of pebble and
stone. And in the middle of the shining white hill
there was their tiny command post, under a massive
jutting rock. A Bren gun was mounted to one side of
it to provide any covering fire that might suddenly
be needed at the ridge.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
The Guards were in somewhat somnolent mood. They
told me you have to be careful how you step over the
pebbles because' they aim at noises. At the ridge the
Germans were SO close you could hear them cough. So
at the ridge you talked in whispers. One sometimes
saw the hand that lobbed the grenade over from the
other side.
Captain H. came down the slope and we greeted
each other. He was over-excited and tired. He said
the Germans had stormed the ridge the previous day.
He had killed one of them with his revolver, then
seized his gun-I think the deadly quick-firing
Schmeizer-and turned it on the others. He later got
an MC for this, cited not exactly for being an
F.0.0., which wasn't feasible in these conditions,
but for becoming an infantryman in a matter of
seconds. He made it sound like an adventure, as if he
couldn't believe the events-the sudden appearance
over the ridge of firing Germans, his killing one of
them, his seizing of the Schmeizer. It was like a
dream he had nothing to do with, he wondered at it
himself as he spoke, flushed and gushing like a boy.
I watched him walk down the slippery jagged
slope to the path home, his feet splayed out in that


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
questing way of his, his men shuffling behind him,
glad to be gone. The Guards were sorry to lose
him-as, I felt sure, they were sorry to get an
untried youth in his place. They had lost most of
their officers and needed all the leaders they could
find and Captain H. was a born one, and above all an
older man.
I talked to the commanding officer under his
jutting rock and, being a career Guards officer, he
gave the dazzling slope, with his soft singing
patrician accent, the air of a St. James's club.
Mortar-bombs and sudden enemy appearances seemed, as
you sat with him, no more risky than crossing the
Mall. He chatted easily without any sense of a
difference of rank, and far from conveying
disappointment at getting a raw youth in place of
Captain H., he seemed to thank me for coming, and at
such a bad time, you know.
One felt very vulnerable from the air, none of
us being dug down, but happily air-burst
shells-those we feared most because their down-
flying flak covered such a large area-were
ineffective in the mountains. as they tended to burst
too high, with the result that they weren't sent very


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
frequently either. My men and I were also nervous
about having nowhere to put ourselves except in the
open. I chose a position low on the slope, below the
We cauld luild a mlde
Guards command post, where there-were-piles-of
hllel av lesst.
boulders. defeuce -gte ogaint
The Guards were preparing for another attack
moflen
5 (itte Kneg.crlertone
that evening. When I had finished settling us inli
crawled up to the ridge and lay down by the most
forward man with his Bren gun. We whispered together.
How am I going to see over the crest? I asked him and
he said, If you put up a finger they'll have it off
in a second. He said, Listen to their voices. I was
surprised how easily the Germans were murmuring to
each other. Those further down the slope behind them
even shouted at times.
Clu € c
flav
Ahen a hand-grenade came over you realised how
close they were, lying exactly like us, a few inches
from the top. My Guardsman began talking about the
officers. He whispered, They've got pictures of their
granddads on the wall at home, the ones who got
killed and they want to do the same, it's an honour,
they go out on a patrol and you'd think they were
walking round their parks, they're talking at the top
of their voices and a Jerry patrol might be two feet


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
away and of course Jerry fires at the voice, and as
fast as one officer gets picked off another one takes
his place-I've never seen anything like it, they
think it's a party, they don't know what fear is,
they've inherited it, we've hardly got an officer
left, they call each other Nigel and Miles and Darcy,
they grew up together, they know each other's
families, it's like a big party and it scares the
shit out of me but you've got to have officers
haven't you?
The attack didn't come but the heavy bitingly
cold rain we feared did. My men and I began to shiver
Soaked
in our wet clothes and of course the cursing
began-what the hell do we do without bivouacs, beds,
tools to dig with, tarpaulins? The ridge began
flowing with icy water and low on the slope it soon
came down in a steady torrent. It poured in a wide
shallow waterfall over our boots and in seconds our
and hagg-cirele a nenniip >tcan,
socks were spongesk I told them, Get the blankets out
loo.
before they're soakedk Then I told them to strip,
take off every inch of their sopping wet clothing,
and to lie down actually in the torrent, where it was
shallowest, and to make pillows with our clothes and
lie side by side naked SO that maximum heat would be


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
generated, and in that position we pulled the more or
less dry blankets over us.
We slept without moving all night long, in a
Wikk
Ylllig ube u
warmth like summer, in all that water/ which-must
have warmed with our four bodies. And we rose in the
drenched
first merciful sun to put on our Gopping clothes and
for
11 the next few hours we stood steaming as the heat
rose to midday fullness. The blue dome of the sky
too
came down and touched us. The rocks steamed and then
gleamed and by the end of that day, after we had made
o hitle
a fire behind A wall ofboulders and cooked our meal,
we were as dry as boards and not a drop of water
remained on the friendly stones. We were lucky to be
gensally
in the south where Christmas day is warm and still.
Next morning I was called up to the ridge and
ym like'
told I could runA make as much noise as liked At
the top an officer was standing there with a smile,
actially standing at the very top, and he told me,
They've asked for a truce to bury their dead.
i Hre
I walked over the ridge and stared down into
Ite
hen
and
golla
glitlenug
skeaniip Ja, feu Cun eyecnuld Jor,
enemy land ektending
bright
sun, theh sweeping slowly up to a distant stony
horizon, and there before me, about fifty yards down,
a small ungainly German medico bearing a white flag


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
on a pole twice his height was coming up. The moment
he saw me he began calling out Nein! Nein!, gesturing
me to fall back. I remained there, not understanding.
cuntinued lahup
He came level with us and as he did So I teck a
leisurely look at the enemy slope, more from
curiosity than a wish to see their dispositions.
Besides, all you could see was boulders. And when the
tiny flag-bearer reached us he too looked round
freely at our set-up, which confused me even more as
to the meaning of his shouts and gestures. That he
recognised me as a gunner officer, fearful that I was
working out future targets, is just possible since my
insignia were different from those of the Guards. But
more possible is that he was afraid I might walk down
into their lines, which would have ruined the truce
before it started, and perhaps got both of us killed.
We stood around talking. He spoke excellent
English and came further down our slope. I would have
kept him at a distance but the Guards officer was
easy-going (if death has no sting you can take your
ease). The German asked for plenty of time to bury
their dead and see to the wounded, whom they had
still not brought in. They would need a day. From now


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
through the following day, until nightfall. It was
music for us.
We lay about all that day, smoked without
worrying where the smoke drifted to, talked in normal
voices, stood about in groups. Sometimes we heard the
enemy calling to each other as the stretcher bearers
did their work. At the first hint of nightfall I
began to fear an attack because the medico had taken
such a good look at our positions. But we all slept
soundly-on both sides, I think.
Then next morning all hell came our way. Heavy
stuff started screaming over. The ridge was sprayed
with Spandau bullets. A Guards patrol had gone out
the previous evening and it hadn't come back. The
decedcdls take
command post was empty. I taok my men down to a
narrow defile between high white rocks where we
talk
hugged the walls to avoid the flak. Tuare wer
In a sudden lull we moved again and came across
an officer and seven or eight of his men. This was. at
the edge of a wooded area well below our ridge. The
officer and I exchanged a greeting. His men were
tense and unnerved, looking round them. He and I
chatted for a bit. They had been separated from their
company and the officer was moving his men around


) un Lavip neachai the d - u line ho l tel aryme
ee . Le h kwn mn Auu un.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
just as I was. I was itching to move on and could see
he was too. If you keep moving you have a better
chance (why you cannot specify).
Lhe separated and went our ways. There were quite
a number of dead. As my men and I climbed we kept on
hearing remarks-They've got old so-and-so, so-and-so
Company's pinned down. It seemed we were all in
separate small units on that slope, cut off from each
other by the suddenness of the attack and without
central command.
We passed a guardsman sitting close to a corpse.
He was staring in front of him. The dead soldier,
right by his ankles, had his genitals torn out. The
blood was new, bright. The guardsman didn't look to
left or right. He had no fear of shells now that his
best pal was gone. We passed him in his vigil.
Such a vigil has many variations, being a last
long dialogue. Asking why. What became of you? What
is to become of me? So quick.
In a fidgety mood I took my men back to our
first rocky shelter and left them there smoking, then
I went for one of my lone strolls. I climbed to a
flank where our patrols crossed to approach the enemy
ridge from behind. I wondered how open this flank


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
was. It had a silence of its own. There was the white
gleam of stone behind the last trees, and then when I
got beyond the trees there were great joyous dazzling
stretches of stone as far as the eye could see. These
lone sallies of mine were very important to me. I
felt I sussed out the closeness of the enemy this
way. But most there was my obsessive curiosity about
nim-how do his cigarettes smell, why is his uniform
that funny blue?
I walked back through the woods and came to the
clearing I had left and there was the same officer I
earler.
had been chatting ton He and his men were sitting
side by side on a huge tree trunk and they were
looking up at me. I noticed as I came further down
ak lue,
that they were beginning to starek One of them nudged
andhelos ed
the officer and he too looked up at me, staring.
loshad
ed,diibehevip
Their expressions were onesof shockx They stared
harder and harder as I came close to them.
dudderd
But we saw you! the officer, called out tome. We
saw you dead! Up there! Just where you've come from.
We were talking about it! Saying what a bloody shame.
Not even when I stood close to them did they
believe I was there. Nor even when I sat down among
were tey veall, cmvincsd,
them/ It was you! they kept on saying, shaking their


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
too
heads. No, I said, here I am, with a smile. But 1/was
strangely unconvinced, as if death could come and go
any mowe a
also
and the dividing line wasn't stricth And I aiso tound fell
andy grargul -
myself moved/that they should have sorrowed for me,
given their attention to my death, among SO many.
Then I began to feel I had indeed been killed
and this life I was sharing with these men on a tree
trunk was a new life, a life after death as all life
is, and simultaneously there came the question I knew
to be naif, how is it I am back with the same men, on
the same tree trunk I left? How is it that my
memories-of K. and the little Kent cottage and her
mother talking about the coming revolution-are still
in my head : if this is a new life?
And then all of a sudden my. thoughts on the
subject céased, and were finished and, done with. And
I was left with my life as it was, new or old.I
thought instead of the man whom they had mistaken
for me, he who had died in my stead. And ittoyle por duil,
Another day shells began falling and.they -
weren't German. Someone touched me on the 'shoulder.
He was a runner from the command post. He said, These
are your guns. I. heard guardsmen grumbling 'as if
Jerry isn't enough'. I snatched the mike of my radio


Buc Ices, 1 Hhaype
cau
e a mb
9 desth, UV Reem k i ttie cyo 2 Mton, ftren i
huuvr he eexy d the hew les
y- tind
pmide 7-
Cn flasz uit), meueniag
ngy
dorug
auottis hk bn yo hea plara ho 3 e yus lune.
N 2 yo
4 t Ko cnuld le ue, Le lue
toe, Lake kai, Daus ducre Saluo handy.
) lv spheard Ite ns Iine hadie love aft al. We
Hoetne
had made Lid t get helind the eueuy
wetam Ferele ut noltif chauerd,


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
and said, Stop firing, stop firing, but the shells
Shelly
went on because the radio was dead. The firing only
stopped when the guns got to the end of their
programme. I pointed out that I hadn't ordered gun
support because of the inaccuracy of all fire in
mountain areas, that my radio was dead, that in any
case the C.O. hadn't asked me for fire. But the
incident was past. Nobody had any further interest.
And, in the way of the world, they didn't believe me
anyway.
On Christmas Eve a runner told us that a church
service was going to be held in the kitchen of one of
the farmhouses below. I walked down there in the hope
of getting a nostalgic reminder of my long- stint as a
choir boy. The singing was coarse and dismal, the
padre's sermon - idiotic, the colonel's cheering words
farlug.
a C tt chat. I returned to our stone warrens
fos2
relieved to be back, under the blue pristine dome
that made light of it all.
I was getting bolshie. There was nothing for an
F.0.0. here. I remember passing a prisoner coming
along one of the mountain paths. He was about my age.
I stepped aside to let him through, he was wet and
exhausted. I gathered the spit in my mouth to aim it


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
at him but I swallowed it again and found I had no >uch
all.
real intention
He flinched back from my
gaze. I was accusing him of things I myself was
doing-I blamed him with my stare for mortar-bombs,
for pebbles that slipped under the feet, for the
inadequacy of our rations and the big fires we
couldn't risk lighting because of the smoke, and I
blamed him for the dying. Never in my life had I
looked at a fellow human that way and for months I
remembered how he flinched back, and gradually from
my guilty memory of it came self-correction-Don't J m
dare repeat that kind of thing. I saw his big round
frightened eyes again and again. Unless you see
yourself as the enemy, him in you and yourself in
him, you are going to go have a bad war of it. I was
glad to have caught myself in time.
One day I joined a Guards patrol with my men. I
think the idea was for us to establish a foothold on
the flank which I had explored all alone. From that
flank I might bring down fire on the German supply
lines. I was once more in radio contact. We watched
the Guardsmen buckling on their belts and ammunition
pouches. We assembled in a white hollow under our own
slope, silent. Then we moved forward in single file


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
and as we did SO a barrage started, with mortar bombs
coming very close, making us hug the mountain side.
Suddenly one of my signallers ran back and threw
himself trembling under a tree. I ran after him and
shook him by the shoulders. He was pale and the skin
of his face was typically loose. I pulled him to his
feet and realised that in this way I was mastering my
own fear. I took him by the belt and drew him close
to me. He hung his head. I unbuttoned my revolver
holster and lay the revolver at the end of its
lanyard in the palm of my hand, my back to the other
men. And I said to him very softly, You're going to
follow me, do you understand that? And he did. Why on
! uaeee
earth I pulled out my revolver I couldn't fathom even
# thetime. Isuspect somedel
ent en
J mk refm h leuew Sne u Czlt wali ne
pulluy
ha mountair.
orud A
Bv /he incident gave me a chance to be a leader, on
a mission that had turned out not to need one. So it
quite bucked me up. As to what happened on that
patrol I have no recall, and I think I never had.
Since you never talk about battle events afterwards
there is nothing to give memory a form. It appears
that certain things are dumped and you don't know
why.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
We were bedraggled and of course there was no
chance of a bath. Nor did we try for one. As we felt
neglected SO we neglected ourselves. I watched one of
my signallers as he hobbled down the hill saying,
I've got frostbite, I can't get my boot on, I'm going
back, I'm sick. I made little effort to stop him and
was astonished at myself. We received no messages
from our regiment. No orders. No questions. And this
forgetfulness on their part helped me. . Christmas was
now over. My earlier appeals over the radio to let us
come down at least for Christmas had gone naturally
and rightly unheard.
In the end I too decided to walk down-with the
rest of my men. I appeared at our gun position
dishevelled and dirty and angry and luckily the first
man who saw me was Captain Maugham, that uncommonly
serene man, reticent, diffident. He smiled
sympathetically-Where have you sprung from? And
then, after standing gazing at me for a moment, he
added, You'd better go and smarten yourself up. And
that was that. Nothing more said.
We heard later that the French chasseurs, as we
called them, under General Juin-mountain troops for


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
whom we had a special regard-had taken over the
Guards positions.
We all knew that Juin was the only man who
could clear those peaks without any trouble. It was
the only time I remember our being right about
Somelhup
anything. His men were Moroccans who had grown up in
the mountains, while the Germans, well fed and well
equipped though they were, lacked the smallest
knowhow
mountain training. We all knew that the Goums, as
these Moroccans were called, yould do the trick in a
thrice. They would work behind the German line and
thus break the gridlock round Cassino.
But our news was inaccurate. It was what we
wanted, not what happened. General Juin's Free French
Corps had been used briefly back in November and the
in a din
Whei he wachtigu A
Goums made a deep impression on our al rmy commander- he sew
how
IS being entirely unconcerned about the-matterof
Hoy WeT And
death! But/that was where it had ended.
accoupanidd
As we now know, General Juin sat
- jeepwith
iu c long Jaspsi usney
General Clark/fer quite a long journey at about this
luoc
time and throughout the journey he tried to persuade
Clark that a simple outflanking movement by his men
was the only way to turn the battle. Juin said


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
haf
afterwards that he had the impression that Clark was
thinking of other things.
The Goums were frightening for all of us,
including the Italians. Everyone knew how they
returned from battle with the trophy of one ear from
each of the enemy killed. It had a bizarrely shocking
effect on us--we who blasted people to pieces. The
taking of an ear seemed to us a breach of lethal
etiquette.
We were even chary of having them on a flank.
And the Italians, for whom explosives were one thing
and a long knife in the back quite another, would
anxiously ask, E i marpchini, dove sono? where are
gli?
they?
Because the Goums weren't (yet) used, the Fifth
al rmy sustained in the one month from December 15 1944
to January 15 1945 15.000 battle casualties, American
and British.
And there were no fewer than 50.000 non-battle
casualties, namely the sick from exposure, exhaustion
or shock, and frequently all three.


Laer Revision
* APPARITION
An Intelligence picture of the enemy in the
Aurunci mountains trickled down to us. They were in
good fighting fettle and commodiously dug in with
regular food kitchens, ammunition ready for any
eventuality.
It was one thing to send us FOO's up there in
the winter but another to face the avalanches of rain
that had been foreçast, plus drastically lower
temperatures. To cap the folly the thing was called
Operation Raincoat, Would to God we had had them.
The story is now that General Eisenhower,
commander in chief of allied operations, had ordered
special mountain wear back in October but it didn't
arrive until November. But it never reached us, even
by the end of December, by which. time the attacks on
the ridges were petering out in attrition.
My map showed me that on the east side of the
Italian peninsula the Eighth army under General
Montgomery was bogged down in rain and mud and
blocked by swelling rivers. His big attack on
November 20th ran into bad trouble, though he was
fivé times stronger, in men and munitions, than the
Germans facing him. Armies were unwieldy things to
have in such a terrain. You needed small independent
units with their own short supply lines.
The Big Show we were waiting for opened on
December 2 1944 when nine hundred of our guns
delivered over four thousand tons of shells on the
implacably resistant boulders. This mighty


bombardment, which sounded routinely like the last
thunder of the gods, could do little to influence a
battle So high up. The margin of error in the flight
of those shells took them invariably far from the
ridges where most of the fighting must go on.
Mountains had to be held by humans within listening
distance from each other, on the two sides of those
thin lines, especially as the varying temperatures
and pressures of mountain air influenced the
ballistics and made more error than usual. So
artillery fire was mostly useless up there.
Nevertheless we were sent up to join the Guards,
those hardiest and most reliable of troops. The first
to go was Captain Hartley. Monte Camino (I believe
our particular ridge was called Cerasola) was SO
sharp a meeting of two steep slopes that maximum
proximity between the two sides was achieved.
Confused messages came down to us from Hartley but
never a map reference on which to fire the guns.
One morning the Battery command post sent a
runner to tell me that Hartley must be relieved at
once and by me. So I set off with four men, not those
that had accompanied me at the river Volturno-I
still hadn't chosen my ideal team. Actually the man
I chose most consistently was the most difficult of
the lot.
To get to those mountain tops west of Cassino
you had to cross the most gracious of clement rivers,
the Garigliano, which curled, as still as glass,
under the Aurunci foothills.


By a series of paths, some of them safe from
enemy observation, some not, you climbed the three
thousand feet. The rocks that jutted out starkly
white and grey on either side of your path, the
steepness of the woods you passed through and the
view when you suddenly turned to look at the placid
river far below, made up-as Giordano Bruno said of
this same landscape over a half a thousand years
ago-a kingdom of heaven here and now, alive and
actual (he was roasted alive in the Piazza Farnese in
Rome for that sort of thought).
It was a few days before Christmas. We had put
on as much heavy clothing as we could get together.
We trudged from village to village with our loads,
bending forward the more as the path grew steep.
Loaded donkeys stumbled ahead of us. We went from one
farmhouse to another, each looking dirty under its
snow. The rations we had weren't sufficient. The wind
came like a dart from the sea. We felt irritated and
childish. I insisted on giving them a good example by
striding ahead of them but it probably exhausted them
unnecessarily. Leading is never a matter of image.
The silence grew as we rose, hugged all round as we
were by the trees.
I had a fit of embittered fury, which happily I
kept to myself, when I saw the legs of a dead German
sticking out of the ground. Why the hell hasn't the
poor devil been buried? It didn't occur to me that he
may but recently have been blown, already dead, into
the air and half buried by the explosion. And who was


there to see to burials on slopes inaccessible to
vehicles?
We looked back and saw the fields below Sessa
Aurunca and the plain to Capua, with the Volturno
hidden in low mist. The men were lagging behind me
again and I petulantly called down to them to hurry
up, only because I wished, as they did, to slow down.
The youngest of them, loaded as he was, strode up the
hill and passed me, forcing himself up just to give
me a lesson, which of course angered me more. I then
hung back, not caring. I was beginning to realise
what a child I still was. Yet it wasn't a child
filling me with pouting anger and rebellion and
sullen defiance but the fact that I was as yet a
learner of the tricks of this deadly trade.
As the air began to cool with the approaching
heights beyond the tree-line we cooled too and only
thought of what would greet us at the top. And if a
hot meal was on the cards.
We at last came to what must surely be the
summit. The steep slope above us, meeting the sky,
shone with boulders vast and small. Little popping
noises came from the ridge followed by a tiny drift
of smoke-hand grenades lobbed over from the other
side. We could see Guards here and there behind
makeshift shields of pebble and stone. And in the
middle of the shining white hill there was their tiny
command post, under a massive jutting rock. A Bren
gun was mounted ta one side of it to provide any
covering fire that might be needed at the ridge.


The Guards were in somewhat somnolent mood. They
told us we had to be careful how we stepped over
pebbles, the noise of which could instantly turn us
into targets. At the ridge the Germans were SO close
you could hear them cough. So at the ridge you talked
in whispers. One sometimes saw the hand that lobbed
the grenade over.
Captain Hartley came down the slope and we
greeted each other. He was over-excited and tired. He
said the Germans had stormed the ridge the previous
day. He had killed one of them, then seized his
gun-I think a quick-firing schmeizer-and turned it
on the other Germans. He later got an MC for this,
cited for becoming an infantryman at a critical
moment. He made it sound like an adventure, also as
if he couldn't believe it-the sudden appearance over
the ridge of firing Germans, his killing of one of
them, presumably with his revolver, then his seizing
of the schmeizer. It was like a dream he had nothing
to do with and he talked through his panting like a
boy, flushed.
I watched him walk down the slippery jagged
slope to the path home, his feet splayed out in that
questing way of his, his men shuffling behind him,
glad to be gone. The Guards were sorry to lose
him-and (I felt sure) to get an untried youth in his
place. They had lost many if not most of their
officers and needed all the leaders they could find
and Hartley was a born one, and above all an older
man.


I talked to the commanding officer under his
jutting rock and, being a career officer, he turned
his command post, with his soft singing patrician
accent, into a St. James's club. Mortar-bombs and
sudden enemy appearances seemed, as you sat with him,
no more risky than crossing the Mall. He chatted
easily, indifferent to the difference of rank between
us, and far from conveying disappointment at getting
a raw youth in place of Hartley he all but thanked me
for coming ('and at such a bad time').
We felt vulnerable from the air-that is, from
air-burst shells-none of us being dug down. But
happily air-burst shells, with their down-flying flak
that covered such a large area, tended to burst too
high in the mountains SO they weren't sent over very
often. My men and I were nervous about having to live
virtually in the open. There was no time to dig down,
even if we had had the tools. We had to establish
radio contact and I needed to get to know the ridge.
Finally I chose a position low on the slope where the
boulders were plentiful.
The Guards were preparing for another attack
that evening. When I had finished settling us in I
walked up to the ridge and lay down by one of the
forward men with his Bren gun. We whispered together.
How am I going to see over the crest? I asked him and
he said, If you put up a finger they'll have it off
in a second. He said, Listen to their voices. I was
surprised how easily the Germans were murmuring to
each other. Those further down the enemy slope even
shouted at times.


When a hand grenade came over-that was when you
realised how close they were, lying exactly like us,
a few inches from the top. My Guardsmen began talking
about the officers. He whispered, They've pictures of
their granddads on the wall at home, the ones who
got killed and they want to do the same, it's an
honour, a family tradition, they don't bother about
Jerry, they go out on a patrol and you'd think they
were walking round their parks, they're talking in
ordinary voices and a Jerry patrol might be two feet
away and of course Jerry fires at the voice, and as
fast as one officer gets picked off another one goes
too-I've never seen anything like it, they think
it's a party, they don't know what fear is, they've
inherited it, we've hardly got an officer left, they
call each other Nigel and Miles and Darcy, they all
seem to know each other, they grew up together, it's
like a shooting party and it scares the shit out of
you but you've got to have officers haven't you?
The attack didn't come but the rain we feared
did. My men and I began to shiver in our wet clothes
and of course the cursing began-what the hell do we
do without bivouacs, beds, tools to dig with,
tarpaulins? Soon the ridge began flowing with ice-
cold water and of course low on the slope it soon
came down in a steady torrent. It poured in a wide
shallow waterfall over our boots and in seconds our
socks were sponges. I told them, Get the blankets out
before they're soaked. Then I told them to strip,
take off every inch of their sopping wet clothing,
and to lie down actually in the torrent, where it was


shallowest, and to make pillows with our clothes and
lie side by side naked So that maximum heat would be
generated, and in that position we pulled the more or
less dry blankets over us and we slept without moving
all night long, in ' a warmth like summer. We rose in
the first merciful sun to put on our wet clothes
again and for the next few hours we stood steaming
together as the heat rose to midday fullness. The
blue dome of the sky seemed to come down and touch
us. The rocks steamed and gleamed and by the end of
that day, after we had made a fire behind a wall of
boulders and cooked our meal we were as dry as boards
and not a drop of water remained on the friendly
stones. We were lucky to be in the south where
Christmas day can be warm and still.
That morning I was called up to the ridge and
told I could run, make as much noise as I liked. At
the top an officer was standing with the sky behind
him, as large as life, smiling, actually at the very
top, and he told me, They've asked for an hour's
truce to bury their dead.
I walked over. the ridge and stared down into
enemy land extending far, far below in the bright
sun, then sweeping up to a distant stony horizon, and
there before me, about fifty yards down, an ungainly,
German medico bearing a white flag on a pole twice
his height was coming up. The moment he saw me he
began calling out Nein! Nein! and gesturing me to
fall back. I remained there, not understanding. He
came level with us and as he did SO I took a
leisurely look at the slope, more from curiosity than


a wish to see their dispositions. Once at the top the
tiny flag-bearer came to our side of the ridge and
looked down at our dispositions freely, which
confused me even more as to the meaning of his
shouts. That he recognised my gunner officer's is
possible, fearful that I was working out my next
targets. Equally he may have been anxious to keep me
from walking down their slope, since only he, with
his white flag, had the right of movement into enemy
territory. He spoke excellent English asked for time
to bury their dead and see to the wounded, whom they
had still not brought in. They would need a day. The
following day. It was music for us.
We lay about all that day, smoked without
worrying where the' smoke drifted to, talked in normal
voices, stood about in groups. Sometimes we heard the
enemy calling out to each other as the stretcher
bearers did their work. It lasted till night fall,
when we feared a sudden attack because the medico had
taken such a good look at our slope. Most important,
he had seen where the Guards command post lay. But
that would have involved a certain treachery in them
and the Germans were rarely that. Except that in
battle treachery is a word difficult to define. We
all slept soundly,, on both sides.
And next morning all hell came our way. Heavy
stuff started screaming over. The ridge was being
sprayed with Spandau bullets. A Guards patrol had
gone out the previous evening and as far as I knew it
hadn't come back. The command post was empty. To
escape the heavy stuff I took my men down to a narrow


defile between high white rocks where we hugged the
walls.
There was a sudden lull my men and we moved on.
We passed an officer and seven or eight men. They
were sitting on a huge log. We chatted for a moment.
It was at the edge of a wooded area well below our
ridge. I kept moving about. In this way you keep your
army number mobile, or think you do. There were
already quite a number of dead. We kept on hearing,
They've got old sorand-so, so-and-so's Company is
pinned down. It seemed we were all in separate small
units, cut off from each other by the suddenness of
the attack and without central command. The heavy
stuff started coming over again and I decided to move
my men on, just for the hell of it. We passed a
Guardsman sitting by a dead friend. He was staring in
front of him. The dead soldier, right by his knees,
had his genitals torn out. It had just happened. The
guardsman didn't look to left or right. He had no
fear of the shells now that his pal was gone. We
passed him in his vigil. Such a vigil has many
variations, being a last long dialogue asking why.
what became of you? what is to become of me? So
quick. So gone. All of life is trying to be solved in
that staring silence and your friend doesn't answer
you.
In a fidgety mood I took my men back to our
rocky shelter and left them there smoking. Then I
went for one of my lone strolls. I saw no one about.
I come to the area where a cluster of shells had
fallen. I wondered how open to the enemy this flank


was. Our patrols always exited by this area to reach
the enemy positions, getting at them from below.
I walked back through the woods. I came to the
clearing I had left and there below me were the same
men with their officer on the tree trunk. I noticed
as I came down that they were staring at me. I saw
one of them nudge the officer and he looked up at me.
Their expressions were ones of shock. They all
started looking at me in astonishment. There was fear
too. They stared harder and harder as I came down.
But we saw you! the officer called out. We saw
you dead! Up there! Just where you've come from. We
were talking about it! Saying what a bloody shame.
Not even when I stood close to them did they
believe I was there. Nor even when I sat down among
them. It was you! they kept on saying, shaking their
heads. No, I said, here I am. But even I remained
unconvinced, as if death could come and go, as if the
dividing line wasn't strict. I felt moved that they
had sorrowed for me, given their attention to my
death, among So many.
I wondered many times afterwards if I had really
died and if this new life was an illusion I had
slipped into and was taking with the same deadly
seriousness as I had taken the previous life with,
whatever that life had been. After all, we know
nothing about how things happen to us. They only
happen, just as life happened to us when we were
born, and life is a certain way and there it is, you
did nothing to be born, you opened your eyes and you
witnessed a life you had nothing to make and at first


don't understand but bit by bit you piece it together
because you must live it. And though there are
millions of us we are millions of editions of that
one lone thing, the life we know nothing about, so
that we don't even,know for sure if there really are
millions of us, we have to take it on trust because
we only have ourselves to go by, our lone selves, SO
how can we say there really other people just because
our lone self tells us, how do we know about changes
that might take place inside of us, how do we know we
don't move from life to life when we know nothing of
how we got here and how this life which we slowly get
to know from birth came about? If we did move from
life to life we wouldn't know each life was different
or new because it would be life and we just have to
live it-it comes packaged with memories, this life,
and with familiar things, however new and different.
And So my thoughts went on as I remembered those
men's faces, their gaping fearful disbelief, I saw
how truly they had seen me dead.
I couldn't work out why all hell had broken out
that day after the truce, why the patrol hadn't come
back, why the Guards command post was empty of its
amiable fearless club man. It seems clear enough to
me now that the medico with his white flag had seen
the path by which our supplies reached us, just below
the tree line. It was this area that the shells had
targeted. And as for my club man he was at the ridge


to hold a brief enemy infiltration. No further
attacks materialised. We all went back to our posts.
One day shells began falling again but this time
they weren't German. Someone touched me on the
shoulder. He was from the command post. He said,
These are your guns. I heard Guardsmen grumbling 'as
if Jerry isn't enough'. I snatched the radio mike and
said, Stop firing, stop firing, but the firing only
stopped when the guns had got to the end of their
programme. I pointed out that I hadn't ordered any
artillery support, and in any case my radio had been
dead. But the incident was dead. Nobody was
interested. And, in the way of the world, they didn't
believe me.
On Christmas Eve a runner told us that a church
service was to be held in the kitchen of one of the
farmhouses below. I walked down there in the hope of
a nostalgic reminder of my long stint as a choir boy.
The singing was coarse and dismal, the padre's sermon
idiotic, the colonel's cheering words paltry chit-
chat. I returned to our stone warrens relieved to be
back, under the blue pristine dome.
I was getting bolshie. There was nothing for an
FOO to do up here. I passed a prisoner of war coming
along one of the mountain paths. He was about my age.
I stepped aside to let him pass, he was wet and
exhausted. I gathered the saliva in my mouth to spit
at him but swallowed it again. I tried to make my
eyes hard and he flinched back from them. I inwardly
blamed him for the mortar-bombs and the pebbles that
yielded to the feet like a beach, for the inadequacy


of the rations and the big fires we couldn't risk
lighting because of the smoke they would send up, and
I even blamed him for the dying. I had never looked
at anyone this way and for months I remembered how he
flinched back, and from my guilty memory of that came
a slow self-correction. This is another step on the
soldier's way. I saw his big round frightened eyes
again and again. Unless you see yourself as the
enemy, him in you and yourself in him, you are going
to go have a bad war of it.
There was at last a chance for me to be the
leader I was here to be when one of my signallers
(the difficult one) refused to walk along a certain
path. We had just joined a Guards patrol. I think the
idea was for us to be with the patrol while it
established a foothill on the flank that I had
explored some days before. I could lay down covering
fire if necessary. We watched the Guardsmen buckling
on their belts and ammunition pouches. We assembled
in a white hollow under the slope, silent. Then we
moved forward in a single file and as we did SO a
barrage started, with mortar bombs coming very close,
making us hug the mountain side. And suddenly this
signaller of mine runs back down the slope and lies
down trembling. I run after him and shake him by the
shoulders. He is pale and the skin of his face is
strangely loose. I pull him to his feet and realise
that in this way I am mastering my own fear. I take
him by the belt and draw him near to me. He hangs his
head. I unbutton my revolver holster and lay the
revolver at the end of its lanyard in the palm of my


hand, my back to the other men. And I say to him very
softly, You're going to follow me, do you understand
that? And he nods. Why on earth I pulled out my
revolver I shall never know. It seemed to me a damned
silly histrionic trick even at the time.
We were bedraggled and of course there was no
chance of a bath. Nor did we try for one. As we felt
neglected SO we neglected ourselves. I watched
another of my signallers as he hobbled down the hill
saying, I've got frostbite, I can't get my boot on,
I'm going back, I'm sick. I made no effort to stop
him. He returned to our guns, a very long haul for a
frostbitten foot, and presumably found medical
treatment. He was walking normally when I got back.
While on that mountain I received barely anhy
messages from my regiment. No orders. No questions.
But this forgetfulness on their part helped me. .
Christmas was now over. My earlier appeals over the
radio to let us came down at least for Christmas went
naturally and rightly unheard. So in end I too
decided to walk down with the rest of my men. A
couple of hours or more later we appeared like
scarecrows at the gun-site. The first person I
clapped eyes on was Captain Maugham, that uncommonly
serene man, reticent, diffident man. He smiled, he
nearly laughed. Where have you sprung from? he asked.
And then, after standing gazing at me for a moment he
said, You'd better go and smarten yourself up. And
that was that. Nothing more was said. There was a
certain wonderful conclusiveness about army life.


We heard that the French chasseurs, as we
called them, under General Juin-mountain troops for
whom we had a special regard-had taken over the
Guards positions we had left. We all knew that Juin
was the only man who could clear those peaks of
enemy, and without much trouble. His men were
Moroccans who had grown up in the mountains, while
the Germans, well equipped for the mountains as they
were, lacked mountain training. The Morrocans were
on horseback, could appear and be gone in a silent
moment, and their horses moved were like mountain
deer.
But our news was inaccurate. It was what we
wanted, not what happened. The Free French Corps
under General Juin had been used briefly back in
November- and had even struck our army commander as
being astonishingly unconcerned about their own
safety or demise. And that was where it ended.
General Juin described once how he had taken a long
jeep ride with Mark Clark and urged on him throughout
the journey the need for his men of the mountains to
settle the issue. But, he said, he had the impression
that Clark was thinking of other things.
And in the end it was indeed General Juin, it
was indeed his Morrocans who, simply and swiftly, cut
the Germans off from their supply lines and secured
at last the road to Rome. But this was after months
of carnage and battery, when whole divisions went
down.
The Goums, as those Morrocans were called, were
frightening for all of us, Italians included. They


returned from battle with the trophy of one ear from
each of the enemy killed. That news had a bizarre
effect on us: we found that we considered blasting
the enemy to pieces with shells a respectable thing
to do while the taking of an ear was a frightening
breach of war etiquette. We were even chary of having
the Goums on a flank. And the Italians, for whom
explosives were one thing and a long knife in the
back quite another (being a deep historical memory),
would anxiously ask, E gli Moracchini, dove sono?
But the Goums weren't for the time being used,
so in the one month from December 15 to January 15
the Fifth army had 15.000 battle casualties, American
and British, and no fewer than 50.000 non-battle
casualties, namely the sick from exposure, exhaustion
or shock, and frequently all three.
I wasn't at all satisfied with myself-so far I
hadn't done more than acquire a certain expertise in
the sights and sounds, that is the hydra-headed many
shocks of battle (when you cut off one head two more
appeared) I . At no time had I been called on by
infantry company commander to coordinate an attack
with him, for the good reason that on the Volturno
there was no time for any consultation whatever
because a river operation either goes too fast or not
at all, while in the Aurunci mountains shells were
useless at the ridge.
Yet those multiple shocks were my teachers. I
was aware, without of course being able to fathom how
or why, that a certain will, almost a plan, was
coming about in me and it wasn't of my making. I


wished to become adept at something I as yet knew
nothing about. I did know that I wished to experience
the battlefield without confusion, meaning not be
immune to terror but the very contrary-terror being
essential to what you are doing, the very fuel of
what we ambiguously call courage, namely a victory of
the nervous system in that it miraculously sees a way
through the terror, being a system that by its
constitution is directed (this side of course of
utter despair) purely and solely towards survival.
I was involved in this and short of deserting I
had no way out of it and, more important, the
involvement felt like a solemn commitment-any other
life was inconceivable because impossible.
It is the way of war. Once in it, once a
function of it, however small, there is only one
behaviour for you-to turn what you are ordered to do
into something your nature and personality stage-
manage in their own way, thus endowing a heady sense
of freedom in the most imprisoned of circumstances.


los
MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
PRAYER
Five
trase
e moved at last from our hill-top partour,
Sessa Aurunca. We said good bye to our
hosts, trying to determine whether they were
in sorrow or deep gratitude at our going.
There were tears from the young women and also from
those matronly ones who had found a son or two, but
gratitude could still be beneath the tears, even
promoting them, especially as they were Italian
tears.
The mountains were forgotten, presumably
shrugged off by the high command. We mounted our
vehicles and moved in slow convoy eastwards, for
reasons we knew nothing of.
Came tmad all mudu
And, as always, Italy/ protruded with her message
that life btas stronger than war. Ne-matterwhere we
turned the
tery as here. Her sky and soil
seized on
with-unewerving, hot certainty
Jouhee
andfrom a seed came
eemedr
Calue (o
sudden pugnacious bud and stemthat bounded


Hell cald erpk bafme
- ey CA and Itier
aglaart, lk at nce, Iraf - wa Nene afai
nth evdeu 2 hanven
N Mey nd


INSERT 95
hit in
Toas Ae cotmnuj nlae we wwti the
sroulder th
lath cud nt 255 lAn nilly
we llay
i ttre wonrai pesh IL reemel
laliain
bng
lhe lud.
werels L
2g neun dooun
andl i
alrau.
k do L, 28
tre
y lher
hark
pomille cl
Hip -
sdivisin
ar Lor )
and leltal
Lame wLle. 0g
catruisn
n k
lad
we Hug
asre Lei grive
< cous Istte son)
Eulnahues (heis wU
alrak.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
with # reckless festive clamour.
surely our rigt mare war our heaver A
lehi ALAA
werc ti loucha
CiH
Day and night we soldiers live ee ir h ne midstof
tup M elve,
Aheis
that sky and soil, unknowingly open/to it fevers and
Hai
favours. And the Italian eople seized on you. kke
Mg ure
L ad vivid, menmeli,
ISEAT)
tooowithout intent, unhurriedk just ke the sky ba
soit. This people of many mysteries seemed without
the slightest knowledge of who they. were, how they
were composed, andof eeut
had.te-be-se.. Leàst
of all did they know that the life they conveyed to-:
antitinofn a. ber WT hed neiw kuoun lefor,
us was life as it had always been. intended to
be/And
just as their terrain was heaven and hell, So were
ly nolwe,
they. They weren't a happy people,/yet they
demonstrated little else:
They were even sullen and bitter, yet these
onr to u
moods came to-usfron-tren as impersonally as
weather, sometimé: s damp and drizzly, sometimes that
hot open glory of sunlight that seemed I made for-them
and, more strangely, by them.
Tu hose weehs
they, T were all experiencing the. daily gnaw of in
hunger. Not that they starved. They all, town and
village dwellers alike, had family connections in the
farmlands. The labourers "had a- nimble: resilience even
in the forward lines, quickly tending maize, vines,


aulen
Krxin
Lhineted
kkg
Ite
1 F
LP Uhe
y-kues tia, rad hieed
tohp
did
kuoe
eup,
fue
Jaxinf wa
tue
a puypnaciou gpmg h shake Y
& He Leut
beip
vegpurins
lup
edt
Ttowr -
Hhc tub
hemb
T re
u D
A = A
ttrkat he 5
D ref
Jolk fr
i Iheu
Ut 1 Tan
V Ca
Pparte A
a - void
Sofall i ude lt
Beirp
elg
Hag wue aid 9
itti
lonille k
OTC
magineg
RR L
sxconey 7
uere
bore aud uni hle thay d Ize
wer pons
Hhelemlle
the iu lnlm Cern wed e ut haya
wtta
>tkei


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
the precious olive tree. They nipped out of the house
in a lull and scraped and rustled where they couldn't
be seen.
We moved eastwares and astonishingly we were set
down at sweet Cassino's doorstep. Of all forbidden
things we actually came within sight of her. She
led
Sprawling higgledy-piggledy down the southern slope O
Her curling domestic-smokè consoled and menacedjus
He lun
plai
equally. And the valley,that tayt before her withits
little roads and a: river that crossed it as' straight
as a dye, and iks-one tiny bridge, added something
Res
hypnotic to Gas AOTS wistful invitation to.us to
visit it, at the price of death.
And then, as if to give that invitation a
certain compelling edge, there'was the vast abbey
that hung - ovéranda little behind the town, yellow-
white and placid in the southern sun, quite as if it
wished to confirm military impregnability with
blessing and prayer, its serene deeply silent stones
being in homage, after all, to a saint.
The allure here grew tragically overpowering.
For this abbey was the size of a sturdily built town,
with cloisters and chapels and libraries and


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
dormitories and halls. And though they were dedicated
to a man who founded a highly reflective order of
monks fourteen hundred years ago, they spoke only one
thing to warriors and that was 'I am a military
bastion'.
That abbey shimmered like a gentle tapestry,
mellow and still, an adjunct of the sky, without
substance, overseeing all below it as if older even
than the earth, and truthfully those trees and
rivulets below gave the impression of having adopted
the abbey as a long-awaited saviour.
And equally it was a perfect defence position---
had always been, was intended to be from the moment
Benedict set foot on the hill and saw that this was
truly the Vatican's southern gate. And he emphasised
this by destroying quite unnecessarily a temple to
Apollo and respecting an ancient Roman tower. Tualwar tyabdics
And now L
abbey had become the benign and
That
sweetly watchful protector of the valley before it.
Or rather this was how you were likely to think if,
say as an F.0.0., you were asked to observe it---and
for several days, during the hours of daylight. Sinpl Arens.
And that did indeed become my job. The Eyes of
the Army had a peaceful role at last.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
I was to do my observing from a ridge that faced
te abby
at a distance of a kilometre or two, not in order
on W
to register targets but to report any movements I
might see in and around the abbey.
Phis ridge was lower than that on which the
abbey sat but since it looked straight at the abbey's
southern windows it gave the impression of equality.
And spread between the abbey and me was the
tranquil green plain with its river, at present
entirely in enemy hands, as was the forward slope of
this ridge from which I was to do my observing.
6 k
lee hadneoved Her
Wehad-meved our guns/to behind this ridge, Mal 1
Zhd
heus
namely behind its southern slopegeethat all I had
In ader
hey
to do/to return to the guns was to clamber down a
steep cliff covered with bushes and saplings thick
hideme. Once doun (
LaX plai
and high enough to bleekeur gunsentirely. On tne
faueb nr
Lother three sides we-were hidder by tall thick trees.
seux) >e
Which alchemy thrust a wonderful, na
on us. If
land 3 S nt 2
spotted from the air we
go to cover easily.
ahago
FUMR:
Never had we been SO snug as in this green drawing-
praare 2
room with its captive/sky. We slept long and deep. No
Caltey cliargip
longer did we addicts of the deafening] fdag haul our
sleeping bags close to it. Its engines were muffled
here, their sedative powers redundant You were


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
pulled deep into the silence the moment you shut your
eyesk And as for the shelfthat had your number on
it, what guns could reach you?
We felt an unusual benevolence amid all these
dank leafy perfumes that smelled so
from the
dilleas
world outside. You stepped into this green haven
suddenly: a road wide enough for our armoured
carriers and guns debouched without warning straight
into its embrace-and ceased as a road the moment A ym
arrived.
Just before dawn one day I was told to take a
signaller with me and climb the ridge to an
observation post that would reveal itself to me
Once there,
across a narrow clearing-11 1 was to establish radio
contact with my command post below, and this would be
done by cable, not radio. It was my signaller's task
to unroll the cable as we climbed.
I was to keep my eyes on the abbey and somewhat
on the plain below me, and I was to report the
slightest movement, and for that purpose I was
a Ruge pa-2
names
provided with/ Rabbit's Ears, which were enormous
wcety seje
binoculars of great penetration, taker from a German
prisoner.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
Our steep path straggled between thickets and
saplings So that the moment we set foot on it we were Jafe
trm hevaa,
hidden. I was to stay at my post in the hours of
light and descend just before first dusk.
At the top we came to the flat shrubby clearing
I had been told about. Walking straight ahead as we
had been instructed to do we came, after a few yards,
to the other, northern edge of the ridge, which had
an even steeper slope than the one we had just
climbed. This too was thick in bush and sapling, such
that you would detect any movement down there by the
sound.
Taking care, crouching to hide ourselves, we
found my little eerie scooped out of the thick bush
between boulders in such a way that it provided a
seat and room to stretch one's legs. It was hidden
from all but the sky. So domeme had Lak Itere hefme,
mme wion
And facing me was the abbey of St. Benedict/as
lie
first built, in wondrous brown-golden state in this
the first light of day.
I settled happily in. The weather was now dry
and fairly warm. I turned the long-distance lenses
on the abbey and set the focus and all at once a


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
brilliantly clear picture of each window, stone
buttress, disposed itself before my eyes.
Those stones were to change each hour to a new
subtle tint, russet and rose in the first dawn, white
and grandly still at noon. You could gaze at this
frail tapestry for minutes on end and less and less
give credence to its solidity. War with its great
hush between battles restored St. Benedict's abbey to
its earlier centuries. In all its thrilling changes
of light from mellow rose and damask and cherry-wood
to tints of brown SO rare that the façade became a
veil held dangling in the sky, this abbey was a last
point of sanity, an assurance that war may not
forever be the shadow that follows us, each and every
one of us.
But also, because this was war, the abbey
windows had a way of staring down into the valley
that could seem to frightened soldiers a bitter grey
warning. Its very stillness might make some
commanders dream of taking it out on the grounds that
Jerry was inside, fully equipped. It only needed a
few philistines among them to set a scare going, and
they were available.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
Intelligence said no such thing. Intercepted
messages to the monastery, even personal ones to the
abbot from Hitler, corroborated the evidence that the
Germans considered Monte Cassino as they considered
Rome, as an open city.
And we F.0.0.S were sent up to that eerie (so I
believe now) in order to banish any idea of the
Germans being inside, since both General Alexander
and General Mark Clark were firmly against violating
such a clearly understood covenant.
The second morning I sent my signaller away. The
silence was all the greater because the plain below
never stirred from hour to hour.
I was wary of the slope immediately below me .
From time to time I gave sober thought to how I might
defend myself should I see those shrubs below move or
Theis
hear branches crack. The only way was to make a bunk
So I recced the path by which I had come and removed
any sharp gravel that might make my exit noisy.
My task was a clearly stated one-direct from
divisional headquarters: I must report all movements
at the end of each day. My reports were, apart from
one, 'No movement'.
mrn


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
vun Un
That one movement was a hand-full of Germans in
a motor-bike-and-sidecar. They suddenly appeared from
the east and sped towards the river. They got out at
its only bridge. I put my Donkey's Ears on them and
watched them climb beneath the stone arches. They
worked for ten or SO minutes, clearly laying mines.
Then they drove back to cover-to the east again.
I waited the rest of that day for the bridge to
blow up but it didn't. In my report that evening I
gave its map reference for our mine detectors,
convinced however that no army in its right mind
would attack across that plain (I was wrong!
One afternoon at the warmest hour, when my
cockpit in the sky was the choicest place to be,
there was a rustle of steps behind me and I turned to
see a young man in uniform, except that it wasn't a
combatant one. We said hullo and at once liked each
other. He was a journalist and armed with a notebook.
Suddenly we were having a chat like the Kent cottage
ones. As then, I made a cup of tea. We talked about
books and, I think at one point, Mass Observation,
for which I had worked just before getting my call-up
papers.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
He wanted to know what I'd been doing on That
Terrible Hill. I told him a few things that happened
and he made some notes and we parted saying how we
must meet again, knowing there wasn't a chance in
hell of that. A few weeks later I had a letter from
my mother saying, What's all this you've been up to?
There was a front-page story in the local paper about
how her boy was a hero. I can't remember what the
heroism was, or how my affable journalist had managed
to extract one from what I told him, but copy has to
be written-and there it was, apparently, under a
photo of me. Horace Potter who lived next door to my
parents called round. He had just seen it come off
the press, he being a sub on the newspaper.
It would hardly bring solace to my parents'
unsung nights in the shelter. And the triumphal style
of war journalism is a pain in the arse anyway, not
least for the journalist. So I closed the subject as
quickly as possible in my subsequent letters. And
then there was the fact that we were forbidden by the
censorship rules to even mention battle in our
letters.
No doubt my intelligence report corroborated
previous ones from that same cockpit. The fact is


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
you cannot stare at such a building for days on end
without some tiny evidence of military occupation,
if it exists. Soldiers inside such a building have a
way of forgetting vague orders such as 'Never show
yourself beyond such and such a point'. They get used
to the silence all round them and it is here that an
observer on a distant hill has his chance- --unseen,
unheard, he is at last discounted. This is when
someone in the building shows himself, if only for
the fraction of a second.
In that eerie I noticed in myself a desire to
say more in my report than my military remit allowed
me. I wished to persuade the higher command that the
abbey was clearly not a defensive position. But my
impressions counted for nothing. Also the absence of
movement proved nothing either way. I realised that
I knew in my heart that the abbey was doomed.
The danger was that some pressure to bomb might
gain momentum, and reach even unto the thrones of the
Shakespeare-quoting Roosevelt and Churchill,
the finel Tfaa - - A
alsaute judes 2
Hei
3 u
beede
NI hol urtpido
Cese
(tle
AkT
Istula
3 h the
and tue
fata
gnky E - has
- palg.


lator Revised
WAR IN ITALY
Prayer
We moved at last from our hill-top parlour, Sessa
Aurunca. We said good bye to our hosts, trying to
determine whether they were really in sorrow or deep
gratitude at our going. There were tears from the young
women who had kissed and fondled all but officers like
me, and also from those matronly ones who had found a son
or two. But gratitude could still be beneath the tears,
even promoting them, especially as they were Italian
tears.
The mountains were forgotten, presumably shrugged
off by: the high command. We mounted our vehicles and
moved in slow convoy eastwards, for reasons we knew
nothing of.
And, as always, Italy protruded with her message
that life was stronger than war. No matter where we
turned the Italian story was there. Her sky and soil
seized on each other with unswerving hot certainty and
from a seed came, within hours it seemed, a sudden
pugnacious bud and stem that bounded into life with a
reckless festive clamour. A terrain that was surely our
nightmare was our heaven.


