INSERTS
For
THEAPE of SORKOWS
and FOR
WAR IN ITAAY
A Wav Legneon Friandis
dragt paes


Guidet HHor'sArohian HQ
mentonatingtet ttay.
Adoftuhers House"


Nr. 1 AUFGANG ZU VERWALTUNG UND BORMANN-BUNKER
SNTRANCE, TO THE ADMINISTRATION AND BORMANN-BUNKER
2 MASCHINENGEWEHRSTANDE
MACHINE GUN POSITION
3 ABGANG ZU BELUFTUNG UND HEIZUNG
: ENTRANCE TO THE HEATING AND FRESH-AIR-SYSTEM
4 HUNDEZWINGER
DOG-KENNELS
5 NOTAUSGANG
EMERGENCY EXIT
BADERAUM FUR LEIBWACHE
HO T E L T U R K E N
BATH-ROOM FOR THE BODY-GUARD
Neben Hitler-Haus
7 TOILETTEN FUR LEIBWACHE
TOILET FOR THE BODY-GUARD
LEIBWACHE
QUARTERS OF THE BODY-GUARD
SPEISEZIMMER
DINING-ROOM
10 LEIBWACHE -
QUARTERS OF THE BODY-GUARD
11 ADOLF HITLER'S BADE-,SCHLAF-, WOHNZIMMER
ADOLF HITLER'S BATH-,BLD-AND LIVINGROOM
12 HITLER'S LEIBARZT DR.MORELL
QUARTERS OF HITLER'S PERSUNAL-DOCTOR,DR.MORELL
13 EVA BRAUN'S BADE-,ANKLEIDE-,SCHLAF-UND WOHNZIMMER
EVA BRAUN'S BATH-,DRESSING-,BED-AND LIVINGROOM
ES FOLGEN: STAATSARCHIV, TELEFONZENTRALEN, KUCHE, RAUME DER LEIB-
STANDARTE BADER U. TOILETTEN. DIESE SIND JEDOCH NICHT ZUGANGLICH.
FURTHER THERE ARE THE STATE ARCHIVES, TELEPHONE-CENTRAL,KITCHEN,
BATH-ROOM AND TOILETS OF THE BODY-GUARD UNIT, WHICH CAN NOT BE
VISITED DUL TO THE LACK OF LIGHTING.


Addena b Ofsms arel wiute
LAS y dekaal.






INDEX
BATILE POSITIONS :
7 The buxe uun I ordend gunfire M
> mh postn-
hcas FAENZA P5.


< agemet lestil
Ilu Hre cossup -
myf. Eha Ca Urole
Imas TTOA Hre eu analis ure
Yeit
few loun, S Bsat
vese wu w en tal Judder slam,
- uhinw ler Les W
Low - d ktter 4-14
stap
anolte prepard lie) - -
- bocose sice a daylire
Iholmit 2 tue kind,tol lagn : avy uu 6 kbe Hhe
hemla 2.a eltrch, u nt Hhe ae-D
3 cp -thel
gadish, lu
tm 2
. ula
alihe te alaned - - clurl stdo
Itre Im umn cauhuir I
Ro L
unnle
a he
ta THtty
fr ucla L ( hs uils tuml
ca ltacl
curs
Le n
pviri 9 tte
clog
Ita
ngny R dire .
Ju )
pha h
hicla
0 cl
kil
c eiflore a Peey L L
lidt -
1 yohl
1 mer
Conce dort
Kae Fipm
T, wide Fonte Ktecle
/ > - ton ek
lte
rereu -
L y cep euouy A
Uhe Le ald
dgle
S a >
den -
belcl
anhn
aile I
bue F
Jan
disate auger
Sk Iihe lue
lsp yo ttimgh
sele
sle
L 3 L
ctoobe
Rplen ttae
A lerf malk The a lu
hen kuon hin