WAR IN ITALY
Day and night we soldiers lived in the midst of that
sky and soil, unknowingly open to its fevers and favours.
And the Italian people seized on you too-without intent,
unhurried, just like the sky and soil. This people of
many mysteries seemed without the slightest knowledge of
who they were, how they were composed, and of course this
had to be so. Least of all did they know that the life
they conveyed to us was life as it had always been
intended to be. And just as their terrain was heaven and
hell, so were they. They weren't a happy people, not at
all, yet they demonstrated little else.
They were even sullen and bitter, yet these moods
came to us from them as impersonally as weather,
sometimes damp and drizzly, sometimes that hot open glory
of sunlight that seemed made for them and, more
strangely, by them. You could see how fascism had started
among them. It was a revolt against their very passivity.
That was why we called fascism 'reaction'. It was
precisely that-- -against the life that brought them hurts
and bitter delusions they did nothing about because it
was in their makeup to 'carry on', those bitter words
used in Britain throughout the war. So the fascists
assaulted the conventions, disrupted, beat people up,
were rude where they formerly had been mild. In the words
of a fascist I knew, people needed to be beaten not with
sticks of wood but sticks of steel.


WAR IN ITALY
They were all experiencing the daily gnaw of hunger.
Not that they starved. They all, town and village
dwellers alike, had family connections in the farmlands.
The labourers had a nimble resilience even in the forward
lines, quickly tending maize, vines, the precious olive
tree. They nipped out of the house in a lull and scraped
and rustled where they couldn't be seen. They never
forsook the land.
We moved eastwards and astonishingly we were set
down at sweet Cassino's doorstep. Of all forbidden things
we actually came within sight of her. Sprawling higgledy-
piggledy down the southern slope her curling domestic
smoke consoled and menaced us equally.
And the valley that lay before her---the lush green
plain---with its little roads and a river that crossed it
as straight as a dye, and its one tiny bridge, added
something hypnotic to Cassino's wistful invitation to us
to visit it, at the price of death.
And then, as if to give that invitation a certain
compelling edge, there was the vast abbey that hung over
and a little behind the town, yellow-white and placid in
the southern sun, quite as if it wished to confirm
military impregnability with blessing and prayer, its
serene deeply silent stones being in homage, after all,
to a saint.


WAR IN ITALY
The allure here grew tragically overpowering. For
this abbey was the size of a sturdily built town, with
cloisters and chapels and libraries and dormitories and
halls. And though they were dedicated to a man who
founded a highly reflective order of monks fourteen
hundred years ago, they spoke only one thing to warriors
and that was 'I am a military bastion'.
That abbey shimmered like a gentle tapestry, mellow
and still, an adjunct of the sky, without substance,
overseeing all below it as if older even than the earth,
and truthfully those trees and rivulets below gave the
impression of having adopted the abbey as a long-awaited
saviour.
And equally it was a perfect defence position---had
always been, was intended to be from the moment Benedict
set foot on the hill and saw that this was truly the
Vatican's southern gate. And he emphasised this by
destroying quite unnecessarily a temple to Apollo and
respecting an ancient Roman tower, which showed a certain
military predilection.
And now that abbey had become the benign and sweetly
watchful protector of the valley before it. Or rather
this wàs how you were likely to think if, say as an
F.0.0., you were asked to observe it---and for several
days, during the hours of daylight.


WAR IN ITALY
And that did indeed become my job. The Eyes of the
Army had a peaceful role at last.
I was to do my observing from a ridge that faced it
at a distance of a kilometre or two, not in order to
register targets but to report any movements I might see
in and around the abbey.
My ridge was lower than that on which the abbey sat
but since it looked straight at the abbey's southern
windows it gave the impression of equality.
And spread between the abbey and me was the tranquil
green plain with its river, at present entirely in enemy
hands, as was the forward slope of this ridge from which
I was to do my observing.
We had moved our guns to behind this ridge, namely
behind its southern slope, SO that all I had to do to
return to the guns was to clamber down a steep cliff
covered with bushes and saplings thick and high enough to
block our guns entirely. On the other three sides we were
hidden by tall thick trees. Which alchemy thrust a
wonderful inactivity on us. If spotted from the air we
could go to cover easily. Never had we been SO snug as in
this green drawing-room with its captive sky. We slept
long and deep. No longer did we addicts of the deafening
dag haul our sleeping bags close to it. Its engines were
muffled here, their sedative powers redundant. You were
pulled deep into the silence the moment you shut your


WAR IN ITALY
eyes. And as for the shell that had your number on it,
what guns could reach you?
We felt an unusual benevolence amid all these dank
leafy perfumes that smelled so far from the world
outside. You stepped into this green haven suddenly: a
road wide enough for our armoured carriers and guns
debouched without warning straight into its embrace-and
ceased. as a road the moment it arrived.
Just before dawn one day I was told to take a
signaller with me and climb the ridge to an observation
post that would reveal itself to me across a narrow
clearing. I was to establish radio contact with my
command post below, and this would be done by cable, not
radio. It was my signaller's task to unroll the cable as
we climbed.
I was to keep my eyes on the abbey and somewhat on
the plain below me, and I was to report the slightest
movement, and for that purpose I was provided with a huge
pair of Rabbit's Ears, which were enormous binoculars of
great penetration, taken from a German prisoner.
Our steep path straggled between thickets and
saplings SO that the moment we set foot on it we were
hidden. I was to stay at my post in the hours of light
and descend just before first dusk.
At the top we came to the flat shrubby clearing I
had been told about. Walking straight ahead as we had


WAR IN ITALY
been instructed to do we came, after a few yards, to the
other, northern edge of the ridge, which had an even
steeper slope than the one we had just climbed. This too
was thick in bush and sapling, such that you would detect
any movement down there by the sound.
Taking care, crouching to hide ourselves, we found
my little eerie scooped out of the thick bush between
boulders in such a way that it provided a seat and room
to stretch one's legs. It was hidden from all but the
sky. So someone had sat there before.
And facing me was the abbey of St. Benedict as first
built, in wondrous brown-golden state in this the first
light of day.
I settled happily in. The weather was now dry and
fairly warm. I turned the long-distance lenses on the
abbey and set the focus and all at once a brilliantly
clear picture of each window, stone buttress, disposed
itself before my eyes.
Those stones were to change each hour to a new
subtle tint, russet and rose in the first dawn, white and
grandly still at noon. You could gaze at this frail
tapestry for minutes on end and less and less give
credence to its solidity. War with its great hush between
battles restored St. Benedict's abbey to its earlier
centuries. In all its thrilling changes of light from
mellow rose and damask and cherry-wood to tints of brown


WAR IN ITALY
SO rare that the façade became a veil held dangling in
the sky, this abbey was a last point of sanity, an
assurance that war may not forever be the shadow that
follows us, each and every one of us.
But also, because this was war, the abbey windows
had a way of staring down into the valley that could seem
to frightened soldiers a bitter grey warning. Its very
stillness might make some commanders dream of taking it
out on the grounds that Jerry was inside, fully equipped.
It only needed a few philistines among them to set a
scare going, and they were available.
Intelligence said no such thing. Intercepted
messages to the monastery, even personal ones to the
abbot from Hitler, corroborated the evidence that the
Germans considered Monte Cassino as they considered Rome,
as an open city.
And we F.0.0.S were sent up to that eerie (so I
believe now) in order to banish any idea of the Germans
being inside, since both General Alexander and General
Mark Clark were firmly against violating such a clearly
understood covenant.
The second morning I sent my signaller away. The
silence was all the greater because the plain below never
stirred from hour to hour.
I was wary of the slope immediately below me. - From
time to time I gave sober thought to how I might defend


WAR IN ITALY
myself should I see those shrubs below move or hear
branches crack. The only way was to make a bunk SO I
recced the path by which I had come and removed any sharp
gravel: that might make my exit noisy.
My task was a clearly stated one-direct from
divisional headquarters: I must report all movements at
the end of each day. My reports were, apart from one, 'No
movement'.
That one movement was a hand-full of Germans in a
motor-bike-and-sidecar. They suddenly appeared from the
east and sped towards the river. They got out at its only
bridge. I put my Donkey's Ears on them and watched them
climb beneath the stone arches. They worked for ten or So
minutes, clearly laying mines. Then they drove back to
cover-to the east again.
I waited the rest of that day for the bridge to blow
up but it didn't. In my report that evening I gave its
map reference for our mine detectors, convinced however
that no army in its right mind would attack across that
plain. I was wrong.
One afternoon at the warmest hour, when my cockpit
in the sky was the choicest place to be, there was a
rustle'of steps behind me and I turned to see a young man
in uniform, except that it wasn't a combatant one. We
said hullo and at once liked each other. He was a
journalist and armed with a notebook. Suddenly we were


WAR IN ITALY
having a chat like the Kent cottage ones. As then, I made
a cup of tea. We talked about books and, I think at one
point, Mass Observation, for which I had worked just
before: getting my call-up papers.
He wanted to know what I'd been doing on That
Terrible Hill. I told him a few things that happened and
he made some notes and we parted saying how we must meet
again, knowing there wasn't a chance in hell of that. A
few weeks later I had a letter from my mother saying,
What's all this you've been up to? There was a front-page
story in the local paper about how her boy was a hero. I
can't remember what the heroism was, or how my affable
journalist had managed to extract one from what I told
him but copy has to be written-and there it was,
apparently, under a photo of me. Horace Potter who lived
next door to my parents called round. He had just seen it
come off the press, he being a sub on the newspaper.
It would hardly bring solace to my parents' unsung
nights: in the shelter. And the triumphal style of war
journalism is a pain in the arse anyway, not least for
the journalist. So I closed the subject as quickly as
possible in my subsequent letters. And then there was the
fact that we were forbidden by the censorship rules to
even mention battle in our letters.
No doubt my intelligence report corroborated
previous ones from that same cockpit. The fact is you


WAR IN ITALY
cannot stare at such a building for days on end without
some tiny evidence of military occupation, if it exists.
Soldiers inside such a building have a way of forgetting
vague orders such as 'Never show yourself beyond such and
such a point'. They get used to the silence all round
them and it is here that an observer on a distant hill
has his chance- -unseen, unheard, he is at last
discounted. This is when someone in the building shows
himself, if only for the fraction of a second.
In that eerie I noticed in myself a desire to say
more in my report than my military remit allowed me. I
wished to persuade the higher command that the abbey was
clearly not a defensive position. But my impressions
counted for nothing. Also the absence of movement proved
nothing either way. I realised that I knew in my heart
that the abbey was doomed.
The danger was that some pressure to bomb might gain
momentum, and reach even unto the thrones of the
Shakespeare-quoting Roosevelt and Churchill.


lob - 114
MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
Shudder
Six
he new attack was to be yet another
breakthrough (the very word denotes the
tactics of rush and too much weight). And it
Ralhe Ban
would take off precisely from where my longenttstance
lenses had been focussed.
- 'Rome by Christmas' had become an ideology for
the highest echelons of commangytvery day that
passed after Christmas Day was overladen with guilt
Dcunr
at not being in Rome and this became a fresh nail in
the coffin of military ingenuity.
We were now in mid-January 1944. Having secured
a mere seventy-mile advance in over four months, to
the tune of at least 10.000 battle casualties a
month, not to mention the sick and shocked, it seemed
logical, in this mood of self-revenge, to try and
repeat those figures.
Not only this but the hardest, most closely
defended centre of the Gustav Line fortification,
namely Cassino, was going to be, of all unilluminated
strategies, our centre of attack.


13 ls
appenely we urese i a ms to jer b
Rome cud Ihe Jin had Kb doue gurche
negu uow, o me
Pary


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
This time our breakthrough would (ideologically
speaking) make it possible for the US 2nd Corps,
containing our Texan brothers, to cross the Rapido
river. As its name suggests, this river was
(especially in torrential rain) as fast as the devil,
and in winter particularly treacherous. And the rains
etalialin
had started again. The cold was beginning to bite.
Yes, this was January, not June.
>ig stug h
ferus
Our job-that of 46th and 56th divisions--was to
ai tormetobe
make a hole in the 14th Panzer Grenadier Corps
chatpmnaup
faced us.
So,it was that we drove, tyres whirring and
slipping in the mud, following white tapes in the
dark, to positions as close to Cassino as
commensurate with officially declared suicide.
In the dead of night we set down in what
appeared to be a very crowded field. We were cheek by
jowl with the Texans once more. There was no question
of slit trenches here. We moved into feverishly
W 0
prepared dugouts of the world war one type. We Eould
stand upright in these-- -with head room to spare.
Mine was the size of a large room. We cut a hole in
the top of a biscuit tin and then dug it into the mud
wall as a grate for a fire. We twisted more biscuit


tue ue
Tesiming
didie lnow ttu nw
cwa SH lastte cand
SOHRE
lego had ended Ing afor p to
the
ure uue i
- sllgella drAoeL ia.
tatwa
a 1
lze
hod ultary uo kuo Jeage 2 Ui hed
uade
lui neuww, ittu, We had uew henrd
7 Itre Coralluica calence u Jaunay
hunke
003-7 hafm We eere tel Ainy i (t8.
Prenidie Rosevele hudl
Tafne
sectanlw deetw
arttr trophrt
lrdiqen nat
dedwed Itre falae
paiiy -
cndelimil sureud uls
k lay, lo Phniln k l ltes ilte
Gumes
Lo Deun Juo heike ndlp
ne ulp --had c clrance. hswer ett Petecsoad
Le -
& as reuo ued
to Toel
rercovnt Gemanle
Teaf delania
Cubontt
he had Lo uisu (
torend - uake C bece a cuguoa
ey kid. lyg cmuldi ho etand Ca
cuuls Sltie ujes
lE peund ttre do
fipe
kthe tro unttu Re re
d i
Goma citis,
Saree twt
aHeeted
treri
troto
dedaed
eresta Tu Gemor pope uue
olsile tre heema pek sr A
hal


-Thee i Na wwr, tui eaniv geusali


Whit wvr 11 poitia " diriunui
LINK
CpL Hart 2DON'T FLY HIGH.
/ttue Conlicurca declante
L a
Se Hul
11.38 ce-phas Jucls
li42 /nis3
JUIN sad le Jos rud
tio
Pacl. akueie
ue 5 dice
towoteet Tue alaivy ty to
lne hoc - ttc we uer e Cenal e
8 Shoe the aw had dave 26
Lol cuflexe, cuol No the urar
an Juo hal caagel ( hst mo)
ATEH ms
olre Juse U tyr Cz red
mal
( 16 - vad, did ce
ftio Gnlaa clua, OS P
0 Gnlher
a hus haan lilhor
Desenle
joniel
Cypne
the liiv
lre F CHEH-
fhe wer BARIC tr Len
The Slappl U tte ally
Sviev leln Burctpng doclaie tn
reluoce ea lnol Ikee wmd,
Ite wvl-y


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
iplia
tins into a chimney that fitted into it and would
carry the smoke through the roof. How that roof was
made I cannot recollect-- -perhaps planks but more
likely corrugated iron since engineers must have been
here before us. I only know we never had a drop of
rain inside. We gathered masses of wood and I had
that fire blazing white most of the day and night.
The walls were soon dry. The puzzle---in view of the
incessant shelling we were getting-- --was that we were
allowed
field
let the
chimneys smoke at all. hein war
dileowa
Every shell that came over made
earthen
inclead.
the
walls shudder. The lulls in the enemy firing were all
the sweeter for being short. The air-burst shells
were now SO high in the sky (because of our ground-
level position) that we rather enjoyed their
deafening useless crack. But most of the stuff coming
over was heavy 88mm.
We and the Texans renewed our acquaintance and
exchanged bully beef for smooth Spam, Players for one
of their almost identical Virginia brands. I noticed
a certain difference in them. They had seen a lot and
I think had begun to wonder what the hell they were
doing SO far from home. They looked wary now. You
could say as an Englishman (admittedly one not quite


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
right in the head) that you were fighting for England
in these fields but as to how they were fighting for
Texas in one doomed battle after another up a narrow
peninsula in the Mediterranean Basin no one had So
far given them a clue.
They gazed, they watched, they smoked, they
nodded and said something from time to time but their
pauses, like those between the shells, were
unpredictable. Of course you could have told them
that they were fighting for world power-which is
what their nation got out of the war. But I don't
think that would have been appreciated as an argument
for their death. Those once soft-spoken creatures
whom we had learned to love would have demurred, I
think-preferred to be with their folks again and to
let American markets achieve world power by their
natural expansion, not by means of this crazed blood
ritual that had fallen in love with its own mistakes.
Our exchanges weren't good humoured as before.
One of them seemed offended when I said something
Brlu
like, American spam has converted me to bully beef.
There was this edge to the nerves that afflicted us
all---and in them perhaps was the shock of
premonition.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
Of course our guns were out of action in this
vulnerable place, SO the enemy could fire without
fear of retaliation. But it was the certainty of
their bombardments---which must come from a very
accurate map reference of our position---that made us
ask what we were doing SO crowded together, one Corps
mixed up with another. One thing we did feel certain
about and that was our proximity to the front line.
It even crossed our minds in giddy moments that we
were actually in that line, though without means of
assault or defenceo à
- Lo wafor
The only practical reason for being crowded up
like this must be the coming attack, planned for
about 20th January (this we knew about). But even SO
you never assembled troops this way, under the
enemy's very noses.
Or the idea may have been that, crammed up
against the front line, we-a mixed bag of infantry
and gunners and perhaps some Engineers-were being
held in reserve SO as to be ready to pour into a hole
made ready for us by that attack. But again, you
simply didn't plan battles this way, your guns stayed
where they should always be, well behind the
committed lines. Even allowing for the freakishness


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
ud Ita satu dreakishnen
ltis ol, ow
of war,) this situation surpassed all manner of
guessing among senior as well as junior officers.
For one thing, the dug-outs were not of our own
making. I have no recollection of my own men digging.
So the Engineers must have been involved---and
earthworks on such a scale are noisy and smoky and
provoke local curiosity. The material had to be
transported----roofs, tarpaulins, stanchions. Italian
gossip travelled faster than fire. You didn't have to
squeeze it out of anybody, it tumbled out of the
mouth and into your ear and the job was done.
Italians regularly passed with wonderful nonchalance
from the enemy to us and back again. They skirted
military positions along paths that meandered unseen
and unsuspected in low hills and woodland. Produce
and family news travelled that way. It was better
than spies.
Captain H. was nearby. I paid my visits to him
at the double, no question here of dodging here and
there to avoid the shell with your number on it. And
these bombardments were SO concentrated, and of such
persistence, that we were constantly convinced that
they were a softening-up barrage before an enemy
attack. But no attacks came.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
In this kind of position no records can be kept.
War records cover supply lines and their arrival or
not, and of course attacks. But the kind of limbo we
were in excites no annals. Our song We're here
kthe luna 2 Auld huug Seiin
because we're here because we're herejenebute it
best.
Meanwhile we were getting more and more
reinforcements. A new second lieutenant joined my
troop and we shared my dugout. It wasn't good that he
came straight into relentless shelling like this. It
was too much of a blind fall. Even the boom of our
own heavy artillery way back made him jump and then
he would half-smile in frightened apology. One day a
shell came within yards of the dugout and we threw
ourselves down in a corner close to the fire and I
found myself on top of him. He was trembling all over
with an unusual violence-like that of a fever more
than fright.
To have your nerves go at the start means you
can't get your self-navigation in proper shape
thereafter. We were very lucky that one time,
favoured by the fact that the blast went forward of
us. But he couldn't take account of degree and
nuance. He had a pale soft skin, still a boy, and we


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
used to sit and talk quietly in the lulls but I think
he couldn't accommodate himself to the idea of people
blowing each other up. I think it deeply contradicted
the life he'd had before, perhaps a village life
where everything was ordered and familiar. Even in
the lulls he was on guard inside himself. In this
state he was sent out on his first F.0.0. mission and
was killed almost at once.
There was suddenly a sense all round us of
bustle and movement at short notice. We and the
Texans were separated.
The attack started on the night of January 17th /
three days earlier than planned. Our two divisions
got across the Garigliano close to the Cassino
defile. But Kesselring threw in his 29th and 90th
Panzer Grenadier divisions and this was a poor omen
for the risky Texan assault across the Rapido.
The rains and that river did for our Texan
brothers. The river swelled up furiously. The two
Texan regiments, already battle-exhausted, were lost
almost in entirety. Their Bailey bridges were swept
away behind them and they were left stranded in
darkness on the northern bank without any avenue of


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
escape and in mud and near freezing rain under shell-
fire all night, exposed in a water-logged trap with
neither supplies nor any chance to prepare defence
positions, and the few that lived to see the morning
must have been near demented.
Mark Clark was indicted in Texas after the war
for this but it is difficult to indict commanders who
know no other military doctrine than meeting. strength
with strength, head-on, especially if they can point
to this doctrine as having come from above, He was
exonerated.
Qesh
This Texan assault was rebuffed by only five
German battalions from the 1st Parachute Regiment,
crack fighting troops.
The real trouble that dogged Mark-Clark was that
he had no battle experience. It is said that General
Eisenhower, chief of American operations in Europe,
was furious at Clark for insisting on getting his
army before he had done a proper stint of battle. But
he gave Clark an army just the same-perhaps in
consideration of the fact that he himself had no
battle experience of any kind, even a view of it
through binoculars. J
tant toert.


huost isp 2 cli dumau ci (tre Ituis
C pais clug
livslue
> So alrue aclced Het - a k att
halce tan 4
M - - cong
Suave i destudii
Rorsevelt ciel Clurclaill.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
BYZANTIUM
Seven
U were pulled out of the line-as 'broken
reeds'. This was how Mark Clark put it. His
afeweilf
hipe
the
use of such expressions caused resentment iu
Commad Leernly
but he was telling the truth. It was decided that we
needed not just a short leave in Rome or Naples, nor
even just a long leave, but one far away from any
theatre of war.
By marvellous degrees the air ceased to vibrate,
boom and whistle with shells departing or arriving,
until finally not SO much as a distant bombing could
be heard.
The further we drew away, in convoy down to
Italy's southern coast and then by ship, the more did
life seem to have slipped back, by means of a naughty
quirk of time, into peace, with all its comforts
artfully provided.
Desires stirred that weth thought lostA aud even
irretrievable. Having reached glittering Taranto-
emphasis on the first syllable-at Italy's heel,
having glimpsed the deep blue water we were to cross


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
for an excitingly unknown destination which we knew
to be Port Said, we began to realise that at the
heart of every great war there is a tourist agency at
work, an agency SO punctilious, SO exhaustive in its
knowledge of schedules, that no lay tourist agency
could possibly rival it.
Thomas Cook was out-cooked in every
matter-ccomodation (varied subtly according to the
delicate shades of rank), food (no longer 'rations'),
attentions of the most civil kind proffered by local
populations, as well as entertainment both personal
and public, all funded and provided SO discreetly
that putting your hand in your pocket was now a
pleasure because needed SO rarely, as for example
(dare I draw the curtain aside?) in the case of
whorehouses.
Suddenly, from having been the chosen targets of
every sort of detonation we were the flattered and
cosseted and above all unpaying guests of that very
army that had marched us into the shit and intended
to march us back into it again.
We leaned over the side of our anchored
troopship to look down on Port Said as small boats
clustered below containing youths lithe from sea and


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
sun holding up melons and trinkets, just as if we
could access them. The vast port was brassy and dirty
and its noises were those you wanted to hear. This
was the 'middle' East, bustling with a poverty that
looked like riches to us because the beggars were
bullet and bomb free and all they wanted was
cigarettes and baksheesh. And spring was coming and
the warm damp harbour air, laden with spicy smells,
was a silent reassurance that to be at ease in limb
and heart was all right.
We clattered and bumped down the runway with our
kit and marched to a train bound for Cairo that was
unashamedly commodious with little mirrors and thick-
pile plushy seats in each compartment, and when it
set off it made the right clattering sound on the
track in celebration of childish trips to the sea.
When at last Cairo appeared in the distance I had one
of those special déjà vue experiences that say 'You
were born here and are only returning' but you can't
see how.
The city was a vast officers' mess set partly in
gaudy palmy lofty rooms, as in Shepheard's Hotel, and
palm-tree gardens with fountains and orderly mellow-
yellow streets of houses with balconies, among which


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
you would find your discreetly unadvertised hotel,
room booked, service readily available, a foyer too
tiny yet a source of everything you needed to know.
I sat in the huge Shepheard's lounge and found
myself one of an astonishing democracy of officers of
every rank with top brass walking by you and gazing
about them indulgently. You were suddenly in a class,
a class that had not long since ruled England and was
now the effective proxy government of a bustling
Coptic cum Muslim world whose king was at once in
rebellion against and amenable to an arrangement
which in peacetime he would have called oppressively
colonial.
And indeed this city was suave and bustling in a
last celebration of empire, and without the faintest
fear of any competitive American ambitions in that
direction. Americans in Cairo were strikingly, you
could say abundantly, absent-given the multitudes of
them elsewhere.
Yet an American presence was suggested. It sat,
a mellow easy authority, in the senior officers whose
life was here and who said 'rarely' for 'really' and
'cawfee' for 'coffee' and made 'you' rhyme with 'er'
or 'awe'. It was in their charmingly bland self-


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
they were a softening-up barrage before an enemy
attack. But no attacks came.
Captain H. and I found that our chats were short
and sweet. I was anxious to get back to my snuggery,
he to stay in his. And we had little to say these
Mittaish
lerren ler
days.pybur' war against tEt
and nazism seemed to
Fup
toR Ju
k ud no 3
As indeed it had. The astonishing thing is that
neither of us even knew about the Allied Conference
that had removed it from the scene, namely the
Ttuovlunt
Casablanca Conference of January 1943,) leng before we
set foot in Italy.LM
Rees
between-the
es' e saw
em as excuses for
mutual carousal.
But in that conference President Roosevelt had
ivy
neatly wiped 'our' war out/ Hehad abolished Ger ermany
clfigaha
as a nation. Germans were/Y now/to 'unconditionally
Surrender. Pheyhad
git to nake a settlement, a
peace
er enemies withinGermany
who hadplannedandexecuted one assassination
attempt-after-ansther en tiff 1 TIce 1938 were as
Gulpable as the nazis they were trying to remeve. . Any
auy adel
Jews who might tragically still be in Germany, were as
auh'-hoyi Jho plehued anasualt
-altle
lhtto(o
sulpable
azis who-starvedand-murde tered them.
catiuied ls do) wrere sips tecalen,
fly
lta-len.


Srou -
Very
- men .
Thai plocd
daty, cith
gurrp ghan
>0w wu againv Itto cel
deouad
hs havr
hgion
diy-phaered.
ludead had.
ledeal i Ite Laluo ulore Hre tr
tmls tre Gema ate 3 Ce,
Cnceivel t 'breek ther uesalio
E-pauponequras
per
sthpels Hhar
relt viufte Co ue t
pece tems hg urue
A N U
1 l
Phasen,
unendilinils Jreude
No disTinclin € ca
how ua uade
letwee
aid
hegi cead wen
toke
Jeus,
Gemaur al Hig were ah
aeh
Emt inheles dauhed hoople SCt hyp
led lee i. umd we co
esAi
yucid.
Tuis peued the dow tyatois, 3d


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
Germany wasnow to be bombed to break the morale of
its former people. This opened the doorto the fire
raids on Germancities, which were quite simply
atrocities.
No winde
a fieled
Andhere Captain H. and I were sitting in oneof
the-conferencels-beize-ups, where mén and materials
udi tmhdusl
were massed together in an area/ that seemed, but
clearly wasn't, in a front line, as if all meaning
Exapt
en a
dils
had
hunipey
gone but the bare one of destructionk
In this kind of military position no records can
be kept. War records cover supply lines and their
arrival or not, and of course attacks. But the kind
of limbo we were in excites no annals. Our song We're
here because we're here because we're here said it
best. That was what Roosevelt and Churchill should be
quoting to each other, not Shakespeare.
Meanwhile we were getting more and more
reinforcements. A new second lieutenant joined my
troop and we shared my dugout. It wasn't good that he
came straight into relentless shelling like this. It
was too much of a blind fall. Even the boom of our
own heavy artillery way back made him jump and then
he would half-smile in frightened apology. One day a
shell came within yards of the dugout and we threw


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
assurance, visible in their biologically relaxed
gestures, their easy-going rigour of comportment
which also included sternness. And it told you they
ruled the world.
However, they didn't rule the world. They didn't
even rule Britain. For a century and a half they had
shared life with a strong middle class and a huge
working one, neither of which had much time for this
other top class, if only because it wasn't top any
more.
Yet it was top. It declared itself, without
fuss, to be top. Their fascinating grace of manner
And also Ite face lv hez were nnniy Hre Brtish sido ) tis
said they were top even while you didn't believe it. k powed
They carried in themselves the last English
Thouph L woneguuls tul
authority, ant clearly twould-not, together with
Ihy ild nov
other things English, survive the war.
hou tu uoueit
ayy $o top did these English people feel 'English'
because they never had Welsh or Irish or Scottish
accents) that they seemed to have finished altogether
with Britain. The faery islands, made faery by queen
Elizabeth 1, who dreamed of a new spiritual empire
that would take in all Europe, undivided by schism
and sect, had become too small for themo more 1A
spirit_than anything else.


to die
AA ln C sersr
thg lwr dyiy iH
ylord. Fn UT had estord
tho
Du Hue celin
the
gretzu apis
kuceny rop 9 Itre wnd cend
e hou, bofni Itu wal wa, uv,
arere le
- + Thre learty
3pues munhy L


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
And that was why, in the last years of the
nineteenth century, they had begun to look for
American heiresses. There was an almost indecent rush
to marry them.
And Winston Churchill, the beloved leader chosen
by all of us on the Left, was the progeny of such a
marriage! His was a great Whig family, and such
families, acting in unison, had once been So powerful
that they could remove and install even monarchs.
They were not to be sniffed at even now, in the
famous 'darkest hour'.
So here in Cairo, in this Last Byzantium, we the
battle-soiled had a chance to stew in refined juices
brewed by an aristocracy that could no longer bear
the grim industrial smoke-hole that Britain had
become (and which had given birth to us). And thoughy
a. do omed
this Cairo was celebrating lost English authority she
A iwhile's lwled,
was also passing that authority/ /down to those like
myself whom they would call, embarrassed, the masses.
Itii
) reio
And that authorifypuas all the more convincing and
generous because they didn't know their power had
passed, much less that it would.
And the absence of Americans helped this
beguiling fairy tale. And since you saw nothing in


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
Cairo to contradict it, you enjoyed it, the city
being both the last jewel in the imperial crown and a
backwater splendid and loud with a pomp that must be
costing a fearful amount of money-for a country
that, far from being the world power it had been only
yesterday, was frankly bankrupt.
Defiant, Shepheard's had an air of unassailable
eircumTance
aristocracy in which young shoulders with only a
high clunfh one
single pip on them rubbed those that flashed red,-ar
HaL
aof
sxepl
aristocracy-that kept the British empire safettapamtA?
from the etmally unassailable facty. that the war had
debtoic
cotal
already made clear, the/most starkly clear ore was
bukise
the demise of that empire.
vway
Yet these men had-inlargedegree-been-running
thewar.Itwas they_who had given us officer cadets
our training. Their dulcet bland accents had
and sAante pandu,
dominated our mock battles/ A They were our lecturers,
Woa how
our_ponior-offioone Andfit was they who saw to
every detail of our grand Byzantine tour, which went
Ihgalve
as smoothly as a Palladium variety hit.
We went to the Pyramids and were served by tall
Nubians at the King Minos hotel. We strolled the
Cairo streets and took gharry rides. One morning I
happened to be leaning over the balcony of my hotel
hoyy i He cadev nen, 3 Sole
a t Rou
guido
uheu ad uit Sv weabm J6 gliv.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
room when I saw just below me, at the window of a
house opposite, a girl with long hair, and she was
smiling at me. I smiled back. We made an appointment
in sign language. We were to meet below, at the
vestibule of her apartment block, at four o'clock
that afternoon.
When the time came we went straight upstairs to
her apartment and I was introduced to her parents. We
had a polite tea in the sitting room and then the
girl and I went for a sedate walk. We chatted and we
strolled. I now had one of those patrician fly-whisks
with horse-hair at the end and this I whisked here
and there. She was a plump young lady and the war
provided her with a feast of marital possibililities--
here was So ardent a believer in the Last Byzantines
that almost anything British and commissioned would
do for her. My balcony of course changed personnel
every few days. And since she expected decorum to be
strictly observed this was probably what she got from
successive officers. From behind her shutters she
could make her choice and hopefully one day she would
clap her eyes on her rightful man. My hunch was that
she would marry a local merchant.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
I met an English nurse in Shepheard's. We shared
a table in the drinks lounge. Nurses were the best
people to know because they understood something of
the forward lines. Our conversation was easy and
agreeable and no doubt if I could hear it again it
would strike me as very much English of a former
time, implying a kind of frank reserve, strikingly
calm, a particular natural alchemy you get wherever
there is world power.
She took a photo of me in the Battery Gardens
wat
- have, a cigarette hanging from a corner
of my mouth, the eyes narrowed against the smoke, a
chic posture of the time. We went for our gharry
rides and at night sat under hanging lights in the
garden of the officers' club. At the end of my stay
we said good bye with one light kiss on the cheek and
looked at each other with a certain regret. We might
have fitted as lovers but it would have been lustre-
less. Friendship would have been good. She glanced at
me in a solicitous way, thinking of the lottery of
death perhaps. I wondered afterwards if she and other
nurses had been planted, asked to 'keep an eye' on
the youngest officers. If So it was a good civilised
idea.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
If I look at that photo today, cracked and
brutalised, I see that a certain change had taken
In nee.
al lhe tiuie
place,, one I was unaware of because it was SO deep.
In it I am gazing straight into the nurse's eyes.
The way my cap is tilted and my dress uniform
So casnally
sits on me
nac -
(no formal Sam
Browne belt) and that cigarette hangs so. suavely in
the corner of my mouth, making the eyelids close a
little against the smoke in a gaze that is
pleasantly, jokingly quizzing-I am gazing at the
nurse whom I like SO much, since she is taking that
photo.
The cool placid Battery gardens in which we
stand are civilisation itself and at last I am a
fully paid-up member of its latest war against
Yen, Ihis i Ai He phot. i celchatip. I'ue heen
itself./ My mad wedding is festive yet also bitter
sweet, like the'smell of apples and fermenting..wing.wine -
in the autumn months of Italy, that go together with
falling leaves.
The photo speaks this SO eloquently. My dress
uniform is like my own specially tailored suit.
Indeed it was specially tailored at Austin Reed's. I
remember looking through the window at Regent's
Street far below and recognising giddily, as the


l aolp
unne ) l iwh
1 elotied W te wwr al lan,


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
tailor pinned here and there, that I was saying good
bye to myself. And now, it seemed, I had recovered
myself. I fitted in. The Last Byzantium had worked
its charms.
We went in convoy across the Sinai desert which
stretched like an eternal garden before us, its wadis
gleaming with stones shaped and polished with careful
deliberation by the sky, a sky that gazed and knew.
These dried-up rivers had become endless avenues
where you felt God was born, this being your first
acquaintance with a silence that spoke to you.
We slept under the trucks in the implacable hot
noon air, andi moved only at night. I remember a
wooden signpost in the middle of the desert marked
simply 'To Baghdad', and how I stood gazing up at it.
I resolved to go there one day and a few years after
the war I did, to teach at its university.
Our convoy ended in Palestine, another jewel
that required our military presence, this time to
prevent trouble between Judah and Islam. We settled
down in Tel Aviv, vacated no doubt by other troops
hardly a day before. I recall sitting in a shaded
cool apartment hotly furnished with carpets on the


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
Rok
wall, thent blinding sunlight squeezing through the
fenillingty.
shutters My hostess is interesting and we are
talking books, and some politics.
Jews said of Arabs and Arabs said of Jews, They
are an ignoble people. The Jewish argument was that
the Arabs had no modernity in them, and the Arab
argument was that the Jews had. But it was a mild
diffident thing, this rivalry, there wasn't yet the
mutual demonisation of after years. At that time they
lived side by side just as they did in Baghdad when I
was later there; and just as they did in Spain before
ASoogear agn
Ferdinand and Isabella banished them, breaking up a
three-part medieval discussion that might have led to
a civilisation of three religions that marvelled at
and increased each other.
The next stop was Beirut where we found French
restaurants too good for us to appreciate, and cafes
where you could sit under the awning for hours with
the cool wash of the sea close by. And here at last
was a brothel For Officers Only (more by fact of
possession than decree), furnished and presented with
tact and taste where there were clever political
discussions and laughter and the apportioning of sex
to a time after, not before, the discussions and


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
coffee and laughter, SO that it drew its juices
somewhat from those pleasures. We went there every
day as one would to friends, and sat under the
tranquil whirring fans with the coffee cups clinking
and the girls rustling to and fro in a sea of giggles
borilii
as Madame spoke/to us in her measured French.
We returned to our tents and transport and this
time we stopped at Damascus with its pearl-clear
stream bubbling through the street, and we ate huge
strawberries and cream. We officers were taken to a
local air strip and one by one went up in an Auster,
sitting in the second cockpit as the pilot did stunts
and invited us to take over the joy-stick and tip the
wings. We swooped down over our own camps to within
yards of the upturned bored faces. We dived endlessly
and looped the loop and travelled upside down,
hanging from the cockpit by straps. I remember seeing
below a dark figure in a white loincloth behind a
wooden plough drawn by a single OX in a brown field
below and feeling I would like to talk to him and
what a pity this thing I was in travelled SO fast and
SO far above. I took over the controls, that is the
joystick, and when at the end of the flight the pilot
jumped down onto the tarmac he said with the winning


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
warmth of those who find travelling half a mile or
more above the earth without any sensation of speed
thrilling, 'I could teach you to fly in a week'.
While in Syria we learned that our two divisions
had been transferred to the British Eighth army,
which meant dumping our earlier attitudes of contempt
for the Eighth army and replacing them with a sense
of bemused self-estrangement.
What we resented about the Eighth army was,
apart from the obvious fact that it wasn't the Fifth,
all the crap publicity that had accrued to it in the
North African desert because of its commander General
Montgomery who wore coloured scarves and berets and
seemed to us to blow his trumpet too much. Not that
we knew a thing about him. Like all other a rmy
commanders he was entirely remote from his men. That
must be so. There is no time for a commander to
travel up and down his lines exhorting thousands of
men through his Tannoy system, apart from the fact
that soldiers hate to be sped into battle by
rhetoric.
Also the proposed Western Front, which we knew
Montgomery was due to lead, made us jealous. 'Our'
(the Eighth army's) 7th Armoured division had already


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
left us to prepare for it, just as the American Fifth
army had lost its US 82nd Airborne division to the
same cause.
Yes, Monty would soon be running Operation
Overlord (notice the truculent big-scenario title),
but this had its plus side because we in the Eighth
army, once abandoned by him, would be able to
jettison its irritating glamour.
For instance, while encamped near Damascus we
got a directive from him which we thought typical of
his cockiness, a directive insisting that we do gym
every morning at 0700hrs. under officer supervision.
We, both officers and men, scoffed at it and did
nothing. What we overlooked was that Montgomery had
left Italy many weeks before and had nothing to do
with it. But in military life that sort of thing
doesn't signify. You go on blaming him just the same.
When I met Montgomery after the war I found him
one of the least cocky people I ever clapped eyes on.
He couldn't help speaking his mind-all the time. And
this fact alone was enough to get him his cocky
reputation, in high places and low. For instance, the
first words he addressed to me were, Never trust a
journalist. As our host at the table ran two hundred


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
newspapers and one or two of his London editors were
present it seemed quite appropriate for Montgomery to
say what he thought. What would be the point of
saying it if they weren't there?
Since army commanders were SO remote from us, we
made them up. The one and only time we saw top brass
was when we assembled in an open Italian field Ore
momiing
day under a splendid hot/ sun and a tiny plane flew
out of the sky and landed a few hundred yards away,
containing our very own king George V1. He was
whisked before us in a jeep, seated on a special
little platform that had been made for him, and when
he jumped down the hand-full of waiting generals
rushed forward to greet him. There was our divisional
commander whom we knew vaguely as Ginger' even
though he was Ginger's successor. And there was
General McCreery, our Corps commander, perhaps the
only commander in the Italian arena who knew what he
was doing (he protected us against any of Clark's
battle plans that seemed to expose us unduly), and he
had several MCs from the first world war. And now he
leapt round the royal jeep like a child dropped in
fairyland, spellbound, while our divisional commander
Ginger-or rather his successor-stood there stolidly


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
showing everybody how deeply he was unimpressed by
anybody but himself.
The king was dressed in summer khaki and shorts
and his knees were very white. He carried a little
cane. We sent up three cheers for him as he gazed
about him. He talked with the generals for a time,
looking very serious and to the point, and then he
remounted, settling himself on the platform once more
and placing a piece of beige cashmere over his knees
against the sun with a fastidious little pat which
put a special hush of fascination on us because it
seemed to come from a deep deep past that we also
belonged to, he being the face and frame of our
country and perhaps a reassurance, even a promise,
that we still had one.
It was an intelligent idea for him to appear out
of the blue, not take a parade or inspect us. Those
who devised the visit knew well that he and he alone
could make us feel we had someone watching out for
us, quite separate from politics. His older brother
Edward, whom a lot of us felt had been ousted from
the throne in a rigged abdication because of his vast
popularity, had been on a par for us with Gracie
Fields who sang Down Our Allie and the American black


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
singer Paul Robeson-they each and all rooted for the
llen /meul
poor. Also, King George and the queen stayed in London
during the blitz and visited the bomb sites next
morning, So they had become 'one of us'.
Sad that despite being ouf head of state he was
excluded from the war conferences by our two
Nol Itai ure uoliced ii. Tue cm/vecer
republican allies. Butit wasn't done for us to be
Ihauk
Calue cLu
wel,
und s Riics cd lueus
aide
gtal,
rociferously pro- - royal so we never
Lked abet
God.
Butl MMost of us felt that the king belonged to us as
we belonged to him in a not quite earthly connection
too subtle for our times.
My no-longer-girlfriend's photo in my pocket was
decidedly cracked and faded now, hardly more than
millions of dots. Stare at these dots as I might they
no longer captured her. I kept its tatters in my
pocket just the same. She was surely many a rdent
copulations ahead of me and I realised she had become
a reminder for me of what I could only see as images
kecaure
from a past that was unattainable even-theugh it had uee
happened.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
DOTONATION
Eight
11 the way across Mesopatamia and Palestine
and the Lebanon we picked up news about
dra - à I
Cassino. captral H
We were hungry for any detail, not least because
of an anxious suspicion that we might be called back
there any minute. In fact battle news came to us
faster,and seemed better informed, than it ever had on
the battlefront. At the back of mY mind/there was
always the Benedictine abbey, a tapestry hung low in
the sky, so impregnable and everlasting that it
looked deapeeatz
It was chiefly, we heard, the commander of the
New Zealand Corps, General Freyberg (described by his


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
second-in-command as having neither brains nor
imagination) who clamoured most for its bombing.
Having won the VC in the 1914 war, as well as knowing
Winston Churchill personally, he was a man to be
feared even by General Alexander (whom the second-in-
command described as 'a flashy ignoramus'). For both
Alexander and Clark the bombing they knew to be
guichly
without rhyme or reason, became a political necessity.
They had to consider what would happen to their
careers should Intelligence, by the remotest of
chances, be wrong.
American bombers already had a bad name for
inaccuracy after persistently attacking a small town
in error for Cassino a month or two previously.
Venafro was the town, and the neadquarters of the
American V1 Corps was on its outskirts. There were
fifty or SO American casualties from the first
bombings. And three months later, having been told to
get their map-reading right, the pilots again missed
Cassino and again bombed Venafro, this time SO
accurately that they caused the death of 96 of their
own soldiers and 140 civilians, with hundreds of
wounded. The place was reduced to rubble.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
We on the ground never, as far as I know,
requested air support, it being within our power as
as soldiers, even at as low a level of command as
mine, to politely decline the offer should it come
Mlss
through when we were forming up for an attack
don't remember a single battle where air support was
involved. Battles are too localised and mobile even
auy egfechve
for/ arti Hery support, let alone for that of bombers.
Planes are here one instant and gone the next, and
ton far up for any but the most extended targets.
X thbugh I now read about twenty, fifty sorties
having taken place at various stages of the Italian
seemp Rearip
campaign I don't remember a single one of them.
Fighter planes were a different kettle of fish.
kept German bombers off, which is why I don't
re nber a single one of them, eitts.
In the bombing of Cassino and its abbey on
February 15th 1944 many bombs went astray, some of
# = EEPRT
them onfFreyberg's own Indian Division. There were
about twenty casualties from these strays, none of
them fatal. General Mark Clark, seventeen miles away
from Cassino at his trailer headquarters, had sixteen
bombs planted in his front garden, so to speak.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
A great cheering and gleeful throng of soldiers
well
and nursesf from, behind the lines)gathered to witness
that bombinec/Apparently everyone knew exactly, to
the second, when it was going to take place. That
fireworks display was not to be missed because, like
all of our plans to punch yet another hole in the
enemy line, it would beyond doubt open the road to
Rome and finish off the Germans for good.
fey md donlr
sulepuas
Whereas that bombing turned our/strategy into a
prolonged funereal calamity.
WF lne gen lourtte hie batyjwan 2 halen 3 ce,
Ared to synchronise with vital
Freybery
movements on the ground. The comander of the Indian
N ameb
Division (noless than the gentleman who more than
anyone else had instigated the bombing) was to move
untt hi divisn
into the rubble of the abbey, the moment the last wave
hi meail he nehiad Ishune l any 2 Ihe disl wave
of bombers had passed. Hewas to receive notice of
Cotehe could
the-firet-wave from air command, and order his men to
the start line. BaNo such notice came. The first he
Readd
knew of the bombing was when the bombs fell. He
rushed out of his command post asking what the hell
the noise was. As for his start line he was nowhere
near it. And you cannot assemble battalions on their
geskiaplonde
ut t
start line after the event. L un uoue
Snuoke,
sotyek.
mitni
I do
Eveu us a tmbisplu taild
Si w planned ls do.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
c the (Ialian lay)
words/ he knew less about the timing of
hor
the bombing than the watching bloodthirsty festive
Lord crowds.
advance
rubble
on the
of the
was Ehus
ThlE
Mis
abbey
PoU
delayed a whole day, during which time the German 1st
Parachute Regiment moved comfortably into their new
Bud
impregnable quarters-jpis subsequent attack on those
quarters was seen off with ease.
That is the trouble with bombing missions- -they
raise an impressive hell in a second and problems for
years.
Forthe bomber crews 1t is simply a logistics
problem. Theyhave to over-fly a targetand-release
bombs OTT
you are moving at
great-speed The ground IS necessarily a fleeting
mlap of tou Youare no more involved with the life
below thangyou would be sitting in an operations
reom. This is why the foot soldier is rarely
heartened by bombing raids. They are over-
destructive. They bomb the house you want to move
into, destroy the roads your supplies must come up
on. And they may rob you of a vital source of succour
and information---civilian friendship.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
The front-line soldier is only 1 in 7 of an
al rmy. The rest of that army is there to sustain,
supply and if necessary hospitalise him. Yet in
strategies that include bombing, and even in many
that do not, that soldier is the last person to be
a tomle
considered. He cannot take part in your/drama in the
hile
air (from-which youcanbe shot
Eh in-moments
beeause-you-have no a
or - bushes to hide behind).
juwer
(uno car
khi deoth ai ay wobert)
And the bomber pilot phnge take part in the drama of
a speck on the ground.
Only monks were in the abbey when it was blown
to pieces-and apparently two children who couldn't
be evacuated because raising them a few inches made
them scream with agony and no sedation was available
(they were both dying, a boy and a girl).
The stricken abbey was now an unbeatable place
for both observation and defence, a marriage which is
deadly indeed for the attacker. Our friends who
rained terror from the skies had provided the enemy
with a positive bee-hive of impregnable bunkers---as
well as the moral right to occupy those still
consecrated fragments.
Naturally all this news sounded to our ears like
home sweet home. But there was more deadly stuff to


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
come. In order to exact revenge on the crassness of
the Cassino bombing it was now decided in a kind of
hara-kiri mood to altogether smash the town of
until ula nf- rheined,
Cassing, and thus turn not simply the summit of that
hill but every inch of its southern slope into a
buzzing fortress.
On March 15th 1944 a huge allied bombardment took
place-1400 bombs from the air (1000 tons-worth) and
190.000 shells from the artillery. And the idea
behind it was the same as that behind all previous
bombardments and assaults, namely 'to dislodge the
n Hue
enemy in and around Cassino'. (L punided tiee,
enkny - uith 6 lodgig lune deuwc tar aeg Le fore
Just three German battalions crawled out of
their holes again and poured down lethal fire on the
poor devils (New Zealanders this time) trying to
cross the Rapido (yet again?) after their first
Bailey bridges and even the replacement ones were
tte canny
destroyed, such that on March 20th, General Alexander, rudlang
2 puhm wakip uphh L + tta tint luie
appalled by the casualty rate,d decided to give the
New Zealanders just a day and a half to regain their
positions or withdraw.
And indeed they withdrew, on March 23rd, but SO
badly mauled that the New Zealand Corps could not be


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
said to exist any more. It was formally disbanded and
its remnants distributed to other units.
We thought, well, this must certainly be the end
of frontal attacks against a proven unbeatable line
but no. In the prevailing aberrant logic of the
Italian campaign the punishment meted out by such a
small German force had to be requited a third time
by incurring even more casualties on our own side.
It was now the turn of the valiant Polish Corps
(the presence today of the Polish cemetery just north
of Cassino is living testimony). But valour was
impotent to turn a thrice-doomed strategy.
That attack happened on May 11th. The Eighth army
to the right flank were going to put in a
simultaneous drive towards the Anzio bridgehead in
order to relieve that beleagured landing, the British
13th Corps tere-going to advance on Sant' Angelo in
Theodice, close to the road to Rome and the Liri
defile.
Again there was a massive artillery bombardment,
though, as if in blushful contrition, the bombing
now
from the air was/concentrated (naturally to no avail
whatever, destroying only roads and ditches) on the
teas
German supply lines. Arisvacaived
Hhe cens
d 3 ca
ugictin 5
Imhip,
k attacle Dhe
INpLC
siple lofi's


) alreads helerguored L Kie jun Ylel au Itelia
trren, Pomin Ih Were.
Zeflan war t
tBith 13 # Coprrm


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
ottackip
Those Poles could be seen from just about eyery
house, now turnedte rubble, in Cassino. So you could
neither get through, the town.nor take it from a
flank.) At last Cassino was left to the Germans. It
-Phey
became a town of ghostly patrols by night- these
tte
would brush each other in ruined kitchens and
Pegeald
cl ecl Otw.
corridors and shoot point
German
rpaune
blank/ Andl the
defenders, compared with the sum total of the
INSERT
forces
nir ludged
ATba
thrown against them a tiny band of men,
And-just think/t suddenly occurred to the top
command to allow the French-commander General Juin to
do what he' (and we) had always said was the only
Imip
ppractical gpe. Without fuss or fury he followed the hip.
i majesp
plan he had tried unsuccessfullylto bend Mark Clark's
wule Cluh werhily 2 owt
ear with seven
typ.
months of blood sactifice ago,
Rii bee
A8I
gelliy
a ing quickly got his Free Frénch Corps across.
Sui
the mountains he sent his Goums, fleet of foot in
mountains as no' one else, on a separate curving
action towards the Liri defile that contained the
road to Rome. This silent and unsupported action
barred the Germans from their -only avenue of escape.
theuov Hhe ttili ceupayr) Soyas
But, by
terrible ironies, that-Goum tore
CERYOf wariy
Lew ner
action opened the defile containing the road to Rome
to guess whom? N6 less than General Mark Clark who,


Are histsr
ar auxics 4 ve uuu ll
tonuith
Lffaey
Brtai wer
Inind RLu0
Lhto Joldi Su
lypee Lowt-
Neme L frejr torpe
L habTinat
ared bh
eue
ree
wer worty (EGetsee) Je
2-HLL urid GI
houe intt
Resili
Strtle
tre sife u doipel ttre fim
Fhe
Pordis
uay taptata
insds,
prusta LTLE
ed Gls . -tei
vitze le
1 armer
Lrenns
HERE
paiteis
INSERT
sintee Lrgdy
ftee Jofee
Keson
Iurd ftay
a FLUALE
Swarkt
sips
ceice
X SERT
la ungins
uow
INS
cafle H, ud
&liibuen
sce
dunad
ueues
Liv-u
ughigon
WHY
T kn tta tte
hopulen
Sntys
f s lad
CASAB LAN CA.
drill
euw leand pi. Once wau mCindey-)
talu ho tort hotice 2 declantmi t
thhe taH
Suecde, hoye tos ae felly
i uare tyllj
thl ttre wa
L lai Case
witoyte
mesketated
ceaxd to cain ad
we oxplos sivr
farin t
ult tags
Spastive
jusued
vendela
cud i aiss Itrdunch
i. Inftte
ou stagll,
- Leeflen cifrgris
be u lurres -
Krtes
And
The whole previou STatgy Y hmls aud
Spolid funlzl attecer
3 a D amid
Madi -
rendwed nol fatile
wnmno
sipy uo V StE dsupy, kb dceph
: pto -
umetnesals Slipid 6


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
instead of sticking to the strategy he had been
aud had. ufneeal h fila,
ordered to follow,) )slipped off the road and into Rome
as its American Liberator.
I- his
thr
General Alexander (once-describgti as a 'fifth
nple
wheel'h complained bitterly(upwardy about this
unmilitary conduct Bit no reprimand, least of all a
court indictment, came forth, it being a rule of this
particular war that if by pulling a fast one you. made
tte handlues asere
headlines no one'would complain. Ad
Yorzidid
/n. millay Value tha
What attually-happened was far worse/ than
mere
conlutt his Tsxuu |s fti Rapito ni U the kmt
unmilitary change -
Y re ction. The. moment the Goums Lo - cLaw
hold
-opened the way to Rome for him he trged his own
t chafe
General Truscott, cammendet of the Anzio operation
and perhaps his. best general, to break out of his
bridgehead eastwards and cut:off the Germans in and
north of Cassino. Truscott did this swiftly. Irfact
Ae cut off a great part of the German army. But just
as he was. about to do his mopping up operation af new
tellyhi
order came down from Clark that Ae should pull out at
once and turn his nose to Rome. Trustcott refused to
believe it. He checked with army HQ atence. But
there was no one of authority to speak to. Clark had
I Rone
gone/on his liberation quest. So withdraw Trustcott


D'Araican thent Rome!


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
had to, leaving thousands of Germans to fight another
how
day---against us who were) on our way.
We disembarked at Taranto, clattering down the
gangway fitter and brighter and more boisterous than
when we had clattered up it.
And we even got more leave, this time in Rome,
now that/by courtesy of our former commander)it was
ready to receive us. I stayed at the Hotel
Inghilterra. The hall porter looked after our sexual
as well as tourist needs without complacency or
connivance or implied disdain, his born Roman tact
turning it into a simple market operation, with the
name of the lady, the address and the price set out
clearly on a piece of paper (not that anything is
this simple for a Roman-he set the price down with a
special dark contempt known only to his city).
From the Piazza di Spagna I took a rocking,
sliding, forward-falling ride in one of the city's
tiny canvas-topped cabs in which a handful of people
stood crammed body to body clinging to an unsteady
steel frame. It was an ideal personal introduction
medium. Should a woman press harder than each
collective free fall justified it was a come-on sign.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
The pope forlornly appealed to the women of Rome to
behave with more discretion, meaning that they
shouldn't perhaps open their legs at the drop of a
hat. But how did he know what they were privately
doing? To judge by their behaviour in fully-dressed
mature (s
encounters you could think it was going to tead 1 that
Snatched Sex
way but it didn't necessarily or even mostly. What
the pope was unable to add, because it might have
seemed an indiscretion, was that the women of Rome
were vit * tally starving and had to feed their men-
denge
folk and children somehow.
Well, at the end of this little cab journey in
search of what I understood would be many hours of
mutual languorous self-indulgence, I found two ladies
in an eighteenth-century setting. They greeted me at
the door of a large apartment with tall windows and
parquet floors, both looking not only like school
teachers but spinsters. They smiled and invited me in
for some ersatz coffee. We sat chatting and the hours
passed and any thought of the mingling of seed, let
alone hours of it, was no more in the air than were
smells of roasting meat. They were thin, they were
anxious. I paid them what I had been told to pay, we
shook hands with great friendliness after such a nice


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
long talk, and I once again did the free-fall
journey. And I thanked the hall porter-and this time
his Roman thoughts were wrong.
Somewhere north of Rome, well east, high in the
hills where thick snow and ice were in the air, we
settled in a townlet that treated us not as guests
but sons and brothers. We had never eaten So well in
all our lives. Where the food came from, it being an
amalgam of our rations and local cellar stores, I was
never told and never enquired about.
One of my gunners who had a cheerful placid face
unmarked by F.0.0. duties told me that a local couple
had adopted him. He was in their house for all meals.
They doted on him because they had no children, he
said. He was the son they had always dreamed about.
And then one day he asked me a question-The man
can't have children and they've begged me to give his
wife a child and what should I do? The woman had
quietly opened the door of their bedroom and shown
him the double bed, and on the wall at its head was a
madonnina with a candle flame before her, such as you
saw in every such bedroom, and at every wayside.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
I said, Give them their child. And as far as I
know (he never spoke of it again) this is what he
did.
And all this took place in two weeks.
No one could say we weren't ripe for more war.
The fitness we exuded cried.out, to be used./Me were
thout-warning told to move in the middT TE
right We stealthily dressedfand when we were kitted
AH he eupi neA Viup ulade,
up to go/i tapped on my host's door, behind which no
fewer than four slept in the one bed. They blinked at
me with bewilderment, thinking it was an alarm. I
said good bye with a smile and all they did was blink
more
at me. from within their deep Italian dreams, and next
morning I swear none of them remembered my little
visit.
The familiar feathers in the belly returned
quite as if war had a direct line to the nervous
system.
womu i bnlai wd
The British press/wasy meanwhile being festive
a choseme
about the liberation' of Rome. Iny
Choser)
ghoulishiy
9 pue iluston
aud gloating war-language it described how the Fifth army
was 'racing' and even 'storming' up Italy in pursuit
of an enemy that was 'fleeing' for dear life under
the 'pounding' of an 'air blitz'-- - - -a retreat SO swift


7 We uiue i Itie Class no U 2 tep gulis AfALAA tonHus
mltial
haueg, tementetmd so rested Ital Lre
uwe itaup
d the Rel leey, lattlo
mpuecel. srdderg, i the ueiddlo ) thro wrly


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
that 'our boys' couldn't keep up with them, though
the said boys were of course 'at grips' with them,
'clashing' with them and 'smashing through' or else
'locked' with them in fight. V
Of all languages this is one which can never
capture battle in its truth, and of course it isn't
mem vovm
meant to. The function of hewspapers : in waris'to
conceal, camouflage and corrupt the truth when it
threatens the reader's determination to go on with
that war. llap Ae ucle - D
epue
Thobua til Newspapers thought and wrote in exactly the same
manner as we did. Their language was grandiose. in a
manner that fitted war-dementia perfectly. So we.
needed it. We needed to see ourselves as 'getting to-
grips with' and 'clashing with' the enemy.
That language made us feel momentarily, rather
shallow
pathe € etieally exalted. In its light we saw ourselves
as 'running the show'., - deciding on whether to rush
lunlassh'aus
the enemy with tanks or machine gunfire or/bombs from
the air. The giddyffunfair that newspapers turned the
war into suited us. 'Above all, the very ignorance
that underlay newspaper reports was ours' too. We
really.did think- that at this moment, with Rome


d Ahising
iverd cl
may
- In Sti port word, Ha prrin nin is tre inuer
engrie 2 wa, tti Urice lzeeps stery rollifs
Hral
Bacarf ltme den KH
Tmy
luou
Ract, Lo wa Car Vl
i Coune,
he cause i hid thm un an expins ttel p ure
use lucky ue ud neuv allas, uncei 3 a
Smishad, h sufec i t H agsi, do
the ue neuw know t Tut
ne ur fek below
the Crass langmps the velcraul nud
ryinere anocialai Hrl rend ttui -f setdure -
twd
WAH
R stand hefnre Lo humat t
Resr,
silace
l1 rauhe un t ue uerert
CoIEN
doiup A teel Iti Which
huis pnp W CL the el Lo urce 2
es Ce


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
taken, Jerry was fleeing for all his worth, and that
we were chasing him for all ours.
In fact we sleepwalkers now had the Trasimene
Line before us, and the Arno Line beyond that, then
the Gothic Line and lastly the river Po. These were
Fied Mashel
the traps Kesselring was even now preparing (in a
mood, surely, of ruse and party game).
He was a singularly fortunate general. He could
devise his strategy fully confident that Hitler was
behind him---a luxury no commander on our side could
ilt tireë allie louo 2 Jhou uudentsok-
expect. Divide Hitter
Itis
Stories about howour motley assembly of
kalliest argued and bickered about almost'everything
trickled down to is on a regular basis. But what did
we expect? "A's between a Britain about to lose its
world status, a communist power bent on getting world'
status and an America impatient to write off the
European war zone and move on to its real area of
1 wowe
1 Ld
interest, namely the Far East,) where was
pom
bs Ital
all
for the single command on which, battle, however
extended, depends?
As for me, I found myself full of zest for what
was to come. I was no longer the one-pip officer who
had led a 4-mile-long convoy into a cul de sac. An
uld be
Row cmld
whue Le umd- anpremay
tiialied,
thare lre roum
Ita


and nohi hu 1 delf-con Ahottusl
unld
Otw
airiay
way 2 huliyho
Rave capoged Alap suce.
H. he Caur we hed Cav
> Iswwlen and Jen 1 Captai
aopns uichei 2
ot - mselver
promene


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
irksome memory, that-the unhitching of the guns and
their laborious reversal, curses all the way down the
column such that though I usually drove up and down
said column on my motor-bike I now found myself with
Opaper uurf
Neyashe
plentynto do at the column's head, now the tail. $ And Une
We travelled north of Rome, skirting the
haddone
Trasimene lake as Hannibal did nearly two and a half
thousand years before. And we set down our guns for
in tte bells
tahe ufp
another wait, which allowed the feathers)to settle
vendau
fhey became, as before, a constant, even in
sleep, which was one of fear's mercies.
But in the meantime, while we waited, I had a
secret debt to settle, in Cassino. I didn't know what Ael
delv
tte
/ was, only that I must pay that town a visit as
soen
dm P a day free
Hesseline,
Its had aall disevangled
umal
did ury
ercl Dt aud tte ditcle
Clad
nth a
motorbles apectin
tre devii did
Eymis
how
y-gat
soldicss
IV war ull
sowd
Rl tuis uen
axpurcc -


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
Eight
11 the way across Mesopatamia and Palestine
and the Lebanon we picked up news about
Cassino.
We were hungry for any detail, not least because
of an anxious suspicion that we might be called back
there any minute. In fact battle news came to us
faster and seemed better informed than it ever had on
the battlefront. At the back of my mind there was
always the Benedictine abbey, a tapestry hung low in
the sky, So impregnable and everlasting that it
looked fragile.
It was chiefly, we heard, the commander of the
New Zealand Corps, General Freyberg (described by his
second-in-command as having neither brains nor
imagination) who clamoured most for its bombing.
Having won the VC in the 1914 war, as well as knowing
Winston Churchill personally, he was a man to be


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
feared even by General Alexander (whom the second-in-
command described as 'a flashy ignoramus'). For both
Alexander and Clark the bombing they knew to be
without rhyme or reason became a political necessity.
They had to consider what would happen to their
careers should Intelligence, by the remotest of
chances, be wrong.
American bombers already had a bad name for
inaccuracy after persistently attacking a small town
in error for Cassino a month or two previously.
Venafro was the town, and the headquarters of the
American V1 Corps was on its outskirts. There were
fifty or So American casualties from the first
bombings. And three months later, having been told to
get their map-reading right, the pilots again missed
Cassino and again bombed Venafro, this time so
accurately that they caused the death of 96 of their
own soldiers and 140 civilians, with hundreds of
wounded. The place was reduced to rubble.
We on the ground never, as far as I know,
requested air support, it being within our power as
as soldiers, even at as low a level of command as
mine, to politely decline the offer should it come
through when we were forming up for an attack. I


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
don't remember a single battle where air support was
involved. Battles are too localised and mobile even
for artillery support, let alone for that of bombers.
Planes are here one instant and gone the next, and
too far up for any but the most extended targets.
Although I now read about twenty, fifty sorties
having taken place at various stages of the Italian
campaign I don't remember a single one of them.
Fighter planes were a different kettle of fish.
They kept German bombers off, which is why I don't
remember a single one of them.
In the bombing of Cassino and its abbey on
February 15th 1944 many bombs went astray, some of
them on Freyberg's own Indian Division. There were
about twenty casualties from these strays, none of
them fatal. General Mark Clark, seventeen miles away
from Cassino at his trailer headquarters, had sixteen
bombs planted in his front garden, So to speak.
A great cheering and gleeful throng of soldiers
and nurses from behind the lines gathered to witness
that bombing---apparently everyone knew exactly, to
the second, when it was going to take place. The
fireworks display was not to be missed because, like
all of our plans to punch yet another hole in the


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
enemy line, it would beyond doubt open the road to
Rome and finish off the Germans for good.
Whereas that bombing turned our strategy into a
prolonged funereal calamity.
It was planned to synchronise with vital
movements on the ground. The commander of the Indian
Division (no less than the gentleman who more than
anyone else had instigated the bombing) was to move
into the rubble of the abbey the moment the last wave
of bombers had passed. He was to receive notice of
the first wave from air command, and order his men to
the start line. But no such notice came. The first he
knew of the bombing was when the bombs fell. He
rushed out of his command post asking what the hell
the noise was. As for his start line he was nowhere
near it. And you cannot assemble battalions on their
start line after the event.
In other words he knew less about the timing of
the bombing than the watching bloodthirsty festive
crowds.
His advance on the rubble of the abbey was thus
delayed a whole day, during which time the German 1st
Parachute Regiment moved comfortably into their new


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
impregnable quarters. His subsequent attack on those
quarters was seen off with ease.
That is the trouble with bombing missions---they
raise an impressive hell in a second and problems for
years.
For the bomber crews it is simply a logistics
problem. They have to over-fly a target and release
bombs on it. This is difficult if you are moving at
great speeds. The ground is necessarily a fleeting
map for you. You are no more involved with the life
below than you would be sitting in an operations
room. This is why the foot soldier is rarely
heartened by bombing raids. They are over-
destructive. They bomb the house you want to move
into, destroy the roads your supplies must come up
on. And they may rob you of a vital source of succour
and information-- -civilian friendship.
The front-line soldier is only 1 in 7 of an
al rmy. The rest of that army is there to sustain,
supply and if necessary hospitalise him. Yet in
strategies that include bombing, and even in many
that do not, that soldier is the last person to be
considered. He cannot take part in your drama in the
air (from which you can be shot to earth in moments


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
because you have no walls or bushes to hide behind) .
And the bomber pilot cannot take part in the drama of
a speck on the ground.
Only monks were in the abbey when it was blown
to pieces-and apparently two children who couldn't
be evacuated because raising them a few inches made
them scream with agony and no sedation was available
(they were both dying, a boy and a girl).
The stricken abbey was now an unbeatable place
for both observation and defence, a marriage which is
deadly indeed for the attacker. Our friends who
rained terror from the skies had provided the enemy
with a positive bee-hive of impregnable bunkers---as
well as the moral right to occupy those still
consecrated fragments.
Naturally all this news sounded to our ears like
home sweet home. But there was more deadly stuff to
come. In order to exact revenge on the crassness of
the Cassino bombing it was now decided in a kind of
hara-kiri mood to altogether smash the town of
Cassino, and thus turn not simply the summit of that
hill but every inch of its southern slope into a
buzzing fortress.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
On March 15th 1944 a huge allied bombardment took
place-1400 bombs from the air (1000 tons-worth) and
190.000 shells from the artillery. And the idea
behind it was the same as that behind all previous
bombardments and assaults, namely 'to dislodge the
enemy in and around Cassino'.
Just three German battalions crawled out of
their holes again and poured down lethal fire on the
poor devils (New Zealanders this time) trying to
cross the Rapido (yet again?) after their first
Bailey bridges and even the replacement ones were
destroyed, such that on March 20th General Alexander,
appalled by the casualty rate, decided to give the
New Zealanders just a day and a half to regain their
positions or withdraw.
And indeed they withdrew, on March 23rd, but SO
badly mauled that the New Zealand Corps could not be
said to exist any more. It was formally disbanded and
its remnants distributed to other units.
We thought, well, this must certainly be the end
of frontal attacks against a proven unbeatable line
but no. In the prevailing aberrant logic of the
Italian campaign the punishment meted out by such a


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
small German force had to be requited a third time
by incurring even more casualties on our own side.
It was now the turn of the valiant Polish Corps
(the presence today of the Polish cemetery just north
of Cassino is living testimony) - But valour was
impotent to turn a thrice-doomed strategy.
That attack happened on May 11th. The Eighth army
to the right flank were going to put in a
simultaneous drive towards the Anzio bridgehead in
order to relieve that beleagured landing. The British
13th Corps were going to advance on Sant' Angelo in
Theodice, close to the road to Rome and the Liri
defile.
Again there was a massive artillery bombardment,
though, as if in blushful contrition, the bombing
from the air was concentrated (naturally to no avail
whatever, destroying only roads and ditches) on the
German supply lines.
Those Poles could be seen from just about every
house, now turned to rubble, in Cassino. So you could
neither get through the town nor take it from a
flank. At last Cassino was left to the Germans. It
became a town of ghostly patrols by night-these
would brush each other in ruined kitchens and


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
corridors and shoot point blank. And the German
defenders, compared with the sum total of the forces
thrown against them a tiny band of men, remained.
And, just think, it suddenly occurred to the top
command to allow the French commander General Juin to
do what he (and we) had always said was the only
ppractical one. Without fuss or fury he followed the
plan he had tried unsuccessfully to bend Mark Clark's
ear with seven months of blood sacrifice ago.
Having quickly got his Free French Corps across
the mountains he sent his Goums, fleet of foot in
mountains as no one else, on a separate curving
action towards the Liri defile that contained the
road to Rome. This silent and unsupported action
barred the Germans from their only avenue of escape.
But, by one of war's terrible ironies, that Goum
action opened the defile containing the road to Rome
to guess whom? No less than General Mark Clark who,
instead of sticking to the strategy he had been
ordered to follow, slipped off the road and into Rome
as its American Liberator.
General Alexander (once described as a 'fifth
wheel') complained bitterly upwards about this
unmilitary conduct but no reprimand, least of all a


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
court indictment, came forth, it being a rule of this
particular war that if by pulling a fast one you made
headlines no one would complain.
What actually happened was far worse than a mere
unmilitary change of direction. The moment the Goums
opened the way to Rome for him he urged his own
General Truscott, commander of the Anzio operation
and perhaps his best general, to break out of his
bridgehead eastwards and cut off the Germans in and
north of Cassino. Truscott did this swiftly. In fact
he cut off a great part of the German a rmy. But just
as he was about to do his mopping up operation an
order came down from Clark that he should pull out at
once and turn his nose to Rome. Trustcott refused to
believe it. He checked with army HQ at once. But
there was no one of authority to speak to. Clark had
gone on his liberation quest. So withdraw Trustcott
had to, leaving thousands of Germans to fight another
day---against us who were on our way.
We disembarked at Taranto, clattering down the
gangway fitter and brighter and more boisterous than
when we had clattered up it.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
And we even got more leave, this time in Rome,
now that by courtesy of our former commander it was
ready to receive us. I stayed at the Hotel
Inghilterra. The hall porter looked after our sexual
as well as tourist needs without complacency or
connivance or implied disdain, his born Roman tact
turning it into a simple market operation, with the
name of the lady, the address and the price set out
clearly on a piece of paper (not that anything is
this simple for a Roman-he set the price down with a
special dark contempt known only to his city).
From the Piazza di Spagna I took a rocking,
sliding, forward-falling ride in one of the city's
tiny canvas-topped cabs in which a handful of people
stood crammed body to body clinging to an unsteady
steel frame. It was an ideal personal introduction
medium. Should a woman press harder than each
collective free fall justified it was a come-on sign.
The pope forlornly appealed to the women of Rome to
behave with more discretion, meaning that they
shouldn't perhaps open their legs at the drop of a
hat. But how did he know what they were privately
doing? To judge by their behaviour in fully-dressed
encounters you could think it was going to lead that


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
way but it didn't necessarily or even mostly. What
the pope was unable to add, because it might have
seemed an indiscretion, was that the women of Rome
were virtually starving and had to feed their men-
folk and children somehow.
Well, at the end of this little cab journey in
search of what I understood would be many hours of
mutual languorous self-indulgence, I found two ladies
in an eighteenth-century setting. They greeted me at
the door of a large apartment with tall windows and
parquet floors, both looking not only like school
teachers but spinsters. They smiled and invited me in
for some ersatz coffee. We sat chatting and the hours
passed and any thought of the mingling of seed, let
alone hours of it, was no more in the air than were
smells of roasting meat. They were thin, they were
anxious. I paid them what I had been told to pay, we
shook hands with great friendliness after such a nice
long talk, and I once again did the free-fall
journey. And I thanked the hall porter-and this time
his Roman thoughts were wrong.
Somewhere north of Rome, well east, high in the
hills where thick snow and ice were in the air, we
settled in a townlet that treated us not as guests


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
but sons and brothers. We had never eaten So well in
all our lives. Where the food came from, it being an
amalgam of our rations and local cellar stores, I was
never told and never enquired about.
One of my gunners who had a cheerful placid face
unmarked by F.0.0. duties told me that a local couple
had adopted him. He was in their house for all meals.
They doted on him because they had no children, he
said. He was the son they had always dreamed about.
And then one day he asked me a question-The man
can't have children and they've begged me to give his
wife a child and what should I do? The woman had
quietly opened the door of their bedroom and shown
him the double bed, and on the wall at its head was a
madonnina with a candle flame before her, such as you
saw in every such bedroom, and at every wayside.
I said, Give them their child. And as far as I
know (he never spoke of it again) this is what he
did.
And all this took place in two weeks.
No one could say we weren't ripe for more war.
The fitness we exuded cried out to be used. We were
without warning told to move in the middle of the
night. We stealthily dressed and when we were kitted


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
- up to go I tapped on my host's door, behind which no
fewer than four slept in the one bed. They blinked at
me with bewilderment, thinking it was an alarm. I
said good bye with a smile and all they did was blink
at me from within their deep Italian dreams, and next
morning I swear none of them remembered my little
visit.
The familiar feathers in the belly returned
quite as if war had a direct line to the nervous
system.
The British press was meanwhile being festive
about the liberation' of Rome. In ghoulishly
gloating war-language it described how the Fifth army
was 'racing' and even 'storming' up Italy in pursuit
of an enemy that was 'fleeing' for dear life under
the pounding' of an 'air blitz'---a retreat So swift
that 'our boys' couldn't keep up with them, though
the said boys were of course 'at grips' with them,
'clashing' with them and 'smashing through' or else
'locked' with them in fight.
Of all languages this is one which can never
capture battle in its truth, and of course it isn't
meant to. The function of newspapers in war is to
conceal, camouflage and corrupt the truth when it


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
threatens the reader's determination to go on with
that war.
Newspapers thought and wrote in exactly the same
manner as we did. Their language was grandiose in a
manner that fitted war-dementia perfectly. So we
needed it. We needed to see ourselves as getting to
grips with' and 'clashing with' the enemy.
That language made us feel momentarily, rather
pathetically, exalted. In its light we saw ourselves
as 'running the show', deciding on whether to rush
the enemy with tanks or machine gunfire or bombs from
the air. The giddy funfair that newspapers turned the
war into suited us. Above all, the very ignorance
that underlay newspaper reports was ours too. We
really did think that at this moment, with Rome
taken, Jerry was fleeing for all his worth, and that
we were chasing him for all ours.
In fact we sleepwalkers now had the Trasimene
Line before us, and the Arno Line beyond that, then
the Gothic Line and lastly the river Po. These were
the traps Kesselring was even now preparing (in a
mood, surely, of ruse and party game) .
He was a singularly fortunate general. He could
devise his strategy fully confident that Hitler was


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
behind him---a luxury no commander on our side could
expect.
Stories about how our motley assembly of
'allies' argued and bickered about almost everything
trickled down to us on a regular basis. But what did
we expect? As between a Britain about to lose its
world status, a communist power bent on getting world
status and an America impatient to write off the
European war zone and move on to its real area of
interest, namely the Far East, where was there room
for the single command on which battle, however
extended, depends?
As for me, I found myself full of zest for what
was to come. I was no longer the one-pip officer who
had led a -mile-long convoy into a cul de sac. An
irksome memory, that-the unhitching of the guns and
their laborious reversal, curses all the way down the
column such that though I usually drove up and down
said column on my motor-bike I now found myself with
plenty to do at the column's head, now the tail.
We travelled north of Rome, skirting the
Trasimene lake as Hannibal did nearly two and a half
thousand years before. And we set down our guns for
another wait, which allowed the feathers to settle


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
in: they became, as before, a constant, even in
sleep, which was one of fear's mercies.
But in the meantime, while we waited, I had a
secret debt to settle, in Cassino. I didn't know what
it was, only that I must pay that town a visit as
soon as I could get a day free.


WAR IN ITALY
HUSH
Nine
stood in the great hush. The sound of my Jeep engine
died as if it had been sucked into the dead earth. Not a
rliving creature was here, not a bird or footstep. The
hill which had contained the town was covered with
quick-lime to hide the stench of the dead and it lay like
a white shroud fallen on the slope and full of soft
mounds. At the top where the abbey had stood was a
formidable glowering mass of jagged sullen stone which
gave no messages except I am dead.


WAR IN ITALY
The moment battles end the Field Hygiene unit (part
of the Medical Corps) moves in to count and remove for
burial the dead, military and civilian. The Field Hygiene
people who moved into Cassino, accustomed though they
were to the sight of the fallen, stood in shock and
bafflement at what they saw before them.
The road to Rome went silently north into its
valley. I heard a slight grating sound and an old lady in
black, head covered, came pushing a wheelbarrow along a
sad ruined road at the lower eastern point of this hill
of debris and dust.
She came within yards of me, looking to neither left
nor right, her gaze bitter and mute and closed, her lips
pursed in a deeply pallid face. She stared at the rubble
before: her, looking for whatever she could rescue.
Standing at her side, just lately from Beirut, I must
have looked an unworthily agile member of that monstrous
assembly that was able to bomb monks and monasteries and
lay entirely waste a slumbering town that wasn't even on
its rightful target programme.
And try as I might to solicit a glance or a smile
from her she remained set on her quest for crushed
mementoes of her home. I wanted to say something about
how senseless war was but I was in uniform, namely war
itself. Yet I didn't really understand her bitterness.
With the forbidding insensitivity of youth, on which wars


WAR IN ITALY
wisely depend, I expected her to mourn this vast white
shroud together with me, to look up from the death of her
town to interest herself in my youthful khaki-clothed
aspiration that all this should come to an end soon.
Worse, I couldn't genuinely perceive what had
happened to her. I accepted that all this was dead
without knowing what exactly that meant-what the death
was that I was always trying to escape, the death that
the other second lieutenant, the shuddering one I had
thrown. myself into a corner of a dugout with, hadn't
escaped.
It wasn't that I didn't know what she had lost, all
her family perhaps, certainly the home that had been hers
since birth, just that I thought it a bagatelle and she
knew this.
I was dizzy, standing there, with the dizziness of
my own incomprehension. It was as if I had entered this
great concourse of the dead and yet remained lively and
loquacious in its midst. I felt numbed and the numbness
was in every bone and I couldn't return to an earlier
time when this numbness was absent because I couldn't
remember it, especially that laughing boy our almost
daily self-taunting chant was about.
No wonder I had drawn a line under my past, written
finis under it, before leaving London. I knew exactly
what I was doing then, wouldn't you say? If I was now


WAR IN ITALY
pondering suicide- -an active vigorous and spectacular
suicide-wasn't that just one more logical step?
The Italian light brings the most forlorn of scenes
to life but it could do nothing for Cassino. The sky,
usually So close, SO part of everything you did, laid
heavy mourning hands on this hill, deepening the silence
of the numberless dead under their quick-lime winding
sheet.
I didn't yet know that I had come to terrible
decisions. Least of all that my thought of graduating as
a soldier had only one meaning.
Only slowly did I come to know that I had resolved
to die. in the campaign that awaited us.
And I would make a mark, I would go out with glory.
I didn't know what the glory was to be. But one thing was
clear-that my present fitness and stamina were at the
service of trying to die.
It would have to be done quickly-I knew we were
about to enter the last stage of the Italian
operations-I needed to seize my chance and I knew this
chance: would come, I knew life would fit in with my
resolve because that resolve was SO deep and sure and
unhesitating.
There was a book much in vogue during the Second
World War called The Last Enemy. It was by a fighter
pilot whose name was Richard Hillary and the Last Enemy


WAR IN ITALY
was death. It had fascinated us all, back during the
Battle of Britain (as the Beaverbrook press christened
it) when our fighters were our only defence against a
vastly. superior Nazi bomber force.
All through his book Richard Hillary seemed resolved
to fight that last enemy, knowing that this last fight
was a first embrace. And he did go down.
I wished to say to myself that, having been enrolled
in the brotherhood of killers, I would now do the
rightful thing by joining the other brotherhood of the
killed, and thus truthfully I would write my own finis on
all things visionary and good, in bitter gratitude for my
former life that had brought me, as its apex and reward,
to this shroud on a hillside whose dead I had managed not
to join.
This time I would be mindful of what I did in
battle, not in the sense of surviving though. I would be
mindful the other way, without attention to the safety of
my skin. After all, if there was such a thing as saving
your skin there had to be the reverse.
And there was another reason for suicide. When SO
much flak has been thrown about, when you have heard that
whizzing hot fragment with its little shriek a sufficient
number: of times you naturally get a sense of yourself as
a special and even cherished target. And in the dearth of
other attentions this becomes strangely like a tribute.


WAR IN ITALY
And your sole worth, as a target for the enemy, must
needs impel you, out of defiance, in the end, to offer
your breast at last.
We moved tremulously into the line. All its fateful
signs and sounds returned to us fondly and it was like
falling into a dream where we shook and stared and
recognised and were impotent to leave.
The Italian spring had begun to work its haunting
brazen magic. We were some miles from a castle high on a
steep hill called Monte Poggiolo (we took names not from
the map but the local people). It was our ultimate
target.
This action took me into enemy lines for the first
time. There are two ways you can find yourself in enemy
lines. You either come on them by mistake, that is you
lose yourself, or they suddenly come on you, you look
round the new terrain and nothing of it is yours any more
and you don't know how it happened.
After some rather sleepless nights full of stop-go
moves and no settling down I arrived with my men at the
appointed place, a country mansion in the flat of a great
valley which stretched before us for at least a mile,
rising to steep woodland on all its three sides.
This place was Battalion neadquarters. The C.O.
told me he was sending a platoon to a smaller house we


WAR IN ITALY
could see on our right flank. He said I had better go
with the platoon because that way I would be more
forward, it would give me a better command of the valley,
especially the hill that rose before us, at the valley's
end.
I moved with my men and the infantry platoon into
the second house and there was a lot of excitement in the
air. We were expecting to attack. We could see yet one
more house on the slope facing us, among trees, a new
house, small and neat. And it seemed likely that we would
be ordered to attack this. We always assumed that a house
that could look straight across at us was enemy-held.
Whether this platoon I was with would attack alone, with
no artillery back-up, or be the spearhead of something
bigger I didn't yet know.
I climbed to the hay loft for a more secluded look.
My signaller below plugged an earphone extension into the
radio and brought it up to me So that I could talk to my
command post at the gun end.
I was in restless mood, pacing about. I spoke into
the mike and pinpointed the map reference of the house
ahead. I wished to put a few shells on it to evoke a
response in the case of its being occupied. I gave my
order: Target..Fire by order...One round gunfire.


WAR IN ITALY
I waited for that to be repeated back, then there
was a longer wait for the word Ready, which
signified
that the guns had been loaded.
Isaid Fire! and almost at once there was a whirring
in the air above that grew to a shrill whistle and the
first shell landed short of the house, briefly obscuring
it in smoke.
When all four shells had landed short I added one
hundred yards and once more ordered fire. This time I got
a hit on the left side of the roof. I ordered a final
four rounds which fell to one side of the house, close to
the walls. Smoke and debris settled down in a stately,
almost loving way among the trees.
I sat in the hay loft in a methodical frame of mind
quite different from the alarm and anger of my earlier
days. I went downstairs, returned to my perch, aching to
get a move on, to hell with this waiting and watching
game. I wasn't kept waiting long. The Battalion commander
at the mansion behind us sent me a runner to say that I
must take a section of infantry, seven or eight men, to
the very house I had just shelled. I would be the officer
in charge.
I called my Battery commander by radio (he had the
final responsibility here) and he assured me that the
house I was going to occupy was safe, therefore my well-
armed infantry escort was just a safeguard. I must go in


WAR IN ITALY
daylight, he said, 'soonest'. Once in the house, he said,
stay put.
So, kitted up and ready, we started off across the
valley. With my signallers we were eleven men in all. We
didn't take much trouble concealing ourselves. I trusted
the Intelligence I'd just received. The men followed me
in single file, pale, their eyes intent on the ground. I
told them what I knew and in answer they spoke my
thoughts-why, if the top of this valley was unoccupied,
was I being sent up like a recce patrol, that is in
strength?
Once we were close to the house we concealed
ourselves behind trees. I saw a movement at the windows
which I thought was careless enough to be a civilian's,
So I walked forward and pushed the door open. My Battery
commander was right. Standing there looking at me in
alarm were five Italians.
The tidy dining room where they stood was identical
to that of every Italian home-a sideboard, a big central
table under a pile cloth and a narrow kitchen visible
through a doorway. There were three women and two men.
They stared at me and I stared at them, then we smiled
and nodded. I gestured behind me to indicate there were
other soldiers outside and in the Italian manner they
beckoned us all in as if it were a normal Italian day. My
patrol trudged in and the nodding went on all over again


WAR IN ITALY
as helmets came off and arms and packs were put down
while chairs were scraped across the floor and others
brought in. Outside there was an uncertain silence. It
was just as if the trees told us things.
Have the Germans been here? was my first noun-and-
gesture question. Yes, they nodded, glad to give
information, they left early this morning (then how could
news of their departure have reached Intelligence SO
soon?). Where did they go? I asked. Oh, they said with
sweeping gestures indicating far away, in
vehicles-macchine.
The women took our army rations and began cooking us
a meal, which we ate at the table with knives and forks
and spoons. Our bully beef was fried with vegetables to
make a padellata of just about everything, and we also
had soup. I spoke particularly to a young couple who
appeared to be the owners of this house. They were
excited by our visit because it indicated, they thought,
that the front line had already moved through them.
The other Italians left, a fact that troubled me . I
eyed their departing backs but I didn't stop them. When I
asked where they had gone the couple said they lived at
another house further up the hill. It didn't occur to me
that they might betray our presence to the Germans once
they were back among them. I just knew they wouldn't.
Italians didn't.


WAR IN ITALY
The couple brought out wine and we toasted each
other, thirteen mouths in all. I asked them, Were you
here this morning when-? and I made shell-fire gestures.
They said, Yes, yes, quite as if I had sent over clouds
of festive balloons. I tapped myself and said, Io, io!,
meaning that it was I who took their roof off. I couldn't
believe what I was saying-do you tell the people who
very narrowly escape death at your hands that the hands
were yours? Was this new soldier in me a bloody idiot? I
couldn't believe their degree of calm. But this is the
Italian way-to get to the next thing quick and, if it is
a good thing, you forget the old thing however bad.
The couple told me that the Germans had behaved very
well. And we all nodded at that comforting cliché-After
all, they're human like all of us. The young man still
gazed at me as if my shells had done him a power of good.
He must surely have been relieved to see us sitting at
his table happily, our shelling duties safely over.
I asked if I might go upstairs, holding up my
binoculars to show them why, and they nodded of course,
of course. I closed the door on them all and tiptoed up
the stairs which had mercifully been spared by my shells.
On the first landing I saw the open sky. Almost half the
roof had been ripped away. The bedroom wall had
collapsed, and a tree's boughs swayed ever So gently in
its place. The carpet of what must be the master bedroom


WAR IN ITALY
was covered with smashed tables and mirrors and ceramic
pots and jewellery and perfume oottles, while the bed-
cover lay under broken roof slates. I was astonished at
the force behind these 'light' twenty-five-pounders.
I walked into a smaller room at the rear, intact and
quiet. I sat on the bed, keeping to the shadows, and
brought the binoculars to my eyes. When I had focussed
them I saw I was looking down a village street, most of
it obscured by trees. Beyond this were the squat tower of
a church and the corner of a square. It was very close.
And all of a sudden a man strolled out into the
open, and he was a German, unarmed. He was perhaps
seventy yards away. I was fascinated by his tin hat,
curling round the ears. I withdrew into the shadows and
watched him strolling up and down. Then he tired of it
and disappeared. I tiptoed downstairs and opened the
dining-room door. I shushed my men quiet. Jerry's still
here, I told them.
I whispered to my signaller to get on to my command
post, and when I was through to the Battery
commander-the major with warm eyes who had sent me on my
first F.0.0. job-I gave him my position in code and told
him, The Germans are here, not many yards off. He made an
astonished What? and quickly said, Put sentries out right
away, you shouldn't be there at all, come back as soon as
it's dark and keep on your toes. I asked him won't our


WAR IN ITALY
line draw level to us? shouldn't I stay? and he said
urgently no, no, come back. It seemed I was attracting
attention at Battalion level for the first time. I
thought I knew why-it was my calm. I was witnessing it
too, my own calm. Because I really did want to stay.
Presumably to be blown up by our own troops that evening.
I didn't put sentries out. Instead I placed a couple
of men by the door; inside-the door was luckily on our
side of the house, not the enemy's. And that was how we
waited, in full kit, arms at the ready, for what seemed
days, in silence, watchful. I had half a mind to go
upstairs again and spy. But something warned me, don't
put out mental waves Jerry might pick up, they can feel
you looking sometimes, stay where you are. The couple
moved about in awed silence. Not a sound came from the
rest of the village. Slowly the sun began going down. And
then shadows formed outside. Jerry would send out patrols
soon so I decided to move before it was quite dark. We
left the house one by one. This time there was no
clanking of belt on gun, no talk at all. The couple was
silently regretful, as well they might be, seeing that in
fact the front line had not yet passed through them.
We got back to Battalion headquarters in record time
and fresh orders were waiting for me. I was to take my
three men to join another company altogether-A Company.
This was commanded by a man I was to work with happily


WAR IN ITALY
and often. Everyone called him The Major. He was a
regular soldier and had come up from the troops, and his
men were as thick as thieves with him, in a conspiracy of
loyalty unto death.
It looked as if I was joining the spearhead of an
attack. The Major when I joined him next day said he
needed to take up a position right below the mighty Monte
Poggiolo. We moved up platoon by platoon, running one
sunlit! tree to the next, with stiff high grass at our
feet. We crouched when Spandau fire spat out, making its
great clatter from the top of the hill. We climbed
sideways as this afforded us best cover and at last we
saw the colossal shell-proof monster above us with its
pouting stone walls that must be a metre or more thick.
We spotted a big farmhouse and ran for it. Inside
there were sacks of barley, maize, huge onions and
aubergines, donkey-panniers of potatoes, grapes that had
shrivelled, a stained prodigal wine-press and urns of
spoiled milk. Grain was spilled all over the floor. We
took up positions in the dark places behind the windows,
treading quietly. The rest of the Company came up in
sections, at intervals.
When The Major arrived, a big cheerful moustached
man with quick eyes and rosy healthy cheeks, we went
together up a ladder to the loft, followed by a Bren
gunner: We stood together behind the closed window,


WAR IN ITALY
excited as the gunner placed the Bren gun on a table
before the window and set it on its tripod. He fed in a
belt of ammunition. The Major went to one side of the
window and, squatting, very slowly moved his hand along
the window ledge until it touched the frame, then he
warily pulled the window open, inch by inch, while I
pushed the gun forward and sighted it. Before us rose a
field of overgrown grass and at its end a farmhouse lay
quiet among its trees with the castle towering behind it
on a rising of its own. It was on the farmhouse that I
sighted the gun.
The Major called to a corporal behind him to take
out a small patrol. We'll give you covering fire, he
said.
The patrol assembled downstairs and left by the
back, through the orchard, and came round the side of the
house to the front, smack under us. As soon as they broke
cover an enemy gun clattered out with a hail of tracer
bullets-swift, floating red flames that spattered on to
our walls. I shouted to The Major that the fire was
coming from a slit trench in front of the enemy house,
not the house itself. We knew it would be difficult to
winkle it out behind its sandbags. The Major crouched at
the gun and sprayed bullets wildly across the field but
since they weren't tracer we couldn't see where they were
going. I shouted; Tracer, tracer, we need tracer! The


WAR IN ITALY
Major took up my shout, Bring up some tracer, I'm going
to have this bastard!
But the trench went on firing back. The bullets
smashed one of the other windows. We were all jumping up
and down with excitement, calling out merrily, More to
the left, down a bit!
Men rushed up with tracer bullets. The Major tore at
the old belt and threw it to the floor but he took some
seconds to fit the new one because his hands were
trembling So with excitement. The more he pushed down the
harder'it wedged. Then there spurted a long flowing
dotted line of tracers from his gun as he gripped the
trigger but they were wide and I tried to push him aside
as he lurched about, the sweat pouring down his face, but
he kicked out to get me in the shins.
We saw a man's hand, then arm, briefly, at the edge
of the enemy trench, pulling down more ammunition. The
Major sighted the gun exactly on that spot and fired and
I envied him this shower of flaming bullets that hurt us
not at all. Our tracers were soon used up. The Major
threw down the last belt and shrugged with a smile,
turning away from the window. We went back downstairs and
smoked, waiting for the tank that was due to come up in
support of us. We heard its sullen grinding roar as it
nearedithe house at the back. When it was in position it
only needed to fire one cannon, which sent up the earth


WAR IN ITALY
round the enemy trench in a tall black fountain, and two
Germans jumped out with their hands up, covered with
dirt. The patrol ran forward and took them prisoner. The
Major shrugged again and told us to get ready to move. We
must now occupy the house these Germans had been
defending.
Again we went up one section (about half a platoon)
at a time, running harder this time, being now in full
view of the castle. When we glimpsed it close up we saw
that it was girded round with a deep moat or ditch. And
the last climb to this ditch was very steep-as well as
exposed. Behind the black slits in the castle walls we
imagined Jerry watching us. The farmhouse we entered was
easy game for them.
The tank commander dismayed us by insisting on
bringing up his tank to our new position, thus attracting
Jerry's heaviest fire. We argued with him, told him to
keep back but he had a facile, swaggering manner, with
the square firm tough chin that So often denotes poor
nerves. Until now we had been lucky. Nothing heavy had
fallen.
Our farmhouse, unruffled within its garden, had
particularly small windows, which was useful but made it
very dark. The whole of the Company crowded in. This was
a breach of war law-you must avoid assembling in a small
area easy to target. And sentries must be posted outside.


WAR IN ITALY
But it was easier to stand sentry behind the windows, and
as for crowding together it-as a matter of military
fact- steadied morale.
The Major was worried. He knew we should be outside,
being too much under the castle's close gaze. But he
decided to hell with it and put his HQ in the kitchen and
stationed a Bren gunner in one of the windows. And he
didn't put out sentries because we were all expecting a
barrage at dusk and nobody wanted to die outside. As a
gunner I felt that any observer in the castle would
target us and as we were SO close his shells would fall
wide of us, due to the high trajectory they needed in
order to get over the castle and onto us, which surely
involved a big margin of error. Not that I expressed this
comforting if complicated doctrine to anyone.
Half the men had put their beds down in the barn and
half in the main room upstairs. Everyone was in reticent
mood, leaden with the sleepiness that often goes with
foreboding. I stepped over them to get to a small room to
the side of the house on the upper floor where my radio
was being set up. Once the tuning signals were over I
passed my new map reference through to the command post.
Then I: called fire down on a few targets close to the
castleito ensure that no enemy would leave the castle
without caution. Having my earphones on I didn't hear the
first warning sweep and whoosh of the barrage when it


WAR IN ITALY
came and I was almost thrown from my chair by a swift hot
blast which came through the window at my side- it was
luckily open, otherwise glass fragments would have made a
nice mess of me. I jumped up and glanced below. Blue
smoke was trailing from the area of the tank parked just
underneath me. But the tank was untouched.
That's only the first! I shouted as I ran downstairs
to get The Major's orders. Men were huddled round the
kitchen windows, guns cocked in case Jerry put his nose
round the corner. Just as I reached The Major all hell
started coming over. The men upstairs were scrambling
downstairs in a great blind clatter and everyone started
trying to pile into the kitchen, with The Major shouting,
Get out you bastards!
Two fell in awful ominous crashes just behind the
house-the firing was devilishly accurate and the men
near the back wall started shouting, We're sitting
targets. They wanted to get at the buggers with their
hands etc. Where's that tank commander? I asked, I just
want to see his face. Because without doubt it was his
machine that had drawn the fire. The fatal pungent smell
of cordite drifted through the house and rubble was
everywhere, I started running round looking for the tank
commander to get him to move that bloody great object of
his-also because it couldn't possibly help at this late
stage.


WAR IN ITALY
The men at the windows wanted to start shooting. I
found the tank commander near one of the radios
downstairs. To my great relief he was looking subdued and
pale and thoughtful-all of a sudden he was one of us,
only ten years younger than he'd looked before. Men were
moving around, jostling each other, trying by motion to
stave off the castle's evil eye. The Major kept coming to
the kitchen door and shouting, What the bloody hell's
going on here? What's the matter? The shells were the
matter and the mens' sightless peregrinations went on and
everybody was thinking surely, surely the next one has to
have all our numbers written on it (for an 88mm. will
easily take care of a mansion).
The tall naystack in front of the house caught fire
from shrapnel. I had just turned to look at the men
crowding together under the stairs-they were making it
difficult for my signaller to get through to the
kitchen-and suddenly everything became lit up with a
bustling generous yellow light followed by the sharp
crackle of hungrily burning hay. The men at the windows
were shouting, Jerry's in there, shoot for christsake,
something's moving! The Bren gunner put a burst into the
flames as The Major pushed his way through and said What
are you shooting at? And then someone shouted Look! and
we heard a woman's long scream and again the gunner put
in a burst of fire and he was about to fire again when a


WAR IN ITALY
girl with long hair ran out of the flames and stood
between the house and the burning hay unable to move from
terror.
Come in, come in, we shouted-venire, venire! Which
only made her shriek the louder. And then, just a moment
before the haystack began to tumble in on itself an old
man and a boy dashed out, then came the rest of the
family and without more ado the old man took to his legs
which were suddenly youthful and in a flash was behind
the house and down the hill with all the family running
after him, including the old women and children and the
screaming girl. It was the first and last we saw of them.
No wonder they say the sole survivor of the earth's total
destruction will be an Italian.
The hay continued to burn but sulkily now. The Bren
gunner left his gun pointing at the castle as dusk came
on. The shells abated. Men had to stand back from the
windows now because the embers lit up their faces.
Two hours later a strong patrol went out stealthily
in slippers, their faces blackened and scarves and
knitted hats round their heads. They skirted the embers
and climbed to the vast wooden door that was, as far as
we knew, the castle's only entrance. Then they lay down,
forming a semicircle. The door was tight shut. It
remained SO for the next three hours, until almost
midnight.