C conh
tranti defer
en racc uxts e
fomal
C D A
Seulisly
ancogrts attalyn )
tet cacophorg 2 sereeclj metel and Tackip Plak and
surake
7 Last - t hidip
tuthe fee Itan
tue helu kas
wsar
MAW
natarl.
Rad d hee uwee 2 seund leutnarb
INSERT 4'z3
ce carrinrg
Henkpunan
3 E
L urirehen uid rtul ( We, Ls pespurylel
tert UL
C C
1 - la at
x A Aochon
I - to Atode B
ralus Hre fass the
: hali
fany
how
Sruyp
ed lsttu dez
dead
Uhice t u also h doy al
Ajy
Iwu ured K tha e
uao d
Uniie L
a P
tun na
alert
afkrn -
Tee calu, lusy ho hea. a C
huld hn lhed gm ke nhnde ihe
acephe
m us pac. + - titt hie Ihad
hrecisu litle h de oth ne I did. Ce
telt
P Lolue ue elze wa, doip s.
alc A
Ruyay
manye reindrckove tm lne Sice
ean
did i belter.
wa aoa ured ktho dead,..
Gnie em
Capta
undotood
hor :
howconirue
a L


INSERT H'A
Copped iv, a W uped k
and
dag.
Lad lepu 7 a Fooji
Heve wa Joue (uestr D Lin ti hac beiy A unup
said
7ake Line, luever usli
Setenal ha
a mpantien alie pwts the tuf A ae
alug a
unre C
Rhu he rct
La Hue hak an d le
difné
5 e
n L
gaus
gpaige
nid Coe hach' d tt
smil
Awrek racht
he uil
tald
- wa tie ul nolods kues
couplaine 1 $ bai - :
TuL He
tezie the Wus a h he
puner
ad- ca selerfiel wound. He died a
A few uomek. ( au glas L Aigyre Lo we all nilu
l he 3 A
'Maughss
att
a few yeen nde Heer luie
a nuell d: Ihnu
Itu u Le - HA tyna A
loy clam Ce
fa a
autens
U 2ulc / - du
suc
sareneg
pr hunbée Mou c relye ee guhe
tot


INSEAT 1672
do 3 kw ou alts? a
Hih IE s A dalie
pren choocs
e a
A my - ev Itie bell.
Br (unstounr tte smt dr) ZE Sosny ) lE'n
aehig dug Craue! Hin and Manyeld
tae creau 2
Aada clie!
Cnue: I Itl d
le vigke!
dow ye a el 2 abudde
SAMBERKY i carhii -
: Acc ne
le - amerted 4 tte pietin.
Z lihe tre
Caulee) Pleer tche C Jeal Srulug!
prictemn Sauly.
7-kiy nob ttie
uo hie >
Ri ek
npey
stany
pritn
amclsi Hul
Saher sih, ie an
ll Jve di ttre bevr vieu) Ahar,
No hsla car. lEI loveb! Ad
Saubay
uerplans.
I cmn ee Bhel ! on, loosenl he Tays - we alway
Ln t Las wail + t
explonin
Ser: Cal get qn
arane jinica Saubes?
Lulans B-0EL im hiteniy the lird - !
ecedaihy:
Ber: mose
con luey a nuillia
biter
Sahs: 2s arei pretio!
ca Lea lae!
Ree k litle nier? (duddes, Bert) Uun's Hla
wmna ursappel H Iwh Ihe 6 la
Crane: fn.'. Conis
Se to ual l tese pitr,
or'i - a ark - avary
a ug
Sptar


WW2 Cahh ( - 2
ina 8B
eh I
9 wwl.
Ryt Kncun
Itee le. 2 Tenef
lourer nue uo we : Are unuld
strel
Ieer 7 denlg, dunts quueh. Rr
way P ul uun
Lld yladia
Itue
3-hedme
à e
H jplu me genlan
Dere lGly + sywol uidbe-can mie, -
elemt
Le x d n'Hi
Hae clone (e
7 tou
peyri du an
mu I . Lotul hn - ltre
Itac
inlel
hilles - de.g It t
had
ulue rel unhin luhc. ce l4
hee tonlid - ttue
L o -
aie uud
lordad ad
tre faleve
tudyy hany
ulr
endila 1 IxinEe iuix
(s2 Juile ital 2
nelnl 2 Lcefitul
7lue Tafuay galle -
Ibe Ioiis (Eelns
cellah
rtre
ueus
tuilp
S uur
Suuih :
hw-clun pufe)
- i wa
weige
Bhure militay
uny, dr
enlal
Tuzce A allale
uinhi o
sapre
W ware. lhre 5 ient tolay
war
kul 2
bhe He n8 uany
grunds
ltn cnld Ue
in Hui
K i Itala, milal A