WAR IN ITALY
Then one of the Germans came out and strolled
towards the bushes to have a pee. He left the door open
behind him. Five men of the patrol got up and crept to
the door while two others went silently towards him, one
putting himself behind him, another in front. They waited
for him to button up. Just as he turned back to the door
the two men leapt forward, one of them stunning him with
a blow at the back of his head-he gasped with an
instant's astonishment, stood for a moment erect, his
eyes staring, appearing to look for someone, then he
collapsed. The five men at the door then went inside,
tiptoed along the stone corridor until they found the
first lighted room. Several Germans were playing cards
inside. The men pointed their Tommy guns into their faces
and after ten minutes the castle was secure, several
other Germans having been found in the upper rooms. They
were put in a dungeon near the gate, relieved of their
money and valuables, to await the arrival of the
quartermaster who would lay on an escort to take them to
the rear.
I heard all this, move by move, from the patrol
itself. The Major marvelled at this wonder of alert
concerted action which involved no casualties on either
side. It sounded like a fairy tale and the men of the
patrol had a collective bemused look in their tired eyes.


WAR IN ITALY
But there it was. The castle was empty. And the tank
commander could look at it to his little heart's content.
This kind of fighting felt very different from the
wholesale frontal stuff we were used to. We now fitted
ourselves into the terrain, fought on smaller fronts,
moved forward swiftly and over much shorter distances. We
advanced by piecemeal actions devised there and then, and
these were hopefully being replicated by similar
independent actions on our flanks, though you didn't
always know. The key to this was perhaps that the
strategy of concerted action between the two armies,
which had never worked anyway, had at last been
abandoned. The Eighth worked on its own and SO did the
Fifth.
As a result the terrain opened its treasures to us.
Attack was no longer the ponderous business involving
massive barrages and start lines. So we were properly in
the country we stealthily advanced over, we smelled it
and felt the earth. And it began to feel as if we were in
artful conspiracy with the most tenderly waking dawns we
had ever known, the softest low-cloud rains, and the
giddiest of earth scents, dense hot summer ones and
dimmer spicier autumnal ones and then the wafts of sodden
leaf and snoozing earth in winter, turning that narrow


WAR IN ITALY
Italian peninsula into a continent of tiny kingdoms, each
the only paradise.
We were now in Tuscany. There was fighting round San
Gimignano and the bombardier who had been disgusted by
his girlfriend's breath was sent there in an F.0.0.
mission. It was his first time. He returned to the guns
green in the face as if privy at last to war's murderous
intent. He was in a state of walking shell-
shock-competent and cogent but only just. He recounted
every moment of his narrow shaves but mostly the moment
when he suddenly looked into a German's eyes before being
thrown off his feet by the blast of a shell. His face
wobbled as he spoke, a face that had hitherto been a
comedian's. He described it in outrage. He seemed to be
saying in his outrage that no one should be asked to
witness such things. We all had to hear about the scandal
of war. We listened like neighbours in a narrow street
when something bad has happened across the way. We sat
hushed with disbelief at what we knew a thousand times
better. And I think we almost laughed.
Yet he was right. He made me feel ashamed of my
having entered the very method of this madness, and
allowed myself to be inured to it.
My curiosity about the Germans intensified, if
anything. I would reach an enemy post just vacated and
stare at the black smouldering shell-holes and ruined


WAR IN ITALY
rooms, pick my way along, on the look-out for mines, trip
wires. There would be no birds. Battle and birds have no
association. Scents have gone, other than the smoke that
chokes you a little. Did I expect to inure myself?
Shouldn't my cheeks wobble like the bombardier's, with
the scandal of it?
Whenever we came to deserted or ruined houses we
took whatever we wished and, usually, sent it home. We
had no thought of pillaging. The word would have offended
us. For us the stuff belonged to a vague caravan of
nomads: who would never return.
If a door didn't open you pushed it open. You slept
in babies' cots under the wondering eyes of the mother,
you took over kitchens, you fed on the grapes that were
coming to fermenting fullness in a last autumn heat. And
you easily overlooked the anxious thwarted hunger of
those who were being charming to you, charming in a way
that, helpfully for us, made it seem that war was
somehow not happening, a passing illusion. That was
gracious of them.
Once I was in an open field, it must have been after
an attack had moved forward because there were prisoners
of war. standing about, trenches had to be dug for some
reason. and a few prisoners of war were digging here and
there. I took a shovel and handed it to a prisoner who
was idle and he shook his head, flat refused to take it.


WAR IN ITALY
I shrugged. Prisoners weren't under our orders. It took
me much puzzling, to find out why he refused-I suddenly
tumbled to it-he thinks it's for his own grave. Perhaps
he had SO much death in his belly he believed that when
you get caught by the enemy they shoot you. We stood
staring at each other without comprehension.
I remember driving a jeep in pitch darkness under a
downpour of rain with a fierce bombardment going on, I
drove through the swirling mud between two white guiding
tapes, swerving and crashing into potholes to avoid the
flak and blast that seemed everywhere-and I did it in a
calm I couldn't understand, I thought I'm going to get
through and the more impossible it gets, the more death
seems certain, the more I'll get through. As if the war
had come to me at last, adopted me with proud confidence,
recognised me as a rightful component.
But such soldiers are also an anxiety for the higher
command. The routine of killing and escaping killing must
not bei taken as the whole of life. We needed to be
reminded that life was still there. We officers were
exhorted to conduct War Aims discussions in free hours.
The very thought of there being any was, for us, damned
silly. But it gave us officers something to kick a
discussion off with. So we would start asking what kind
of world do we want when it's over and before two words
were out we seemed to register collectively that it was


WAR IN ITALY
all a lot of balls, So we quickly trailed off into
silence and then started saying whatever came into our
pleasure-craving heads.
The idea of getting us to discuss War Aims was
nevertheless a devilishly clever one since it planted in
us the idea that there were any-and the acceptance of a
falsehood is hardly easy to thrust on multitudes. No
wonder, when Hitler heard from his Intelligence about War
Aims on our side, he promptly ordered his armies to
discuss them. Here he had the advantage of simplicity.
Naturally his war aim to eliminate the Jews would not
come under discussion. He was particularly anxious that
his soldiers should never be stationed close to a
concentration camp. The screams were noticed. It had
happened once. And he made it his personal order that the
two must henceforth never meet.
Otherwise War Aims were as useful to him as they
were to us. They introduced the idea that we were here in
battle not simply to kill each other but for a purpose
which rendered our deaths if not desirable at least
worthwhile. And what government clean or foul could
resist that?
And he did have a War Aim which his troops could
talk about-one fixed military purpose which bestrode all
others, namely the destruction of communism.


WAR IN ITALY
And the one clear and demonstrable thing his
politics achieved was the first communist empire.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
Nine
stood in the great hush. The sound of my
Jeep engine died as if it had been sucked
into the dead earth. Not a living creature
was here, not a bird or footstep. The hill which had
contained the town was covered with quick-lime to
hide the stench of the dead and it lay like a white
shroud fallen on the slope and full of soft mounds.
At the top where the abbey had stood was a formidable
glowering mass of jagged sullen stone which gave no
messages except I am dead.
The moment battles end the Field Hygiene unit
(part of the Medical Corps) moves in to count and
remove for burial the dead, military and civilian.
The Field Hygiene people who moved into Cassino,
accustomed though they were to the sight of the
fallen, stood in shock and bafflement at what they
saw before them.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
The road to Rome went silently north into its
valley. I heard a slight grating sound and an old
lady in black, head covered, came pushing a
wheelbarrow along a sad ruined road at the lower
eastern point of this hill of debris and dust.
She came within yards of me, looking to neither
left nor right, her gaze bitter and mute and closed,
her lips pursed in a deeply pallid face. She stared
at the rubble before her, looking for whatever she
could rescue. Standing at her side, just lately from
Beirut, I must have looked an unworthily agile member
of that monstrous assembly that was able to bomb
monks and monasteries and lay entirely waste a
slumbering town that wasn't even on its rightful
target programme .
And try as I might to solicit a glance or a
smile from her she remained set on her quest for
crushed mementoes of her home. I wanted to say
something about how senseless war was but I was in
uniform, namely war itself. Yet I didn't really
understand her bitterness. With the forbidding
insensitivity of youth, on which wars wisely depend,
I expected her to mourn this vast white shroud
together with me, to look up from the death of her


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
town to interest herself in my youthful khaki-clothed
aspiration that all this should come to an end soon.
Worse, I couldn't genuinely perceive what had
happened to her. I accepted that all this was dead
without knowing what exactly that meant-what the
death was that I was always trying to escape, the
death that the other second lieutenant, the one I had
thrown myself into a corner of a dugout with, hadn't
escaped.
It wasn't that I didn't know what she had lost,
all her family perhaps, certainly the home that had
been hers since birth, just that I thought it a
bagatelle and she knew this.
I was dizzy, standing there, with the dizziness
of my own incomprehension. It was as if I had entered
this great concourse of the dead and yet remained
lively and loquacious in its midst. I felt numbed and
the numbness was in every bone and I couldn't return
to an earlier time when this numbness was absent
because I couldn't remember it, especially that
laughing boy our almost daily chant was about.
No wonder I had drawn a line under the past,
written finis under it, before leaving London. I knew
exactly what I was doing then, wouldn't you say? If I


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
was now pondering suicide-an active vigorous and
spectacular suicide-wasn't that just one more
logical step?
The Italian light brings the most forlorn of
scenes to life but it could do nothing for Cassino.
The sky, usually SO close, SO part of everything you
did, laid heavy mourning hands on this hill,
deepening the silence of the numberless dead under
their quick-lime winding sheet.
I didn't yet know that I had come to terrible
decisions. Least of all that my thought of graduating
as a soldier had only one meaning.
Only slowly did I come to know that I had
resolved to die in the campaign that awaited us.
And I would make a mark, I would go out with
glory. I didn't know what the glory was to be. But
one thing was clear-that my present fitness and
stamina were at the service of trying to die.
It would have to be done quickly-I knew we were
about to enter the last stage of the Italian
operations-I needed to seize my chance and I knew
this chance would come, I knew life would fit in with
my resolve because that resolve was SO deep and sure
and unhesitating.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
There was a book much in vogue during the second
world war called The Last Enemy. It was by a fighter
pilot whose name was Richard Hillary and the Last
Enemy was death. It had fascinated us all, back
during the Battle of Britain (as the Beaverbrook
press christened it) when our fighters were our only
defence against a vastly superior nazi bomber force
(Hitler's only superiority).
All through his book Richard Hillary seemed
resolved to fight that last enemy, knowing that this
last fight was a first embrace. And he did go down.
I wished to say to myself that, having been
enrolled in the brotherhood of killers, I would now
do the rightful thing by joining the other
brotherhood of the killed, and thus truthfully I
would write my own finis on all things visionary and
good, in bitter gratitude for my former life that had
brought me, as its apex and reward, to this shroud on
a hillside whose dead I had managed not to join.
This time I would be mindful of what I did in
battle, not in the sense of surviving though. I would
be mindful the other way, without attention to the
safety of my skin. After all, if there was such a


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
thing as saving your skin there had to be the
reverse.
And there was another reason for suicide. When
So much flak has been thrown about, when you have
heard that whizzing hot fragment with its little
shriek a sufficient number of times you naturally get
a sense of yourself as a special and even cherished
target. And in the dearth of other attentions this
becomes strangely like a tribute.
And your sole worth, as a target for the enemy,
must needs impel you, out of defiance, in the end, to
offer your breast at last.
We moved tremulously into the line. All its
fateful signs and sounds returned to us fondly and it
was like falling into a dream where we shook and
stared and recognised and were impotent to leave.
The Italian spring had begun to work its
haunting brazen magic. We were some miles from a
castle high on a steep hill called Monte Poggiolo (we
took names not from the map but the local people). It
was our ultimate target.
This action took me into enemy lines for the
first time. There are two ways you can find yourself


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
in enemy lines. You either come on them by mistake,
that is you lose yourself, or they suddenly come on
you, you look round the new terrain and nothing of it
is yours any more.
After some rather sleepless nights full of stop-
go moves and no settling down I arrived with my men
at the appointed place, a country mansion in the flat
of a great valley which stretched before us for at
least a mile, rising to steep woodland on all its
three sides.
This place was Battalion headquarters. The
commander told me he was sending a platoon to a
smaller house we could see on our right flank. He
said I had better go with the platoon because that
way I would be more forward, it would give me a
better command of the valley, especially the hill
that rose before us, at the valley's end.
I moved with my men and the infantry platoon
into the second house and there was a lot of
excitement in the air. We were expecting to attack.
We could see yet one more house on the slope facing
us, among trees, a new house, small and neat. And it
seemed likely that we would be ordered to attack
this. We always assumed that a house that could look


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
straight across at us was enemy-held. Whether this
platoon I was with would attack alone, with no
artillery back-up, or be the spearhead of something
bigger I didn't yet know.
I climbed to the hay loft for a more secluded
look. My signaller below plugged an earphone
extension into the radio and brought it up to me So
that I could talk to my command post at the gun end.
I was in restless mood, pacing about. I spoke
into the mike and pinpointed the map reference of the
house ahead. I wished to put a few shells on it to
evoke a response in the case of its being occupied. I
gave my order: Target...Fire by order...One round
gunfire.
I waited for that to be repeated back, then
there was a longer wait for the word Ready, which
signified that the guns had been loaded.
I said Fire! and almost at once there was a
whirring in the air above that grew to a shrill
whistle and the first shell landed short of the
house, briefly obscuring it in smoke.
When all four shells had landed short I added
one hundred yards and once more ordered fire. This
time I got a hit on the left side of the roof. I


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
ordered a final four rounds which fell to one side of
the house, close to the walls. Smoke and debris
settled down in a stately, almost loving way among
the trees.
I sat in the hay loft in a methodical frame of
mind quite different from the alarm and anger of my
earlier days. I went downstairs, returned to my
perch, aching to get a move on, to hell with this
waiting and watching game. I wasn't kept waiting
long. The Battalion commander at the mansion behind
us sent me a runner to say that I must take a section
of infantry, seven or eight men, to the very house I
had just shelled. I would be the officer in charge.
I called my Battery commander by radio (he had
the final responsibility here) and he assured me that
the house I was going to occupy was safe, therefore
my well-armed infantry escort was just a safeguard. I
must go in daylight, he said, 'soonest'. Once in the
house, he said, stay put.
So, kitted up and ready, we started off across
the valley. With my signallers we were eleven men in
all. We didn't take much trouble concealing
ourselves. I trusted the Intelligence I'd just
received. The men followed me in single file, pale,


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
their eyes intent on the ground. I told them what I
knew and in answer they spoke my thoughts-why, if
the top of this valley was unoccupied, was I being
sent up like a recce patrol, that is in strength?
Once we were close to the house we concealed
ourselves behind trees. I saw a movement at the
windows which I thought was careless enough to be a
civilian's, So I walked forward and pushed the door
open. My Battery commander was right. Standing there
looking at me in alarm were five Italians.
The tidy dining room where they stood was
identical to that of every Italian home-a sideboard,
a big central table under a pile cloth and a narrow
kitchen visible through a doorway. There were three
women and two men. They stared at me and I stared at
them, then we smiled and nodded. I gestured behind me
to indicate there were other soldiers outside and in
the Italian manner they beckoned us all in as if it
were a normal Italian day. My patrol trudged in and
the nodding went on all over again as helmets came
off and arms and packs were put down while chairs
were scraped across the floor and others brought in.
Outside there was an uncertain silence. It was just
as if the trees told us things.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
Have the Germans been here? was my first noun-
and-gesture question. Yes, they nodded, glad to give
information, they left early this morning (then how
could news of their departure have reached
Intelligence So soon?). Where did they go? I asked.
Oh, they said with sweeping gestures indicating far
away, in vehicles-macchine.
The women took our army rations and began
cooking us a meal, which we ate at the table with
knives and forks and spoons. Our bully beef was fried
with vegetables to make a padellata of just about
everything, and we also had soup. I spoke
particularly to a young couple who appeared to be the
owners of this house. They were excited by our visit
because it indicated, they thought, that the front
line had already moved through them.
The other Italians left, a fact that troubled
me. I eyed their departing backs. When I asked where
they had gone the couple said they lived at another
house further up the hill. Then they brought out wine
and we toasted each other, thirteen mouths in all. I
asked the couple, Were you here this morning when-?
and I made shell-fire gestures. They said, Yes, yes,
quite as if I had sent over clouds of festive


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
balloons. I tapped myself and said, Io, io!, meaning
that it was me who took their roof off. I couldn't
believe what I was saying-do you tell the people who
very narrowly escape death at your hands that the
hands were yours? Was this new soldier in me a bloody
idiot? I couldn't believe their degree of calm. But
this is the Italian way-to get to the next thing
quick and, if it is a good thing, you forget the old
thing however bad.
The couple told me that the Germans had behaved
very well. And we all nodded at that comforting
cliché-After all, they're human like all of us. The
young man still gazed at me as if my shells had done
him a power of good. He must surely have been
relieved to see us sitting at his table happily, our
shelling duties safely over.
I asked if I might go upstairs, holding up my
binoculars to show them why, and they nodded of
course, of course. I closed the door on them all and
tiptoed up the stairs which had mercifully been
spared by my shells. On the first landing I saw the
open sky. Almost half the roof had been ripped away.
The bedroom wall had collapsed, and a tree's boughs
swayed ever So gently in its place. The carpet of


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
what must be the master bedroom was covered with
smashed tables and mirrors and ceramic pots and
jewellery and perfume bottles, while the bed-cover
lay under broken roof slates. I was astonished at the
force behind these 'light' twenty-five-pounders.
I walked into a smaller room at the rear, intact
and quiet. I sat on the bed, keeping to the shadows,
and brought the binoculars to my eyes. When I had
focussed them I saw I was looking down a village
street, most of it obscured by trees. Beyond this was
the squat tower of a church and the corner of a
square. It was very close.
And all of a sudden a man strolled out into the
open, and he was a German, unarmed. He was perhaps
seventy yards away. I was fascinated by his tin hat,
curling round the ears. I withdrew into the shadows
and watched him strolling up and down. Then he tired
of it and disappeared. I tiptoed downstairs and
opened the dining-room door. I shushed my men quiet.
Jerry's still here, I told them.
I whispered to my signaller to get on to my
command post, and when I was through to the Battery
commander-the major with warm eyes who had sent me
on my first F.0.0. job-I gave him my position in


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
code and told him, The Germans are here, not many
yards off. He made an astonished What? and quickly
said, Put sentries out right away, you shouldn't be
there at all, come back as soon as it's dark and keep
on your toes. I asked him won't our line draw level
to us? shouldn't I stay? and he said urgently no, no,
come back. It seemed I was attracting attention at
Battalion level for the first time. I thought I knew
why-it was my calm. I was witnessing it too, my own
calm. Because I really did want to stay. Presumably
to be blown up by our own troops that evening.
I didn't put sentries out. Instead I placed a
couple of men by the door, inside-the door was
luckily on our side of the house, not the enemy's.
And that was how we waited, in full kit, arms at the
ready, for what seemed days, in silence, watchful. I
had half a mind to go upstairs again and spy. But
something warned me, don't put out mental waves Jerry
might pick up, they can feel you looking sometimes,
stay where you are. The couple moved about in awed
silence. Not a sound came from the rest of the
village. Slowly the sun began going down. And then
shadows formed outside. Jerry would send out patrols
soon So I decided to move before it was quite dark.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
We left the house one by one. This time there was no
clanking of belt on gun, no talk at all. The couple
was silently regretful, as well they might be, seeing
that in fact the front line had not yet passed
through them.
We got back to Battalion headquarters in record
time and fresh orders were waiting for me. I was to
take my three men to join another company
altogether-A Company. This was commanded by a man I
was to work with happily and often. Everyone called
him The Major. He was a regular soldier and had come
up from the troops, and his men were as thick as
thieves with him, in a conspiracy of loyalty unto
death.
It looked as if I was joining the spearhead of
an attack. The Major when I joined him next day said
he needed to take up a position right beloew the
mighty Monte Poggiolo. We moved up platoon by
platoon, running one sunlit tree to the next, with
stiff high grass at our feet. We crouched when
Spandau fire spat out, making its
great clatter
from the top of the hill. We climbed sideways as this
afforded us best cover and at last we saw the
colossal shell-proof monster above us with its


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
pouting stone walls that must be a metre or more
thick.
We spotted a big farmhouse and ran for it.
Inside there were sacks of barley, maize, huge onions
and aubergines, donkey-panniers of potatoes, grapes
that had shrivelled, a stained prodigal wine-press
and urns of spoiled milk. Grain was spilled all over
the floor. We took up positions in the dark places
behind the windows, treading quietly. The rest of the
Company came up in sections, at intervals.
When The Major arrived, a big cheerful
moustached man with quick eyes and rosy healthy
cheeks, we went together up a ladder to the loft,
followed by a Bren gunner. We stood together behind
the closed window, excited as the gunner placed the
Bren gun on a table before the window and set it on
its tripod. He fed in a belt of ammunition. The Major
went to one side of the window and, squatting, very
slowly moved his hand along the window ledge until it
touched the frame, then he warily pulled the window
open, inch by inch, while I pushed the gun forward
and sighted it. Before us rose a field of overgrown
grass and at its end a farmhouse lay quiet among its
trees with the castle towering behind it on a rising


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
of its own. It was on the farmhouse that I sighted
the gun.
The Major called to a corporal behind him to
take out a small patrol. We'll give you covering
fire, he said.
The patrol assembled downstairs and left by the
back, through the orchard, and came round the side of
the house to the front, smack under us. As soon as
they broke cover an enemy gun clattered out with a
hail of tracer bullets-swift, floating red flames
that spattered on to our walls. I shouted to The
Major that the fire was coming from a slit trench in
front of the enemy house, not the house itself. We
knew it would be difficult to winkle it out behind
its sandbags. The Major crouched at the gun and
sprayed bullets wildly across the field but since
they weren't tracer we couldn't see where they were
going. I shouted, Tracer, tracer, we need tracer! The
Major took up my shout, Bring up some tracer, I'm
going to have this bastard!
But the trench went on firing back. The bullets
smashed one of the other windows. We were all jumping
up and down with excitement, calling out merrily,
More to the left, down a bit!


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
Men rushed up with tracer bullets. The Major
tore at the old belt and threw it to the floor but he
took some seconds to fit the new one because his
hands were trembling So with excitement. The more he
pushed down the harder it wedged. Then there spurted
a long flowing dotted line of tracers from his gun as
he gripped the trigger but they were wide and I tried
to push him aside as he lurched about, the sweat
pouring down his face, but he kicked out to get me in
the shins.
We saw a man's hand, then ar rm, briefly, at the
edge of the enemy trench, pulling down more
ammunition. The Major sighted the gun exactly on that
spot and fired and I envied him this shower of
flaming bullets that hurt us not at all. Our tracers
were soon used up. The Major threw down the last belt
and shrugged with a smile, turning away from the I
window. We went back downstairs and smoked, waiting
for the tank that was due to come up in support of
us. We heard its sullen grinding roar as it neared
the house at the back. When it was in position it
only needed to fire one cannon, which sent up the
earth round the enemy trench in a tall black
fountain, and two Germans jumped out with their hands


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
up, covered with dirt. The patrol ran forward and
took them prisoner. The Major shrugged again and told
us to get ready to move. We must now occupy the house
these Germans had been defending.
Again we went up one section (about half a
platoon) at a time, running harder this time, being
now in full view of the castle. When we glimpsed it
close up we saw that it was girded round with a deep
moat or ditch. And the last climb to this ditch was
very steep-as well as exposed. Behind the black
slits in the castle walls we imagined Jerry watching
us. The farmhouse we entered was easy game for them.
The tank commander dismayed us by insisting on
bringing up his tank to our new position, thus
attracting Jerry's heaviest fire. We argued with him,
told him to keep back but he had a facile,
swaggering manner, with the square firm tough chin
that So often denotes poor nerves. Until now we had
been lucky. Nothing heavy had fallen.
Our farmhouse, unruffled within its garden, had
particularly small windows, which was useful but made
it very dark. The whole of the Company crowded in.
This was a breach of war law-you must avoid
assembling in a small area easy to target. And


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
sentries must be posted outside. But it was easier to
stand sentry behind the windows, and as for crowding
together it--as a matter of military fact- steadied
morale.
The Major was worried. He knew we should be
outside, being too much under the castle's close
gaze. But he decided to hell with it and put his HQ
in the kitchen and stationed a Bren gunner in one of
the windows. And he didn't put out sentries because
we were all expecting a barrage at dusk and nobody
wanted to die outside. As a gunner I felt that any
observer in the castle would target us and as we
were So close his shells would fall wide of us, due
to the high trajectory they needed in order to get
over the castle and onto us, which surely involved a
big margin of error. Not that I expressed this
comforting if complicated doctrine to anyone.
Half the men had put their beds down in the barn
and half in the main room upstairs. Everyone was in
reticent mood, leaden with the sleepiness that often
goes with foreboding. I stepped over them to get to a
small room to the side of the house on the upper
floor where my radio was being set up. Once the
tuning signals were over I passed my new map


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
reference through to the command post. Then I called
fire down on a few targets close to the castle to
ensure that no enemy would leave the castle without
caution. Having my earphones on I didn't hear the
first warning sweep and woosh of the barrage when it
came and I was almost thrown from my chair by a swift
hot blast which came through the window at my side-
it was luckily open, otherwise glass fragments would
have made a nice mess of me. I jumped up and glanced
below. Blue smoke was trailing from the area of the
tank parked just undereneath me. But the tank was
untouched.
That's only the first! I shouted as I ran
downstairs to get The Major's orders. Men were
huddled round the kitchen windows, guns cocked in
case Jerry put his nose round the corner. Just as I
reached The Major all hell started coming over. The
men upstairs were scrambling downstairs in a great
blind clatter and everyone started trying to pile
into the kitchen, with The Major shouting, Get out
you bastards!
Two fell in awful ominous crashes just behind
the house-the firing was devilishly accurate and the
men near the back wall started shouting, We're


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
sitting targets. They wanted to get at the buggers
with their hands etc. Where's that tank commander? I
asked, I just want to see his face. Because without
doubt it was his machine that had drawn the fire. The
fatal pungent smell of cordite drifted through the
house and rubble was everywhere, I started running
round looking for the tank commander to get him to
move that bloody great object of his-also because it
couldn't possibly help at this late stage.
The men at the windows wanted to start shooting.
I found the tank commander near one of the radios
downstairs. To my great relief he was looking subdued
and pale and thoughtful-all of a sudden he was one
of us, only ten years younger than he'd looked
before. Men were moving around, jostling each other,
trying by motion to stave off the castle's evil eye.
The Major kept coming to the kitchen door and
shouting, What the bloody hell's going on here?
what's the matter? The shells were the matter and the
mens' sightless peregrinations went on and everybody
was thinking surely, surely the next one has to have
all our numbers written on it (for an 88mm. will
easily take care of a mansion).


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
The tall haystack in front of the house caught
fire from schrapnel. I had just turned to look at the
men crowding together under the stairs-they were
making it difficult for my signaller to get through
to the kitchen-and suddenly everything became lit up
with a bustling generous yellow light followed by the
sharp crackle of hungrily burning hay. The men at the
windows were shouting, Jerry's in there, shoot for
christsake, something's moving! The Bren gunner put a
burst into the flames as The Major pushed his way
through and said What are you shooting at? And then
someone shouted Look! and we heard a woman's long
scream and again the gunner put in a burst of fire
and he was about to fire again when a girl with long
hair ran out of the flames and stood between the
house and the burning hay unable to move from terror.
Come in, come in, we shouted-venire, venire!
Which only made her shriek the louder. And then, just
a moment before the haystack began to tumble in on
itself an old man and a boy dashed out, then came the
rest of the family and without more ado the old man
took to his legs which were suddenly youthful and in
a flash was behind the house and down the hill with
all the family running after him, including the old


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
women and children and the screaming girl. It was the
first and last we saw of them. No wonder they say the
sole. survivor of the earth's total destruction will
be an Italian.
The hay continued to burn but sulkily now. The
Bren gunner left his gun pointing at the castle as
dusk came on. The shells abated. Men had to stand
back from the windows now because the embers lit up
their faces.
Two hours later a strong patrol went out
stealthily in slippers, their faces blackened and
scarves and knitted hats round their heads. They
skirted the embers and climbed to the vast wooden
door that was, as far as we knew, the castle's only
entrance. Then they lay down, forming a semicircle.
The door was tight shut. It remained SO for the next
three hours, until almost midnight.
Then one of the Germans came out and strolled
towards the bushes to have a pee. He left the door
open behind him. Five men of the patrol got up and
crept to the door while two others went silently
towards him, one putting himself behind him, another
in front. They waited for him to button up. Just as
he turned back to the door the two men leapt forward,


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
one of them stunning him with a blow at the back of
his head-he gasped with an instant's astonishment,
stood for a moment erect, his eyes staring, appearing
to look for someone, then he collapsed. The five men
at the door then went inside, tiptoed along the stone
corridor until they found the first lighted room.
Several Germans were playing cards inside. The men
pointed their Tommy guns into their faces and after
ten minutes the castle was secure, several other
Germans having been found in the upper rooms. They
were put in a dungeon near the gate, relieved of
their money and valuables, to await the arrival of
the quartermaster who would lay on an escort to take
them to the rear.
I heard all this, move by move, from the patrol
itself. The Major marvelled at this wonder of alert
concerted action which involved no casualties on
either side. It sounded like a fairy tale and the men
of the patrol had a collective bemused look in their
tired eyes. But there it was. The castle was empty.
And the tank commander could look at it to his little
heart's content.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
This kind of fighting felt very different from
the wholesale frontal stuff we were used to. We now
fitted ourselves into the terrain, fought on smaller
fronts, moved forward swiftly and over much shorter
distances. We advanced by piecemeal actions devised
there and then, and these were hopefully being
replicated by similar independent actions on our
flanks, though you didn't always know. The key to
this was perhaps that the strategy of concerted
action between the two armies, which had never worked
anyway, had at last been abandoned. The Eighth worked
on its own and So did the Fifth.
As a result the terrain opened its treasures to
us. Attack was no longer the ponderous business
involving massive barrages and start lines. So we
were properly in the country we stealthily advanced
over, we smelled it and felt the earth. And it began
to feel as if we were in artful conspiracy with the
most tenderly waking dawns we had ever known, the
softest low-cloud rains, and the giddiest of earth
scents, dense hot summer ones and dimmer spicier
autumnal ones and then the wafts of sodden leaf and
snoozing earth in winter, turning that narrow Italian


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
peninsula into a continent of tiny kingdoms, each the
only paradise.
We were now in Tuscany. There was fighting round
San Gimignano and the bombardier who had been
disgusted by his girlfriend's breath was sent there
in an F.0.0. mission. It was his first time. He
returned to the guns green in the face as if privy
at last to war's murderous intent. He was in a state
of walking shell-shock-competent and cogent but only
just. He recounted every moment of his narrow shaves
but mostly the moment when he suddenly looked into a
German's eyes before being thrown off his feet by the
blast of a shell. His face wobbled as he spoke, a
face that had hitherto been a comedian's. He
described it in outrage. He seemed to be saying in
his outrage that no one should be asked to witness
such things. We all had to hear about the scandal of
war. We listened like neighbours in a narrow street
when something bad has happened across the way. We
sat hushed with disbelief at what we knew a thousand
times better. And I think we almost laughed.
Yet he was right. He made me feel ashamed of my
having entered the very method of this madness, and
allowed myself to be inured to it.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
My curiosity about the Germans intensified, if
anything. I would reach an enemy post just vacated
and stare at the black smouldering shell-holes and
ruined rooms, pick my way along, on the look-out for
mines, trip wires. There would be no birds. Battle
and birds have no association. Scents have gone,
other than the smoke that chokes you a little. Did I
expect to inure myself? Shouldn't my cheeks wobble
like the bombardier's, with the scandal of it?
Whenever we came to deserted or ruined houses we
took whatever we wished and, usually, sent it home.
We had no thought of pillaging. The word would have
offended us. For us the stuff belonged to a vague
caravan of nomads who would never return.
If a door didn't open you pushed it open. You
slept in babies' cots under the wondering eyes of the
mother, you took over kitchens, you fed on the grapes
that were coming to fermenting fullness in a last
autumn heat. And you easily overlooked the anxious
thwarted hunger of those who were being charming to
you, charming in a way that, helpfully for us, made
it seem that war was somehow not happening, an
illusion. That was gracious of them.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
Once I was in an open field, it must have been
after an attack had moved forward because there were
prisoners of war standing about, trenches had to be
dug for some reason and a few prisoners of war were
digging here and there. I took a shovel and handed it
to a prisoner who was idle and he shook his head,
flat refused to take it. I shrugged. Prisoners
weren't under our orders. It took me much puzzling to
find out why he refused-I suddenly tumbled to it-he
thinks it's for his own grave. Perhaps he had So much
death in his system he believed that when you get
caught by the enemy they shoot you. We stood staring
at each other without comprehension.
I remember driving a jeep in pitch darkness
under a downpour of rain with a fierce bomba rdment
going on, I drove through the swirling mud between
two white guiding tapes, swerving and crashing into
potholes to avoid the flak and blast that seemed
everywhere-and I did it in a calm I couldn't
understand, I thought I'm going to get through and
the more impossible it gets, the more death seems
certain, the more I'll get through. As if the war had
come to me at last, taken me on its side, recognised
me as its rightful component.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
I wonder if that was why we officers were always
being told to conduct War Aims discussions in free
hours. I mean, the very thought of there being any
was So damned silly. But it gave us officers
something to apparently and seemingly talk about in
those 'discussion' hours that yawned with vacuity. We
would start talking about The World We Want After
It's All Over and before two words were out we seemed
to register collectively that it was all a lot of
balls, So we quickly trailed off into silence and
then started saying whatever came into our pleasure-
craving heads.
But the idea of getting us to discuss War Aims
was nevertheless a devilishly clever one since it
planted in us the idea that there were any-and the
acceptance of a falsehood is hardly easy to thrust on
multitudes. No wonder, when he heard from his
Intelligence sources about War Aims on our side,
Hitler promptly ordered his armies to discuss them.
Naturally his war aim to eliminate the Jews
would not come under discussion, whereas it offered
us Gentiles on the other side an ocean of empty
avowals. He had to be careful with a programme SO
extreme and was therefore particularly anxious that


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
his soldiers were never stationed close to a
concentration camp. The screams were noticed. It had
happened once. And he made it his personal order that
the two must henceforth never meet.
Otherwise War Aims were as useful to him as they
were to us. They introduced the idea that we were
here in battle not simply to kill each other but for
a purpose which rendered our deaths if not desirable
at least worthwhile. And what government clean or
foul could resist that?
And Hitler did have a War Aim which his troops
could talk about-one fixed military purpose which
bestrode all others, namely the destruction of
communism.
And the one clear and demonstrable thing his
politics achieved was the first communist empire.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
Nine
stood in the great hush. The sound of my
Jeep engine died as if it had been sucked
into the dead earth. Not a living creature
was here, not a bird or footstep. The hill which had
contained the town was covered with quick-lime to
hide the stench of the dead and it lay like a white
shroud fallen on the slope and full of soft mounds.
been
At the top where the abbey had steod was a formidable


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
glowering mass of jagged sullen stone which gave no
messages except I am dead.
The moment battles end the Field Hygiene unit
(part of the Medical Corps) moves in to count and
remove for burial the dead, military and civilian.
The Field Hygiene people who moved into Cassino,
accustomed though they were to the sight of the
fallen, stood in shock and bafflement at what they
saw before them.
The road to Rome went silently north into its
valley. I heard a slight grating sound and an old
lady in black, head covered, came pushing a
wheelbarrow along a sad ruined road at the lower
eastern point of this hill of debris and dust.
She came within yards of me, looking to neither
left nor right, her gaze bitter and mute and closed,
her lips pursed in a deeply pallid face. She stared
at the rubble before her, looking for whatever she
could rescue. Standing at her side, just lately from
Beirut, I must have looked an unworthily agile member
of that monstrous assembly that was able to bomb
monks and monasteries and lay entirely waste a
slumbering town that wasn't even on its rightful
target programme.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
And try as I might to solicit a glance or a
smile from her she remained set on her quest for
crushed mementoes of her home. I wanted to say
something about how senseless war was but I was in
uniform, namely war itself. Yet I didn't really
understand her bitterness. With the forbidding
insensitivity of youth, on which wars wisely depend,
I expected her to mourn this vast white shroud
together with me, to look up from the death of her
town to interest herself in my youthful khaki-clothed
aspiration that all this should come to an end soon.
Worse, I couldn't genuinely perceive what had
happened to her. I accepted that all this was dead
without knowing what exactly that meant-what the
death was that I was always trying to escape, the
had
whose Shudds lan Atelt
death that the other second lieutenant, the onel Ihad
uer we ttirew welve dou i Itil
threwn-myself ite
cernerofa dugout with, hadn't
escaped.
It wasn't that I didn't know what she had lost,
all her family perhaps, certainly the home that had
been hers since birth, just that I thought it a
bagatelle and she knew this.
I was dizzy, standing there, with the dizziness
of my own incomprehension. It was as if I had entered


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
this great concourse of the dead and yet remained
lively and loquacious in its midst. I felt numbed and
the numbness was in every bone and I couldn't return
to an earlier time when this numbness was absent
because I couldn't remember it, especially that
/ Tutwes
Timdcidhg used h Call uue ttre lauphg Iny -ul Iac al kue. how
laughing boy our almost daily chant was about./
No wonder I had drawn a line under the past, disounediv
ahice
writtenjfinis under it/ before leaving London,) I knew
exactly what I was doing then, wouldn't you say? If I
was now pondering suicide-an active vigorous and
spectacular suicide-wasn't that just one more
logical step? Aresploge
The Italian light brings the most forlorn of
scenes to life but it could do nothing for Cassino.
The sky, usually SO close, so part of everything you
did, laid heavy mourning hands on this hill,
deepening the silence of the numberless dead under
their quick-lime winding sheet.
I didn't yet know that I had come to terrible
decisions. Least of all that my thought of graduating
as a soldier had only one meaning.
Only slowly did I come to know that I had
resolved to die in the campaign that awaited us.


seg-taunling
Jhi u ared l
i Cn loud att clampoft
Lf Taua
l K. cu c dosested
dayip a celn aud hanrd 2rodye
rilwy Go plattom.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
And I would make a mark, I would go out with
Neer Whal the wvd bupyly ueanl cc
glory. I didn't know what the glory was to bel But
hlue
one thing was cleartthat my present fitness and
stamina were at the service of trying to die.
It would have to be done quickly-I knew we were
about to enter the last stage of the Italian
operations-I needed to seize my chance and I knew.
this chance would come, I knew life would fit in with
my resolve because that resolve was SO deep and sure
and unhesitating, and in 3 a qu kuow tti Jhe yu
There was a book much in vogue during the second
world war called The Last Enemy. It was by a fighter
pilot whose name was Richard Hillary and the Last
Enemy was death. It had fascinated us all, back
during the Battle of Britain (as the Beaverbrook * fren
mom
press christened it) when our fighters were our only
defence against a vastly superior nazi bomber force
uy Hal lime,
(Hitler's only superiority)-
All through his book Richard Hillary seemed
resolved to fight that last enemy, knowing that this
nflao
last fight was ayfirst embrace. And he did go down.
I wished to say to myself that, having been
enrolled in the brotherhood of killers, I would now
do the rightful thing by joining the other


situalinis thi ueue, never had wum t iV
dee
unsn h J-e ahead, S
Aeevicas.
ahead,
doul


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
orotherhood of the killed, and thus truthfully I
would write my own finis on all things visionary and
quetting
good, in bitter gratitude for my formér life that had
brought me, as its apex and reward, to this shroud on
sarspngg
a hillside whose dead I had managed)not to join.
This time I would be mindful of what I did in
battle, not in the sense of surviving though. I would
be mindful the other way, without attention to the
safety of my skin. After all, if there was such a
thing as saving your skin there had to be the
reverse.
And there was another reason for suicide. When
SO much flak has been thrown about, when you have
heard that whizzing hot fragment with its little
shriek a sufficient number of times you naturally get
a sense of yourself as a special and even cherished
target. And in the dearth of other attentions this
becomes strangely like a tribute.
And your sole worth, as a target for the enemy,
must needs impel you, out of defiance, in the end, to
offer your breast at last.
fowant
We moved tremulously into the/line. All Its
fateful signs and sounds returned to us fondly and it


A - tta
ponty Haie


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
I still preferred to be an officer, though. I
wanted to lead because I felt that in a dangerous
spot I could bring things to a good conclusion. I
thought that under someone else's guidance my
instincts would dry up, I might be dragged into
someone else's slowness of response.
One of the bitterest aspects of losing my
signaller at Cava def Tirreni was that I felt
responsible for his death. Had I not been SO helpless
a novice I would have briskly shouted my men to
cover, and shown them where that cover was. And in
the Volturno attack I had led my men into hell (at
id lele
the double)-not that there was any choice but I
still taxed myself with this unjust idea. It was the
beginning in me of the guilt that goes, for better or
for worse, with self-training.
I hoped earnestly that my signaller's death
falal
the I didil Laue smegnel us 0 ckal d
en -
hadn't been an omen for the
future- weu
and ) hoped Hl tte lue- 1 chose t
h HI w
men er
eavy
1 Pre them?
wuldle laa axkaice cal ind L jt ne who tosh ther Ly
had_these first scenes set precedent? Thesewere
cn hass Jum
fare ilz t kkichen ) tes yhie,
the gin
recegni-sed
mysel during
2of
Anel 2 cnae tearet ttun 1
L et 16 0
I uw
these daysof -quiet foreboding,
Lt A egret
diaie know Row kup unldjo fn lue a (6 Jiu Leemed
Icouldn't trace, a tic of worry I was never without.
Hur the muers Sofar A enu jood. IV
- a atc.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
was like falling into a dream where we shook and
stared and recognised and were impotent to leave, as lrefre.
The Italian spring had begun to work its
haunting brazen magic. We were some miles from a
castle high on a steep hill called Monte Poggiolo (we
took names not from the map but the local people). It
was our ultimate target.
This action took me into enemy lines for the
first time. There are two ways you can find yourself
in enemy lines. You either come on them by mistake,
that is you lose yourself, or they suddenly come on
thalis
you,Lyou look round the new terrain and nothing of it
is yours any moren aual ym cair sxac < yasy (os
lrecause yn wwe, defci rel,
yu un hies ad
> lued
weel
After some sa
cop
geme
arrived with my men
had
lay
lwa t. Joi us Usttat
ifanls Inttalen,
at the appointed place, a country mansion in the flat
IL wa
aud Ikis
of a great valley, whrich stretched before us for at
least a mile, rising to steep woodland on all its
three sides.
(Le houx
a place was Battalion headquarters. The C.o,
cemmander told me he was sending a platoon to a
smaller house we could see on our right flank. He
said I had better go with the platoon because that
way I would be more forward, it would give me a


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
better command of the valley, especially the hill
that rose before us, at the valley's end.
I moved with my men and the infantry platoon
into the second house and there was a lot of
excitement in the air. We were expecting to attack.
onls e Loure chead d) u on a Mope,
We could see-yetone more house en the slope facing
US, among trees, a new house, small and neat. And It
seemed likely that we would be ordered to attack
trnlilly acms an pertild.
thisk We always assumed that a house that could look
straight across at us was enemy-held. Whether this
N U cv to bagrbrtmg
platoon I was with would attack alone,L with nO
wail
(Avcwutttattr ectapatt L -thocty,
artillery-back-upt er be the spearhead of something
bigger I didn't yet know.
I climbed to the hay loft for a more secluded
look. My signaller below plugged an earphone
extension into the radio and brought it up to me So
that I could talk to my command post at the gun end.
I was in restless mood, pacing about. I spoke
into the mike and pinpointed the map reference of the
house ahead. I wished to put a few shells on it to
evoke a response in the case of its being occupied. I
gave my order: Target...Fire by order...One round
gunfire.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
I waited for that to be repeated back, then WA
there was a longer wait for the word Ready, which
signified that the guns had been loaded.
I said Fire! and almost at once there was a
whirring in the air above that grew to a shrill
whistle and the first shell landed short of the
house, briefly obscuring it in smoke.
When all four shells had landed short I added
one hundred yards and once more ordered fire. This
time I got a hit on the left side of the roof. I
ordered a final four rounds which fell to one side of
the house, close to the walls. Smoke and debris
settled down in a stately, almost loving way among
the trees.
I sat in the hay loft in a methodical frame of
mind quite different from the alarm and anger of my
earlier days. I went downstairs, returned to my
perch, aching to get a move on, to hell with this
waiting and watching game. I wasn't kept waiting
long. The Battalion commander at the mansion behind
us sent me a runner to say that I must take a section
of infantry, seven or eight men, to the very house I
had just shelled. I would be the officer in charge.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
I called my Battery commander by radio (he had
the final responsibility here) and he assured me that
the house I was going to occupy was safe, therefore
my well-armed infantry escort was just a safeguard. I
must go in daylight, he said, 'soonest'. Once in the
house, he said, stay put.
So, kitted up and ready, we started off across
the valley. With my signallers we were eleven men in
all. We didn't take much trouble concealing
ourselves. I trusted the Intelligence I'd just
received. The men followed me in single file, pale,
their eyes intent on the ground. I told them what I
knew and in answer they spoke my thoughts-why, if
the top of this valley was unoccupied, was I being
sent up like a recce patrol, that is in strength?
Once we were close to the house we concealed
ourselves behind trees. I saw a movement at the
windows which I thought was careless enough to be a
civilian's, So I walked forward and pushed the door
open. My Battery commander was right. Standing there
looking at me in alarm were five Italians.
The tidy dining room where they stood was
identical to that of every Italian home-a sideboard,
a big central table under a pile cloth and a narrow


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
kitchen visible through a doorway. There were three
women and two men. They stared at me and I stared at
them, then we smiled and nodded. I gestured behind me
to indicate there were other soldiers outside and in
the Italian manner they beckoned us all in as if it
were a normal Italian day. My patrol trudged in and
the nodding went on all over again as helmets came
off and arms and packs were put down while chairs
were scraped across the floor and others brought in.
Outside there was an uncertain silence. It was just
as if the trees told us things.
Have the Germans been here? was my first noun-
and-gesture question. Yes, they nodded, glad to give
information, they left early this morning (then how
could news of their departure have reached
Intelligence So soon?). Where did they go? I asked.
Oh, they said with sweeping gestures indicating far
away, in vehicles-macchine.
The women took our army rations and began
cooking us a meal, which we ate at the table with
knives and forks and spoons. Our bully beef was fried
with vegetables to make a padellata of just about
everything, and we also had soup. I spoke
particularly to a young couple who appeared to be the


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
owners of this house. They were excited by our visit
because it indicated, they thought, that the front
line had already moved through them.
The other Italians left, a fact that troubled
me. I eyed their departing backs. When I asked where
they had gone the couple said they lived at another
house Eurther up the hill. Then they brought out wine
and we toasted each other, thirteen mouths in all. I
asked the couple, Were you here this morning when-?
and I made shell-fire gestures. They said, Yes, yes,
quite as if I had sent over clouds of festive
balloons. I tapped myself and said, Io, io!, meaning
that it was me who took their roof off. I couldn't
believe what I was saying-do you tell the people who
very narrowly escape death at your hands that the
hands were yours? Was this new soldier in me a bloody
idiot? I couldn't believe their degree of calm. But
Reslty
this ig the/Italian way-to get to the next thing
quick and, if it is a good thing, you forget the old
thing, however bad, juw as puichy.
The couple told me that the Germans had behaved
very well. And we all nodded at that comforting
cliché-After all, they're human like all of us. The
young man still gazed at me as if my shells had done


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
him a power of good. He must surely have been
relieved to see us sitting at his table happily, our
shelling duties safely over.
I asked if I might go upstairs, holding up my
binoculars to show them why, and they nodded of
course, of course. I closed the door on them all and
tiptoed up the stairs which had mercifully been
spared by my shells. On the first landing I saw the
open sky. Almost half the roof had been ripped away.
The bedroom wall had collapsed, and a tree's boughs
swayed ever So gently in its place. The carpet of
what must be the master bedroom was covered with
smashed tables and mirrors and ceramic pots and
jewellery and perfume bottles, while the bed-cover
lay under broken roof slates. I was astonished at the
force behind these 'light' twenty-five-pounders.
I walked into a smaller room at the rear, intact
and quiet. I sat on the bed, keeping to the shadows,
and brought the binoculars to my eyes. When I had
focussed them I saw I was looking down a village
street, most of it obscured by trees. Beyond this was
the squat tower of a church and the corner of a
square. It was very close.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
And all of a sudden a man strolled out into the
open, and he was a German, unarmed. He was perhaps
seventy yards away. I was fascinated by his tin hat,
curling round the ears. I withdrew into the shadows
and watched him strolling up and down. Then he tired
of it and disappeared. I tiptoed downstairs and
opened the dining-room door. I shushed my men quiet.
Jerry's still here, I told them.
I whispered to my signaller to get on to my
command post, and when I was through to the Battery
commander-the major with warm eyes who had sent me
on my first F.0.0. job-I gave him my position in
code and told him, The Germans are here, not many
yards off. He made an astonished What? and quickly
said, Put sentries out right away, you shouldn't be
there at all, come back as soon as it's dark and keep
on your toes. I asked him won't our line draw level
to us? shouldn't I stay? and he said urgently no, no,
come back. It seemed I was attracting attention at
Battalion level for the first time. I thought I knew
why-it was my calm. I was witnessing it too, my own
calm. Because I really did want to stay. Presumably
to be blown up by our own troops that evening.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
I didn't put sentries out. Instead I placed a
couple of men by the door, inside-the door was
luckily on our side of the house, not the enemy's.
And that was how we waited, in full kit, arms at the
ready, for what seemed days, in silence, watchful. I
had half a mind to go upstairs again and spy. But
something warned me, don't put out mental waves Jerry
might pick up, they can feel you looking sometimes,
stay where you are. The couple moved about in awed
silence. Not a sound came from the rest of the
village. Slowly the sun began going down. And then
shadows formed outside. Jerry would send out patrols
soon So I decided to move before it was quite dark.
We left the house one by one. This time there was no
clanking of belt on gun, no talk at all. The couple
was silently regretful, as well they might be, seeing
that in fact the front line had not yet passed
through them.
We got back to Battalion headquarters in record
time and fresh orders were waiting for me. I was to
take my three men to join another company
altogether-A Company. This was commanded by a man I
was to work with happily and often. Everyone called
him The Major. He was a regular soldier and had come