) L lta hiu urd eu
Aer cn Itue Lali
L - un
tel
Mai - end
Hae
hyes - Y - - (
I Le uln trd tlac lEa
hal bl Itue wr, c lys hounp
hagnume
J cune A vur nerl Ie
le nmlj lleis kid D y a ttue uenpyes
ulel be denl - S ttu tauie
ca lue
atiiln alg v uidel ttue
lt hiel lnol
kh Itre Slug ul lte meilive brey wr
n tte hend Co Lld Ur a juratud
t Itre luple dos ttre flyy
ee C
al Ite >acifiie
Toes Ite glyg cd e efrie ad,
SM co ur uh, er lEljul, Ju -
(eee s
18-26gur nd aclus ned
uo dus
knti enl, andl uee Lo L 2 2
Itan
culg.
L frel ur n7 lt uld Chs
hant 2 i
Onne ua
Ml the Srate vey
hytz 1 K i
a C c ceyienl huua a
eur vuenlae ENlh han collhed Kdae
gul - - cerl tt a the the fclialon 2 lie,
tile A l-en Til leede Itue -8TICh umlle


WW2 Canusl Co unl 7 ttue astert ' WWI
5 Iue rud ud
the
had ls
heve
myue cnonl
tie lies
Paadd H Beice uel teac
hed lsle tr pellled Wy
yetor
du E
heub devon
edttes
aiti
couics,
AL csAE casrana Acel
- Iuin task uce lle
eeureilt
banth
fuirs 1 fom
Loe ael. Y
lte pois 7 gerin. Benhony E de -
PAT
ett ealier
7 E
ardel
encuy 9) a war Tue cald Ce
hin heer
Veled, aud Iayors an adat euoug 2 Clurel YI
hi vatid volle
unth
unce
Mrcetet
tece
giad,
>auf the VARC Peace
Wa fy
I - Isoe and
past,
Clurlilt, Aporei ly
4 a
pels .
perg
STing
left
howlipt
lu lis - C es L
tre
- Iieeliere
hopeo
i tue
bed.
meayau
tenta
Tue lalur pans
ivitd lt o a
suere wey ral
gnemuer
soraannt
E tatut D
lela
coe GlG
auriuat. kantrk
asud Ssd -
waptda hi
0 lal
LuuT
Ara kike C Hand azlathgnt v
# ckre
3 ( (ole
Lot
He de.6
e Bde oy
pesce
pars
& peotphlisa puilugaut L iclud
ueulus P2 f.. -
fnuls P
Lr 2 t -
TV -


witiai
penasu h tey Uhile
Atirnie
Lyylad:
adamals pue a n ttul Le war ho L
te merhel
au teyy Srature + Jhatcw
LG 3m
dautti hoo. - ia Sudrlud fly up hoat
hi plist war alre-l fel te
PEL i tae ai degili fenels
fef-
Dluzket A
i >aid the E
-feep
oth Lo i Iae Sikmki plan)
Quii, a ttue ne Iau -
Facet
aad
urole velestions
de lulle apreak
L a 3 a alwoy euclos ATt
21 a covesk
Way T tue xiple rcim Ttul do ue
pispe ullnot staud T - ure 2
fue ler: y ty hold peamel prileny
L burkdo Do Gaull mamnuf esely
2 1 Kert wa nuddurg 'snok doun' - i ( blane (
u jis lold U
C h aue
ier
Portyre)
alo camid ca la Juo Imeed lihe, elureil. Cr
heve leanedt ute
fr tue io 3 a: -FRy 7
k Swede (tie ceh d
+ IHEL)
da the
C SuscA
ERE
dulue kued ) accdee
lard
Kgiyloat, Uhive loss had dolo ce Iheilt
Rlu-1- ttul lefol Clurell otu
Sikorski,
wc uustic be arpure


The tall haystack in front of the house caught fire
from some 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
aed auddud
to the kitchen- when evérything 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.
o o
Come-in, come in, we shouted-venire, venire!
Which onlymade hër shriek the louder. And then, just
doun
aa moment before the haystack began to tumblejan old
man and a boy dàshed out, then came the rest of the
O C o
family and without ado the old man, after a moment's
6 C
thought, took to his legs which were suddenly
- A o
and in a flash was behind the house and down
youthful
oothe hill with all the familyf including-the old women
sereamig
and children and the girlo (Funning after him, It was
the first and last we saw of them. The person who
ugittishe
invented the joke that-when
we as
been-destreyed-by Atelear
there WI
be One
survivor, - an
a aAr knew something
Yut
how.
The hay continued to burn sulkily/ The Bren
gunner Aableft his gun pointing at the castle as


R42: Tue
hi Crue,
2wmn
elta
um uwurd Rininil the smAuy cl av
wen iN lefle flurk,
Apa i htthe (Ruz) tunld
wmuid Ck tas suouldiy doran
trlme
A miik 2
Stai I U
te deuminal
eueus I lememion
he Biu du mine 1
1 Conue
gruts Ite Muers 1 om
lunld
Jer thu ta tie wy lag sspnled Lcen
ou U -
tnu Ha
hu nun - -
tuy
u uus Hae douri Egfu ) hiuen
i tunar I I
Rasfs Ll in Ucau
1 unlale
the pen. 1 Bens
h Io
tr nn L mon asefil
Smees- wep,
urel E gail
Aral enicn C ttue lhi. lehay U


S6tat ter un ller
kre
punati Mald Uine ctr
lun clar
a a sil,
mel; l ttue eeailia atie
ad ale
Ruml


ADDENDA faom OF SNs
ArD
WINTER:
S Salano: tinu uonenles R6. Cyonia a *e8 iunee
ul the benche, 2 Solens Tho Jine asily hner
tavre P.(Dunir ney Training u
hovice. 1) -fts
w uovet l
CAVA DEI TIRRENI: 24
guu
alme. (R9)
hou the
Jums A M See S8 beloo Dorats 2
2 VATURNO NB
tol PI4
mp 'seval'
muen
C s
Ser BeLow
Toi-laeA
Cava dei . I imaii
agt bonhauina 1.15
te a las O
iphiyton placennt
A alo
hot deruibel -
Cne
hit.
A K2 II st
Te Kur ++ the Ccochres) Majm Jun we cald ioe C
uit coltay nendffalso nee Frengs?), P. a4 a tie 19-pu
na cays,a Majin coelong di. Hwms 31 le
enldil gonpe the att-cl..
l wa krlld. 6f tem?
Benipis ) Foo, P.2 Cellidnt uean tajie n Lo.
6 Tue fembms uec lied a: 8.2g/201he 14.00 han
loulnduet : I do uol uentin nro me
aneca day
The moaly te me srattnd. IL wan amagir howclote
k ded dedg nmmad udl deet
yeb Uhe ttue
mote, Mercl
codite dicel
Tpicet
lihefor
e taennuis
ufp
NAE dredu, Aeluh
Atue fool bmag lle 'H He
coupary
kand boouphur a (( wer ueeheat
anfoo
Te Volkno Operation. P.46.
gl SALERNO: P.A9 cnere Le Leel
ttimo Linrep khe guunt
aol Dcemed ls tams dusceptoon.
7'Cernela" 1
the Guarh'eiu? P.49 "fel. 1944 /I
imerti
Mrna KA pill Mnl'e Cairo


ADDENDA ARoM OF SINS AN WITER
o SA LERNO 1 Ite Min talks l meia snu853
CAVA DEI TIRRENI- 2upar 253
2 I MY hAST REBEHLION 11 DEc. 1944
R54
(URONE1843)
Rewiile ondden nge. hord stwer 1u willesd Lul wo podily
Atzurd MONTE CERASOLA ( a twdag bafm Cluryluna
P.55. Cenmanhve I Re leave te
. ntau TD58
Me Atus Puik 4 guw ue dead P.57
141 CERASOLA
Fnr lasr pan P.60 lT RL2 Als. lan batt
2.63 We ur ohelled Sm oun A uuse hue prins vhpune. :
1.64, R.65 a ngull wm awn, I mekhi elc.c. P66 -P67
lau clevcr nt tuds nfe
pmder terute tup ce
chose tw lue, utie ) han
I= do ath CL
POST-
Lyr
DPLLOEE CRRASOLA Uhelcau MIT Frul :
Ras a kid 2 pat -Tenw U Li hiaac
Lerui ryma
powd-
riotar uith toreldiy n-shal I 267/68/62 I we ae rudd-
culy toker nt
ttre linek Resphs
1) Casiney 20p61 las po170/
12) CASTEL POCGIOLO - P.73
To PB
lwar astmisnel HE L0 uo me
polud ue
ttais LESE
fke tnutt nee
tum
heuad tue Ilodud reiltu
clueld uo a ua he w ce
uuce cloe ( ceilthod,
spciep d fenin Phers,
hyg lrede allocsace, kusury
Ite wa i a
AMngh aaliser