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
up from the troops, and his men were as thick as
thieves with him, in a conspiracy of loyalty unto
death.
It looked as if I was joining the spearhead of
an attack. The Major when I joined him next day said
he needed to take up a position right belogm the
mighty Monte Poggiolo. We moved up platoon by
platoon, running one sunlit tree to the next, with
stiff high grass at our feet. We crouched when
Spandau fire spat out, making its
great clatter
from the top of the hill. We climbed sideways as this
afforded us best cover and at last we saw the
colossal shell-proof monster above us with its
pouting stone walls that must be a metre or more
thick.
We spotted a big farmhouse and ran for it.
Inside there were sacks of barley, maize, huge onions
and aubergines, donkey-panniers of potatoes, grapes
that had shrivelled, a stained prodigal wine-press
and urns of spoiled milk. Grain was spilled all over
the floor. We took up positions in the dark places
behind the windows, treading quietly. The rest of the
Company came up in sections, at intervals.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
When The Major arrived, a big cheerful
moustached man with quick eyes and rosy healthy
cheeks, we went together up a ladder to the loft,
followed by a Bren gunner. We stood together behind
the closed window, excited as the gunner placed the
Bren gun on a table before the window and set it on
its tripod. He fed in a belt of ammunition. The Major
went to one side of the window and, squatting, very
slowly moved his hand along the window ledge until it
touched the frame, then he warily pulled the window
open, inch by inch, while I pushed the gun forward
and sighted it. Before us rose a field of overgrown
grass and at its end a farmhouse lay quiet among its
trees with the castle towering behind it on a rising
of its own. It was on the farmhouse that I sighted
the gun.
The Major called to a corporal behind him to
take out a small patrol. We'll give you covering
fire, he said.
The patrol assembled downstairs and left by the
back, through the orchard, and came round the side of
the house to the front, smack under us. As soon as
they broke cover an enemy gun clattered out with a
hail of tracer bullets-swift, floating red flames


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
that spattered on to our walls. I shouted to The
Major that the fire was coming from a slit trench in
front of the enemy house, not the house itself. We
knew it would be difficult to winkle it out behind
its sandbags. The Major crouched at the gun and
sprayed bullets wildly across the field but since
they weren't tracer we couldn't see where they were
going. I shouted, Tracer, tracer, we need tracer! The
Major took up my shout, Bring up some tracer, I'm
going to have this bastard!
But the trench went on firing back. The bullets
smashed one of the other windows. We were all jumping
up and down with excitement, calling out merrily,
More to the left, down a bit!
Men rushed up with tracer bullets. The Major
tore at the old belt and threw it to the floor but he
took some seconds to fit the new one because his
hands were trembling SO with excitement. The more he
pushed down the harder it wedged. Then there spurted
a long flowing dotted line of tracers from his gun as
he gripped the trigger but they were wide and I tried
to push him aside as he lurched about, the sweat
pouring down his face, but he kicked out to get me in
the shins.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
We saw a man's hand, then arm, briefly, at the
edge of the enemy trench, pulling down more
ammunition. The Major sighted the gun exactly on that
spot and fired and I envied him this shower of
flaming bullets that hurt us not at all. Our tracers
were soon used up. The Major threw down the last belt
and shrugged with a smile, turning away from the
window. We went back downstairs and smoked, waiting
for the tank that was due to come up in support of
us. We heard its sullen grinding roar as it neared
the house at the back. When it was in position it
only needed to fire one cannon, which sent up the
earth round the enemy trench in a tall black
fountain, and two Germans jumped out with their hands
up, covered with dirt. The patrol ran forward and
took them prisoner. The Major shrugged again and told
us to get ready to move. We must now occupy the house
these Germans had been defending.
Again we went up one section (about half a
platoon) at a time, running harder this time, being
now in full view of the castle. When we glimpsed it
close up we saw that it was girded round with a deep
moat or ditch. And the last climb to this ditch was
very steep-as well as exposed. Behind the black


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
slits in the castle walls we imagined Jerry watching
us. The farmhouse we entered was easy game for them.
The tank commander dismayed us by insisting on
bringing up his tank to our new position, thus
attracting Jerry's heaviest fire. We argued with him,
told him to keep back but he had a facile,
swaggering manner, with the square firm tough chin
that So often denotes poor nerves. Until now we had
been lucky. Nothing heavy had fallen.
Our farmhouse, unruffled within its garden, had
particularly small windows, which was useful but made
it very dark. The whole of the Company crowded in.
This was a breach of war law-you must avoid
assembling in a small area easy to target. And
sentries must be posted outside. But it was easier to
stand sentry behind the windows, and as for crowding
together it-as a matter of military fact- steadied
morale.
The Major was worried. He knew we should be
outside, being too much under the castle's close
gaze. But he decided to hell with it and put his HQ
in the kitchen and stationed a Bren gunner in one of
the windows. And he didn't put out sentries because
we were all expecting a barrage at dusk and nobody


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
wanted to die outside. As a gunner I felt that any
observer in the castle would target us and as we
were SO close his shells would fall wide of us, due
to the high trajectory they needed in order to get
over the castle and onto us, which surely involved a
big margin of error. Not that I expressed this
comforting if complicated doctrine to anyone.
Half the men had put their beds down in the barn
and half in the main room upstairs. Everyone was in
reticent mood, leaden with the sleepiness that often
goes with foreboding. I stepped over them to get to a
small room to the side of the house on the upper
floor where my radio was being set up. Once the
tuning signals were over I passed my new map
reference through to the command post. Then I called
fire down on a few targets close to the castle to
ensure that no enemy would leave the castle without
caution. Having my earphones on I didn't hear the
first warning sweep and woosh of the barrage when it
came and I was almost thrown from my chair by a swift
hot blast which came through the window at my side-
it was luckily open, otherwise glass fragments would
have made a nice mess of me. I jumped up and glanced
below. Blue smoke was trailing from the area of the


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
tank parked just undergneath me. But the tank was
untouched.
That's only the first! I shouted as I ran
downstairs to get The Major's orders. Men were
huddled round the kitchen windows, guns cocked in
case Jerry put his nose round the corner. Just as I
reached The Major all hell started coming over. The
men upstairs were scrambling downstairs in a great
blind clatter and everyone started trying to pile
into the kitchen, with The Major shouting, Get out
you bastards!
Two fell in awful ominous crashes just behind
the house-the firing was devilishly accurate and the
men near the back wall started shouting, We're
sitting targets. They wanted to get at the buggers
with their hands etc. Where's that tank commander? I
asked, I just want to see his face. Because without
doubt it was his machine that had drawn the fire. The
fatal pungent smell of cordite drifted through the
house and rubble was everywhere, I started running
round looking for the tank commander to get him to
move that bloody great object of his-also because it
couldn't possibly help at this late stage.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
The men at the windows wanted to start shooting.
I found the tank commander near one of the radios
downstairs. To my great relief he was looking subdued
and pale and thoughtful-all of a sudden he was one
of us, only ten years younger than he'd looked
before. Men were moving around, jostling each other,
trying by motion to stave off the castle's evil eye.
The Major kept coming to the kitchen door and
shouting, What the bloody hell's going on here?
what's the matter? The shells were the matter and the
mens' sightless peregrinations went on and everybody
was thinking surely, surely the next one has to have
all our numbers written on it (for an 88mm. will
easily take care of a mansion).
The tall haystack in front of the house caught
fire from schrapnel. I had just turned to look at the
men crowding together under the stairs-they were
making it difficult for my signaller to get through
to the kitchen-and suddenly everything became lit up
with a bustling generous yellow light followed by the
sharp crackle of hungrily burning hay. The men at the
windows were shouting, Jerry's in there, shoot for
christsake, something's moving! The Bren gunner put a
burst into the flames as The Major pushed his way


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
through and said What are you shooting at? And then
someone shouted Look! and we heard a woman's long
scream and again the gunner put in a burst of fire
and he was about to fire again when a girl with long
hair ran out of the flames and stood between the
house and the burning hay unable to move from terror.
Come in, come in, we shouted-venire, venire!
Which only made her shriek the louder. And then, just
a moment before the haystack began to tumble in on
itself an old man and a boy dashed out, then came the
rest of the family and without more ado the old man
took to his legs which were suddenly youthful and in
a flash was behind the house and down the hill with
all the family running after him, including the old
women and children and the screaming girl. It was the
first and last we saw of them. No wonder they say the
sole survivor of the earth's total destruction will
be an Italian.
The hay continued to burn but sulkily now. The
Bren gunner left his gun pointing at the castle as
dusk came on. The shells abated. Men had to stand
back from the windows now because the embers lit up
their faces.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
Two hours later a strong patrol went out
stealthily in slippers, their faces blackened and
scarves and knitted hats round their heads. They
skirted the embers and climbed to the vast wooden
door that was, as far as we knew, the castle's only
entrance. Then they lay down, forming a semicircle.
The door was tight shut. It remained SO for the next
three hours, until almost midnight.
Then one of the Germans came out and strolled
towards the bushes to have a pee. He left the door
open behind him. Five men of the patrol got up and
crept to the door while two others went silently
towards him, one putting himself behind him, another
in front. They waited for him to button up. Just as
he turned back to the door the two men leapt forward,
one of them stunning him with a blow at the back of
his head-he gasped with an instant's astonishment,
stood for a moment erect, his eyes staring, appearing
to look for someone, then he collapsed. The five men
at the door then went inside, tiptoed along the stone
corridor until they found the first lighted room.
Several Germans were playing cards inside. The men
pointed their Tommy guns into their faces and after
ten minutes the castle was secure, several other


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
Germans having been found in the upper rooms. They
were put in a dungeon near the gate, relieved of
their money and valuables, to await the arrival of
the quartermaster who would lay on an escort to take
them to the rear.
I heard all this, move by move, from the patrol
itself. The Major marvelled at this wonder of alert
concerted action which involved no casualties on
either side. It sounded like a fairy tale and the men
of the patrol had a collective bemused look in their
tired eyes. But there it was. The castle was empty.
And the tank commander could look at it to his little
heart's content.
This kind of fighting felt very different from
the wholesale frontal stuff we were used to. We now
fitted ourselves into the terrain, fought on smaller
fronts, moved forward swiftly and over much shorter
distances. We advanced by piecemeal actions devised
there and then, and these were hopefully being
replicated by similar independent actions on our
flanks, though you didn't always know. The key to
Caslang
this was perhaps that theastrategy of concerted
or uowe
hedilee alnndoueed
action between the twon armies/ which had never worked


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
anyway, hac
aal A doned. The Eighth worked
on its own and So did the Fifth.
As a result the terrain opened its treasures to
us. Attack was no longer the ponderous business
involving massive barrages and start lines. So we
Hhal
were properly in the country we stealthily advanced
over, we smelled it and felt the earth. And it began
to feel as if we were in artful conspiracy with the
most tenderly waking dawns we had ever known, the
softest low-cloud rains, and the giddiest of earth
scents, dense hot summer ones and dimmer spicier
autumnal ones and then the wafts of sodden leaf and
snoozing earth in winter, turning that narrow Italian
peninsula into a continent of tiny kingdoms, each the
only paradise.
We were now in Tuscany. There was fighting round
San Gimignano and the bombardier who had been
disgusted by his girlfriend's breath was sent there
in an F.0.0. mission. It was his first time. He
returned to the guns green in the face as if privy
Really
at last to war's murderous intent/He was in a state
of walking shell-shock-competent and cogent but only
just. He recounted every moment of his narrow shaves
but mostly the moment when he suddenly looked into a


Nine
The third Cassino travail
he first chance I got I drove to Cassino, now
I that it was erased from the earth. I went
alone. I stood in the great hush. Not a living
creature was here, not a bird or footstep. The hill
which had contained the town was covered with quick-
lime to hide the stench of the dead and it lay like a
white shroud fallen on the slope and full of soft
mounds. At the top where the abbey had stood was a
formidable glowering mass of jagged stone.
The road to Rome went silently north. I heard a
slight grating sound and an old lady in black, head
covered, came pushing a wheelbarrow along a sad
ruined road at the lower eastern point of this hill
of debris and dust. She came within yards of me,
looking to neither left nor right, her gaze bitter
and mute and closed, her lips pursed in a deeply
pallid face. She stared at the rubble before her,
looking for whatever she could rescue. Standing at
her side, just lately from Beirut, I must have looked
an unjustly fit and healthy member of that monstrous
assembly that was able to bomb monks and monasteries
and lay entirely waste a slumbering town that wasn't
even on its target programme.
And try as I might to solicit a glance or a
smile from her she remained set on her quest for
crushed mementoes of her home. I wanted to say
something about how senseless war was but I was in


uniform, namely war itself. Yet I didn't really
understand her bitterness. With the forbidding
insensitivity of youth, on which wars wisely depend,
I expected her to mourn this vast white shroud
together with me, to look up from the death of her
town to interest herself in my youthful khaki-clothed
aspiration that all this should come to an end soon.
Worse, I couldn't genuinely perceive what had
happened to her. I accepted that all this was dead
without knowing what exactly that meant-what the
death was that I was always trying to escape, the
death that the other second lieutenant, the one I had
thrown myself into a corner of a dugout with, hadn't
escaped. And without knowing what she had lost, all
her family pernaps, certainly the home which had been
hers since birth, almost certainly.
I was dizzy, standing there, with the dizziness
of my own incomprehension. It was as if I had entered
this great concourse of the dead and yet remained
lively and loquacious in its midst. What had
happened? I felt numbed and the numbness was in every
bone and I couldn't return to an earlier time when
this numbness was absent because I couldn't remember,
I no longer knew what it was to be free of it. No
wonder, in my mind, I had drawn a line under the
past, written finis under it, before leaving London.
I knew exactly what I was doing then, wouldn't you
say?
The Italian light brings the most forlorn of
scenes to life but it could do nothing with this. The
sky, usually SO close, so part of everything you did,


laid heavy mourning hands on this hill, deepening the
silence of the numberless dead under their white
quick-lime shroud.
I didn't yet know that I had come to terrible
decisions. Least of all that my thought of graduating
as a soldier had a meaning. Only slowly did I come to
know that I had resolved to die in the campaign that
now awaited us. And I would make a mark, I would go
out with glory. I didn't know what the glory was to
be. And I couldn't end the dialogue I was having with
myself. It seemed that my very fitness and stamina
were now at the service of trying to die. How could I
know that this is what the Killing Time does? There
was a book called The Last Enemy by a fighter pilot
which had fascinated us all, back during the Battle
for Britain period when our fighters were our only
defence against a superior German bomber force. The
last enemy was of course death and all through that
book Edmund Hillary seemed resolved to fight that
last enemy, knowing that this last fight was also a
first embrace. And he did go down.
I wished to say to myself that, having been
enrolled in the brotherhood of killers, I would now
do the right thing by joining the other brotherhood
of the killed, and thus truthfully I would write my
own finis on all things visionary and good, in bitter
gratitude for my former life that had brought me, as
its apex and reward, to this shroud on a hillside
whose dead I had managed not to join.
This time I would be mindful of what I did in
battle, not in the sense of surviving though. I would


be mindful the other way, without attention to the
safety of my skin. After all, if there was such a
thing as saving one's skin there had to be the
reverse.
I think there is also a subtle influence at
work in the flak after SO much has been thrown at
you. It gives you a sense of yourself as a special
and even cherished target, SO that, in the dearth of
other attentions, there is a desire to accept this
special status as a tribute. We soldiers did our
best. We laughed, told each other our dreams,
brought each other solace of a kind, but your sole
worth, as a target for the enemy, must needs impel
you, out of defiance, in the end, to offer your
breast at last.
We moved tremulously into the line. All its
fateful signs and sounds returned to us fondly and it
was like falling into a dream where we shook and
stared and were impotent to leave.
The Italian spring had begun to work its
miracles. We were now in Tuscany, near a hill with a
castle on top called Monte Poggiolo (we took names
not from the map but the local people).
This action took me into enemy lines for the
first but not last time. There are two ways you can
find yourself in enemy lines, you either come on them
by mistake, that is lose yourself, or they suddenly
come on you.


After three more or less sleepless nights I
arrived with my men at the appointed place, a country
mansion in the flat of a great valley which stretched
before us for at least a mile, rising to steep
woodland on all its three sides. This house was
Battalion headquarters. The commander told me he was
sending a platoon to a small house we could see on
our right flank. He said I had better go with it too
because that way I was more forward. It had a better
command of the valley, especially the hill that rose
before us at the end of it. I was where an FOO
belonged.
We moved into the house and there was a lot of
excitement in the air. We were expecting to attack.
We could see another house on the slope facing us,
among trees, new house, small and neat. And it seemed
likely that we would be ordered to attack this. We
always assumed that a house that could look straight
across at us was enemy-held. Whether we would attack
alone or be the spearhead of an attack I didn't yet
know.
I climbed up to the hay loft for a more secluded
look. My signaller below plugged an earphone
extension into the radio and brought it up to me So
that I could talk to my command post at the gun end.
I was in a restless mood, pacing about. I spoke
into the mike and pinpointed the map reference of the
house ahead. I wished to put a few shells on it to
evoke a: response in the case of its being occupied. I
gave my order: Target...Fire by order...One round
gunfire. I waited for that to be repeated, then there


was the longer wait for the word Ready, which
signified that the guns had been loaded. I said Fire!
and almost at once there was a whirring in the air
that grew to a shrill whistle and the first shell
landed short of the house, briefly obscuring it in
smoke. When all four shells had landed short I added
one hundred yards and once more ordered fire. This
time I got a hit on the left side of the roof. I
ordered a final four rounds which fell to one side of
the house, close to the walls. Smoke and debris
settled down in a stately, almost loving way among
the trees.
I sat in the hay loft in a methodical frame of
mind quite different from the alarm and anger of my
earlier days. I went downstairs, came up to my perch
again, aching to get a move on, to hell with this
waiting and watching game. I wasn't kept waiting
long. The Battalion commander at the mansion behind
us sent me a runner to say that I must take a section
of infantry, seven or eight men, to the very house I
had just shelled. I would be the officer in charge.
I called my Battery commander by radio (he had
the final responsibility here) and he assured me that
the house we were going to occupy was safe, therefore
my well-armed infantry escort was just a safeguard. I
must go in daylight, he said, 'soonest'. Once in the
house, he said, stay there.
So, kitted up and ready, we started off across
the valley. With my signallers we were eleven men in
all. We didn't take much trouble concealing ourselves
because of the intelligence I'd just received. The


men followed me in single file, pale, their eyes
intent on the ground. I had told them what I knew and
in answer they spoke my thoughts-why, if the top of
the valley was unoccupied, were we being sent up like
a recce patrol designed to sniff out the enemy?
Once we were close to the house we concealed
ourselves behind trees. I saw a movement at the
windows which I thought was careless enough to be a
civilian's, So I walked forward and pushed the door
open. My Battery commander was right. Standing there
looking at me in alarm were five Italians.
The tidy dining room where they stood was
identical to that of every Italian home- a sideboard,
a big central table under a pile cloth and a narrow
kitchen visible through a doorway. There were three
women and two men. They stared at me and I stared at
them, then we smiled and nodded. I gestured behind me
to indicate there were other soldiers outside and in
the Italian manner they beckoned us all in as if we
were neighbours on a normal Italian day. My patrol
trudged in and the nodding went on all over again as
helmets came off and arms and packs were put down
while chairs were scraped across the floor and others
brought in. Outside there was an uncertain silence.
It was just as if the trees told us things. Have the
Germans been here? was my first noun-and-gesture
question. Yes, they nodded, glad to give information,
they left early this morning (then how could news of
their departure have reached Intelligence SO soon?).
Where did they go? I asked. Oh, they said with


sweeping gestures indicating far away, in
vehicles-macchine.
The women took our army rations and began
cooking us a meal, which we ate at the table with
knives and forks and spoons. Our bully beef was fried
with vegetables to make a padellata of just about
everything, and we also had soup. I spoke
particularly to a young couple who appeared to be the
owners of the house. They were excited by our visit
because it indicated, they thought, that the front
line had moved through them.
The other Italians left, a fact that troubled
me. I eyed their departing backs. When I asked where
they had gone the couple said they lived at another
house further up the hill. Then they brought out wine
and we toasted each other, thirteen mouths in all. I
asked the couple, Were you here this morning when-?
and I made shell-fire gestures. They said, Yes, yes,
quite as if I had sent over clouds of festive
balloons. I tapped myself and said, Io, io!, meaning
that was me, me. I couldn't believe what I was
saying-do you tell the people who very narrowly
escaped death at your hands that the hands were
yours? Was this new soldier in me a bloody idiot? I
couldn't believe their degree of calm. But this is
the Italian way-to get to the next thing quick and,
if it is a good thing, you forget the rest however
bad.
The couple told me that the Germans had behaved
very well. And we all nodded at that comforting
cliché-('After all, they're human like all of us'


etc.) The young man still gazed at me as if my shells
had done him a power of good. He must surely have
been relieved to see us sitting at his table happily,
our shelling duties safely over.
I asked if I might go upstairs, holding up my
binoculars to show them why, and they nodded of
course, of course. I closed the door on them all and
tiptoed up the stairs which had mercifully been
spared by my shells. On the first landing I saw the
jagged tear in the roof, with open sky beyond. Almost
half the roof had been ripped away. The bedroom wall
had collapsed, showing the trees outside, their
boughs swaying ever SO gently. The carpet of what
must be the master bedroom was covered in the debris
of smashed tables and mirrors and ceramic pots and
jewellery and perfume bottles, while the bed-cover
lay under slates from the roof. I was astonished at
the force behind these 'light' twenty-five-pounders.
I walked into a smaller room at the rear, intact
and quiet. I sat on the bed, keeping to the shadows,
and brought the binoculars to my eyes. When I had
focussed them I saw I was looking down a village
street, most of it obscured by trees. Beyond there
was the squat tower of a church and the corner of a
square. It was very close.
And all of a sudden a man strolled out into the
open, and he was a German, unarmed. He was perhaps
seventy yards away. I was fascinated by his tin hat,
curling round the ears. I withdrew into the shadows
and watched him strolling up and down. Then he tired
of it and disappeared. I tiptoed downstairs and


opened the dining-room door. I shushed my men quiet.
Jerry's still here, I told them. I whispered to my
signaller to get on to my command post, and when I
was through to the Battery commander-the major with
warm eyes who had sent me on my first FOO job-I gave
him my position in code and told him, The Germans are
here, not many yards off. He made an astonished What?
and quickly said, Put sentries out right away, you
shouldn't be there at all, come back as soon as it's
dark and keep on your toes. I asked him won't our
line draw level to us? shouldn't I stay? and he said
urgently no, no, come back. I think perhaps it was
attracting attention at Battalion level for the first
time. I knew what it was. I was equally, with them, a
witness of it-my calm. Because I really wanted to
stay. It would have been a calamity, since, as I
found out later, this was well and truly in German
lines.
I didn't put sentries out. Instead I put a
couple of men by the door, which was luckily on our
side of the house, not the enemy's. And that was how
we waited, in full kit, arms at the ready, for what
seemed days, in silence, watchful. I had half a mind
to go upstairs again and spy. But something warned
me, don't put out waves Jerry might pick up, they can
feel you looking sometimes, stay where you are. The
couple moved about in awed silence. Not a sound came
from the rest of the village. Slowly the sun began
going down. And then shadows formed outside. Jerry
would sent out patrols soon So I decided to move
before it was quite dark. We left the house one by


face that had hitherto been a comedian's. He
described it in outrage. He seemed to say that no one
in his right mind should be asked to witness it,
everyone must hear about the scandal of war. We
listened like neighbours in a narrow street when
something bad has happened across the way. We sat
hushed with disbelief at what we knew a thousand
times better. And I think we almost laughed.
Yet he was right. He made me feel ashamed of my
having entered the very method of this madness, and
made my suicidal pact with it.
I would reach an enemy post just vacated and
stare at the black smouldering shell-holes and ruined
rooms, pick my way along, on the look-out for mines,
trip wires. There would be no birds. Battle and birds
have no association. Scents have gone, other than the
smoke that chokes you a little. Did I expect to inure
myself? Shouldn't my cheeks wobble like the
bombardier's, with the scandal of it?
Whenever we came to deserted or ruined houses we
took whatever we wished and, usually, sent it home.
We had no thought of pillaging. The word would have
shocked us. For us the stuff belonged to a vague
caravan of nomads who would never return. If a door
didn't open you pushed it open. You slept in babies'
cots under the wondering eyes of the mother, you took
over kitchens, you fed on the grapes that were coming
to fermenting fullness in a last autumn heat. And you
easily overlooked the anxious thwarted hunger of
those who were being charming to you, charming in a


way that, helpfully for us, made it seem that war was
somehow not happening, an illusion.
Once I was in an open field, it must have been
after an attack had moved forward because there were
prisoners of war standing about, trenches had to be
dug for some reason and a few prisoners of war were
digging here and there. I took a shovel and handed it
to a prisoner who was idle and he shook his head,
flat refused to take it. I shrugged. Prisoners
weren't under our orders. It took me much puzzling to
find out why he refused-until I suddenly tumbled to
it-he thought it for his own grave. Perhaps he had
So much death in his system he believed that when you
get caught you are naturally shot. We stood staring
at each other without comprehension.
I remember driving a jeep in pitch darkness
under a downpour of rain with a fierce bombardment
going on, I drove through the swirling mud between
two white guiding tapes, swerving and crashing into
potholes to avoid the flak and blast that seemed
everywhere-and I did it in a calm I couldn't
understand, I thought I'm going to get through and
the more impossible it gets-the more death seems
certain-the more I'll get through. As if the war had
come to me at last, taken me on its side, recognised
me as a rightful member.


place, as Cairo was, but a people and landscape to
which I felt I had once belonged.
During our halts the mountain hush closed about
us. We hadn't heard such a silence for years. We came
to Villach, then to Klagenfurt, then to Graz. We
bathed in the Worthersee and took photos.
It was the British 5th Corps under General Sir
Charles Keightley that halted the Russians-in the
sense the two sides stopped, facing each other, their
only other alternative being to fight each other. Not
that the Russians retired to where they should have
been. But that was the least of allied problems.
Southern Austria was milling with different
nationalities. Thousands of German soldiers were
waiting to be registered as prisoners of war, many of
them sick (a whole group had been left unattended
with gangrene). There were various Cossack
formations, whole corps of Hungarian soldiers as well
as non-communist Yugoslavs under German command (like
the Slovenes in the Russky Corps) and a whole
Bulgarian army. And they were mostly going in
different directions.
But the moment we showed our military noses a
hush of order and respect came about in our area. The
ability to retaliate creates an immediate sense of
order. The mayhem was gone.
In the midst of people who had nice lamp shades
and carpets and knew about tea as well as coffee and
were blond (apart, as in our own case, from the dark
ones) we felt acknowledged and even, already,
repatriated.


burning to death of 80.000 people. The note read
'Babies satisfactorily born'. Knowing that the
burning to death of babies involves the least
lee
satisfactory of deaths you call it a satisfactory
birth?
I was in one of the first batches to be sent
home when the war ended. There was a rush to get
soldiers back to their universities. Some weeks
cul
after, in Oxford again, I got a letter saying that I
had been promoted to the substantive' rank of
captain. I didn't know what 'substantive' meant, and
never did. I remembered the word for many years
though. It seemed to say that I had really existed in
that strange killing time, and I was glad of any
testimony.
Another letter stated that I had been decorated.
It was a Mention in Despatches, which I took to be a
booby prize for when your citation for the Military
Cross doesn't for some reason work. Yet surely I got
my wish. Armies are strangely wise in that respect. I
pushed the letter away in my papers and kept it
hidden. Whom the gods wish to destroy they first make
mad. And by the very same token, whom the gods wish
to live they first make truthful.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
Ten
ext day, late afternoon, we moved beyond the
castle to yet another farmhouse. I had just
told my signaller to start up radio contact.
I heard him acknowledging the first signals and then
he said to me, handing me the mike, Officer to speak.
I got the order to leave The Major at once. I was to
find another Company which would be going into attack
at precisely eight o'clock that evening.
The Major looked at me in surprise, presumably
at having his F.0.0. snatched away. I told my
signaller to close down. Then I called out to my
other men, Prepare to move. The itinerary I had been
given was the vaguest possible. I had little daylight
left to find my way. It meant crossing to the other
Company at a flank, without any of us in the forward
lines being clear as to what was happening on that
flank. But I didn't get into a grumbling mood-it
appeared those days were firmly over. And in any case
we never questioned vague orders. Everyone-including
the officer giving you orders-had to rely on the


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
latest scratch Intelligence which could be flat
wrong.
The house we had just moved into was on the
southern slope of a valley that stretched
magnificently before us, with woodland on its right
side. We were to take a path through those woods-it
lay clear before us in the deepening dusk and nothing
could appear safer.
We walked with the usual clinking of metal from
our belts and packs. We were sharp and taut, alert
for every sound. There was a burst of very loud
machine-gun fire to our left, the sound amplified to
an extraordinary deafening echo by the valley. I
couldn't tell from which side it was coming. Which
told me that the path we were taking was in the
direction of the enemy. That was my first thought but
I put it aside as absurd.
I thought we would soon find white tapes,
those infallible guides portending and attending
battle. But there was no sign of them. I was used to
piecemeal Intelligence. It could come from false
intelligence or an exhausted officer. And as always
in this kind of terrain the words 'front line' were a


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
euphemism for what could in minutes become a
semicircle.
The only trouble was that we were to be with an
attack going in at 20.00 hrs. I made up my mind to
stop at the first house and ask where Jerry was. The
Italians always knew. When we came to one, at the
edge of a clearing, about half way up the slope, I
thumped quietly at the door. There was an instant
hush at my knock, then nothing. This time I thumped
more insistently but not more loudly and at once the
door opened an inch or two. I could see the man's
eyes. He was scared but when I pushed firmly on the
door to indicate that I wished to speak to him,
whether he liked it or not, he opened up So that I
could see all of him. I asked him in our awful
clipped gibberish, Inglesi? dove? He made one of
those Italian shrugs with the eyes turned up, that
denote ignorance of just about everything. I put my
foot in the door and repeated my question and perhaps
he grew more scared of being ignorant than of
cooperating with me because he pointed quickly behind
him, up the hill. Are you sure? sicuro? are the
inglesi up there? and he made a nonçommittal nod and
was about to close the door when I said, OK, you take


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
me there, you. At first he refused and began to back
up but I advanced my boot a little and repeated, You,
voi, voi, take me to the inglesi. He pulled on a coat
quickly and came outside, not even telling his wife
or whomever was there. It was really dark now. .
I had him with me at the head of the column,
close So that I could grab him if he tried to run,
and we all tramped through the steep woods in
silence. How was it that the Company we had left was
a mile back and still neither battle nor white tape
were in sight? There was a chance that the forward
line was on a loop or bulge. And there was also the
thought that we might at any moment walk smack into
crossfire.
We reached the crest at last and stopped just
short of a gravelly road crossing from left to right.
It was a moonless night and we could hardly see
across the road-and how lucky that was. But opposite
us appeared to be a tall white house with a drive,
thought it was impossible to be sure. A soft breeze
played in the leaves around us. The man said in an
urgent whisper, Inglesi, inglesi, pointing across,
and at once a shout, more a scream, came from the


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
other side of the road, HALT! and it was German not
British.
I caught hold of the Italian's sleeve and
hissed, You've got us in the Bosch line! and he tore
himself free and with the most miraculous leap I have
ever heard (for we saw nothing) he jumped high in an
arc and landed So far down the slope behind us, and
So softly, that you couldn't hear the impact of fall.
I stood for a swift moment undecided and then dashed
across the road to the right of the sentry's voice
onto the road's soft shoulder, fearful that the
racket of our boots would make us easy targets. And
then I started running faster than my legs had ever
carried me-along that soft shoulder. God alone knows
what made me choose to run right instead of left. I
could hear my men panting and stumbling behind me and
in a matter of a second or So as I glanced down I saw
phosphorus-painted notices sticking out of the earth
and they were marked in big letters MINEN, with a
skull and crossbones. They stood every few yards and
I began leaping over them one by one, unable to leave
the soft shoulder because Jerry would target the
sound of our boots while, this way, silent on the
soft earth, the chances were that the sentry was


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
confused or terrified and that we wouldn't set the
mines off. But with the first few leaps it went all
right, otherwise we would all be finished by now. So
I jumped higher and higher and hoped that my men were
doing the same. My batman was immediately behind me
(on his first F.0.0. mission) and he kept saying
frantically, trying to keep his voice down, Sir, sir,
it's too heavy, it's too heavy, I can't keep up! But
keep up he did and I wasn't about to stop for any
man. I reckoned he would keep up with twice the load
if he had to. And he did. And all of a sudden I saw a
vast barn on the other side of the road and veered
towards it. Clattering across the road we rushed into
that barn and in a moment were lying breathless in
the straw, the radios and batteries and maps and
belts thrown down, and all we could hear for the next
few minutes were our heavy choked breaths. And very
gradually we began to hear the beloved silence of the
night and saw the clement merciful stars through the
tall open barn door, and we sank further and
thankfully into the straw feeling almost merriment
but still wary because of Jerry's closeness, with the
thought that he might send a patrol out any minute.
We didn't like those Schmeizers of theirs, fired from


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
the hip with a deadly rapid spray of bullets. But the
silence went on closing its arms round us and there
was another better thought-that equally Jerry might
want a peaceful night too. As for the mines we
thought about them but we didn't, then or thereafter,
talk about them. To think, there had been five pairs
of boots jumping over each sign. But we banished it
from our minds because we had a superstitious horror
of ever mentioning again an escape beyond belief.
And then other moods encroached on us as we lay
on the quickly warming hay. My batman at my side
murmured to me, I wouldn't have thought that of you
sir, leaving me with all that stuff. And I hissed
back, I've got all the forward positions on my map,
do you think I'm going to get myself captured? But I
didn't convince myself. He had sewn the thought in
me, coward. And it wouldn't leave me, interfering
with the other thoughts I had in my head-that we
were in enemy lines and I would have to move on and I
didn't even know if the direction I'd taken was
right, and perhaps we were now even deeper in Jerry
lines. We listened in case a tank started up with its
hungry crushing roar, and we waited for a headlight
to be shone into the barn. I told myself, All I did


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
was run. My feet did it for me. What else do you do
with a German sentry a few feet away? do you stand
arguing the toss about who's going to carry what?
What was my batman blaming me for? After all, he'd
got here, hadn't he, he was alive and well? he hadn't
been taken prisoner or shot dead had he? He said
nothing more. Perhaps he had already made peace with
me. But I couldn't shake it off-this shame that set
in like a nausea just when we'd had a reprieve.
Happily for soldiers, moods die the quickest death of
all.
I rarely consulted my signallers about what was
to be done in a tight spot. They were with me for the
radio signals after all, not the decisions. Usually
I let a decision develop inside me-I left it
alone-waited for it to settle. What else could you
do? If I had taken the wrong direction I was
committed to it now, up to my eyeballs. I might be
even deeper into enemy lines. And going further in.
Because I knew I was going to stay near that road,
and keep in the same direction. We might end up as
prisoners and in that case it would be the end of the
war for us. These were my thoughts. But none of us
wanted to be taken prisoner. The idea brought a


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
peculiar foreboding inside, a strangeness too
terrible. So I had to be sure of the right direction.
You couldn't have conferences about it. I had to get
us out of this. I relied on my decision just as they
did, and still I didn't know what it would be.
I walked to the barn door and looked out and
standing there I realised we had got to walk straight
on. At a little signal from me they quickly gathered
at the door behind me. I took them parallel to the
road, which lay on our left now. Our boots made
hardly any noise. The marvellously unrushed orbs of
the sky continued to be there. After about a hundred
yards we came to a path veering to the right and I
decided to take it, stepping carefully, as it was
narrow. In a few moments I stopped, hushed the others
with a sign. We pressed ourselves against a wall.
There was a man standing close to me, in the tiny
garden of a house. You couldn't say in this degree of
darkness whether his clothes were a uniform or
not-he was in shirt sleeves, hatless. And he was
sharpening a long knife. He began walking up and
down. Sometimes he came within inches of us. Now and
then he looked up at the sky, his face large and
round and seemingly pale-a German, an Italian?


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
Whenever he looked up he appeared to be smiling but
it wasn't a smile. Then he swiftly turned and went
back to the house behind him soundlessly. He went in,
closing the door. We crept on, still hugging the wall
to our side. In a few minutes we emerged close to the
road we had abandoned further back, only it was wider
now, more important.
A burst of machine-gun fire echoed to the left,
that is the north. I couldn't tell if it was a Bren
or a Spandau but opted for the Bren and told the
others so. It shed a little hope. Burst after burst
went into the sky. Then there were rifle shots and
the tiny muffled thump of mortar bombs. It seemed
there might be a valley on the other side of the
road. It would explain the muffled nature of the
sounds. Suddenly mortar bombs were exploding right
behind us and we threw ourselves to the ground. Most
of them fell on the road. Ahead of us there was a
field full of craters and as soon as the mortar-
firing died down we dashed to the biggest and deepest
one.
We lit cigarettes under our blouses. We heard a
track vehicle on the road, just a few yards away, not
a tank. Inching myself up to the edge of the crater I


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
saw a mansion-size house on the other side of the
road. In its forecourt were vehicles. But the more I
stared the less I saw. You can't stay mute for ever
and I whispered to the others that the house must be
an HQ-come and have a look, I said, is it ours or
Jerry's? can you recognise the trucks? are they
armoured carriers? They all peeked over the crater's
edge and like me got nowhere. Sometimes the vehicles
looked like jeeps, sometimes they seemed German. We
watched that place on and off for an hour or more.
Sometimes it was obvious that the house was British
held, sometimes more obvious that Jerry was there. In
that case, if it was German, we had simply walked
deeper into their line and were in cross-fire land.
So where was the attack? Our people must already be
far beyond their start lines. If so, where had the
opening barrage got to? and surely shouldn't that
barrage be falling right where we were? We stared at
the house, studied it. All we saw were our fancies.
Not a sound came from that courtyard. We could detect
no armed sentry there, no one walking about. The
moment I was certain I had identified a vehicle it
became floating shadows again. I knew I would walk
over to that house sooner or later. I would have to.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
The only other option was to roam all night and the
consequences might be worse than capture. If I found
the vehicles to be German was I going to walk into
that house just the same? I couldn't answer that one.
All I wanted now was for this to end, and I think the
men did too, we were sick of the waiting game, our
nerves weren't up to it any more. But we still didn't
know if our fatigue was the sort that would make us
want to give ourselves up.
It was in that moment of wanting the suspense
to end that I felt a spasm of confidence. I jumped up
and beckoned to them and waited for them to form up
behind me. Without troubling to be stealthy-who gave
a shit now?-I walked across the road and among the
vehicles. There wasn't a jeep among them but there
were 5-cwt. trucks and armoured carriers and they
were British. I pushed open the door and we beheld a
huge room, brilliantly lit by dags, full of
infantrymen, some on sleeping bags, others sitting
round. To the left as we went in was a long trellis
table with phones and a young officer sat there with
two or three men. He looked up at me and suddenly
smiled and the first thing he said was 'Hullo,
weren't we at Oxford together?'


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
Battles are never militarily proper. Somewhere
the human, the most helpless of animals, will always
come forth. Between happiness and astonishment and
trying to believe that this wasn't another life, we
stood there smiling and nodding. I wracked my brains
as to who he was-from an Oxford life that had become
a lost lonely dream in a finished epoch. The room
with its noise and crammed life whirled about us, a
reprieve which had come direct from somewhere
bountiful, a somewhere we had no part in. Quickly we
moved on to the subject of the Company I was looking
for and the young officer said, jumping up, I'll send
a runner with you but they're all out, one'll be back
shortly, So we sat about smoking and drinking char.
The sounds of battle were plentiful on this side of
the house. We were indeed on the crest of another
valley and the battle must be happening to the rear
of the enemy house whose sentry we had fled from.
A runner came and we set out behind him. A
drenching downpour had started. We soon reached the
white tape, much of it already trodden into the mud.
There were flashing dimmed torches and men carrying
supplies and armoured carriers in what seemed a
meaningless mess. The sounds of machine guns and


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
mortars came from every angle, or SO it seemed to our
foolish heads. We passed ruined farmhouses with men
standing in the doorways, there were cattle dead at a
trough, the familiar corpse stench in the air, the
trees had been torn up and we heard anguished
weeping-from a soldier? an Italian? I began to
understand why I had been pulled out of The Major's
company. I was needed here as a reinforcement, an
emergency, quickly.
I remember we reached a house, presumably where
my new Company commander was but I don't remember the
rest of that night-except for one brief picture of
myself. I am at the back of a big house, alone,
standing there in pitch darkness. I don't know how I
got here, but the house is where my men are. I step
forward and feel something soft under my foot. I look
down and see a dead German. I keep straining my eyes
to make out his shape but he is sunk in the mud. I
put my foot forward and there it is again, the
yielding nature of a body and I can't understand what
I am doing there, what puzzle I am trying to solve
but I go on puzzling just the same-is that his face,
how pale he is, how helplessly he looks up, how
yielding he is. Why do I need to establish his


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
presence better for myself, what is there to say
between us, why should I now, after we have survived
by the grace of God, be moving my foot in this way
and mournfully gazing down as if I should speak to
him, recall him to this bitter field?
It was about this time that Captain Maugham came
into my command post back at the guns and told me he
was off on an F.0.0. assignment. He had lost his
helmet and could he borrow mine? He smiled in that
diffident yet self-possessed way of his and I said,
Of course you can, I never use one anyway, never
have. Are you sure? he said. I pulled out the tin hat
and gave it to him and as he turned to leave I said,
Come back, in the half-joking way we all had. He
stopped. I hope so, he said with a moment's diffident
blink. And then he went off.
He didn't come back. I heard he died complaining
about a pain in his arm, everyone thought he was all
right, no wounds visible. I thought of his wife. He
never talked about her but you get a feeling of how
it is with some couples-lost unless they're close
by, missing the precious one like life always
beckoning from another place to where the life and
light is, leaving you incomplete.


SAK
UNFOR
Ten
ext day, late afternoon, we moved beyond the castle to
yet another farmhouse. I had just told my signaller to
Nstart up radio contact. I heard him acknowledging the
first signals and then he said to me, handing me the
mike, Officer to speak. I got the order to leave The
Major at once. I was to find another Company which would
be going into attack at precisely eight o'clock that
evening.


WAR IN ITALY
The Major looked at me in surprise, presumably at
having his F.0.0. snatched away. I told my signaller to
close down. Then I called out to my other men, Prepare to
move. The itinerary I had been given was the vaguest
possible. I had little daylight left to find my way. It
meant crossing to the other Company at a flank, without
any of us in the forward lines being clear as to what was
happening on that flank. But I didn't get into a
grumbling mood-it appeared those days were firmly over.
And in any case we never questioned vague orders.
Everyone-including the officer giving you orders-had to
rely on the latest scratch Intelligence which could be
flat wrong.
The house we had just moved into was on the southern
slope of a valley that stretched magnificently before us,
with woodland on its right side. We were to take a path
through those woods-it lay clear before us in the
deepening dusk and nothing could appear safer.
We walked with the usual clinking of metal from our
belts and packs. We were sharp and taut, alert for every
sound. There was a burst of very loud machine-gun fire to
our left, the sound amplified to an extraordinary
deafening echo by the valley. I couldn't tell from which
side it was coming. Which told me that the path we were
taking was in the direction of the enemy, not a friendly


WAR IN ITALY
battalion. That was my first thought but I put it aside
as absurd.
I thought we would soon find white tapes,
those infallible guides portending and attending battle.
But there was no sign of them. I was used to piecemeal
Intelligence. It could come from false intelligence or an
exhausted officer. And as always in this kind of terrain
the words 'front line' were a euphemism for what could in
minutes become a. semicircle.
The only trouble was that I was to accompany an
attack going in at 20.00 hrs. I made up my mind to stop
at the first house and ask where Jerry was. The Italians
always knew. When we came to one, at the edge of a
clearing, about half way up the slope, I thumped quietly
at the door. There was an instant hush at my knock, then
nothing. This time I thumped more insistently but not
more loudly and at once the door opened an inch or two. I
could see the man's eyes. He was scared but when I pushed
firmlyion the door to indicate that I wished to speak to
him, whether he liked it or not, he opened up So that I
could see all of him. I asked him in our awful clipped
gibberish, Inglesi? dove? It didn't occur to me to ask,
more to the point, where the Germans were. He made one of
those Italian shrugs with the eyes turned up, that denote
ignorance of just about everything. I put my foot further
in thei door and repeated my question and perhaps he grew


WAR IN ITALY
more scared of being ignorant than of cooperating with me
because he pointed quickly behind him, up the hill. Are
you sure? sicuro? are the inglesi up there? and he made a
noncommittal nod and was about to close the door when I
said, OK, you take me there, you. At first he refused and
began to back up but I advanced my boot a little and
repeated, You, voi, voi, take me to the inglesi. He
pulled on a coat quickly and came outside, not even
telling his wife or whomever was there. It was really
dark now.
I had him with me at the head of the column, close
So that I could grab him if he tried to run, and we all
tramped through the steep woods in silence. How was it
that the Company we had left was a mile back and still
neither battle nor white tape were in sight, for it was
past eight by now? There was a chance that the forward
line was on a loop or bulge. And there was also the
thought that we might at any moment walk smack into
crossfire.
We reached the crest at last and stopped just short
of a gravel road crossing from left to right. It was a
moonless night and we could hardly see to the other side
of that road-and how lucky that was. But opposite us
appeared to be a tall white house with a drive, though it
was impossible to be sure. A soft breeze played in the
leaves around us. The man said in an urgent whisper,


WAR IN ITALY
Inglesi, inglesi, pointing across, and at once a shout,
more a. scream, came from the other side of the road,
HALT! and it was German not British.
I. caught hold of the Italian's sleeve and hissed,
You've: got us in the Bosch line! and he tore himself free
and with the most miraculous leap I have ever heard (for
we saw: nothing) he jumped high in an arc and landed So
far down the slope behind us, and SO softly, that you
couldn't hear the impact of fall. I stood for a swift
moment undecided and then dashed across the road
diagonally to the right of the sentry's voice onto the
road's soft shoulder, fearful that the racket of our
boots would make us easy targets. And then I started
running faster than my legs had ever carried me-along
that soft shoulder. God alone knows what made me choose
to run right instead of left. I could hear my men panting
and stumbling behind me and in a matter of a second or So
as I glanced down I saw phosphorus-painted notices
sticking out of the earth and they were marked in big
letters MINEN, with a skull and crossbones. They stood
every few yards and I began leaping over them one by
one, unable to leave the soft shoulder because Jerry
would target the sound of our boots while, this way,
silent on the soft earth, the chances were that the
sentry was confused or terrified and that we wouldn't set
the mines off. But with the first few leaps it went all


WAR IN ITALY
right, otherwise we would all be finished by now. So I
jumped higher and higher and hoped that my men were doing
the same. My batman was immediately behind me (on his
first F.0.0. mission) and he kept saying frantically,
trying; to keep his voice down, Sir, sir, it's too heavy,
it's too heavy, I can't keep up! But keep up he did and I
wasn't about to stop for any man. I reckoned he would
keep up with twice the load if he had to. And he did. And
all of, a sudden I saw a vast barn on the other side of
the road and veered towards it. Clattering across the
road we rushed into that barn and in a moment were lying
breathless in the straw, the radios and batteries and
maps and belts thrown down, and all we could hear for the
next few minutes were our heavy choked breaths. And very
gradually we began to hear the beloved silence of the
night and saw the clement merciful stars through the tall
open barn door, and we sank further and thankfully into
the straw feeling almost merriment but still wary because
of Jerry's closeness, with the thought that he might send
a patrol out any minute. We didn't like those Schmeizers
of theirs, fired from the hip with a deadly rapid spray
of bullets. But the silence went on closing its arms
round us and there was another better thought-that
equally Jerry might want a peaceful night too. As for the
mines we thought about them but we didn't, then or
thereafter, talk about them. To think, there had been


WAR IN ITALY
five pairs of boots jumping over each sign. But we
banished it from our minds because we had a superstitious
horror: of ever mentioning again an escape beyond belief.
Only now can I see that the live mines were directly
under the phosphorus signs and that they had been put
there to deter an unlikely attack from where we had come
from.
And then other moods encroached on us as we lay on
the quickly warming hay. My batman at my side murmured to
me, I wouldn't have thought that of you sir, leaving me
with all that stuff. And I hissed back, I've got all the
forward positions on my map, do you think I'm going to
get myself captured? But I didn't convince myself. He had
sewn the thought in me, coward. And it wouldn't leave me, /
interfering with the other thoughts I had in my
head-that we were in enemy lines and I would have to
move on and I didn't even know if the direction I'd taken
was right, and perhaps we were now even deeper in Jerry
lines. We listened in case a tank started up with its
hungry; crushing roar, and we waited for a headlight to be
shone into the barn. I told myself, All I did was run. My
feet did it for me. What else do you do with a German
sentry. a few feet away? do you stand arguing the toss
about who's going to carry what? What was my batman
blaming me for? After all, he'd got here, hadn't he, he
was alive and well? he hadn't been taken prisoner or shot


WAR IN ITALY
dead had he? He said nothing more. Perhaps he had already
made peace with me. But I couldn't shake it off-this
shame that set in like nausea just when we'd had a
reprieve. Happily for soldiers, moods die the quickest
death of all.
I rarely consulted my signallers about what was to
be done in a tight spot. They were with me for the radio
signals after all, not the decisions. Usually I let a
decision develop inside me-I left it alone--waited for
it to settle. What else could you do? If I had taken the
wrong direction I was committed to it now, up to my
eyeballs. I might be even deeper into enemy lines. And
going further in. Because I knew I was going to stay near
that road, and keep in the same direction. We might end
up as prisoners and in that case it would be the end of
the war for us. These were my thoughts. But none of us
wanted to be taken prisoner. The idea brought a peculiar
foreboding inside, a strangeness too terrible. So I had
to be sure of the right direction. You couldn't have
conferences about it. I had to get us out of this. I
relied on my decision just as they did, and still I
didn't: know what it would be.
Iw walked to the barn door and looked out and
standing there I realised we had got to walk straight on.
At a little signal from me they quickly gathered at the
door behind me. I took them parallel to the road, which


WAR IN ITALY
lay on, our left now. Our boots made hardly any noise. The
marvellously unrushed orbs of the sky continued to be
there. After about a hundred yards we came to a path
veering to the right and I decided to take it, stepping
carefully, as it was narrow. In a few moments I stopped,
hushed the others with a sign. We pressed ourselves
against a wall. There was a man standing close to me, in
the tiny garden of a house. You couldn't say in this
degree: of darkness whether his clothes were a uniform or
not-he was in shirt sleeves, hatless. And he was
sharpening a long knife. He began walking up and down.
Sometimes he came within inches of us. Now and then he
looked: up at the sky, his face large and round and
seemingly pale-a German, an Italian? Whenever he looked
up he appeared to be smiling but it wasn't a smile. Then
he swiftly turned and went back to the house behind him
soundlessly. He went in, closing the door. We crept on,
still hugging the wall to our side. In a few minutes we
emerged close to the road we had abandoned further back,
only it was wider now, more important.
A: burst of machine-gun fire echoed to the left, that
is the north. I couldn't tell if it was a Bren or a
Spandau but opted for the Bren and told the others so. It
shed a: little hope. Burst after burst went into the sky.
Then there were rifle shots and the tiny muffled thump of
mortar bombs. It seemed there might be a valley on the


WAR IN ITALY
other side of the road. It would explain the muffled
nature of the sounds. Suddenly mortar bombs were
exploding right behind us and we threw ourselves to the
ground. Most of them fell on the road. Ahead of us there
was a field full of craters and as soon as the mortar-
firing died down we dashed to the biggest and deepest
one.
We lit cigarettes under our blouses. We heard a
track vehicle on the road, just a few yards away, not a
tank. Inching myself up to the edge of the crater I saw a
mansion-size house on the other side of the road. In its
forecourt were vehicles. But the more I stared the less I
saw. You can't stay mute for ever and I whispered to the
others that the house must be an HQ-come and have a
look, I said, is it ours or Jerry's? can you recognise
the trucks? are they armoured carriers? They all peeked
over the crater's edge and like me got nowhere. Sometimes
the vehicles looked like jeeps, sometimes they seemed
German. We watched that place on and off for an hour or
more. Sometimes it was obvious that the house was British
held, sometimes more obvious that Jerry was there. In
that case, if it was German, we had simply walked deeper
into their line and were in cross-fire land. So where was
the attack? Our people must already be far beyond their
start lines. If so, where had the opening barrage got to?
and surely shouldn't that barrage be falling right where


WAR IN ITALY
we were? We stared at the house, studied it. All we saw
were our fancies. Not a sound came from that courtyard.
We could detect no armed sentry there, no one walking
about. The moment I was certain I had identified a
vehicle it became floating shadows again. I knew I would
walk over to that house sooner or later. I would have to.
The only other option was to roam all night and the
consequences might be worse than capture. If I found the
vehicles to be German was I going to walk into that house
just the same? I couldn't answer that one. All I wanted
now was for this to end, and I think the men did too, we
were sick of the waiting game, our nerves weren't up to
it any more. But we still didn't know if our fatigue was
the sort that would make us want to give ourselves up.
It was in that moment of wanting the suspense to end
that I felt a spasm of confidence. I jumped up and
beckoned to them and waited for them to form up behind
me. Without troubling to be stealthy-who gave a shit
now?-I walked across the road and among the vehicles.
There wasn't a jeep among them but there were 5-cwt.
trucks and armoured carriers and they were British. I
pushed open the door and we beheld a huge room,
brilliantly lit by dags, full of infantrymen, some on
sleeping bags, others sitting round. To the left as we
went in was a long trellis table with phones and a young
officer sat there with two or three men. He looked up at


WAR IN ITALY
me and suddenly smiled and the first thing he said was
'Hullo, weren't we at Oxford together?'
Battles are never militarily proper. Somewhere the
human, the most helpless of animals, will always come
forth. Between happiness and astonishment and trying to
believe that this wasn't another life, we stood there
smiling and nodding. I wracked my brains as to who he
was-from an Oxford life that had become a lost lonely
dream in a finished epoch. The room with its noise and
crammed life whirled about us, a reprieve which had come
direct from somewhere bountiful, a somewhere we had no
part in. Quickly we moved on to the subject of the
Company I was looking for and the young officer said,
jumping up, I'll send a runner with you but they're all
out, one'll be back shortly, So we sat about smoking and
drinking char. The sounds of battle were plentiful on
this side of the house. We were indeed on the crest of
another valley and the battle must be happening to the
rear of the enemy house whose sentry we had fled from.
A runner came and we set out behind him. A drenching
downpour had started. We soon reached the white tape,
much of it already trodden into the mud. There were
flashing dimmed torches and men carrying supplies and
armoured carriers in what seemed a meaningless mess. The
sounds of machine guns and mortars came from every angle,
or So it seemed to our foolish heads. We passed ruined


WAR IN ITALY
farmhouses with men standing in the doorways, there were
cattle dead at a trough, the familiar corpse stench in
the air, the trees had been torn up and we heard
anguished weeping-from a soldier? an Italian? I began to
understand why I had been pulled out of The Major's
company. I was needed here as a reinforcement, an
emergency, quickly.
I remember we reached a house, presumably where my
new Company commander was but I don't remember the rest
of that night-except for one brief picture of myself. I
am at the back of a big house, alone, standing there in
pitch darkness. I don't know how I got here, but the
house is where my men are. I step forward and feel
something soft under my foot. I look down and see a dead
German. I keep straining my eyes to make out his shape
but he is sunk in the mud. I put my foot forward and
there it is again, the yielding nature of a body and I
can't understand what I am doing there, what puzzle I am
trying to solve but I go on puzzling just the same-is
that his face, how pale he is, how helplessly he looks
up, how yielding he is. Why do I need to establish his
presence better for myself, what is there to say between
us, why should I now, after we have survived by the grace
of God, be moving my foot in this way and mournfully
gazing down as if I should speak to him, recall him to
this bitter field?