NB CAPTAIN MAUGHAM
amud Cenis? ITarcany?
ADDENDA fRom of SINS ANDUINTER
JEURUM
18 The
winnisthe RiiwP P.1ofmis calle
Hue noxt
gustm' agts Ite e Shure, 7 the e 3 - a If loyk in Gumas
hier. Nate couhs ttacks' Hal tinwvad
nher lu
ko Jhe nula kve hee
I ueary
oplpu -upypralu
leodyi srailu il CL uslefendes Anslui.
I I
munto soun
ls he :
hesve,
hicce Ihe tleore 2 Ita Btel C A La
bee decmlzi t gellurs 3 tue
lFrulle
Ylance
Were cue, -
to Itue ceinitai Lo di
L thl
hoxt idiolre
Wr a alLa ueinzhe ec a bup ulpl
leyadi (h Jhs
pitn 2
papras ther
wen Gonng, Polad,au, Biva neB uoe, Juur wn Rural) e
: Lens clse.- Henis. God? I Huc Case Oscar Cilele 3 ca
ee rfy niae Una he >aial -tee Cryid, i creaki lunoen d tha
li mep-RIc ut hi haul. RE-READ
A P.103 iitk teongs "gui wn ku: pur ) te
Ns yutis mid
*Rgeih No, supur & V.- lrr
Xlis L Lo Hal Loc tue
Rigtth any C Vodd tue velu sid ) tre Aes-lt kiinh, te Stt Any
te maritinmnnds. RE - READ (f details nel a te
lmer no guget uv ne)
Re-read
d details


Fok CASJINO
llly
SATILS
khe
tae Jihhhund
Tixan,
Apert
gta
Lhe unU
CAML2 iingis hefals Iny urebon
nuulus 7 uer Caurs aH lo
7 erape war HL Hue anhsnit) ASera
65M HJal Drnisi Shie dee uend l
enxixe uory 2 lEenacss So had
latle expui. Mrtymn Gl
Matpme
ceured tuy Ulta 6 eicryh blrei
9 C Cremen menure Jii phoerd tere
ui Smgro
le s Hul dicai; Lole
hand, 21 5 C
à - unll dry a, ut
undegs 7 une uggi.
Muln
nlerd
a lamre 1 Ara prot F anhotec ttul Jent nu
fos
m dix ttro wsan Shell
and
mas 2 te gute cave lanlled Les 1 (
teeir duy- ul
A lattiliis imohe! i
ni lite larm. i nte uml bunrche
tue
lotue - a
T pud dap
puny
aily
Ma ty
tur nul dou 4
solduin
thue 2ADirrnn tee
Ryh wny.


A wor
Seheen
freuy
Sexln
worfave
refalt3


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
anywhere, even the latrine. He was beginning to bald
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. We quickly
discovered how devoted we had each been to the
Struggle against Fascism, Artypdsnn me/agerf
founteen That-was the vast left-wing movement of the
bhiv
Thirties, 1 K had stretched right across Europe.
I told him how in 1940 my girlfriend K. and I
Qug
had marched up Whitehall in a crowd of100.000 people
yelling Down With Chamberlain and Chamberlain Must
Go. Yes, it was we of the Struggle who had put
Churchill there. He was hoisted up on our sole
3 Co
shoulders. This was very much 'our' war. SQ why did I
carp about being in it?
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


MAURICE ROWDON Forward To The Death
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
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