WAR IN ITALY
It was about this time that Captain Maugham came
into my command post back at the guns and told me he was
off on; an F.0.0. assignment. He had lost his helmet and
could he borrow mine? He smiled in that diffident yet
self-possessed way of his and I said, Of course you can,
I never use one anyway, never have. Are you sure? he
said. I pulled out the tin hat and gave it to him and as
he turned to leave I said, Come back, in the half-joking
way we all had. He stopped. I hope so, he said with a
moment's diffident blink. And then he went off.
He didn't come back. I heard he died complaining
about a pain in his arm, everyone thought he was all
right, no wounds visible. I thought of his wife. He never
talked. about her but you get a feeling of how it is with
some couples-lost unless they're close by, missing the
precious one like life always beckoning from another
place to where the life and light is, leaving you
incomplete.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
Eleven
he Eighth army moved north-east from
Tuscany. We were now in charge of the east
side of the peninsula while the Fifth army
stayed on the left. We were sorry to be obliged to
skirt Florence and resented the missing the chance of
opening, like the first words of an enchanted book,
the gates of a ravishing city we seemed already to
know ancestrally, as it were.
You couldn't help feeling that the Fifth army
was getting all the plum towns-Naples, Rome, Siena,
Florence and no doubt, by the time we drew level to
it, Bologna as well. It would have been nice to bad-
mouth that army but we had too recently been in it,
and soldiers like to have their hatreds unalloyed.
Thus it was, by being rudely pushed to the
right, that we came within sight of the road that led
from Forli (emphasis on the second syllable) to
Cesena (also on the second syllable), ending in
Rimini on the coast and the deep blue glittering
Adriatic, whose wash was So much less hauntingly


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
suave than the Mediterranean's. Adriatic waves were
thick and buxom and deep dark blue-a more bustling
sea than most because narrow.
One day I walked down to a narrow Adriatic beach
and couldn't believe that north and south of me, east
and west, there wasn't a soul or vehicle to be seen
or heard, only the saucy emphatic crash of the waves.
For a moment I had all I saw to myself, yet a road
went by a few metres behind me. I knew I would never
see or hear a world like that again.
I was once more detailed to The Major. We were
under shell-fire all the way up to the line and
finally occupied a house on a slope, with the enemy
further up. The Major wasn't satisfied with our
position, exposed as we were on both flanks-and with
danger from the rear if Jerry was clever enough. We
put our sleeping bags down but The Major was restive.
However, to withdraw and once again cover the shell-
holed road we had come up by could be more costly
than staying put. I persuaded him to stay. He agreed
only if I shelled the house further up the hill
intermittently through the night SO as to pin the
enemy down, should he be there.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
In the course of my night's shelling the house
ahead caught fire and we could see the fields
surrounding it in a bright orange glow. Which assured
us that any enemy patrol coming from behind that
house could be picked off at once. At dawn the Major
put out a well-armed patrol and prisoners were
quickly taken. We moved up beyond the burning house,
leaving it there to smoulder. We pushed through
fences and broken gates to our new position.
When the battle noises died down in the evening
I strolled back downhill to that burning house. The
bushes round it were still smouldering. The upper
floor had collapsed altogether. The kitchen door at
the back, as I came down to it, swung open. I walked
towards it. A dead German officer lay just by it,
raised up and all but buried in the debris. I thought
I saw a movement in the bushes and jumped round to
the side of the house. I heard a woman's voice. I
walked back to the door and pushed it open and in the
dark hot kitchen I found two elderly women. One was
sitting by the table but she didn't look up when I
came in. The flesh of her leg was open. I could
hardly see across the room for a thin white smoke.
Then the other woman cried out as I came further into


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
the room but not with fright and they managed to
raise themselves and come towards me, their hands
clasped together in prayer and they began crying out,
Aiuto, aiuto, that cry for help we heard all the way
up this stricken peninsula sacrificed to madness,
every soldier knew that word. All night they had sat
there in the flames-my flames-flames devised for
our night-long safety.
I ran back up to headquarters, knowing my youth
was unable to deal with this, and grabbed hold of The
Major. They've been there all night, I said. He knew
my youth wasn't up to handling it. Together we ran
back down, calling stretcher bearers to follow. The
Major stood in the kitchen white and appalled and
with his arms round those women he shook his head
again and again saying, No, no, no, no, no, no.
We saw the truth of the dead and dying now
because our assaults were quick and sudden. You came
across enemy gun emplacements and dug-outs just
vacated by Jerry. You might see his mug of coffee
still there, half full, steaming. I would stare at
his quaint mobile kitchens and once when I came
across one turned on its side from a shell-burst I
opened the covers one by one with the food spilled


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
and cold inside. Another time I ran into a hay barn
just abandoned by an enemy rearguard and thought I
smelled their cigarette smoke still in the air.
Always this unanswered question, who is this
enemy? how did it come about that he had achieved
human form, SO many millions of demons now cast
aside? So it was that we turned over their wallets
and watches and photos from home, trying to discover
more about demons, how they talked and laughed. And
all because we knew it wasn't true.
It is the enemy dead who convince us they are
nothing of the sort. One lies akimbo with his last
horrified grin. Always round the corner they appear,
in barns as you rush in, sometimes head down, in a
clean death, one that came too soon for the grimace
of shock. So battle instils the opposite of what made
you enter it. It softens and then quite steals away
your deathly recrimination.
And the tiny women clinging to their burning
home-what sort of enemy were they? how did they
deserve to be there in the fire and how did I deserve
to cause it?


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
Twelve
hese days I hardly had time to rest between
missions. I was quickly ordered to join The
Major again. This time he was already
installed in a splendidly stout country villa behind
tall iron gates. The road of approach at its side was
deserted and still, too open and innocent for my
choice. On an impulse, as there was intermittent
shelling, I led my men, five or six in all, into the
ditch at the roadside. It gave us better cover in the
event of our having to throw ourselves down.
Then I took it into my head that I was going to
catch a packet if I continued walking at the head. I
suspected there might be a sniper somewhere (it was
quite impossible) as the view was open all sides
except the one that was in our hands. But I thought
the two pips, as they now were on my shoulder,
denoting a full-blown lieutenant, stood out. So I
waited for my men to pass me and took my place in the
rear. This was one of the million sops to blood-
thirsty Cerberus that each of us made every


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
day-jumping up to stroll to another spot, leaving
one room for another, touching every other tree we
walked by, in this way we cheated the eye vigilant
for our demise.
I spent the first evening at the villa at an
upstairs window listening to the voices of a platoon
The Major sent out at night-fall. They were to
capture a white cottage about a hundred yards
forward, a peaceful jewel, not a farmhouse but set
there for pleasure. It hadn't So far been touched by
schrapnel. There was no firing. I heard one of our
patrol call out in a high-pitched voice, Come out you
bastards! It was a strange voice. There was a
disturbing allure in it, invitation more than menace.
We knew a Spandau was waiting round the corner of
that house. And then again-Come out! he cried.
Almost a woman's voice. The rest of the attacking
platoon seemed to be lying low, waiting. And once
more-Let's have you Jerry!
The voice belonged to one small wiry man.
Everybody round me was listening too. They always did
when he went out. Especially The Major listened. He
knew the capacities of this one small slight
ferociously strong cockney who everybody said was


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
rich from the merchandise he stole on such nights. He
went out with a clear resolute head, a plan of his
own. He neither needed nor heeded others. He showed
neither fear before nor satisfaction after. He didn't
speak-except to the enemy in his unnerving siren
voice. And the men were chary of him, respectful but
chary. They never questioned him, only gazed, riled
him a bit, cautiously.
A short time back he had taken six prisoners
single-handed. He told them to line up and lay out in
front of them everything they had-money, watches,
pens. Then in a single burst of fire he shot them
dead. That was a story told about him. But it wasn't
his customary way of killing. He used a knife. He
would come up slowly and silently behind Jerry and
slit his throat. And he was able to throw his siren
voice to somewhere else, So that a shot in his
direction would miss. Those were the stories about
him.
There was sudden fire from the enemy and then in
the hush that followed we heard a scuffle and a
groan. We could just make out the platoon running
forward, closer to the white house, then came another
burst of gun-fire. It went on thus for an hour. At


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
last they trooped back, led by the small wiry one,
who had a bullet wound in the calf of his right leg.
He sat down and tended the wound, his eyes restless,
excited, also resentful in case another trooper
should come near him. You felt everyone was the enemy
for him, he didn't make allowances for nationality or
allegiance. A trooper came over and said, Here's a
dressing, holding it out. All the cockney said was a
quiet, Fuck the dressing, without even looking up,
making The Major smile.
I arranged with The Major for another attack the
next morning to smother the enemy gun. I was to lay
down some fire and we would bring a tank up. The wiry
cockney was insulted by the idea of a tank. It wasn't
the way to fight. He said he was going out again,
tonight, in his slippers as always, his face black.
But he spent all night moaning with pain. He was
eventually stretchered out. During the night I
ordered intermittent fire from the guns. My head kept
slumping forward with fatigue as I passed the orders
down-Fire by order.10,9,8,7.. At dawn the tank came
up, fired its cannon twice while a fresh platoon
moved forward. Enemy shells began to paste us and the
tank moved back, the platoon retired.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
It became sunny and I walked outside where a
pleasant bordered courtyard made it seem a war-free
zone, especially as it was hidden from Jerry. The
shade of the trees, the motionless well-tended
borders and the mellow response of the stone walls to
the sun made a place where, unobserved, So we
thought, you could smoke quietly and chat.
I saw three officers talking together and joined
them for a bit. Then I wandered off. Just as I turned
the corner of the house a mortar bomb fell smack in
the courtyard where I had just been. I walked back
and one of the officers I had been talking to lay on
the ground, his eyes staring aghast. He was grey,
trembling violently in the last throes. A stretcher
came up and took him inside. When he died one of the
officers brought a blanket and covered him. And this
officer kept coming back to. turn the blanket down
from his face and gaze at him, then replace it, in a
vigil that lasted till dusk.
You can't get used to the unexpected, expect it
as you might. Of course you know that the bell is
always tolling and it may or may not be for you but
it tolls SO madly, So minute by minute, it is bound
to seem to be always in some measure tolling for you


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
and there is no escape from it, even when it has
tolled, in a split-second choice, for someone else.
By the middle of that afternoon we were a mile
behind the forward line, So quick was the advance on
our flanks. Peace came to that indolent mansion that
basked as ever, flaunted its borders, whispered with
the breeze.
I rested in that patrician home, sure that my
regiment wouldn't require me for another mission just
yet. Which of course was a premonition of the
opposite. Twigs were burning in the hearth from
something fried or boiled. Occasionally I asked for a
glass of Marsala from the cellar where the family
hid. They were prodigal with their store.
The order had been given for B Company to pass
through us. Being fresh, they would occupy positions
well forward, in the thick of the fighting that was
now going on ahead of me. Our small wiry man with the
bullet wound had been taken to a first-aid post,
whence he would be taken to hospital.
The Major told me he didn't envy B Company, they
were in for a bad time. We ate lunch from our mess
tins, waiting for them to come up. Nothing happened
for about fifty minutes. Then a signal came over my


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
radio. My signaller started, probably with thoughts
close to mine. He looked up at me and said, Officer
to speak.
I went shaking to the mike, no doubt looking
calm and ready, and I was told, You will join B
Company, you will get all the tactical information
from the commanding,officer of the company, you will
prepare to move now, any questions? No sir.
I threw the mike into the signaller's lap and
called out to the others, Prepare to move, and there
was the long groan we all knew So well. And to my
signaller I said, You can close down. I felt like
calling the duty officer at Battery HQ and giving him
a piece of my mind but of course I didn't. Instead I
told The Major as casually as possible that I'd been
detailed to B Company and he said, Christ, off again?
My batman shouted for me from upstairs. Where
did I wish to sleep that night? He was unrolling my
bag. I said, Prepare to move, didn't they tell you?
When I heard B Company outside I went to meet
the major in command. He was tall with an easy-going,
non-commital, perhaps vague manner. He told me there
was an assembly point we all had to move on to. It
was clearly going to be something big. He spoke


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
pleasantly, distantly. We were to move at dawn next
morning.
We were outside before dawn, puffing and
blowing against the chill. The C.O. and I walked
ahead. We went by a copse charred at its edges and a
farmhouse with its roof caved in. The assembly point
was a moderately sized house, walls intact. Every
room was already crowded. A few radios had been set
up. Men were playing cards. I recognised some old
faces. It was a cheerful, not to say festive
atmosphere as companies arrived fresh from the rear
while others departed for the forward posts. Then we
of B Company moved on.
After a time we reached fields that had the
stillness of a battlefield to be.
Our designated house was open to the enemy on
three sides, with only the rear approachable. It was
in a steep dip below us. We had to be mindful of the
noise we made, over sixty of us, as we dropped down
into a ditch behind the house, then scrambled up it
to reach the entrance of a great cattle shed. There
was one mercy-no one could have seen us occupy it.
Also the house stood on its own single hillock,
giving us commanding views to the front and our left


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
flank. Our concealed avenue of escape at the rear,
through rising woodland, was our best asset,
balancing our precarious tactical situation-we all
knew we were sticking out in enemy territory-with
this assured escape route.
Two Germans lay dead in the cattle shed, under a
cobwebbed window. They each had their arms held
rigid in the air, vertical, and that was how they
remained while we were in possession of the house.
Further on, opening from the cattle shed, you came to
a vast room that took up pretty well the whole ground
floor. It gave off to tiny rooms which we used for
observation, behind tiny windows dark with dust.
We shed our equipment. I liked the Company
commander. He had a quiet geniality. Yet he seemed to
observe things distantly rather than taking charge.
By now it was a sunny morning. We felt sure we had
entered the house unobserved but one never knew-
uncertainty was to dog us all the time we were there.
I set up the radio in one of the tiny rooms
where hams had once been hung. From here we could
see, immediately below us on our left flank, not more
than thirty yards away, another, smaller house. A
thick barrier of bushes lay between us. We could gaze


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
down into the house's rear courtyard and were
grateful to see a British armoured carrier there. It
was a boost to find our left flank covered, even
though we, both they and us, might still be sticking
out like the tips of sore thumbs into enemy land.
It didn't take us long to discover that in fact
we were well inside enemy land, all sixty of us. I
think few F.0.0.s could ever have found themselves in
German lines with So many well-armed men round them.
If I wanted to observe the area straight in
front I had to put myself in a much bigger store-room
with long barred windows. These gave me an ample view
left and right as well as forward and, being dusty
and cobwebbed, they made us invisible from outside.
A long table right under these windows ran the
length of the wall-convenient both for its view and
for positioning a Bren gun. I kept my radio and
signallers in the big room because at this lookout
window silence was essential.
The field before us sloped very slightly
downwards, then proceeded flat for a hundred yards
or more to a road that crossed from left to right a
hundred yards or more ahead.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
Preparing for a long stay I set myself up with a
machine-gunner at my right side. I saw this grimy
nook as the house's principal look-out post, and this
it certainly turned out to be. Together the machine
gunner and I sat in the hush and waited for events to
present themselves. Our question, Does Jerry know
we're here? was quickly followed by, Of course he
does (but we never found out if he did).
My signaller in the big room quickly coded our
map reference and sent it back to my command post. I
wanted to register a target in the field ahead. This
much self-exposure was necessary. I waited for Guns
Ready and gave the order to fire. After a few moments
there was a mounting swish above our heads and a
shell landed just beyond the road that lay before us.
I ordered the target to be registered, then I
registered the fields to the left and right flank.
We all expected an attack that evening. There
was an uneasy atmosphere, especially as we could hear
the grind of nearby enemy tanks, perhaps the most
feared noise in battle because a tank can crush you
without pause, not to say push down without effort
your walls.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
When dusk came double sentries were posted at
the windows and the barn door. After a time I went to
sit with my men in the big room. Pretty well the
whole Company was gathered there now.
Armchairs and settees had been brought in from
the other rooms. Suddenly there was a crash and a
scream. Part of the cattle shed wall next door had
been blown in. Brick dust came drifting through. I
hoped this wasn't an answering shell to my
registration one. It would mean Jerry had seen us
coming in. A stretcher was rushed to the wounded man,
one of our sentries. He was put down next the dead
Germans. We thought he had little hope of life. He
kept crying out to be brought in among us. Our
commanding officer did nothing. So the stretcher
bearers brought him close to our door, where he could
hear us, though this exposed him to greater danger.
People weren't obeying the commanding officer. I
think The Major had told me that this man was a
replacement, perhaps even a reinforcement, i.e.
entirely fresh to the game. I began to dislike him,
making an unjust shift in my affections of the kind
soldiers are good at. The hole in the stable wall
turned out to have been made by a bazooka, which is


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
fired from the shoulder. And this posed the problem
of where it could have been fired from, if not from
the rear, namely from behind the British-occupied
house at our side. At that rate the soldiers in there
were even more exposed than we.
But a bazooka was better news than artillery,
from the lethality point of view. At least I was
satisfied that Jerry wasn't answering me -
Somehow, without an order having been given, we
sixty-odd men came to a collective understanding that
even though we were probably being observed we must
behave as if we weren't. The bazooka shot might have
been a try-on to provoke response. So we mustn't
respond.
In the absence of any orders from our infantry
commander I put it around-as if I had already taken
the command over-that our machine gunners should be
careful not to respond to fire. The sentries didn't
move.
There was another crash-this to our left flank.
Sentries reported that a Jerry patrol was out. But if
SO they didn't come near us. The evening passed
without event.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
Once the sentries had been changed we put down
our sleeping bags. The men's spirit seemed to be
going. This happens when the leadership crumbles-a
lightning transformation into listless gloom. Dr.
Johnson once argued that subordination was essential
to mankind. In battle the moment it collapses the
field is lost. Our sentries sat smoking cynically.
The predicted attack didn't happen. But all night we
heard the jarring scream of Jerry tanks. In the case
of our having to run it would be messy escaping via
the back-sixty or more men clambering up a narrow
strip of hill, however concealed. And we had nothing
so useful as a bazooka, the only hand-held instrument
in existence with armour-piercing capacity.
At first light I went to the tiny window
overlooking the house on our left. The armoured
carrier was still there. We ate, sat in silence,
confident that nothing would happen in daylight. In
this we were mistaken. In the early afternoon there
was the screeching roar of a tank and it was coming
nearer. I had just sat down by my machine gunner and
heard him gasp. Straight ahead, on the road that cut
across the field before us, a German tank was moving
from left to right, a mighty towering structure


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
indeed, and slow. Then it stopped, dead in front of
us. And a Jerry patrol, perhaps eight men, appeared
from behind it, looking straight in our direction. It
was something you never saw, a bunch of enemy
apparently unaware of you in broad daylight, and SO
close. But why had the tank stopped if not because
Jerry was perfectly aware of us? Well, they might be
thinking that only the house next door was occupied.
After all, they had probably been chased out of it.
So my non-response policy was continued,
especially as the tank rendered defence on our side
useless.
Very slowly the tank's long gun began turning.
It turned on us. It stopped, dead on us, our house.
We sat utterly motionless. The mouth of a big gun
holds you. We stared into its black hole, without
even thought of resistance. One cannon would do for
us with ease. We were goners. And to our bafflement
that gun turret moved back again, away from us to the
left, and in its leisurely ponderous way it drew to a
halt on the British-held house to our left.
The moment this happened the Jerry patrol ran
forward and lay down in the furrows, conspicuously,
making signs to each other. And they waited for the


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
tank to send its cannon shot. It fired once, emitting
a white lazy puff of smoke, and its cannon missed.
Then it fired again and was smack on target and our
own house wobbled in the massive crash as a yellow
cloud of rubble went up. Covered by it the Germans
ran forward. They came across the field one by one,
each giving cover to the other, swift, in perfect
drill. It was a model tangential attack. They
disappeared from view immediately below us, closing
on the house at our side. The machine gunner and I
looked at each other and blew out the air as if we
shared the same breath. A reprieve again, not to be
believed like all of them SO that you always ask,
Were we really saved or shifted to another life?
Our sentries came and reported that the British
had run out of the other house, some of them hatless,
they had disappeared in the trees of the slope
behind. I dashed to the side-window and saw one of
the Germans stroll out and gaze at the armoured
carrier, moving round it inquisitively. I could see
every feature of his plump face. Why did they seem SO
sure that we weren't here? He would never have
strolled out of the house in such a casual fashion
otherwise.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
Why didn't they do a quick recce on our house?
But this, surely, they must be leaving to the dark
hours. They could never risk another daylight
operation. Then why had they risked one just now? And
surely that operation argued that they knew nothing
of our presence here? So our thoughts tortured each
other.
I decided to treat an attack this evening as a
certainty. In that case I must prepare for it. The
enemy - tank was principally on my mind-the appearance
of one meant an armoured division not far away. I had
to make sure that somehow those tanks were pinned
down.
When the owner of our house went outside to draw
water a Jerry machine-gunner opened up on him with
blue tracer bullets from the house next door. A bad
sign. But it made an attack that evening look more
certain. The farmer lost some flesh off a finger.
Then the bullets came showering over the house,
smashing the windows. So they did know we were here.
We cursed the farmer out. He cowered back to his
hiding place. Civilians rarely had any idea of what
the soldiery was up to. For him we were just sitting


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
it out in his house. Proprietors who kept to the
darkness of their cellars fared best.
To our bafflement, despite having fired bullets
at us, the Jerry patrol appeared again-right under
our noses, as before, hardly twenty yards away. They
were chatting, huddled together in the natural way we
soldiers had because nature's binding guarantee of
continued life had been withdrawn.
The machine-gunner and I sat gazing at them in
disbelief. We could almost hear their voices. They
had no way of escaping us. We could have had them all
dead in a second. The sensible, practical thing was
to kill them. I made a very quick calculation. It was
practical but not sensible. It would bring down
immediate retaliation on us. Tanks would finish us
off, every man of us.
The truth was also that I didn't believe for an
instant I would kill them, I didn't want to do it, I
refused to do it. I saw their families before my
eyes-an involuntary image, I did nothing to call it
up. I put my hand on the machine gunner's arm and
mutely shook my head. No firing. And he nodded. That
was the best thing I did in all my life. It wasn't
strategy on my part. My gunner's quick nod showed he


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
felt the same. No death in cold blood. A thousand
times in my life, all through these years, I have
offered up thanks for that hand on my gunner's arm.
The Germans crossed the field on the same
diagonal line as their attack, without the smallest
effort to take cover. They got to the road again and
disappeared. But almost certainly they had left a
strong force in the house at our side, and this had
entered the house from the extreme left flank, hidden
to us.
Our Company major had been sitting in the big
room all this time just staring in front of him. The
orders he gave came from trembling lips and made no
sense. His voice had all but gone. He sat there with
an almost green pallor, close to the chimney, his
eyes sightless. He was clearly in shell-shock true
and proper. His hands trembled violently. Shell-shock
is muscular paralysis. There is almost no awareness
of what is going on, just a state of blindly staring
shock.
The sergeant-major, legendary for his firmness,
lay under the staircase in a doomed stupor. I had to
step over his body to get to my look-out post and he
hardly stirred. Among soldiers the collapse of one


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
man's nervous system, especially an officer's, is a
deadly contagion that spreads.
An army cannot stop to attend to such cases. A
stretcher will not be called because the man is to
all intents and purposes still whole.
An army is a vast moving city of destruction and
necessarily it looks away from shell-shock cases. It
has never studied them, never produced a technique
for their management. An army cannot sympathise too
deeply-especially with a state that arises from its
own destructive identity, the deeply unstated madness
at its heart. It might slip, all too fatally, into
its own identity. It is why shell-shock quickly
spreads, a miracle virus, seizing the limbs and with
secret healing smile immobilising them.
Thus it was that we no longer looked at the
major, never So much as thought of him again, or
spoke to him. During all that transpired in the next
few hours he remained where he was near the chimney,
his trembling only accelerated by the noise and
debris, and I think none of us knew what happened to
him afterwards.
In me his collapse induced a certain excitement
(so artfully does war work its mystical charms). I


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
could take command. I could devise the evening
defence of our position. I trusted myself if I acted
alone. I trusted my own orders because they came from
guidance, not from me. I let them happen.
Then one of my signallers (the same tall youth
who had tried to run away on the mountain) came
stumbling over to me and said, trying to hide his
voice from the infantrymen, Let me go back sir, I
can't go on. His lips were quivering. He couldn't
have fallen better into my scheme of things. I
feigned anger and this anger was another aid for me .
If the major's lonely staring state wasn't going to
spread I had better do something about it quick.
That tall youth served my purpose. He was trying
to say something to me and I couldn't make it out. I
shouted, What? what?, intending my voice to carry. He
went into a kind of crouching position by my knees
and what with tanks grinding in the distance I leaned
down to him to hear better. The infantrymen had their
eyes on us. I pushed the boy away and yelled, I don't
care who hears this, I don't care if Jerry
hears-you're disgusting to me, I don't want you near
me, I said. Look at you grovelling. Two of my own men
came over and tried to draw him away, whispering to


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
him. But he persisted, he said he had to be sent
back, his nerves had gone. And I went on saying, Get
away from me, come back when you're human (the poor
soul was being altogether this).
And I wasn't angry. Not in the least. He just
gave me the chance to show an impatience that sounded
like anger. I felt the boy was safe-this was just
his way of taking breath for the next hell, a sort of
surrogate shock. So when I shouted at him I seemed to
be telling him that he was really all right, he would
make the transition.
And of course I was doing this for the other men
too. I meant the sting of my rebuke for them, for the
simple reason, as I knew, that their spirit had gone
to the dogs. A sense of theatre came over me from my
childhood-I knew suddenly how I should be in this
crisis. I told my signaller, still in a loud voice,
to contact my command post, put an officer on, I must
speak soonest, I said. And when he reported to me,
Officer speaking, I took the mike and said, I want
all the guns of the sector to stand by, repeat all
guns. An attack is expected this evening, repeat this
evening. It will be supported by tanks. I wish to set
up a programme of fire across the whole divisional or


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
Corps front. All guns were to stand by at sundown, I
said. I myself will give the order to fire, the
target reference I will be giving you is the house in
which we are at this moment. You will fire on this
house. This house is within yards of another house on
our immediate left flank, it was this morning
attacked and reoccupied, repeat reoccupied, and it is
now in enemy hands.
I said I wished to ask the gunners across the
whole front to exercise care in carrying out the
programme. They would have to raise their
trajectories very slightly above my map reference SO
that shells would fall as much as possible on the
fields immediately north of us, though some must
inevitably fall either on us or very close.
The word Understood came through from the other
end of the line. Then I waited and everyone else
waited too. By late afternoon my plan was confirmed:
all guns will be on standby by 18.00 hrs. I repeated
this in a loud voice for everyone in the room to
hear. The guns will be on Stand By at 18.00 hrs. The
eyes of every man except the poor commanding officer
were on me. By five o'clock I had worked out the
firing programme and relayed this to my command post.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
Then I jumped up and began walking among the
infantrymen. I felt great elation and started
pointing at them and ridiculing them, I did some mock
trembling, I laughed at the way they were lolling and
slumping. I started addressing them. I told them I
can save you if you want me to. I said I can do this
by bringing down heavy fire SO near this house that
our lives will be in great danger. Many of the shells
will hit this house. I therefore require your
permission. I have to have your agreement. Will you
risk it? There is no other way. We're in too tight a
spot. We're in enemy lines. You have to put
yourselves in my hands. If you do, if you're prepared
to leave everything to me, I will save you, I will
get most of you out of here alive. And finally I
said, You're good men, all of you, SO for God's sake
don't give up.
I was throwing out my voice like an actor and
yet I wasn't acting at all, I wasn't even responsible
for my words-they were quickly fed into my head.
Some of those men might be five or more years older
than I but they didn't seem so. I was taken aback by
the power I had over them, which was the power they
gave me, and it happened without the slightest effort


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
on my part. It felt like a role that had been decided
on and which I had been awaiting and even, unknown to
myself, planning, and here I was obediently fitting
into it, a stranger to what I was doing, facilitating
it only. No courage happens at such events. You are
simply taken over.
Sometimes your own life comes forward and lets
itself be taken over and you know nothing about it
until it happens, and then, even then, you are a
spectator.
I seemed to have more energy than all the men
put together and I think this was because, with every
word I spoke, I felt more and more convinced that,
yes, we were OK now (how much easier it is to lead
than to be led). And also I felt that this confidence
of mine was due to the fact that I and I alone was in
charge, I was free and no commanders, no headquarters
controlled this battle, the outcome of which might
even decide the fate of the whole sector. And these
men were making this possible for me. Their assent
was feeding me .
They agreed. I made sure that not one man
objected. And this energy of mine also came from my
own simple wish to survive. What we call courage lies


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
very close to what we easily call cowardice. Neither
word is appropriate to battle. The two words simply
describe two different kinds of shock-the one impels
you to flee and the other impels you to stand firm.
The one grows out of the other. It is like the actor
who sweats with fear as he makes his first entrance
on first night. If he didn't sweat a bit all would be
lost. There is much the same tension in the forward
lines, springing readily from great fear.
I now had a roomful of eager men who wouldn't
fuss, much less panic. They returned to their sentry
posts as the sun went down. The signaller who had
crumbled not many hours before came over and said,
I'm sorry, I'm all right now. I simply said, Go to
your post.
Most strangely of all, I found I didn't believe
in the success of my plan. I was astonished at this.
I thought the Germans will blow holes in our walls
with their bazookas, throw hand grenades in at the
windows. They will easily, with the implacable
strength of tanks behind them, surround us and take
the few survivors among us prisoner. And somehow this
solid conviction managed to lie under a weight of


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
total confidence-which confidence revealed itself in
my calm, my good cheer, not my thoughts.
Radio contact started. The count-down from 10 to
zero drew near. Headquarters wanted to know, Will you
take responsibility for the closeness of the target?
Yes, I said, I will take responsibility. I made sure
my voice was heard all over the room. It was almost
nightfall. I waited for the guns to report Standing
By. This took some time as the word had to be
repeated from the guns to each command post on the
entire front, and from them further up. When the word
Ready came at last-for this had to trickle down the
hierarchy too-I gave the order Fire.
In what seemed only a few seconds the first
whisper came, then the next, then there was a full
metallic shriek in the sky and the first shells
crashed down just behind the house. Then the second
wave came, the shells began to fly over in choirs,
with a ceaseless thunder that shook the walls and the
men began to shout and the choking stench of cordite
filled the rooms as shells fell smack in the entrance
of the cattle shed and the poor devil on his
stretcher screamed to be brought in-for God's sake
why was he out there at all, what the hell were the


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
stretcher people doing? But in such noise his voice
made but a murmur, the shells hit our walls causing
showers of rubble, everybody was coughing as dust
cascaded down the roof and into the chimneys. It
seemed to go on endlessly-if I wished I could stop
the firing at any moment, within a minute, even
thirty seconds it would stop but I was waiting for a
sign and at last I heard a shout from a machine
gunner at one of the windows, They're outside,
outside! Jerry's outside!
I heard another shout, Fire you silly bastard!
At once a machine gun sounded out and in reply came a
shower of blue tracer bullets from the neighbouring
house, lighting up the clouds of rubble and dust.
Somebody shouted for me and I jumped up, scrambling
across the room-who wants me? who wants me? A
trooper at one of the windows caught hold of me and
said, A German's just looked in, he stared down my
gun, there's a whole bloody section out there!
The shell-fire was beginning to abate and I
rushed back to the radio and gave the order, Repeat,
repeat. And within a few moments the same choirs came
over, several shells falling together, then a rain of
dozens. Flak was hitting the ceiling and the machine


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
guns started to fight it out again. Then at last
voices at the windows, with the word that brought
balm and safety and joy and thanksgiving to us all,
Kamerad, Kamerad, Kamerad! and a sentry shouted,
They're got their hands up. Somebody else shouted
back, Keep your gun on 'em! I scrambled to my radio
as the Germans came in, bunched together, anxious to
be among us as we were to have them. I grabbed the
mike and shouted, Stop firing, stop firing, stop
firing.
And at last the fields outside were silent. We
started chatting with our prisoners and they took out
their photos. We agreed in dumb language that war was
bloody silly. I would have liked to ask them
questions about what they had known of our presence
here but they were quickly whisked off to the rear
echelons.
I was pulled out of the line a few days later
and when I got back to the guns I was asked to write
a description of everything that happened that night.
Our colonel paid my command post a visit and took a
look at me. I was told that writing a description was
the preliminary to being put up for a medal. I didn't
refuse to do it, I simply didn't do it. I had no more


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
thought of putting down words on the subject than I
had of shooting myself.
I knew of two officers who had written
themselves up after an exploit, and I thought that
was shameful, and they both got their decoration. For
me it was just an ignominious thing to sit down and
play the reporter with death. And also I thought it
was an ignominious way of making an award.
I heard whispers from infantrymen over the
coming months when I was on other F.0.0. assignments.
I'd been cited for a Military Cross, they said. They
were certain about it. I think The Major had put it
about, since my informants were from his Company. But
in a zone of non-communication like the army you can
be certain of nothing.
I was proud, excited and as quickly I was
ashamed of feeling excitement. I didn't even remember
my suicide plan, nor did I realise that I had just
fulfilled it, yet without my devoutly wished-for
death.


noldla To The Death
VERVES
Juntelto-
e were now cléarly winning. From June 8th to
July 25th 1944 (no fewer than five years
after the war was declared) the Normandy
coast had been invaded by our allied armies.
Never had preparations for a series of simple
assaults been prepared with such-you could say
meticulous-care, though some would say fanatical
ease to an extreme of craven fussiness. But this
perhaps had its purpose. The warily detailed snail's
progress was such that an impression grew among us
that the various highly moral and unswervingly
upright 100% successful Western commands were waiting
for the war between Germany and Russia to reach its
hoped-for conclusion of total mutual erasure (it was
how Stalin saw it too).
You might say that this was outrageous, beyond
all reasonable expectation. But the fact that it was
also wily power politics could not be denied.
That invasion name 'Overlord' was not for
nothing. The Overlords running our lives and
determining our deaths would not tolerate from their
armies anything less than an assurance that their
vast dignity would not suffer, however much ours did.
And that dignity (which in its frightful saturation


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
bombing of German cities was after all only
performing a clinical operation) meant to survive the
war too-so we heard: an Overlord court would be set
up and the criminals of the nazi regime would be put
on trial, in a neat typically mealy-mouthed inference
that on our hands was no blood. Soldiers can hardly
object to a war they have signed up for but turning
it into a moral quest-no, that is a cynicism too
far.
As for the Italian front, we were within an ace,
as always, of pushing the Germans across the Italian
Alps, where they would walk smack into Overlords
advancing across their own country.
Our own local high command was getting excited.
It urged us to make one last push which would put us
behind the German line and cut off Jerry's Alpine
escape route for good and all. Yes, for one last time
we were to gird our grimy loins.
On the other hand (and this was the hand we
always considered most), while we were clearly
winning the war we still hadn't. And we had heard of
quick pushes before. Therefrom had sprung many a tale
of cock-up.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
In fact the Germans, stung by the imminence of
their defeat, were at this moment discovering in
themselves a new defiance, just as their people at
home, stung by the allied atrocity of the blanket and
fire bombing of their cities, had already been moved
to greater passive resistance than ever before.
Our senior officers were falling over themselves
to talk to us. Yes, we were actually spoken to, all
but implored to rouse ourselves for one last show.
And those ropey words, groaning under their weight of
corn, 'the armour will pass through', were once more
brought out.
And we, our cynicism So deep that it corroded
our judgement, believed every word of it.
By now we were well north of the Faenza-Rimini
line. And this was flat country, that is quite
baffling for us. As far as the Alps there were
undulating plains and one river on the heel of
another, and these great open distances promised
swift advances but on the other hand (yes, that same
crucial hand) having no cover could mean-once more
-a close coordination across a whole front which we
allies had proved we were no bloody good at.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
And there was that strangely moving tendency in
the allied forces to grind to a halt whenever a
speedy advance was of the essence. Even the
successful disembarkation at Caen, in the Normandy
landings, went-to quote General Montgomery, who led
them-exactly according to plan. What he didn't
mention was that the capture of the town of Caen was
supposed to happen on the first day but it
didn't-because the forward command, namely he,
didn't move. Had he moved he would have encountered
no resistance. As it was, two enemy divisions leapt
into the hole and managed to delay the taking of Caen
for a month. So the landing didn't go according to
plan, did it? The answer was certainly not his
incompetence but the fact that his genius for finding
holes in the enemy line came from his awareness of
the holes he, like any other commander, made in his
own, your own mistakes being all you really learn
from in an army.
My first F.0.0. engagement in this new show was
in the late autumn, when we were coming into the
plains close to lake Comacchio with their numberless
rivers. Finding my infantry commander now required


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
hard driving, and this time it turned out to be a
wild goose chase. Pure chaos under sunlight.
Believing I had arrived at the start line I gazed in
confusion at what was obviously a forward line, with
combat going on at the crest of a long gradual slope
before me. In other words we were moving SO fast that
start lines were no more than assembly positions.
The slope was criss-crossed with hastily dug
trenches and within them men stared about them
apathetically as hand grenades came over and made
their brief puffing impact and thud. I stood gaping
from a narrow pathway with bushes close on either
side. Men near the crest were lopping grenades back,
they would run crouched to within a few feet of the
enemy and tear out the pin and throw. Then new ones
came back.
There were rifle shots I couldn't locate. So
Jerry must be on a flank, as well as in front,
perhaps in some woodland that hadn't been cleared-
but this was my nerves (which I suddenly realised had
gone) talking, not my judgement.
I climbed to where I saw a group of officers in
shirt sleeves. They had cheerful begrimed faces. I
asked if they knew where my Company was and one of


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
them said, You'd better be quick, they'll be crossing
the river by now. There were dead Germans close by
and we chatted comfortably among them on this golden
afternoon.
I had come forward in an armoured carrier, a
conveyance we hated because of its noisy tracks. For
the past hour my signaller had been telling me, They
want to know our position, command post are asking
for our map reference, they'd like to know how things
are going, whether you need to register any targets
etc. etc., and my inactivity was added proof to me
that my nerves were playing up. I told my driver to
move and I would follow on foot, and the carrier
shrieked and seesawed to the cover of a church.
I ducked to avoid splinters from a close shell
and almost toppled over a grinning enemy boy, his
arms outstretched in a last appeal, staring directly
into my eyes. I ran past another an enemy even
younger slumped dead on an upturned hand-cart, his
head near the ground, his feet towards the church
steeple.
The men were waiting for me and with simulated
calm I told them to remount. Then I jumped in too and
nodded to my driver to move. As the carrier swung


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
away I made a top-speed gesture-a clenched fist
waved sharply up and down-and he careered the
vehicle between the trees like a speed boat, rolling
and weaving, until we had climbed the hill and saw
before us a flat plain crossed with a vast dried-up
pebble-bed river, glassy here and there with little
pools, which may have been the Adige or the PoI was
well past such details. It was a hundred yards or
more across and open to the sky, with low-lying
banks. I ordered a stop. I got in a blue funk about
crossing. How did I mean to handle this ghostly white
expanse in a track vehicle making enough racket to
wake the devil? But how was I to give any order at
all unless I knew for certain that the other bank was
in our hands? I could hardly call my command post for
field information-even coded it wouldn't be allowed
through.
At least no flak was flying. Was I going to
stare at river pebbles all day? The one thing I
couldn't get out of myself was action. I was just
going through the motions-busy studying my map,
taking out my compass for a reading, staring thyrough
my binoculars. And the only thing on my mind was I'm
going to be killed and this is bloody silly because I


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
did my suicide thing and that was supposed to be the
end and here I am at it again and I'm not looking for
suicide because there isn't much of a real life to
dispose of here.
Then, as always-it really did seem that old
soldiers never die but only fade away-something
happened within me and took the matter into its own
hands. Suddenly to the far right flank I saw tanks
crossing the river-bed in a long column, and they
were our tanks. No flak was bothering them, which
would have been the case if they had been enemy tanks
in flight. But by the same token they might be
crossing unobserved and I would certainly find myself
up the creek if I crossed ahead of our own tanks.
The contesting thoughts bounced on each other and not
one of them was serious. Meanwhile the landscape
before us was a peaceful Constable study.
We had no rations, not even water. I had shut
the radio. The sun was beginning to go down in a red
vision. We chatted and the men seemed to accept that
all was well, only that we were taking our time to
get over there. And this in turn encouraged me. I was
suddenly persuaded that I was waiting for the tank
force to get across before I moved. And who was there


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
to say I wasn't right, that my nerves had done me a
service? But my inert state and the guilt that went
with it rendered judgement one way or the other
useless.
All of a sudden I found myself telling the
driver, OK, let's go, and again I did the clenched-
fist sign. And the engine's roar, the lurch and roll
of the tracks seemed to confirm my decision and we
began a bumping, racing, smacking dash across a river
that had no interest in us, splashing through the
shallow pools, a joy ride for boys and we were
suddenly all looking forward to a hot meal soonest.
We screamed up the bank on the other side and at
once we were in the soft air of a dense leafy wood
whose floor muffled our tracks. And at last we
emerged from the woods and with little difficulty
found a dark humped farmhouse, and there my Company
was lodged. What a sweat of fear for that most
pursued and cosseted lady of battle, Fanny Adams.
In the forecourt, piled high, there were long
belts of German ammunition, Schmeizers in perfect
nick, several Rabbit's Ears binoculars, discarded
radios and Spandau tripods, and beyond the forecourt,
more astonishing than this evidence of enemy


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
positions seized, an autumn countryside untouched by
military action or any action but that of the all-
providing sky, the trees intact and courteously
acknowledging the last of the sun at this moment of
the evening angelus.
I strolled into the house fearful of a reprimand
for being SO bloody late but instead I looked into
the C.O.'s eyes and they almost beseeched
forgiveness of me for not having been found.
It was as if he, the Company major, had been
playing hide and seek with me, not vice versa. I've
been looking for you everywhere I said. Oh, he said,
we were dead beat So I decided to kip down here for
the night. It's all clear further up, he said, I'll
be sending a patrol out though, just in case. With a
self-reproaching dodge of the head.
He was a handsome robust man in his mid-thirties
and his hair was greying at the temples. Three times
this man had been decorated. His was by now a
legendary name. If he took a company forward it
always got there. He never withdrew. And it began to
dawn on me that I was looking at my double, an older
brother who had exhausted like me the quota of his
reprieves. He glanced about him secretly, his face


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
drawn, his shoulders almost cringed forward in a
premature self-defence. He rarely gave an order now.
His adoring soldiers moved round him softly, not
needing spoken orders any more.
I took out the map and asked him the routine
question that he must have heard a hundred times, Any
SOS targets for the night? I squatted and spread the
map on the floor, shining a torch on it. He stared at
it without really seeing it. I pointed out several
places near the house that might serve as targets and
he nodded all the time but said nothing. Then I got
up and this seemed to afford him pleasure, and he
almost let out a sigh of relief, sitting deeper in
his chair, when I left the room.
Our driver found a large bread oven at the back
and we had our hot meal by it. We ate ravenously. And
we slept there.
Tomorrow was going to be the day. The armour
would now pass through the hole that had been made in
the enemy line. The dawn was cold and sunlit. An even
frost was spread over the hills. Far below us we
could see the road to the north, between lower hills.
And there we saw hundreds of vehicles, presumably
waiting for the tanks to pass through.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
Behind us, to the north, some firing started.
Which meant either that we weren't in the forward
lines after all or that we had been pushed back. I
had breakfast with my men. I decided I wanted to see
the armour pass through, witness it from on high,
which meant getting as far forward of it as possible.
I asked the legendary Company major, Will you come?
He shook his head with a dark look not at me but the
floor. But a little later, when I asked him if I
could borrow a lighter vehicle than my armoured
carrier, he said, I'll be coming. He wore heavy fur
gloves and kept on making a hissing noise with his
teeth as I drove uphill on paths frozen hard, in a
sudden relapse to winter that would quickly melt. We
came out into a great hush-broken now and then by
cannon-fire below. I spotted a cottage at the edge of
a field of maize. I found myself in an hilarious
mood, humming, lightly hitting the steering wheel
with my hand. We went into the cottage and at every
window there were infantrymen watching not the
passing through of our tanks but a tank battle. There
were English tanks gutted and broken up. We watched a
German tank punching an English one to death.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
That evening only burning tanks rémained. A
scandal brewed. One more general was transferred to
the Far East, not a word said. The peaceful
occupation of Austria would certainly take place. The
rounding up of thousands of prisoners would take
place too. But not yet.


WAR IN ITALY
mer 0D
death. And also I thought it was an ignominious way of
mak king an award.
I heard whispers from infantrymen over the coming
months when I was on other F.0.0. assignments. I'd been
cited for a Military Cross, they said. They were certain
about it. I think The Major had put it about, since my
informants were from his Company. But in a zone of non-
communication like the army you can be certain of
nothing.
I. was proud, excited and as quickly I was ashamed of
feeling excitement. I didn't even remember my suicide
plan, nor did I realise that I had just fulfilled it, yet
without my devoutly wished-for death.
Thirteen
e were now clearly winning. From June 8th to July 25th
1944 (no fewer than five years after the war was
wdeclared) the Normandy coast had been invaded by our
allied armies.
Never had preparations for a series of simple
assaults been prepared with such-you could say
meticulous-care, though some would say fanatical ease to
an extreme of craven fussiness. But this perhaps had its


WAR IN ITALY
purpose. The warily detailed snail's progress was such
that an impression grew among us that the various highly
moral and unswervingly upright 100% successful Western
commands were waiting for the war between Germany and
Russia to reach its hoped-for conclusion of total mutual
erasure (it was how Stalin saw it too).
You might say that this was outrageous, beyond all
reasonable expectation. But the fact that it was also
wily power politics could not be denied.
That invasion name 'Overlord' was not for nothing.
The Overlords running our lives and determining our
deaths would not tolerate from their armies anything less
than an assurance that their vast dignity would not
suffer, however much ours did. And that dignity (which in
its frightful saturation bombing of German cities was
after all only performing a clinical operation) meant to
survive the war too-so we heard: an Overlord court would
be set up and the criminals of the Nazi regime would be
put on trial, in a neat typically mealy-mouthed inference
that on our hands was no blood. Soldiers can hardly
object to a war they have signed up for but turning it
into a moral quest-no, that is a cynicism too far.
As for the Italian front, we were within an ace, as
always, of pushing the Germans across the Italian Alps,
where they would walk smack into Overlords advancing
across their own country.


WAR IN ITALY
Our own local high command was getting excited. It
urged us to make one last push which would put us behind
the German line and cut off Jerry's Alpine escape route
for good and all. Yes, for one last time we were to gird
our grimy loins.
On the other hand (and this was the hand we always
considered most), while we were clearly winning the war
we still hadn't. And we had heard of quick pushes before.
There from had sprung many a tale of cock-up.
In fact the Germans, stung by the imminence of their
defeat, were at this moment discovering in themselves a
new defiance, just as their people at home, stung by the
allied atrocity of the blanket and fire bombing of their
cities, had already been moved to greater passive
resistance than ever before.
Our senior officers were falling over themselves to
talk to us. Yes, we were actually spoken to, all but
implored to rouse ourselves for one last show. And those
ropey words, groaning under their weight of corn, 'the
armour will pass through', were once more brought out.
And we, our cynicism SO deep that it corroded our
judgement, believed every word of it.
By now we were well north of the Faenza-Rimini line.
And this was flat country, that is quite baffl-ing_for us.
As far as the Alps there were undulating plains and one
river on the heel of another, and these great open


WAR IN ITALY
distançes promised swift advances but on the other hand
(yes, that same crucial hand) having no cover could
mean--Once more -a close coordination across a whole
front which we allies had proved we were no bloody good
And there was that strangely moving tendency in the
allied forces to grind to a halt whenever a speedy
advance was of the essence. Even the successful
disembarkation at Caen, in the Normandy landings,
went-to quote General Montgomery, who led them-exactly
according to plan. What he didn't mention was that the
capture of the town of Caen was supposed to happen on the
first day but it didn't-because the forward command,
namely he, didn't move. Had he moved he would have
encountered no resistance. As it was, two enemy divisions
leapt into the hole and managed to delay the taking of
Caen for a month. So the landing didn't go according to
plan, did it? The answer was certainly not his
incompetence but the fact that his genius for finding
holes in the enemy line came from his awareness of the
holes he, like any other commander, left exposed in his
own, your own mistakes being all you really learn from in
an army.
My first F.0.0. engagement in this new show was in
the late autumn, when we were coming into the plains


WAR IN ITALY
close to Lake Comacchio with their numberless rivers.
Finding my infantry commander now required hard driving,
and this time it turned out to be a wild goose chase.
Pure chaos under sunlight. Believing I had arrived at the
start line I gazed in confusion at what was obviously a
forward line, with combat going on at the crest of a
long gradual slope before me. In other words we were
moving: So fast that start lines were no more than
assembly positions.
The slope was criss-crossed with hastily dug
trenches and within them men stared about them
apathetically as hand grenades came over and made their
brief puffing impact and thud. I stood gaping from a
narrow pathway with bushes close on either side. Men near
the crest were lopping grenades back, they would run
crouched to within a few feet of the enemy and tear out
the pin and throw. Then new ones came back.
There were rifle shots I couldn't locate. So Jerry
must be on a flank, as well as in front, perhaps in some
woodland that hadn't been cleared- but this was my
nerves! (which I suddenly realised had gone) talking, not
my judgement.
I climbed to where I saw a group of officers in
shirt sleeves. They had cheerful begrimed faces. I asked
if they knew where my Company was and one of them said,
You'd better be quick, they'll be crossing the river by


WAR IN ITALY
now. There were dead Germans close by and we chatted
comfortably among them on this golden afternoon.
I: had come forward in an armoured carrier, a
conveyance we hated because of its noisy tracks. For the
past hour my signaller had been telling me, They want to
know our position, command post are asking for our map
reference, they'd like to know how things are going,
whether you need to register any targets etc. etc., and
my inactivity was added proof to me that my nerves were
playing up. I told my driver to move and I would follow
on foot, and the carrier shrieked and seesawed to the
cover of a church.
I ducked to avoid splinters from a close shell and
almost toppled over a grinning enemy boy, his arms
outstretched in a last appeal, staring directly into my
eyes. I ran past another an enemy even younger slumped
dead on an upturned hand-cart, his head near the ground,
his feet towards the church steeple.
The men were waiting for me and with simulated calm
I told! them to remount. Then I jumped in too and nodded
to my driver to move. As the carrier swung away I made a
top-speed gesture-a clenched fist waved sharply up and
down-and he careered the vehicle between the trees like
a speed boat, rolling and weaving, until we had climbed
the hill and saw before us a flat plain crossed with a
vast dried-up pebble-bed river, glassy here and there


WAR IN ITALY
with little pools, which may have been the Adige or the
Po-I was well past such details. It was a hundred yards
or more across and open to the sky, with low-lying banks.
I ordered a stop. I got in a blue funk about crossing.
How did I mean to handle this ghostly white expanse in a
track vehicle making enough racket to wake the devil? But
how was I to give any order at all unless I knew for
certain that the other bank was in our hands? I could
hardly call my command post for field information-even
coded it wouldn't be allowed through.
At least no flak was flying. Was I going to stare at
river pebbles all day? The one thing I couldn't get out
of myself was action. I was just going through the
motions-busy studying my map, taking out my compass for
a reading, staring through my binoculars. And the only
thing on my mind was I'm going to be killed and this is
bloody. silly because I did my suicide thing and that was
supposed to be the end and here I am at it again and I'm
not looking for suicide because there isn't much of a
real life to dispose of here.
Then, as always-it really did seem that old
soldiers never die but only fade away-something happened
within me and took the matter into its own hands.
Suddenly to the far right flank I saw tanks crossing the
river-bed in a long column, and they were our tanks. No
flak was bothering them, which would have been the case


WAR IN ITALY
if they had been enemy tanks in flight. But by the same
token they might be crossing unobserved and I would
certainly find myself up the creek if I crossed ahead of
our own tanks. The contesting thoughts bounced on each
other and not one of them was serious. Meanwhile the
landscape before us was a peaceful Constable study.
We had no rations, not even water. I had shut the
radio. The sun was beginning to go down in a red vision.
We chatted and the men seemed to accept that all was
well, only that we were taking our time to get over
there. And this in turn encouraged me. I was suddenly
persuaded that I was waiting for the tank force to get
across before I moved. And who was there to say I wasn't
right, that my nerves had done me a service? But my inert
state and the guilt that went with it rendered judgement
one way or the other useless.
All of a sudden I found myself telling the driver,
OK, let's go, and again I did the clenched-fist sign. And
the engine's roar, the lurch and roll of the tracks
seemed to confirm my decision and we began a bumping,
racing, smacking dash across a river that had no interest
in us, splashing through the shallow pools, a joy ride
for boys and we were suddenly all looking forward to a
hot meal soonest.
We screamed up the bank on the other side and at
once we were in the soft air of a dense leafy wood whose


WAR IN ITALY
floor muffled our tracks. And at last we emerged from the
woods and with little difficulty found a dark humped
farmhouse, and there my Company was lodged. What a sweat
of fear for that most pursued and cosseted lady of
battle, Fanny Adams.
In the forecourt, piled high, there were long belts
of German ammunition, Schmeizers in perfect nick, several
Rabbit's Ears binoculars, discarded radios and Spandau
tripods, and beyond the forecourt, more astonishing than
this evidence of enemy positions seized, an autumn
countryside untouched by military action or any action
but that of the all-providing sky, the trees intact and
courteously acknowledging the last of the sun at this
moment of the evening angelus.
Istrolled into the house fearful of a reprimand for
being so bloody late but instead I looked into the C.O.'s
eyes and they almost beseeched forgiveness of me for not
having been found.
It was as if he, the Company major, had been playing
hide and seek with me, not vice versa. I've been looking
for you everywhere I said. Oh, he said, we were dead beat
So I decided to kip down here for the night. It's all
clear further up, he said, I'll be sending a patrol out
though, just in case. With a self-reproaching dodge of
the head.


WAR IN ITALY
He was a handsome robust man in his mid-thirties and
his hair was greying at the temples. Three times this man
had been decorated. His was by now a legendary name. If
he took a company forward it always got there. He never
withdrew. And it began to dawn on me that I was looking
at my double, an older brother who had exhausted like me
the quota of his reprieves. He glanced about him
secretly, his face drawn, his shoulders almost cringed
forward in a premature self-defence. He rarely gave an
order now. His adoring soldiers moved round him softly,
not needing spoken orders any more.
I took out the map and asked him the routine
question that he-must have heard a hundred times, Any SOS
targets for the night? I squatted and spread the map on
the floor, shining a torch on it. He stared at it without
really seeing it. I pointed out several places near the
house that might serve as targets and he nodded all the
time but said nothing. Then I got up and this seemed to
afford him pleasure, and he almost let out a sigh of
relief, sitting deeper in his chair, when I left the
room.
Our driver found a large bread oven at the back and
we had! our hot meal by it. We ate ravenously. And we
slept there.
Tomorrow was going to be the day. The armour would
now pass through the hole that had been made in the enemy


WAR IN ITALY
line. The dawn was cold and sunlit. An even frost was
spread over the hills. Far below us we could see the road
to the north, between lower hills. And there we saw
hundreds of vehicles, presumably waiting for the tanks to
pass through.
Behind us, to the north, some firing started. Which
meant either that we weren't in the forward lines after
all or that we had been pushed back. I had breakfast with
my men. I decided I wanted to see the armour pass
through, witness it from on high, which meant getting as
far forward of it as possible. I asked the legendary
Company major, Will you come? He shook his head with a
dark look not at me but the floor. But a little later,
when I asked him if I could borrow a lighter vehicle than
my armoured carrier, he said, I'll be coming. He wore
heavy fur gloves and kept on making a hissing noise with
his teeth as I drove uphill on paths frozen hard, in a
sudden relapse to winter that would quickly melt. We came
out into a great hush-broken now and then by cannon-fire
below. I spotted a cottage at the edge of a field of
maize. I found myself in a hilarious mood, humming,
lightly hitting the steering wheel with my hand. We went
into the cottage and at every window there were
infantrymen watching not the passing through of our tanks
but a tank battle. There were English tanks gutted and


WAR IN ITALY
broken up. We watched a German tank punching an English
one to: death.
That evening only burning tanks remained. A scandal
brewed. One more general was transferred to the Far East,
not a word said. The peaceful occupation of Austria would
certainly take place. The rounding up of thousands of
prisoners would take place too. But not yet.
Fourteen


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
Fourteen
e were suddenly snatched away to Greece. It
A was obvious, though not to us, that the
Italian campaign was being wound down, like
a road-show that had toured too long and even the
tyres were gone. What we didn't know, and what we
never knew, was that we were no longer even in the
Eighth army. The old 10th Corps, containing our two
divisions, was now skeletal, that is no longer in
battle function.
The story is that on December 3 1944 the foreign
secretary Anthony Eden felt he needed 5000 Italy-
based troops in Greece to stop it sinking into civil
war.
On the other hand (yes, that hand figured high
in politics too) the Chief of the Imperial Staff,
Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke, said the figure should
be 80.000, which was quite a difference.
Over the ensuing weeks Eden's quote went up to
40.000. And then, in a matter of days, he doubled it,
that is to Alanbrooke's first estimate. It was then
decided at cabinet level (between the 23rd and 30th of
December 1944) to send our division into the zone


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
without delay. We were even mentioned at cabinet
level. To think, the 46th Division got a mention So
high up-Ginger (or rather No Longer Ginger) must
have felt bucked indeed.
We had no idea that a civil war was brewing in
Greece of all places-for the good reason that it
wasn't. Greece was a peaceful, harmless backwater.
But we did become aware of the fact that the
communists were bitter enemies of the country's
National Guard, which was on the side of the Greek
king, whose war-time residence was in London. And it
became all too clear that we had come in order to
forestall a communist take-over.
But we couldn't be told this beause we soldiers
had no quarrel with the communists, apart from not
being communists. And secondly our coalition
government at home, both its Labour and its Tory
part, was unwilling to upset apple carts by revealing
such a plan. In fact they shared our attitude of
regarding communism as the enemy but only in a
friendly sort of way. Their Labour people, and we,
were much more suspicious of Churchill, whose hand we
saw clear in this virtual occupation in Greece. We
were very sure about this. We would have Churchill


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
the war leader but not he the politician. This was
why, when the war ended, the so-called Soldier's
Vote, to the astonishment of the world, threw
Churchill out and a rather embarrassed Labour cabinet
took over.
Our official job, our Battery commander told us,
was to administer two hundred and fifty square miles
between Nea Epidaurus, a fishing village on the
Saronic Gulf, and the city of Nauplion.
We were paraded occasionally in front of the
citizens of Nauplion to show both a military presence
and a peaceful intent. They, the friendliest of
people, didn't at all seem about to make war on each
other.
We lived in clean safe rooms while the National
Guard shot at imaginary enemies (so we thought) at
night.
I established my headquarters in Ligourion,
about an hour's drive on mountain roads from
Nauplion, and within sight of the amphitheatre of
Epidaurus. I would drive to the amphitheatre daily
and sit alone on its stone seats, with on my left the
pine grove where Aesculapios, son of Apollo, still
kept a healing presence. From the highest tier, quite


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
alone in a silence that stretched to the highest
heavens, I would gaze across the valley to the
mountains behind Arakhnaion, lost in slight tints of
blue and grey and russet on this warm sunlit morning
which in times of peace would echo with tourists
trying out the theatre's still perfect acoustics from
the circular orchestra seventy feet below me. It was
built nearly two and a half millennia ago and seated
audiences of fourteen thousand people. I was
administering this whole area with its many wonders
built and natural, yet it never once occurred to me
that I had any power. Perhaps because I didn't.
I received a few deputations from the villagers.
I took reports from my own men when they returned
from missions that had resulted from my orders ('go
and see if they really have no water'). I listened to
the mayor of one place arguing the toss with the
mayor of another, understanding neither. I chose a
man in rags as my interpreter. He stayed with me all
day, shooing away children and getting hold of good
wine for me. He talked highly about my powers to his
friends, and especially to his enemies. He didn't
know what my powers were but then neither did I.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
I arranged for the collection of food and
medical supplies in trucks. None of it occupied more
than a couple of hours a day. I arranged for
expeditions across the mountains with donkeys because
I liked to visit the villages and sit with the
chieftains while they sang and talked. I compiled
reports about rickets, tuberculosis (the scourge) and
scabies. I badgered and bullied a doctor to find a
bed in his hospital for my interpreter's little girl
who had dark tubercular bruises on her chest and
stomach. The doctor told me, All my beds are taken
with very serious cases. Then he took me outside and
whispered to me, I've examined this girl many times,
she is dying, she is better at home.
I was taken by the mayor of the fishing village
Nea Epidaurus into the hills above it and shown a
vast open well full of corpses. They had been stood
at the lip of the well, knifed in the back and then
pushed. There were girls. On top of them a gauntlet
had been thrown. The Mayor said the murderers were
still in the hills, partisans. Eighty people are down
there, he said. I gazed at them, the familiar stench
in my throat, and looked helpless.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
I visited Arakhnaion whose chieftain spoke no
Greek and sang for me So tenderly and ardently that
his wife knelt down and pummelled his knees, weeping,
begging him to stop.
One night I was called out to visit an isolated
house. We went along with the National Guard as
usual. The alarmed, good-looking couple whom we had
woken up stood by while one of the guards opened,
without permission, a big chest in the sitting room.
He asked me to examine the books. They were communist
essays of the kind I had received at the age of
fourteen from Radio Moscow. I looked at the guards. I
said, These are communist tracts. Yes! they said. But
what about it? I asked. They looked perplexed. These
people are communists! they said. But So are our
allies, I said. This was astonishing for them-not of
course the fact but the saying of it out loud.
I turned away from the Guards and apologised to
the couple, closing the chest. Then I shook their
hands and ushered the armed men out.
Of course mine wasn't the only sortie of this
kind. Captain H. was incensed. We talked about it
hotly. We weren't going to pursue Churchill's private
vendettas and wondered what the hell the Labour


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
party, which was half of the government, was doing in
allowing such a policy etc. etc. After all, while we
weren't communists, the Soviet Union was still very
much a model state for us, as what state would not be
after a ten-year campaign to win hearts and minds all
over the world.
And ours weren't the only dissident voices. Word
was sent up the command hierarchy, discreetly, from
captain to major, from major to colonel to brigadier
to general, that political witch-hunting didn't come
within our military remit. And, as discreetly, word
came down the same command ladder that there would be
no more searches. Someone must have realised that
this was combustible mutiny material. It didn't once
occur to us that letting Greece become communist
might not be to our advantage.
We returned to Italy just in time for more
charitable work.
The Italian war was now over, though neither the
European nor the Far Eastern wars were, not quite.
Mussolini and his mistress were captured by the
Italian partisans (28th April 1945) and hung upside
down on meat hooks in Milan for everyone to see and


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
shoot at. Their corpses swayed a fraction with the
impact of new bullets. Photographs of this deathly
moralist spree were seen by the whole world, evoking
shudders of distaste. We know from photographs that
Fifth Army soldiers were present at that lapse of law
and order but perhaps it was thought impolitic to
confront armed partisans.
The enemy had at last been out-flanked. Chaos
(the first-born of war) began. There were now
numberless prisoners of war to be billeted and fed,
and we were needed to handle them, in haste. So we
were sped at top speed up the Italian peninsula to
Udine near the Yugoslav border where we at once set
up a prisoner-of-war camp in a vast empty barracks.
The great race to reach Berlin first was on, a
race not between Germans and we allied ones, as you
might have thought, but between two of the allies,
the USA and the USSR. And a similar though much less
important race was going on for Vienna, in which we
would soon be involved.
We weren't SO much perplexed as moved to silent
wonder when a notice board appeared on a wall outside
our barracks showing a large-scale map of eastern
Germany (so it had to have high-level approval). On


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
it was shown the forward line of the Americans and
the forward line of the Reds as they came ever closer
to each other in a race to get to Berlin in what
promised to be the opening feature of world war
three.
Our camp became overcrowded to bursting point
within moments of our having set it up. We
specialised in enemy officers, most of them from
crack SS divisions.
Every morning we British and SS officers and
women of various nationalities crowded round the
notice board like punters at Sandown as the Russians
slowed and our own polyglot armies quickened.
Sometimes it looked hopeless for the Americans-they
would take days, perhaps weeks, getting there, while
the Russians were already close to Berlin's eastern
outskirts.
And sometimes the Americans made a spurt
forward, and the Russians, to our enormous relief,
were halted for a bit. Yes, to our relief (where on
earth did that suddenly come from?).
By an osmosis so deep that we were entirely
unconscious of it we had changed into, well, not


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
exactly enemies of the Soviet Union but rivals and
bitter ones at that.
Good bye to left-wing pretensions-Stalin was
now out to extend his frontiers as far across Europe
as he could get and we knew it. And he had his eye on
Manchuria too and indeed he later walked into it and
in order to make it seem a legitimate act of war he
deliberately prolonged the war with Japan--by the
simple act of disregarding the Japanese emperor's
pleas of surrender. Here, though (for in certain
respects the war alliance was as strong as ever), he
was in agreement with the allies, whose physicists
also needed an extension of the Japanese war in order
to give their atom bomb the chance of a live
demonstration. And these people were going to put the
nazis on trial!
One morning I noticed something deeply peculiar
on the notice board. Or rather, I tumbled suddenly to
its import. Little Poland was now securely behind
Soviet lines, and a hell of a way behind. It was
captive. And this was the Poland whose independence
we had entered the war to guarantee. A Soviet
possession. And it would clearly remain so--though


dy Caly
MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The
Death
none of us guessed it would be for nearly fifty
years.
No wonder General Sikorski, leader of the Free
Poles in London, had been such an embarrassment for
our government. It is said he was furious when he
heard that Churchill had agreed to Stalin keeping
those chunks of Poland he had, SO to speak, slipped
into while Hitler's ally. But, much more likely, he
feared the truth, that Poland had been struck off the
political agenda.
He narrowly escaped death in 1942 when his
plane, bound for Washington from Montreal, had to
make an emergency landing due to its two engines
cutting out on takeoff. No wonder his wife felt, when
he crashed to his death July 4th 1943 after another
faulty takeoff during a flight from Egypt, that he
had been got rid of, especially as he died in the
same kind of plane as the Duke of Kent had crashed to
his death in a year and one month before, and even
more especially as her husband and the Duke had been
close associates--there had even been plans for the
Duke to be free Poland's monarch.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
Conspiracy theories of course. Though in war,
being one of the conspirators, a soldier develops a
certain nose.
Naturally our prisoners-of-war basked in the
irony and ineptitude of it all. They saw, as we still
didn't, that nearly six years of war had been fought
solely on behalf of two huge powers who could regard
both Britain and Germany as provinces-the first
bankrupt, the second in ruins.
Of course there was hilarity among the SS
officers. The corridors echoed with it. Here were
their two main enemies moving faster than they had
ever done during the war. Speed (none of your
nonsense about unconsolidated rears or exposed
flanks) was suddenly more of the essence than it had
ever been in world war two. Was, then, world war
three going to be waged according to the strategy
that should have been adopted for world war two? had
Two been a sort of training camp for Three? was it
all right just to go on with war since none of us
were by now trained for anything else?
Also, with the Americans hot-footing it to halt
the Red Scourge and the Russians burning tyres to


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
halt the Forces of Capitalism, it began seriously to
look as if during all these six years we had done
nothing more than reduce our closest anti-Red
friends, namely the Germans, to rubble.
Each morning we looked at that board and the
odds became ever shorter. There was no longer
anything in it for the punter. The Russians were
clearly going to get there first, if by a whisker.
Perhaps those SS officers saw things more
realistically than we did because they had lost
everything. We British still had our ideals, that is
we thought we had won. We simply didn't see that
other people had walked off with all the prizes. Nor,
being fellow idealists, did the Americans see that
they were the main prize-winners, indeed that they
had become the foremost power of the world. It took
over fifty years for both them and the world to fully
wake up to this, though it was perfectly obvious on
the first day of peace.
There were reasons for this seeming modesty, the
chief among them being the favourite Washington
rhetoric that the USA had entered the war out of the
kindness of her heart, indeed just to help out an old
friend in a tight spot. But no serious foreign policy


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
can be fired by emotions as silly as this. War has to
be worked out, and in detail. Quite rightly the
negotiations for American entry were long and
detailed, and contained much bargaining, not to say a
handing over of at least one huge British
investment, plus bullion. In a word, war has to be
pondered with national interests in mind, and an eye
to sufficiency of resources. Above all, war's
staggering costs must be seen to promise plentiful
reward 'at the end'.
One little known fact about war is that it is
immeasurably harder to organise than peace. Your
labour force must be mobilised in a perilously short
time to pursuits that will not bring in money. That
force must become munitions workers, professional
killers, nurses, code-breakers, censorship watchdogs.
Every human action, and most thoughts, must now be
devoted to the destruction of toreign territories and
peoples. Yet the food must still be produced, so it
would be madness to mobilise everyone into killers
and arms makers. The 'war machine', as it is called,
must night and day be kept efficient, as the machine
of peace need not.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
Do we think that this total and always sudden
switchover requires no discussion, above all about
the unthinkable expense ahead--so great that it will
topple most of the rich and bring low the former
controlling class?
How could war-rhetoric go into these practical
details? We wouldn't have stomached it for a minute.
Bargaining and scheming about war? A war population
must have its feelings aroused. It must be moved,
even deeply. Credit-and-debit columns are an
intrusion. In WW2 we were extremely sceptical about
war rhetoric, and we consumed it hungrily.
When Churchill's rhetoric told us that we were
weak and must needs defend ourselves, even though not
a day before we had been the strongest nation in the
world in possession of the strongest navy in the
world and the biggest empire yet, we were jolted by
fear because we felt he knew better than we did, we
were flattered by his high-flying account of how we
were all going to defend ourselves to the death when
the German boot touched British soil.
As Hermann Goring said at the Nuremberg trials,
it is the fare that all governments intent on war
must provide.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
Thus it was that Roosevelt and Churchill were
able to weave the fairy tale that Britain was
suddenly on its knees while America, known for her
ardour on behalf of just causes, was coming into war
out of moral indignation at Hitler's behaviour.
This was not at all how most Americans felt. For
one thing, they didn't have the Germans sixty miles
away. For another, a second world war So few years
after the first seemed frankly like crass
incompetence. Not until Pearl Harbour could they be
persuaded to enter a war So deeply wrapped up in non
sequiturs. Nor was world power a thought in most
American heads, let alone a goal. In fact America was
frequently called Isolationist. Yet-and this yet'
helped the war argument--her markets were already, as
a matter of practical fact, on the road to world
domination. So war might, if Roosevelt arranged
things successfully, begin to appear not only the
right but the advantageous thing to do. As we all
know, it is the arms business that needs to be
excited first. We mustn't blush at such truths. The
Struggle against Fascism required arms just as
capitalism did. In truth, no war conducted without an
advantage in mind has ever happened.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
Only in 1945 when war was over did the new
banner of America the Saviour begin to flap in the
breeze. It was too good a political chance for the
West to turn down. And in any case this is the
classical way of dignifying the frightful carnage
that all war is, which carnage must be forgotten in a
cloud of justice. So for fifty years any Briton who
criticised Washington policies was told, usually in
the letters-pages of British newspapers, that he or
she had a 'short memory', i.e. he or she owed their
very existence to America.
What a strange thing it is that none of us
consented to that war, neither Americans nor French
nor Germans nor British. For a lot of us WW1 had been
a worse than useless enterprise that fatuously
abolished the Austro-Hungarian empire by turning it
into small states So weak that in a flash Germany
towered above them, and soon moved into them.
Yet that 1914 war was fought with a certain
spirit, an innocent suicidal fervour. It was called
'the war to end all war' and what could be more
innocent than that, given the fact that 'the war to
end all peace' would have been a better description?


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
This second world war had no such spirit. The
women didn't try to pin the white feather of
cowardice on your lapel if you happened to walk war-
time London's streets out of uniform. They didn't
stand in line waving and cheering the troops on their
way to embarkation for overseas. Far from running
after truckloads of departing soldiers and throwing
bunches of flowers at them, as in WW1, women in WW2
had war-jobs and they embarked for overseas duties as
men did.
The truth is that war is no more a specifically
male activity than peace. That is another of the
military fairy tales designed to maintain war as a
sane and even venerable activity. A female army would
almost certainly choose different strategies but the
moment the first shot was fired and terror went
through the female organism there would be rapid
resort to quickly thought-out defensive positions.
Shock, after all, is shared by male and female
because the same nervous system is at work.
War happens, in a strange biological osmosis,
as a result of its happening. Accidental statements,
strange decisions, a sense of hush-hush are its
harmless signs. Yet the war-nightmare is such an


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
outside event, So real---how could it happen from SO
many mere nothings on the air? But this is war's most
illusory and illusive mask. It comes about from
within, evolving like an unprompted self-hypnosis. No
one can say quite how it happens---for the good and
sole reason that human choice never came into it. The
thing was automatic, it was there before your eyes,
an awesome and all too real a thing, quite as if the
whole point of 'peace' was simply to conceal its own
fictional character, containing as it always does the
ever-present seed of war.
The first world war started at a time when royal
families governed Europe. It was they who decided on
whether armies were going to be assembled (solely as
a warning of course) at the frontiers. And they were
really one family, brothers and sisters and cousins,
Russia under the Tsar, Germany under the Kaiser, the
Austro-Hungarian lands under the emperor. Yet their
very blood closeness ensured that the automatic
nature of war was even more assured, more
hypnotically make-believe in its first advances.
This is why it is So difficult to attribute
blame for war. It simply doesn't belong to the zone
of personal choice. Indeed, being an automatic


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
activity it happens irrespective, in the end, even of
those who 'make' it. We can : say I am against war or I
am for war but it is like saying we are for or
against thunder storms.
Even the profit and gain and power which, since
the ancient Greeks told us about it, we suppose to be
the motive of war are simply a further effort to
explain a phenomenon beyond our power to erase from
life.
It is why wars never happen with a clear
reckoning, right at the beginning, of how long they
will last, how much they will cost, what frightful
lines of dead and maimed and ruined there will
precisely be. Nothing is carefully totted up and made
allowance for. How could it be otherwise when wars
begin with simple precautionary moves and harmless
ritualistic stances, like mobilising troops on one's
frontiers? For the Kaiser and the Tsar and the
emperor of the Austro-Hungarian lands 'mobilisation'
was another of those fairy-tale words that do So much
to rationalise war as an orderly activity, not the
blind chaos that it always is.
In 1939 we were all suddenly plunged into war's
grim organisation. Every aspect of our 'private' or


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
'personal' lives (thought hitherto to be a simple
natural inheritance) suddenly vanished. Each of us,
without exception, was consigned his or her role,
before anybody could say boo.
That incomprehensible declaration of war on
September 3rd was more than a bolt from the blue for
us-- --we were in it without any of those 'rumblings'
that historians say precede war. As automatically as
the coming of night there was the issuing of gas
masks, then the order to sew blackout material on
your curtains, then the building of bomb shelters at
the bottom of the garden, then the ration books.
No time to say yes or no or let's think. It
simply unfolded---but within your life. You watched
it happen inside you---a simple, even appealing
hypnotic effect. You no longer had to be responsible
for yourself, make decisions, plan. Even the money
would start coming in for the role you were to fit.
When I was affably asked in that tiny Oxford
room by the officer-recruiting gentleman, Will you
join the armed forces?, I said yes because of the
nazi concentration camps, they were an outrage that
had to be removed---and simultaneously I knew that
this was a feeble rationalisation after the event.


Mrs Dachiell Rowdon
Private and Confidential
Yeare ended 5April 2010
Domicile
Domicile Status This Year
Not domiciled in the UK
Dual Residence
Dual Residence Status This Year
Not Dual resident
Prepared on 28/01/11
Page


WAR IN ITALY
Chophly
fag dub mipn
e were suddenly snatched away to Greece. It was obvious,
though not to us, that the Italian campaign was being
wwound down, like a road-show that had toured too long
and even the tyres were gone. What we didn't know, and
what we-never knew, was that we were no longer even in
the Eighth army. The old 10th Corps, containing our two
divisions, was now skeletal, that is no longer in battle
function.
The story is that on December 3 1944 the foreign
secretary Anthony Eden felt he needed 5000 Italy-based
troops in Greece to stop it sinking into civil war.
On the other hand (yes, that hand figured high in
politics too) the Chief of the Imperial Staff, Field
Marshal Lord Alanbrooke, said the figure should be
80.000, which was quite a difference.
Over the ensuing weeks Eden's quote went up to
40.000. And then, in a matter of days, he doubled it,
that is to Alanbrooke's first estimate. It was then
decided at cabinet level (between the 23rd and 30th of
December 1944) to send our division into the zone without
delay. We were even mentioned at cabinet level. To think,
the 46th Division got a mention sO high up-Ginger (or
rather No Longer Ginger) must have felt bucked indeed.
We had no idea that a civil war was brewing in
Greece of all places-for the good reason that it wasn't.
Greece was a peaceful, harmless backwater. But we did


WAR IN ITALY
become aware of the fact that the communist party was the
bitter enemy of the country's National Guard, who were on
the side of the Greek king, whose war-time residence was
in London. And it became all too clear that we had come
in order to forestall a communist take-over.
But we couldn't be told this because we soldiers had
no quarrel with the communists, apart from our not being
communists. The hard work Stalin had put in throughout
the Thirties to persuade us throughout Europe that the
Soviet Union was an enlightened community of happy
citizens had worked miracles. So he was an untouchable
for us, being the very beacon of our Struggle against
Fascism.
Naturally our coalition government at home, both its
Labour and its Tory part, was unwilling to upset allied
apple carts by revealing such a plan. In fact they shared
our attitude of regarding communism as the enemy but only
in a friendly sort of way. It was Churchill we were
suspicious of, the man who had risen on our shoulders and
who had to be watched. The trouble was that in the House
of Commons he was unbeatable. More than once when members
of parliament wished to record a vote of no confidence in
him they backed down solely because of his great
popularity. So you could say we had hung ourselves on our
own petards.


WAR IN ITALY
We wanted Churchill as our war leader and were
determined he wouldn't last a minute after the war was
over. We were true to our word. To the bafflement of the
world we threw him and his party out---it was called 'the
soldier's vote'.
Our official job in Greece, our Battery commander
told us, was to administer two hundred and fifty square
miles between Nea Epidaurus, a fishing village on the
Saronic Gulf, and the city of Nauplion.
We were paraded occasionally in front of the
citizens of Nauplion to show both a military presence and
a peaceful intent. They, the friendliest of people,
didn't at all seem about to make war on each other.
We lived in clean safe rooms while the National
Guard shot at imaginary enemies (so we thought) at night.
I established my headquarters in Ligourion, about an
hour's drive on mountain roads from Nauplion, and within
sight of the amphitheatre of Epidaurus. I would drive to
the amphitheatre daily and sit alone on its stone seats,
with on my left the pine grove where Aesculapios, son of
Apollo, still kept a healing presence. From the highest
tier, quite alone in a silence that stretched to the
highest heavens, I would gaze across the valley to the
mountains behind Arakhnaion, lost in slight tints of blue
and grey and russet on warm sunlit mornings which in
times of peace would echo with tourists trying out the


WAR IN ITALY
theatre's still perfect acoustics from the circular
orchestra seventy feet below me. It was built nearly two
and a half millennia ago and seated audiences of fourteen
thousand people. Its front row was of pink limestone, the
rest of the audience sat on white. The hill on which it
stood, whose curve it took advantage of, was the hill of
Cynortios. Fourteen thousand people could be seated here,
the crowds must have poured in festively from great
distances. Low woodland hugged it all round while
Arakhnaion, as the distant mountain it gazed across at,
was the point to which you would naturally raise your
eyes when moved to ponder something said or half sung
below. The actor was miraculously in voice and presence
from wherever you sat.
I sat there for hours taking advantage of war's
silence, and the emptiness. It wasn't difficult to see
how ancient Greece had brought an extraordinary order to
harsh mountains on the one hand (over a sixth of Greece's
surface) and the consoling villages and plains never far
from water. War was a bagatelle for them. You needed it
to get something you didn't have but wanted. That was how
they put it. Like every other civilisation we know about
war was a staple of survival for them.
I was administering this whole area with its many
wonders built and natural, yet it never once occurred to
me that I had any power. Perhaps because I didn't.


WAR IN ITALY
I received a few deputations from the villagers. I
took reports from my own men when they returned from
missions that had resulted from my orders ('go and see if
they really have no water'). I listened to the mayor of
one place arguing the toss with the mayor of another,
understanding neither. I chose a man in rags as my
interpreter. He stayed with me all day, shooing away
children and getting hold of good wine for me. He talked
highly about my powers to his friends, and especially to
his enemies. He didn't know what my powers were but then
neither did I.
I arranged for the collection of food and medical
supplies in trucks. None of it occupied more than a
couple of hours a day. I arranged for expeditions across
the mountains with donkeys because I liked to visit the
villages and sit with the chieftains while they sang and
talked. I compiled reports about rickets, tuberculosis
(the scourge) and scabies. I badgered and bullied a
doctor to find a bed in his hospital for my interpreter's
little girl who had dark tubercular bruises on her chest
and stomach. The doctor told me, All my beds are taken
with very serious cases. Then he took me outside and
whispered to me, I've examined this girl many times, she
is dying, she is better at home.
Iwas taken by the mayor of the fishing village Nea
Epidaurus into the hills above it and shown a vast open


WAR IN ITALY
well full of corpses. They had been stood at the lip of
the well, knifed in the back and then pushed. There were
girls. On top of them a gauntlet had been thrown. The
Mayor said the murderers were still in the hills,
partisans. Eighty people are down there, he said. I gazed
at them, the familiar stench in my throat, and looked
helpless.
I visited Arakhnaion whose chieftain spoke no Greek
and sang for me So tenderly and ardently that his wife
knelt down and pummelled his knees, weeping, begging him
to stop.
One night I was called out to visit an isolated
house. We went along with the National Guard as usual.
The alarmed, good-looking couple whom we had woken up
stood by while one of the guards opened, without
permission, a big chest in the sitting room. He asked me
to examine the books. They were communist essays of the
kind I had received at the age of fourteen from Radio
Moscow. I looked at the guards. I said, These are
communist tracts. Yes! they said. But what about it? I
asked. They looked perplexed. These people are
communists! they said. But So are our allies, I said.
This was astonishing for them-not of course the fact but
the saying of it out loud.


WAR IN ITALY
I turned away from the Guards and apologised to the
couple, closing the chest. Then I shook their hands and
ushered the armed men out.
Of course mine wasn't the only sortie of this kind.
Captain H. was incensed. We talked about it hotly. We
weren't going to pursue Churchill's private vendettas and
wondered what the hell the Labour party, which was half
of the government, was doing in seconding such a policy
etc. etc.
And ours weren't the only dissident voices. Word was
sent up the command hierarchy, discreetly, from captain
to major, from major to colonel to brigadier to general,
that political witch-hunting didn't come within our
military remit.
And, as discreetly, word came down the same command
ladder: that there would be no more searches. Someone must
have realised that this was combustible mutiny material.
It didn't once occur to us that letting Greece become
communist might not be to our advantage.
All we knew was that Churchill was in our bad books.
cuk
But why hadn't we cottoned on to his real character much
earlier? Was it his fault that we hadn't? Had we troubled
to investigate a single one of his ideas as to what
constituted a war against Hitler (for we still believed
that we were engaged in one)?


WAR IN ITALY
In actually living fact we had never been interested
in his actual war performance. War speeches are always a
bore but his had a special quality of deception which we
no more saw through than we listened to them. The 1940
speech about how we were going to fight 'on the beaches,
in the streets' against the invading Nazis, which has
gone down in the press room archives as one that stirred
us to a new fighting spirit (even aroused us from
pacifism), did nothing of the kind. It scared the living
daylights out of us as it was meant to. How could we be
invaded if we had the greatest navy in the world, and
Hitler only had a few boats? How could invaders get
through? And why did he try to rally us for war when war
had been on at least a year?
And when that speech was coupled a few days later by
the announcement that in the case of invasion the
government and the royal family would be clearing off to
Canada for the duration (presumably with the greatest
navy in the world) it looked like a decision of open
abandonment. We regarded ourselves as belonging to the
most powerful nation on earth, with the greatest empire
ever known, SO why was he pulling us down? Did it have
something to do with his being the progeny of one of
those aristocratic marriages with American heiresses?
Did he simply prefer America (we know he did personally)?
Or was his abandonment of us simply the logic of the


WAR IN ITALY
times? Was he saying that our power in the Thirties had
been a conviction, not a fact backed up economically?
After all, we on the Left had been saying this very thing
for years, we had decried the empire as the prize of an
exploiting class which had incidentally exploited us too.
So what we were after now? Were we suddenly casting about
for reasons why the old Britain we had hated So deeply
should survive? Did we believe that Churchill had failed
to read our real message? Perhaps he had read it---with
his quiet genius for war politics---all too
CwT
understandingly.
We returned to Italy just in time for more
charitable work.
The Italian war was now over, though neither the
European nor the Far Eastern wars were, not quite.
Mussolini and his mistress were captured by the Italian
partisans (28th April 1945) and hung upside down on meat
hooks in Milan for everyone to see and shoot at. Their
corpses swayed a fraction with the impact of new bullets.
Photographs of this deathly moralist spree were seen by
the whole world, evoking shudders of distaste. We know
from photographs that Fifth Army soldiers were present at
that lapse of law and order but perhaps it was thought
impolitic to confront armed partisans.


WAR IN ITALY
The enemy had at last been out-flanked. Chaos (the
first-born of war) began. There were now numberless
prisoners of war to be billeted and fed, and we were
needed to handle them, in haste. So we were sped at top
speed up the Italian peninsula to Udine near the Yugoslav
border where we at once set up a prisoner-of-war camp in
a vast empty barracks.
The great race to reach Berlin first was on, a race
not between Germans and we allied ones, as you might have
thought, but between two of the allies, the USA and the
USSR. And a similar though much less important race was
going on for Vienna, in which we would soon be involved.
We weren't So much perplexed as moved to silent
wonder when a notice board appeared on a wall outside our
barracks showing a large-scale map of eastern Germany (so
it had to have high-level approval). On it was shown the
forward line of the Americans and the forward line of the
Reds as they came ever closer to each other in a race to
get to Berlin in: what promised to be the opening feature
of world war three.
Our camp became overcrowded to bursting point within
moments of our having set it up. We specialised in enemy
officers, most of them from crack SS divisions.
Every morning we British and SS officers and women
of various nationalities crowded round the notice board
like punters at Sandown as the Russians slowed and our


WAR IN ITALY
own polyglot armies quickened. Sometimes it looked
hopeless for the' Americans-they would take days, perhaps
weeks, getting there, while the Russians were already
close to Berlin's eastern outskirts.
And sometimes the Americans made a spurt forward,
and the Russians; to our enormous relief, were halted for
a bit. Yes, to our relief (where on earth did that
suddenly come from?).
By an osmosis so deep that we were entirely
unconscious of it we had changed into, well, not exactly
enemies of the Soviet Union but rivals and bitter ones at
that.
Good bye to left-wing pretensions-Stalin was now
out to'extend his frontiers as far across Europe as he
could get and we knew it. And he had his eye on Manchuria
too and indeed he later walked into it and in order to
make it seem a legitimate act of war he deliberately
prolonged the war with Japan--by the simple act of
disregarding the Japanese emperor's pleas of surrender.
Here, though (for in certain respects the war alliance
was as strong as ever), he was in agreement with the
allies, whose physicists also needed an extension of the
Japanese war in order to give their atom bomb the chance
of a live demonstration. And these people were going to
put the Nazis on trial!


WAR IN ITALY
One morning I noticed something deeply peculiar on
the notice board. Or rather, I tumbled suddenly to its
import. Little Poland was now securely behind Soviet
lines, and a hell of a way behind. It was captive. And
this was the Poland whose independence we had entered the
war to guarantee. A Soviet possession. And it would
clearly remain so--though none of us guessed it would be
for nearly fifty years.
No wonder General Sikorski, leader of the Free Poles
in London, had been such an embarrassment for our
government. It is said he was furious when he heard that
Churchill had agreed to Stalin keeping those chunks of
Poland he had, So to speak, slipped into while Hitler's
sudden ally at the opening of world war two. But, much
more likely, he feared the truth, that independent Poland
had been struck off the political agenda. And it had.
He narrowly. escaped death in 1942 when his plane,
bound for Washington from Montreal, had to make an
emergency landing due to its two engines cutting out on
takeoff. No wonder his wife felt, when he did crash to
his death July 4th 1943 after another faulty takeoff
uItll
during a flight from Egypt, that he had been got rid of,
especially as he died in the same kind of plane as the
ESArg
Duke of Kent had crashed to his death in a yearand one
month before, and even more especially as her husband and
the Duke had been close associates--there had even been
Dule I asraninsh
hls
Skordisl
Myshet
ilentot


WAR IN ITALY
plans for the Duke to be Poland's monarch. The name
'Sikorski' was prudently dropped from conversation.
I remember the rubbish the press rooms served up to
us about the Duke of Kent's death. He was 'on active
service' and travelling in a plane to Portugal. There was
a Churchill lookalike on board and a German fighter plane
attacked Kent's plane and brought it down. You just
couldn't believe it. There is something candid about the
most cynical lies---they are transparent. In fact, as we
now know without doubt, Kent was on his way to Sweden (at
a pinch Iceland) and his plane crashed on takeoff from
Scotland. It was the same type of plane as Sikorski had
died in. And Kent was trained in Intelligence. And Sweden
was the country where peace negotiations took place. Had
it been decided not only to cut short all peace talks
with Hitler (this is said to have been Churchill's first
decision on taking office) but also to get rid of the top
people connected with the peace initiative?
Rubbish was also served up to us about a crash
landing in Scotland on May 10 1941. Rudolf "Hess, Hitler's
deputy, was in it. The news item of his arrival had to be
searched for in the papers. I think I came across it on a
page 4, tucked away as a brief statement occupying hardly
two column inches, quite as if it was nothing in the
world for the second-in-command of a nation at war with
you to fly over and see how you were doing. Again, its


WAR IN ITALY
suave cynicism was the giveaway. We all knew he had come
over to put the final touches to a peace treaty between
the two countries. And I think we all knew that this
would be the end of Hess. It is a story too cruel to be
told perhaps, and for that reason it never will be.
Conspiracy theories of course. Press rooms, the
seasoned dressers-up of conspiracy, frown on them. But,
being one of the conspirators, a soldier develops a
certain nose for such.
Naturally our prisoners-of-war basked in the irony
and ineptitude of it all. They saw, as we still didn't,
that nearly six years of war had been fought solely on
behalf of two huge powers who could regard both Britain
and Germany as provinces-the first bankrupt, the second
in ruins.
Of course there was hilarity among the SS officers.
The corridors echoed with it. Here were their two main
enemies moving faster than they had ever done during the
war. Speed (none of your nonsense about unconsolidated
rears or exposed flanks) was suddenly more of the essence
than it had ever been in world war two. Was, then, world
war three going to be waged according to the speed and
stealth strategy that should have been adopted for world
war two? had Two been a sort of training camp for Three?


WAR IN ITALY
was it all right just to go on with war since none of us
were by now trained for anything else?
Also, with the Americans hot-footing it to halt the
Red Scourge and the Russians burning tyres to halt the
Forces of Capitalism, it began seriously to look as if
during all these six years we had done nothing more than
reduce: our closest anti-Red friends, namely the Germans,
to rubble.
Each morning we looked at that board and the odds
became ever shorter. There was no longer anything in it
for the punter. The Russians were clearly going to get
there first, if by a whisker.
Perhaps those SS officers saw things more
realistically than we did because they had lost
everything. We British still had our ideals, that is we
thought we had won. We simply didn't see that other
people had walked off with all the prizes. Nor, being
fellow idealists, did the Americans see that they were
the main prize-winners, indeed that they had become the
foremost power of the world. It took over fifty years for
both them and the world to fully wake up to this, though
it was perfectly obvious on the first day of peace.
There were reasons for this seeming modesty on the
American side, the chief among them being the favourite
Washington rhetoric that the USA had entered the war out
of the: kindness of her heart, indeed just to help out an


WAR IN ITALY
old friend in a tight spot. But no serious foreign policy
can be. fired by emotions as silly as this. War has to be
worked out, and in detail. Quite rightly the negotiations
for American entry were long and detailed, and contained
much bargaining, not to say a handing over of at least
one huge British investment, plus bullion. In a word, war
has to be pondered with national interests in mind, and
an eye to sufficiency of resources. Above all, war's
staggering costs must be seen to promise plentiful reward
'at the end'.
One little known fact about war is that it is
immeasurably harder to organise than peace. Your labour
force must be mobilised in a perilously short time to
pursuits that will not bring in money. That force must
become munitions workers, professional killers, nurses,
code-breakers, home-front rescue and medical teams. Every
human action, and most thoughts, must now be devoted to
the destruction of foreign territories and peoples. Yet
the food must still be produced, SO it would be madness
to mobilise everyone into killers and arms makers. The
'war màchine', as it is called, must night and day be
kept efficient, as the machine of peace need not.
Do we think that this total and always sudden
switchover requires no discussion, above all about the
unthinkable expense ahead--so great that it will topple


WAR IN ITALY
most of the rich and bring low the former controlling
classes?
How could war-rhetoric have gone into these
practiçal details? We wouldn't have stomached it for a
minute. Bargaining and scheming about war? A war
population must have its feelings aroused. It must be
moved, even deeply. Credit-and-debit columns are an
intrusion. In WW2 we were extremely sceptical about war
rhetoric, and we consumed it hungrily.
When Churchill's rhetoric told us that we were weak
and must needs defend ourselves, even though not a day
before we had been the strongest nation in the world in
possession of the strongest navy in the world and the
biggest empire yet, we were jolted by fear because we
felt he knew better than we did, we were flattered by his
high-flying account of how we were all going to defend
ourselves to the death when the German boot touched
British soil.
As Hermann Goring said at the Nuremberg trials, it
is the fare that all governments intent on war must
provide.
Thus it was that Roosevelt and Churchill were able
to weave the fairy tale that Britain was suddenly on its
knees while America, known for her ardour on behalf of
just causes, was coming into war out of moral indignation
at Hitler's behaviour.


WAR IN ITALY
This was not at all how most Americans felt. For one
thing, they didn't have the Germans sixty miles away. For
another, a second world war So few years after the first
seemed frankly like crass incompetence to them. Not until
Pearl Harbour, namely when they felt menaced by a
neighbour, could they be persuaded to enter a war So
deeply wrapped up in non sequiturs---and SO far away.
Nor was world power a thought in most American heads
at that time, let alone a goal. In fact America was
frequently called Isolationist. She was bent on commerce,
not war, least of all other people's. Yet-and this yet'
helped the war argument--her markets were already, as a
matter of practical fact, on the road to world
domination. So war might, if Roosevelt arranged things
successfully, begin to appear not only right but
advantageous. As we all know, it is the arms business
that needs to be excited first. We mustn't blush at such
truths. The Struggle against Fascism required arms just
as capitalism did. In truth, no war conducted without an
advantage in mind has ever happened.
Only in 1945 when war was over did the new banner of
America the Saviour begin to flap in the breeze. It was
too good a political chance for the West to turn down.
And in any case this is the classical way of dignifying
the frightful carnage that all war is, which carnage must
be forgotten in a cloud of justice. So for fifty years


WAR IN ITALY
any Briton who criticised Washington policies was told,
usually in the letters-pages of British newspapers, that
he or she had a 'short memory', i.e. he or she owed their
very existence to America.
What a strange thing it is that none of us consented
to that war, neither Americans nor French nor Germans nor
British. For a lot of us WW1 had been a worse than
useless enterprise that fatuously abolished the Austro-
Hungarian empire by turning it into small states So weak
that in a flash Germany towered above them, and soon
moved into them.
Yet that 1914 war was fought with a certain spirit,
an innocent suicidal fervour. It was called 'the war to
end all war' and what could be more innocent than that,
given the fact that 'the war to end all peace' would have
been a better description?
This Second World War had no such spirit. The women
didn't: try to pin the white feather of cowardice on your
lapel if you happened to walk war-time London's streets
out of uniform. They didn't stand in line waving and
cheering the troops on their way to embarkation for
overseas. Far from running after truckloads of departing
soldiers and throwing bunches of flowers at them, as in
WW1, women in WW2 had war-jobs and they embarked for
overseàs duties as men did.


WAR IN ITALY
The truth is that war is no more a specifically male
activity than peace. That is another of the military
fairy tales designed to maintain war as a sane and even
venerable activity. A female army would almost certainly
choose' different strategies but the moment the first shot
was fired and terror went through the female organism
there would be rapid resort to quickly thought-out
defensive positions. Shock, after all, is shared by male
and female. The same nervous system is at work.
War happens, in a strange biological osmosis, as a
result of its happening. Accidental statements, strange
decisions, a sense of hush-hush are its harmless
harbingers. The stuff of dreams. So how could the most
relentlessly physical thing we know arise. from nothings
on the air?
But this is war's most illusory and illusive mask.
It plays within the brain I evolving like a. self-
hypnosis. No one can say quite how it happens for the
good reason that human choice never came into it.
That was how world war two started. Chamberlain
simply announced it. As automatically as night after day
there was the issuing of gas masks, then the order to sew
blackout material on your curtains, then the building of
bomb shelters at the bottom of your garden, then the
ration books.


WAR IN ITALY
But why did Chamberlain declare war? He didn't want
war. He was privy to all the peace negotiations that were
going on. He was even thinking of substituting Hermann
Goring, Germany's air chief, for Hitler, So close was he
to the Nazi government. He was a shrewd politician.
And that declaration was 'tragically ill-timed,
causing the deaths of tens of millions of people'. Those
were Churchill's words---after the war. What he didn't
add was that he was in Chamberlain's cabinet at the time
and not only fully approved the declaration but
(according to the French ambassador) So elated that he
could hardly speak. He said it would be over in six
weeks, a walkover. But neither the French nor British
armies could reach Poland, where this six-weeks war would
be fought.
So what pushed Chamberlain's hand to declare war? It
certainly wasn't Churchill, or any other member of his
party. It was the most dreaded thing for a politician
(when it turns against him) --public opinion.
And we on the Left were making that opinion. We
forced him to hide his friendship with the Nazis--
suddenly withdraw from the enthusiasm his own Foreign
Office had always shown towards Hitler, with top
diplomats appearing at the Nazi rallies, rubbing
shoulders with the leaders. Indeed they made such a fuss


WAR IN ITALY
of Hitler as to give nazism a seal of respectable
approval in German eyes.
So here was Chamberlain forced to show sudden
hostility to Hitler, while the last thing he or we of the
Left wanted was war. Indeed that declaration was So
unreal, So flabbergastingly uncalled for, that nothing
happened for six months, in what the American press rooms
called The Phoney War. No shots were fired, naturally--
because peace talks were still on.
Useless for us to go on the streets declaring
ourselves for or against war. It is like going on the
streets for or against thunderstorms.
And why did Chamberlain cosset and spoil the Nazis?
He was pursuing a foreign policy, and he shared this
foreign policy with France and America. Hitler had done
something miraculous. From the ruins and starvation of
the first world war he had in very few years built a
fully-employed Germany potentially strong enough to stand
up to Stalin. Now that was by no means a disreputable
foreign policy. It was pursued for fifty years after the
war, by common consent among all the western powers: in
fact, it divided the world in two, the Soviet zone on one
side and the West on the other side of an 'iron curtain'
(Churchill's phrase).
So we entered this sleepwalk of fearful destruction
to achieve a foreign policy which Chamberlain had


WAR IN ITALY
suddenly been obliged to hide? In peace this would be a
contradiction. In war it is simply part of the sleepwalk.
The body-count from that long six-year sleep was
50.000.000, military and civilian. In the First World War
8.000.000 died, 20.000.000 were wounded (it being mostly
a non-civilian war).
We have no official body-count for the fifty years
after the war because the world was divided into armed
camps dedicated, both sides, to the invention of ever
more lethal weapons with which if the need came to
destroy entirely each other and every vestige of the
living earth. Is war then just an appetiser producing
hunger for itself the greater according to its
destructive extent, SO that finally fills millions of
peace-loving heads (as those heads think) with thoughts
of explosion, quick-firing weapons at the hip, torture
and the poisoning of earth and animal and sky and soil
and waters as an engaging video game?
One morning the colonel of an SS regiment, a tall
handsome man with white hair, invited me to his quarters
for breakfast after I had made a standard welfare enquiry
about his troops. I think I was something of a favourite
for ss'officers because I stood tall and blond-prime
Aryan material (they made no bones about this). The two


WAR IN ITALY
of us waited, sitting on camp chairs, while his batman
prepared the chicory.
He told me he was the pre-Nazi type of career
soldier. Hitler's great mistake, he said, was to go to
war with Britain. The two countries had clear interests
in common.
I couldn't see this at all. What I saw, with cross
eyes, was the colonel as a late apologist for a war he
alone had caused. I saw him as a Jew-exterminator. It
didn't occur to me that the subject of Hitler's
extermination of the Jewish civilisation in Europe had
never been treated by the allies as of the slightest
relevance, despite the fact that the deliberately long
war gave a safe licence to Hitler's followers to complete
the Final Solution.
If I couldn't see what the colonel was talking about
it was because of my own clichés, one of them being that
this war had been against the Nazis, SO that I was in
agreement with his mistaken view of the war, while
incensed by his attitude.
The colonel said, I have an English wife. Even this
statement I took to be an extra bid for my approval. Yet
if anyone had called me a prig I would have been hurt.
Somewhere inside me I knew I was, and I hated being So
full of self-righteousness (the moral stance of
blindness).


WAR IN ITALY
The barracks had four separate buildings and a vast
quadrangle. In any other country it would have looked
bleak but the festive Italian light (close as we were to
Venice) turned it into a bustling township. SS battalions
arrived from Austria continuously, in flight from the Red
Army advance. They raced to get to a British camp also
because the Yugoslavs wished to lay the same red hands on
them.
Officers often arrived in Mercedes Benz limos, dressed in
shiny black raincoats.
Rumours went round the camp as quick as a breath.
Everyone was to be sent to Canada. Everyone was to be
released shortly because, after all, what country would
want to maintain SO many thousands of foreigners? Then
suddenly everyone was to be taken to a prison island
(Procida, Nauplion?) for no fewer than twelve years.
But no one looked afraid. In any case Germans have a
remarkable composure in crisis. The only ones to look
afraid, mortally so, were the Hitler Youth. The poor
children watched us cautiously with their heads down.
Like us they had been taught that they were to fight
demons, and unlike us believed it.
I was happy in that place. This was peace, however
loud. I even dared to dream of when I would be back at
Oxford: with my head in a book (as if this camp were a
foretaste). I slept in a high-ceilinged room with elegant


WAR IN ITALY
tall windows and great bare walls. The nights were
deliriously, excitingly hot and sleepless, with a
bloodhound continually barking outside and lights
flashing in at the windows and the starting up of engines
as troops came in and others went out to God knows where.
One had to remind oneself that this camp was a
miracle-the Germans in it didn't want to kill you and
you didn't want to kill them. It gave these crowded halls
and corridors the feel of an excellently serviced
congress full of delegates from hell with suddenly no
agenda.
The very anomalies and absurdities, such as the pets
and women of every nationality once attached to the
German fighting force, and every language being spoken,
and our ignorance of exactly who and how many our inmates
were, and the soirées that came about in remote parts of
the building, were the prison's raison d'être quite as
if the Italians had devised it as the last earthly festa.
One of my tasks was to search the officers as they
came in, immediately they came in. I was constantly
called out of my bed which, because the whole experience
was deeply restful for me, I accepted happily as one
would an on-going Family Do. I would have to dash along
the corridor to stop a quarrel over food. Or there was
trouble over a woman prisoner-this was routine. All of
us officers were on constant call in an orgy of social


WAR IN ITALY
engagements, and in the quiet moments we sat together
turning over the watches and cameras and binoculars that
resulted from our 'searches' (a euphemism from higher up
which meant stripping the prisoner of all but very
personal items like underpants and bootlaces). Since we
treated this as a joke, and strangely the joke seemed to
be shared by the enemy too, we never felt predatory or
acquisitive about it. Besides, there was such a glut of
these victory gifts. What is the point of seventeen wrist
watches on your arm?
An open German car pulled into the prison after
midnight and a thick-set officer with a truculent gaze
jumped down from the dashboard clearly intending to walk
straight into the barracks and leave the vehicle where it
stood. It contained three or four women. What about these
women? I asked him. What about them? he said in English.
Where are they supposed to stay, I asked, with you? as
fellow prisoners? are they German? His answer was, Will I
need women where I'm going? Then, half addressing the SS
officers standing around, he translated what he'd said
into German, which got a big laugh from the enemy.
The girls, as it always turned out, were mistresses
and prostitutes, which filled us officers on the
victorious side with a quiet green glow of retrospective
envy, when we considered that we could have advanced up
the Italian peninsula in constant concubinage. Yet those


WAR IN ITALY
German. . armies had lived much more frugally than we had.
They had used about half the supplies we used, from food
to ammunition. They wasted infinitely less equipment
(such as empty petrol cans). Endless resources make you
throw half of them away.
During an otherwise calm night one of my men ran
into the guardroom and asked me to come quick. We nipped
along the corridor and up some stairs and I heard a woman
screaming. I pushed open a door into a long hall with
pillars and there before me, perfectly at their ease, sat
an SS officer and a middle-aged German woman. They had an
oil lamp between them, on a small table-a Victorian
picture called Contentment at the End of a Long Day. I
eyed the oil lamp, realising that what those officers
handed over was probably about equal to what they didn't.
A woman was lying on a camp bed at the end of the hall,
in half darkness. What's the matter with her? I asked.
The officer shrugged. I asked the woman opposite him,
You're German aren't you? She nodded and said in English,
She is frightened. Why did she scream? I asked. She is
Italian, she said, very excitable, she calls for her
husband. I walked over to the Italian woman and told her
to come with me. Then I asked the officer, Was it you who
frightened her? And he shook his head with mock
solemnity. The Italian woman was still shaking and
sobbing. She said, I'm Italian and in my own country. She


WAR IN ITALY
said her husband was a doctor. Where is he? I asked. In
the south, she said. Why aren't you with him? I asked.
I've come from Austria, she said. That was all the
explanation you ever got from the women-I'm here because
I'm here. I took her to the guardroom and got her a bed.
By the morning she had gone. She must have solicited a
hitch south from one of our drivers who no doubt struck a
fleshly bargain with her.
Further north, close to the Tarvisio Pass into
Austria, there was a huge concourse of various
peoples-Caucasians, Domanov Cossacks, Hungarians who had
served under the Germans, Chetnicks (who had fought the
Germans within Yugoslavia), Croats, Slovenes, Cossacks
under General Pannwitz and Yugoslavs who had fought for
Germany under General von Seeler. Tito's agents were
trying to take a lot of them prisoner. This had been
agreed with the allies but the Yugoslavs were also trying
to occupy southern Austria and the Venezia-Giulia area
for keeps, which had definitely not been agreed.
The Yugoslavs seemed too truculent to become
friends. They were on what I thought a moral high horse
and deplored the way we treated our prisoners like
guests. Their attitude to Germans, as to Italians, was
that they were trash. I had to drive into Yugoslavia one
day toltalk over a welfare question and was indiscreet
enough to take a German soldier with me as interpreter.


WAR IN ITALY
It nearly got me arrested inside the Yugoslav border. The
officer who received me was So enraged he could only
glare àt me, and he refused to hear or address the German
youth. For him the war was an ideology. And as it was
supposed to be the same for me I realised he was
right-for himself. As for myself, the morality junk had
all washed away in blood.
I little thought that this man might have reasons
other than moral ones. I doubt if I even knew that
Yugoslavia had been occupied by the Germans since 1941.
And how could my 22 years know that 10% of the population
(which- at that time was around 16.000.000) had been
tortured or whipped or starved or strangled or knifed to
death in atrocities?
The allied rule was that the peoples who 'faced' us
were our prisoners, while those who 'faced' Yugoslav
forces were theirs. So there was no doubt where most of
these displaced peoples wished to face-camps like ours:
hence the fact that So many poured down into
Italy-flying from Soviet troops but also from the equal
threat of imprisonment and worse from Tito's men.
All around the search-shed there were piles of
German bank notes swirling in the breeze. They had
suddenly been declared defunct and useless, SO prisoners
stood gazing wistfully at piles of money which not a week


WAR IN ITALY
before would have made them millionaires, and when no one
was looking they made a vain hoard.
Every time I confronted a new batch of officers I
made a set speech-an interpreter translated. I said, You
must give up your fire-arms, ammunition, maps, compasses,
military documents, binoculars, and obviously since there
are so many of you I must rely on your honour as officers
to hand these things over. They seemed to enjoy this
appeal to what they felt was the Aryan in them, and
naturally held certain things back.
These SS officers were mostly tall, healthy young
men-the first I had yet seen of that imaginary German
army cooked up by the press rooms as strapping and
implacable troops drilled to robot status, so different
from that strangely inoffensive collection of clerks,
academics and youths of every shape and size, more
bewildered than determined, more lost than indoctrinated,
that made up the armies against which we actually fought.
Gertrude Stein's experience of the German soldier in
occupied France was exactly the same. She couldn't
believe how unlike the invented 'Nazi troops' these boys
were, and how like they were to the boys at home.
One day some officers came in bleeding and bandaged.
They complained they had been stoned by our Jewish
Brigade. They looked to me for redress. I told them,
You're: lucky not to be massacred for what you did to the


WAR IN ITALY
Jews. It was astonishing to see their hurt righteous
faces without the slightest grasp of what I was saying.
In the afternoon heat a crowd gathered in one of the
smaller quadrangles. Two Russian women were screaming
hysterically. I stood watching them from the back of the
crowd. I recognised one of the SS women standing close to
me and I called her over. What's going on? I asked. She
said these women have just heard they're going to be sent
back to Russia which means they'll be shot for having
attached themselves to a German column. The Russian women
were looking about them, sobbing, talking to everyone,
and no one understood them. We all lost interest.
A few weeks later we were driving in convoy through
the winding mysterious Tarvisio Pass. For the second time
I felt - I was journeying back to a place I knew deeply
without having set foot in it. During our halts the
mountain hush closed about us. We came to Villach, then
Klagenfurt, then Graz. We bathed in the Worthersee and
took photos.
It was the British 5th Corps under General Sir
Charles Keightley that halted the Russians in Austria.
That is, the two armies sat down cheek to cheek, with
simulated bonhomie. Of course the Russians knew that they
would have to move back to their internationally agreed
lines when the war was officially over. It was the least


WAR IN ITALY
of allied problems. Southern Austria was milling with
different nationalities. Thousands of German soldiers
were waiting to be registered as prisoners of war, many
of them sick (a whole group had been left unattended with
gangrene). There were various Cossack formations, whole
corps of Hungarian soldiers as well as non-communist
Yugoslavs under German command (like the Slovenes in the
Russky Corps) and a whole Bulgarian army. And they were
mostly going in different directions.
At last we were among the Austrians who had nice
lamp shades and carpets and knew about tea and were blond
(apart; as in our own case, from the dark ones). We felt
acknowledged and even, almost, repatriated.
Isat in my room in a little village near Klagenfurt
and read newly arrived books from England behind curtains
in the evening, on a silent lane.
My first duty in this strange allied peace was to
help exercise the Cossack horses that had come to us as a
special gift from the Soviet government. Why and how we
had become candidates for this gift we didn't know but we
hauled up sacks of corn for our welcome guests, we
watered them and sheltered them and with beautiful tackle
(another gift) and divinely comfortable saddles (yet
another) we mounted them. Those who like me had never
ridden before learned in a matter of minutes under the
eye ofa reticent young major who indicated how to mount,


WAR IN ITALY
how to sit, how to hold the feet in stirrups, how to
canter, trot and gallop, how to brush down, how to remove
tackle and saddle and muck out the stables, all by means
of a series of differently modulated grunts. We learned
how to measure the right degree of tightness in the girth
by putting a wary hand underneath, how to heave ourselves
onto the horse's back in one clean jump, hands gripping
the saddle and one leg over. We enjoyed the way our
horses moved round impatiently before we even had both
feet in the stirrups. And the man who grunted his horse
wisdom at us had a whole regiment of officers to
instruct.
The Cossack horses were small and swift and once in
the gallop all but impossible to rein. in, having been
taught to do this in service of the blind headlong
Cossack attack. I galloped alone through the woods. One
day my: mare, who had a distressful habit of twisting her
haunches when at speed (this also taught) sent me flying
off on the left side with my left foot still in the
stirrup and dragged me along for quite fifty yards with
the back of my head bumping on the gravel path. My riding
major simply grunted, These horses are made for grass.
We soon realised how we had come by these gifts. One
day we were put in charge of a long convoy consisting of
Cossack families to be conveyed back to the Red Army at
Judenberg.


WAR IN ITALY
It seemed to us outrageous that these simple people
should be returned to a regime which we all knew would
kill the lot of them. We were up in arms about it, senior
as well as junior officers. Even the war minister
P.J.Grigg, as we now know, complained to the foreign
secretary Anthony Eden. Churchill, always careful about
matters of common humanity, suggested to Eden that we
should stall on the hand-over, in the diplomatic manner.
But Eden wouldn't have it. An official war diary of the
period (that of the 3rd Battalion Welsh Guards) called the
whole thing 'an act of unparalleled duplicity'.
These Cossacks could be brutal. In the Venezia-
Giulia.area a group of them had kicked a priest to death.
But they weren't being sent back for brutality any more
than for being simple kindly folk, which they also were.
The lie that won us over was that everything had
been settled with the Soviet authorities. These men and
women and children were being conveyed to Judenberg in
order to be rehabilitated as Russians. Stalin's people
had assured us that this was a serious promise because
farmers were So badly needed in the Soviets now. And we
swallowed it. And it may have been true. Or not. Even
certainly not.
The Cossacks seemed happy in our convoy of trucks,
waving to us from the back, holding their children up to
wave to us. They had been fed with a lie too, a different


WAR IN ITALY
one. While for us they were giving themselves up happily
to the: Red Army, they had been told that under no
circumstances would they be given up to the Red Army.
That was Eden's little joke.
After travelling some miles we began to slow up. The
Cossacks craned round the side of the trucks, curious to
see where they were going to be housed. And what told us
the truth about their fate was their sudden confusion,
their eyes wide open with fear, their last-minute
searching round for avenues of escape, as they recognised
this Red Army road-block that was virtually the Soviet
frontier.
They began chattering wildly among themselves,
turning round to look at us, unable to believe it. Yet
they seemed to understand that we soldiers weren't
responsible. They began beckoning to us, not to save
themselves but to give us their possessions, they were
holding out their trinkets and gaudy shawls for us to
take, their arms laden, but of course we only mimed back
to them, No, you're going to be all right-divided as we
were now between the truth and the low-down lie.
And then, as their trucks moved and ours stood still
we satiback and in common with those Cossacks mourned.
This time it was too late for mutinous attitudes. We
simply stared, as they did. But our feelings about it
were shared all the way up the military command. Only


WAR IN ITALY
this time there was no answer, no climbing down. The job
had been done.
Our days were now a round of idleness. I spent much
time driving my jeep here and there unnecessarily. We had
no administrative duties because the Austrians ran their
own lives. I went to the opera in Graz, had fun going
round afterwards to the dressing rooms and talking with
the girls.
One day in Klagenfurt I saw a young man walking
along in a British uniform which clearly didn't fit him,
and which didn't bear any insignia. I drew up beside him
and asked him sternly, What are you doing in that
uniform? He blanched and stared at me and at first
couldn't get his words out. It transpired he had just
been released from a concentration camp, he was Jewish
and this was what they had given him to wear. He was all
but trembling, staring at me to see what new nemesis this
was. And now I had the task of retracing my steps with
placatory smiles and useless words that he couldn't
understand, and for the life of me I couldn't bring a
smile back on his face, and my expecting a smile was
another preposterous emotion in me. Finally after shaking
him by the hand I drove away slowly and didn't want to
drive, only sit there and put my head down on the
steering wheel and wonder what the devil, what the devil?
where has all this led me?


WAR
ITALY
The Hitler/Churchill honeymoon
MAURICE ROWDON 2009


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
CONTENTS
Figs
Crater
Laughter
Apparition
Prayer
Shudder
Byzantium
Detonation
Hush
Unforsaken
Flames
Kamarad
Nerves
Defeat


KST Poye mumny
MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death 2202
C omu Ghin i 2
choice. On an impulse, S there was intermittent
shelling, I led my men, five or six in all, into the
ditch at the roadside. It gave us better cover in the
event of our having to throw ourselves down.
Then I took it into my head that I was going to
catch a packet if I continued walking at the head. I
suspected there might be a sniper somewhere (it was
quite impossible) as the view was open all sides
except the one that was in our hands. But I thought
the two pips, as they now were on my shoulder,
denoting a full-blown lieutenant, stood out. So I
waited for my men to pass me and took my place in the
rear. This was one of the million sops to blood-
thirsty Cerberus that each of us made every
day-jumping up to stroll to another spot, leaving
one room for another, touching every other tree we
walked by, in this way we cheated the eye vigilant
for our demise.
I spent the first evening at the villa at an
upstairs window listening to the voices of a platoon
The Major sent out at night-fall. They were to
capture a white cottage about a hundred yards
forward, a peaceful jewel, not a farmhouse but set
there for pleasure. It hadn't So far been touched by


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
schrapnel. There was no firing. I heard one of our
patrol call out in a high-pitched voice, Come out you
bastards! It was a strange voice. There was a
disturbing allure in it, invitation more than menace.
We knew a Spandau was waiting round the corner of
that house. And then again-Come out! he cried.
Almost a woman's voice. The rest of the attacking
platoon seemed to be lying low, waiting. And once
more-Let's have you Jerry!
The voice belonged to one small wiry man.
Everybody round me was listening too. They always did
when he went out. Especially The Major listened. He
knew the capacities of this one small slight
ferociously strong cockney who everybody said was
rich from the merchandise he stole on such nights. He
went out with a clear resolute head, a plan of his
own. He neither needed nor heeded others. He showed
neither fear before nor satisfaction after. He didn't
speak-except to the enemy in his unnerving siren
voice. And the men were chary of him, respectful but
chary. They never questioned him, only gazed, riled
him a bit, cautiously.
A short time back he had taken six prisoners
single-handed. He told them to line up and lay out in


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
front of them everything they had-money, watches,
pens. Then in a single burst of fire he shot them
dead. That was a story told about him. But it wasn't
his customary way of killing. He used a knife. He
would come up slowly and silently behind Jerry and
slit his throat. And he was able to throw his siren
voice to somewhere else, SO that a shot in his
direction would miss. Those were the stories about
him.
There was sudden fire from the enemy and then in
the hush that followed we heard a scuffle and a
groan. We could just make out the platoon running
forward, closer to the white house, then came another
burst of gun-fire. It went on thus for an hour. At
last they trooped back, led by the small wiry one,
who had a bullet wound in the calf of his right leg.
He sat down and tended the wound, his eyes restless,
excited, also resentful in case another trooper
should come near him. You felt everyone was the enemy
for him, he didn't make allowances for nationality or
allegiance. A trooper came over and said, Here's a
dressing, holding it out. All the cockney said was a
quiet, Fuck the dressing, without even looking up,
making The Major smile.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
I arranged with The Major for another attack the
next morning to smother the enemy gun. I was to lay
down some fire and we would bring a tank up. The wiry
cockney was insulted by the idea of a tank. It wasn't
the way to fight. He said he was going out again,
tonight, in his slippers as always, his face black.
But he spent all night moaning with pain. He was
eventually stretchered out. During the night I
ordered intermittent fire from the guns. My head kept
slumping forward with fatigue as I passed the orders
down-Fire by order..10,9,8,7.. At dawn the tank came
up, fired its cannon twice while a fresh platoon
moved forward. Enemy shells began to paste us and the
tank moved back, the platoon retired.
It became sunny and I walked outside where a
pleasant bordered courtyard made it seem a war-free
zone, especially as it was hidden from Jerry. The
shade of the trees, the motionless well-tended
borders and the mellow response of the stone walls to
the sun made a place where, unobserved, SO we
thought, you could smoke quietly and chat.
I saw three officers talking together and joined
them for a bit. Then I wandered off. Just as I turned
the corner of the house a mortar bomb fell smack in


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
the courtyard where I had just been. I walked back
and one of the officers I had been talking to lay on
the ground, his eyes staring aghast. He was grey,
trembling violently in the last throes. A stretcher
came up and took him inside. When he died one of the
officers brought a blanket and covered him. And this
officer kept coming back to turn the blanket down
from his face and gaze at him, then replace it, in a
vigil that lasted till dusk.
You can't get used to the unexpected, expect it
as you might. Of course you know that the bell is
always tolling and it may or may not be for you but
it tolls SO madly, SO minute by minute, it is bound
to seem to be always in some measure tolling for you
and there is no escape from it, even when it has
tolled, in a split-second choice, for someone else.
By the middle of that afternoon we were a mile
behind the forward line, SO quick was the advance on
our flanks. Peace came to that indolent mansion that
basked as ever, flaunted its borders, whispered with
the breeze.
I rested in that patrician home, sure that my
regiment wouldn't require me for another mission just
yet. Which of course was a premonition of the


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
opposite. Twigs were burning in the hearth from
something fried or boiled. Occasionally I asked for a
glass of Marsala from the cellar where the family
hid. They were prodigal with their store.
The order had been given for B Company to pass
through us. Being fresh, they would occupy positions
well forward, in the thick of the fighting that was
now going on ahead of me. Our small wiry man with the
bullet wound had been taken to a first-aid post,
whence he would be taken to hospital.
The Major told me he didn't envy B Company, they
were in for a bad time. We ate lunch from our mess
tins, waiting for them to come up. Nothing happened
for about fifty minutes. Then a signal came over my
radio. My signaller started, probably with thoughts
close to mine. He looked up at me and said, Officer
to speak.
I went shaking to the mike, no doubt looking
calm and ready, and I was told, You will join B
Company, you will get all the tactical information
from the commanding officer of the company, you will
prepare to move now, any questions? No sir.
I threw the mike into the signaller's lap and
called out to the others, Prepare to move, and there


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
was the long groan we all knew SO well. And to my
signaller I said, You can close down. I felt like
calling the duty officer at Battery HQ and giving him
a piece of my mind but of course I didn't. Instead I
told The Major as casually as possible that I'd been
detailed to B Company and he said, Christ, off again?
My batman shouted for me from upstairs. Where
did I wish to sleep that night? He was unrolling my
bag. I said, Prepare to move, didn't they tell you?
When I heard B Company outside I went to meet
the major in command. He was tall with an easy-going,
non-commital, perhaps vague manner. He told me there
was an assembly point we all had to move on to. It
was clearly going to be something big. He spoke
pleasantly, distantly. We were to move at dawn next
morning.
We were outside before dawn, puffing and
blowing against the chill. The C.O. and I walked
ahead. We went by a copse charred at its edges and a
farmhouse with its roof caved in. The assembly point
was a moderately sized house, walls intact. Every
room was already crowded. A few radios had been set
up. Men were playing cards. I recognised some old
faces. It was a cheerful, not to say festive


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
atmosphere as companies arrived fresh from the rear
while others departed for the forward posts. Then we
of B Company moved on.
After a time we reached fields that had the
stillness of a battlefield to be.
Our designated house was open to the enemy on
three sides, with only the rear approachable. It was
in a steep dip below us. We had to be mindful of the
noise we made, over sixty of us, as we dropped down
into a ditch behind the house, then scrambled up it
to reach the entrance of a great cattle shed. There
was one mercy-no one could have seen us occupy it.
Also the house stood on its own single hillock,
giving us commanding views to the front and our left
flank. Our concealed avenue of escape at the rear,
through rising woodland, was our best asset,
balancing our precarious tactical situation-we all
knew we were sticking out in enemy territory-with
this assured escape route.
Two Germans lay dead in the cattle shed, under a
cobwebbed window. They each had their arms held
rigid in the air, vertical, and that was how they
remained while we were in possession of the house.
Further on, opening from the cattle shed, you came to


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
a vast room that took up pretty well the whole ground
floor. It gave off to tiny rooms which we used for
observation, behind tiny windows dark with dust.
We shed our equipment. I liked the Company
commander. He had a quiet geniality. Yet he seemed to
observe things distantly rather than taking charge.
By now it was a sunny morning. We felt sure we had
entered the house unobserved but one never knew-
uncertainty was to dog us all the time we were there.
I set up the radio in one of the tiny rooms
where hams had once been hung. From here we could
see, immediately below us on our left flank, not more
than thirty yards away, another, smaller house. A
thick barrier of bushes lay between us. We could gaze
down into the house's rear courtyard and were
grateful to see a British armoured carrier there. It
was a boost to find our left flank covered, even
though we, both they and us, might still be sticking
out like the tips of sore thumbs into enemy land.
It didn't take us long to discover that in fact
we were well inside enemy land, all sixty of us. I
think few F.0.0.S could ever have found themselves in
German lines with SO many well-armed men round them.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
If I wanted to observe the area straight in
front I had to put myself in a much bigger store-room
with long barred windows. These gave me an ample view
left and right as well as forward and, being dusty
and cobwebbed, they made us invisible from outside.
A long table right under these windows ran the
length of the wall-convenient both for its view and
for positioning a Bren gun. I kept my radio and
signallers in the big room because at this lookout
window silence was essential.
The field before us sloped very slightly
downwards, then proceeded flat for a hundred yards
or more to a road that crossed from left to right a
hundred yards or more ahead.
Preparing for a long stay I set myself up with a
machine-gunner at my right side. I saw this grimy
nook as the house's principal look-out post, and this
it certainly turned out to be. Together the machine
gunner and I sat in the hush and waited for events to
present themselves. Our question, Does Jerry know
we're here? was quickly followed by, Of course he
does (but we never found out if he did).
My signaller in the big room quickly coded our
map reference and sent it back to my command post. I


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
wanted to register a target in the field ahead. This
much self-exposure was necessary. I waited for Guns
Ready and gave the order to fire. After a few moments
there was a mounting swish above our heads and a
shell landed just beyond the road that lay before us.
I ordered the target to be registered, then I
registered the fields to the left and right flank.
We all expected an attack that evening. There
was an uneasy atmosphere, especially as we could hear
the grind of nearby enemy tanks, perhaps the most
feared noise in battle because a tank can crush you
without pause, not to say push down without effort
your walls.
When dusk came double sentries were posted at
the windows and the barn door. After a time I went to
sit with my men in the big room. Pretty well the
whole Company was gathered there now.
Armchairs and settees had been brought in from
the other rooms. Suddenly there was a crash and a
scream. Part of the cattle shed wall next door had
been blown in. Brick dust came drifting through. I
hoped this wasn't an answering shell to my
registration one. It would mean Jerry had seen us
coming in. A stretcher was rushed to the wounded man,


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
one of our sentries. He was put down next the dead
Germans. We thought he had little hope of life. He
kept crying out to be brought in among us. Our
commanding officer did nothing. So the stretcher
bearers brought him close to our door, where he could
hear us, though this exposed him to greater danger.
People weren't obeying the commanding officer. I
think The Major had told me that this man was a
replacement, perhaps even a reinforcement, i.e.
entirely fresh to the game. I began to dislike him,
making an unjust shift in my affections of the kind
soldiers are good at. The hole in the stable wall
turned out to have been made by a bazooka, which is
fired from the shoulder. And this posed the problem
of where it could have been fired from, if not from
the rear, namely from behind the British-occupied
house at our side. At that rate the soldiers in there
were even more exposed than we.
But a bazooka was better news than artillery,
from the lethality point of view. At least I was
satisfied that Jerry wasn't answering me
Somehow, without an order having been given, we
sixty-odd men came to a collective understanding that
even though we were probably being observed we must


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
behave as if we weren't. The bazooka shot might have
been a try-on to provoke response. So we mustn't
respond.
In the absence of any orders from our infantry
commander I put it around-as if I had already taken
the command over-that our machine gunners should be
careful not to respond to fire. The sentries didn't
move.
There was another crash-this to our left flank.
Sentries reported that a Jerry patrol was out. But if
SO they didn't come near us. The evening passed
without event.
Once the sentries had been changed we put down
our sleeping bags. The men's spirit seemed to be
going. This happens when the leadership crumbles-a
lightning transformation into listless gloom. Dr.
Johnson once argued that subordination was essential
to mankind. In battle the moment it collapses the
field is lost. Our sentries sat smoking cynically.
The predicted attack didn't happen. But all night we
heard the jarring scream of Jerry tanks. In the case
of our having to run it would be messy escaping via
the back-sixty or more men clambering up a narrow
strip of hill, however concealed. And we had nothing


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
so useful as a bazooka, the only hand-held instrument
in existence with armour-piercing capacity.
At first light I went to the tiny window
overlooking the house on our left. The armoured
carrier was still there. We ate, sat in silence,
confident that nothing would happen in daylight. In
this we were mistaken. In the early afternoon there
was the screeching roar of a tank and it was coming
nearer. I had just sat down by my machine gunner and
heard him gasp. Straight ahead, on the road that cut
across the field before us, a German tank was moving
from left to right, a mighty towering structure
indeed, and slow. Then it stopped, dead in front of
us. And a Jerry patrol, perhaps eight men, appeared
from behind it, looking straight in our direction. It
was something you never saw, a bunch of enemy
apparently unaware of you in broad daylight, and SO
close. But why had the tank stopped if not because
Jerry was perfectly aware of us? Well, they might be
thinking that only the house next door was occupied.
After all, they had probably been chased out of it.
So my non-response policy was continued,
especially as the tank rendered defence on our side
useless.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
Very slowly the tank's long gun began turning.
It turned on us. It stopped, dead on us, our house.
We sat utterly motionless. The mouth of a big gun
holds you. We stared into its black hole, without
even thought of resistance. One cannon would do for
us with ease. We were goners. And to our bafflement
that gun turret moved back again, away from us to the
left, and in its leisurely ponderous way it drew to a
halt on the British-held house to our left.
The moment this happened the Jerry patrol ran
forward and lay down in the furrows, conspicuously,
making signs to each other. And they waited for the
tank to send its cannon shot. It fired once, emitting
a white lazy puff of smoke, and its cannon missed.
Then it fired again and was smack on target and our
own house wobbled in the massive crash as a yellow
cloud of rubble went up. Covered by it the Germans
ran forward. They came across the field one by one,
each giving cover to the other, swift, in perfect
drill. It was a model tangential attack. They
disappeared from view immediately below us, closing
on the house at our side. The machine gunner and I
looked at each other and blew out the air as if we
shared the same breath. A reprieve again, not to be


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
believed like all of them SO that you always ask,
Were we really saved or shifted to another life?
Our sentries came and reported that the British
had run out of the other house, some of them hatless,
they had disappeared in the trees of the slope
behind. I dashed to the side-window and saw one of
the Germans stroll out and gaze at the ar rmoured
carrier, moving round it inquisitively. I could see
every feature of his plump face. Why did they seem SO
sure that we weren't here? He would never have
strolled out of the house in such a casual fashion
otherwise.
Why didn't they do a quick recce on our house?
But this, surely, they must be leaving to the dark
hours. They could never risk another daylight
operation. Then why had they risked one just now? And
surely that operation argued that they knew nothing
of our presence here? So our thoughts tortured each
other.
I decided to treat an attack this evening as a
certainty. In that case I must prepare for it. The
enemy tank was principally on my mind-the appearance
of one meant an armoured division not far away. I had


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
to make sure that somehow those tanks were pinned
down.
When the owner of our house went outside to draw
water a Jerry machine-gunner opened up on him with
blue tracer bullets from the house next door. A bad
sign. But it made an attack that evening look more
certain. The farmer lost some flesh off a finger.
Then the bullets came showering over the house,
smashing the windows. So they did know we were here.
We cursed the farmer out. He cowered back to his
hiding place. Civilians rarely had any idea of what
the soldiery was up to. For him we were just sitting
it out in his house. Proprietors who kept to the
darkness of their cellars fared best.
To our bafflement, despite having fired bullets
at us, the Jerry patrol appeared again-right under
our noses, as before, hardly twenty yards away. They
were chatting, huddled together in the natural way we
soldiers had because nature's binding guarantee of
continued life had been withdrawn.
The machine-gunner and I sat gazing at them in
disbelief. We could almost hear their voices. They
had no way of escaping us. We could have had them all
dead in a second. The sensible, practical thing was


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
to kill them. I made a very quick calculation. It was
practical but not sensible. It would bring down
immediate retaliation on us. Tanks would finish us
off, every man of us.
The truth was also that I didn't believe for an
instant I would kill them, I didn't want to do it, I
refused to do it. I saw their families before my
eyes-an involuntary image, I did nothing to call it
up. I put my hand on the machine gunner's arm and
mutely shook my head. No firing. And he nodded. That
was the best thing I did in all my life. It wasn't
strategy on my part. My gunner's quick nod showed he
felt the same. No death in cold blood. A thousand
times in my life, all through these years, I have
offered up thanks for that hand on my gunner's arm.
The Germans crossed the field on the same
diagonal line as their attack, without the smallest
effort to take cover. They got to the road again and
disappeared. But almost certainly they had left a
strong force in the house at our side, and this had
entered the house from the extreme left flank, hidden
to us.
Our Company major had been sitting in the big
room all this time just staring in front of him. The


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
orders he gave came from trembling lips and made no
sense. His voice had all but gone. He sat there with
an almost green pallor, close to the chimney, his
eyes sightless. He was clearly in shell-shock true
and proper. His hands trembled violently. Shell-shock
is muscular paralysis. There is almost no awareness
of what is going on, just a state of blindly staring
shock.
The sergeant-major, legendary for his firmness,
lay under the staircase in a doomed stupor. I had to
step over his body to get to my look-out post and he
hardly stirred. Among soldiers the collapse of one
man's nervous system, especially an officer's, is a
deadly contagion that spreads.
An army cannot stop to attend to such cases. A
stretcher will not be called because the man is to
all intents and purposes still whole.
An army is a vast moving city of destruction and
necessarily it looks away from shell-shock cases. It
has never studied them, never produced a technique
for their management. An army cannot sympathise too
deeply-especially with a state that arises from its
own destructive identity, the deeply unstated madness
at its heart. It might slip, all too fatally, into


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
its own identity. It is why shell-shock quickly
spreads, a miracle virus, seizing the limbs and with
secret healing smile immobilising them.
Thus it was that we no longer looked at the
major, never SO much as thought of him again, or
spoke to him. During all that transpired in the next
few hours he remained where he was near the chimney,
his trembling only accelerated by the noise and
debris, and I think none of us knew what happened to
him afterwards.
In me his collapse induced a certain excitement
(so artfully does war work its mystical charms). I
could take command. I could devise the evening
defence of our position. I trusted myself if I acted
alone. I trusted my own orders because they came from
guidance, not from me. I let them happen.
Then one of my signallers (the same tall youth
who had tried to run away on the mountain) came
stumbling over to me and said, trying to hide his
voice from the infantrymen, Let me go back sir, I
can't go on. His lips were quivering. He couldn't
have fallen better into my scheme of things. I
feigned anger and this anger was another aid for me.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
If the major's lonely staring state wasn't going to
spread I had better do something about it quick.
That tall youth served my purpose. He was trying
to say something to me and I couldn't make it out. I
shouted, What? what?, intending my voice to carry. He
went into a kind of crouching position by my knees
and what with tanks grinding in the distance I leaned
down to him to hear better. The infantrymen had their
eyes on us. I pushed the boy away and yelled, I don't
care who hears this, I don't care if Jerry
hears-you're disgusting to me, I don't want you near
me, I said. Look at you grovelling. Two of my own men
came over and tried to draw him away, whispering to
him. But he persisted, he said he had to be sent
back, his nerves had gone. And I went on saying, Get
away from me, come back when you're human (the poor
soul was being altogether this).
And I wasn't angry. Not in the least. He just
gave me the chance to show an impatience that sounded
like anger. I felt the boy was safe-this was just
his way of taking breath for the next hell, a sort of
surrogate shock. So when I shouted at him I seemed to
be telling him that he was really all right, he would
make the transition.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
And of course I was doing this for the other men
too. I meant the sting of my rebuke for them, for the
simple reason, as I knew, that their spirit had gone
to the dogs. A sense of theatre came over me from my
childhood-I knew suddenly how I should be in this
crisis. I told my signaller, still in a loud voice,
to contact my command post, put an officer on, I must
speak soonest, I said. And when he reported to me,
Officer speaking, I took the mike and said, I want
all the guns of the sector to stand by, repeat all
guns. An attack is expected this evening, repeat this
evening. It will be supported by tanks. I wish to set
up a programme of fire across the whole divisional or
Corps front. All guns were to stand by at sundown, I
said. I myself will give the order to fire, the
target reference I will be giving you is the house in
which we are at this moment. You will fire on this
house. This house is within yards of another house on
our immediate left flank, it was this morning
attacked and reoccupied, repeat reoccupied, and it is
now in enemy hands.
I said I wished to ask the gunners across the
whole front to exercise care in carrying out the
programme. They would have to raise their


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
trajectories very slightly above my map reference SO
that shells would fall as much as possible on the
fields immediately north of us, though some must
inevitably fall either on us or very close.
The word Understood came through from the other
end of the line. Then I waited and everyone else
waited too. By late afternoon my plan was confirmed:
all guns will be on standby by 18.00 hrs. I repeated
this in a loud voice for everyone in the room to
hear. The guns will be on Stand By at 18.00 hrs. The
eyes of every man except the poor commanding officer
were on me. By five o'clock I had worked out the
firing programme and relayed this to my command post.
Then I jumped up and began walking among the
infantrymen. I felt great elation and started
pointing at them and ridiculing them, I did some mock
trembling, I laughed at the way they were lolling and
slumping. I started addressing them. I told them I
can save you if you want me to. I said I can do this
by bringing down heavy fire So near this house that
our lives will be in great danger. Many of the shells
will hit this house. I therefore require your
permission. I have to have your agreement. Will you
risk it? There is no other way. We're in too tight a


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
spot. We're in enemy lines. You have to put
yourselves in my hands. If you do, if you're prepared
to leave everything to me, I will save you, I will
get most of you out of here alive. And finally I
said, You're good men, all of you, SO for God's sake
don't give up.
I was throwing out my voice like an actor and
yet I wasn't acting at all, I wasn't even responsible
for my words-they were quickly fed into my head.
Some of those men might be five or more years older
than I but they didn't seem so. I was taken aback by
the power I had over them, which was the power they
gave me, and it happened without the slightest effort
on my part. It felt like a role that had been decided
on and which I had been awaiting and even, unknown to
myself, planning, and here I was obediently fitting
into it, a stranger to what I was doing, facilitating
it only. No courage happens at such events. You are
simply taken over.
Sometimes your own life comes forward and lets
itself be taken over and you know nothing about it
until it happens, and then, even then, you are a
spectator.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
I seemed to have more energy than all the men
put together and I think this was because, with every
word I spoke, I felt more and more convinced that,
yes, we were OK now (how much easier it is to lead
than to be led). And also I felt that this confidence
of mine was due to the fact that I and I alone was in
charge, I was free and no commanders, no headquarters
controlled this battle, the outcome of which might
even decide the fate of the whole sector. And these
men were making this possible for me. Their assent
was feeding me
They agreed. I made sure that not one man
objected. And this energy of mine also came from my
own simple wish to survive. What we call courage lies
very close to what we easily call cowardice. Neither
word is appropriate to battle. The two words simply
describe two different kinds of shock-the one impels
you to flee and the other impels you to stand firm.
The one grows out of the other. It is like the actor
who sweats with fear as he makes his first entrance
on first night. If he didn't sweat a bit all would be
lost. There is much the same tension in the forward
lines, springing readily from great fear.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
I now had a roomful of eager men who wouldn't
fuss, much less panic. They returned to their sentry
posts as the sun went down. The signaller who had
crumbled not many hours before came over and said,
I'm sorry, I'm all right now. I simply said, Go to
your post.
Most strangely of all, I found I didn't believe
in the success of my plan. I was astonished at this.
I thought the Germans will blow holes in our walls
with their bazookas, throw hand grenades in at the
windows. They will easily, with the implacable
strength of tanks behind them, surround us and take
the few survivors among us prisoner. And somehow this
solid conviction managed to lie under a weight of
total confidence-which confidence revealed itself in
my calm, my good cheer, not my thoughts.
Radio contact started. The count-down from 10 to
zero drew near. Headquarters wanted to know, Will you
take responsibility for the closeness of the target?
Yes, I said, I will take responsibility. I made sure
my voice was heard all over the room. It was almost
nightfall. I waited for the guns to report Standing
By. This took some time as the word had to be
repeated from the guns to each command post on the


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
entire front, and from them further up. When the word
Ready came at last-for this had to trickle down the
hierarchy too-I gave the order Fire.
In what seemed only a few seconds the first
whisper came, then the next, then there was a full
metallic shriek in the sky and the first shells
crashed down just behind the house. Then the second
wave came, the shells began to fly over in choirs,
with a ceaseless thunder that shook the walls and the
men began to shout and the choking stench of cordite
filled the rooms as shells fell smack in the entrance
of the cattle shed and the poor devil on his
stretcher screamed to be brought in-for God's sake
why was he out there at all, what the hell were the
stretcher people doing? But in such noise his voice
made but a murmur, the shells hit our walls causing
showers of rubble, everybody was coughing as dust
cascaded down the roof and into the chimneys. It
seemed to go on endlessly-if I wished I could stop
the firing at any moment, within a minute, even
thirty seconds it would stop but I was waiting for a
sign and at last I heard a shout from a machine
gunner at one of the windows, They're outside,
outside! Jerry's outside!


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
I heard another shout, Fire you silly bastard!
At once a machine gun sounded out and in reply came a
shower of blue tracer bullets from the neighbouring
house, lighting up the clouds of rubble and dust.
Somebody shouted for me and I jumped up, scrambling
across the room-who wants me? who wants me ? A
trooper at one of the windows caught hold of me and
said, A German's just looked in, he stared down my
gun, there's a whole bloody section out there!
The shell-fire was beginning to abate and I
rushed back to the radio and gave the order, Repeat,
repeat. And within a few moments the same choirs came
over, several shells falling together, then a rain of
dozens. Flak was hitting the ceiling and the machine
guns started to fight it out again. Then at last
voices at the windows, with the word that brought
balm and safety and joy and thanksgiving to us all,
Kamerad, Kamerad, Kamerad! and a sentry shouted,
They're got their hands up. Somebody else shouted
back, Keep your gun on 'em! I scrambled to my radio
as the Germans came in, bunched together, anxious to
be among us as we were to have them. I grabbed the
mike and shouted, Stop firing, stop firing, stop
firing.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
And at last the fields outside were silent. We
started chatting with our prisoners and they took out
their photos. We agreed in dumb language that war was
bloody silly. I would have liked to ask them
questions about what they had known of our presence
here but they were quickly whisked off to the rear
echelons.
I was pulled out of the line a few days later
and when I got back to the guns I was asked to write
a description of everything that happened that night.
Our colonel paid my command post a visit and took a
look at me. I was told that writing a description was
the preliminary to being put up for a medal. I didn't
refuse to do it, I simply didn't do it. I had no more
thought of putting down words on the subject than I
had of shooting myself.
I knew of two officers who had written
themselves up after an exploit, and I thought that
was shameful, and they both got their decoration. For
me it was just an ignominious thing to sit down and
Yon ents Itie hen rUn to stac ttae mlt ?
play the reporter with death. Jand also I thought it
was an ignominious way of making an award.
I heard whispers from infantrymen over the
coming months when I was on other F.0.0. assignments.


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
I'd been cited for a Military Cross, they said. They
were certain about it. I think The Major had put it
about, since my informants were from his Company. But
in a zone of non-communication like the army you can
be certain of nothing.
I was proud, excited and as quickly I was
ashamed of feeling excitement. I didn't even remember
my suicide plan, nor did I realise that I had just
fulfilled it, yet without my devoutly wished-for
death.
Thirteen
e were now clearly winning. From June 8th to
July 25th 1944 (no fewer than five years
after the war was declared) the Normandy
coast had been invaded by our allied armies.
Never had preparations for a series of simple
assaults been prepared with such-you could say