ANAR BETWEEN FRIENDS
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.
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
bul 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 moulh 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 nul snug and smug for its defenders. with wriggling lues and
humped houses clutched together in a centuries-old solitude, but a nut which
evenifyou desiruy ed it siune by Liune ui ie by te culd: remmiin udeed
assert itself infinitely- --as the nut too deadly to approach, and beyond human
powen t infiliate.
And not even this was enough. The sleepy nut was accompanied, even
dominled, by i gieuie cnl more imposing und espevially reinfonved SIt dal
covered the summit of the hill and would require an arsenal of nuterackers to
breuk :. yei ruL juci is bwesi sii Caninu, ieediie
ofhei
sweetness- -more. the very cause of her lazy presence here, being no less than
i E.
spiritual end by resisting foreign invaders from the south, a Keeper of the
Vatican's Southern Gate, so to speak.


A NAR BETWEEN FRIENDS
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 ofit, 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 ofit, stretched along the Garigliano river in its
Mediterranean reaches to its tributaries in the east, the Liri and the Rapido,
close io Cassino. Namely a delence position sei there by nalure with such defl
attontion to dctail that the Bencdictinc monks WCrC no morc in nccd of arms
than archangels were.
Often they weren't even there Once they were ahsent 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 tu de sC and he wuS tumed back by a dreum 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 hut destroy for ever.


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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,
lo give him full command ofllalian operations. And not only this. He
undertook to increase Kesselring's strength with what remained of Rommel's
army in North Africa.
Hitler made his decision on November 21st 1943, just as we were
preparing to move up from the Volturno ared.
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 Wis somelhing 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 frum the
northern banks of the Volturno to a tiny hill-top town called Sessa Aurunca,
which look its name from the Aurunci mountains that placidly gazed at it
across a valley of flat green land.
Frum Sessa, ds 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


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protector, running before it and reduced from our point of view to a curling
thread of mirror.
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 thal 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 urmy booklet wamed us thai, while a people of
great affability, they could on occasion be treacherous.
What the booklet didn' t tell us was that Italiis lnnd fruternity piunivu
them at birth, whatever disprezzo or malicious aforethought lurked in them. In
over. Kisses and smiles were exchanged and anything more secret was
elders and us commissioned officers. We officers only heard reports- -the girls
passing the time of day with us when they saw we didn't bite and were exactly


AWARE BETWEEN FRIENDS
like those vile Germans, namely cosy and cheerful and humane. You could see
the relief on their faces.
Among the tantalising cries ofjoy 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
pul it down to 'the bromide they put in your lea' ' - 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 litile lown of Sessa I felt sad to be an officer. I rarely saw my
men unless they were on duty, SO deep were they in surrogate family life. And,
thuugh nothing was said (in the army nothing is Suid ubuul iliinvsi
as second lieutenant came quickly to realise that he must never become
vyuuvivus willi Ciiici iuiins Ui
Hici Vitiins tiiiti
my room yearning for the laughter I heard coming from the cellars. And my
listen).
that in a dangerous spot I could bring things to a good conclusion. I thought


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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 bul I still laxed 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 hadn't been an omen for the
fulure- -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
iny inissions wouldn't look askance at me as the one who look them by a nasty
turn of fate into the thickest shit of all. And of course I feared this in myself
iuo. Iijusi stCiiied tu iiic that the Uniciis SU far weren'igoud. It was i ti uf
worry I was never without.
One morning I walked down to the foot of Sessa' 's steep hill in the
bracing early sunlighi. Ilere, in a small group ofhouses at Funte RoiLu, which
bridged a little rivulet from the Garigliano, we had put our guns and installed a
hind uf comand post. The guis were under camouflage nicis 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


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said, I saw your name in an officer-list and thought I'd drive over and see how
you were. We 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 al each olher. 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
evacualed from London because of the bombing. It gave us our firsi tastc uf
wholesome air and silence. For the first time I started doing well in exams.
Tlcy gui iit iv Cafuid. Aud Guidun gui iu Cumbiidge. liis fiisi luve was
already his wife. Of course he knew my girlfriend K. and I pulled out the
pinviu. Ile uuked ui it withi wiit I tuuk tu be ilulciiay iilisgiving. Feilupslic
knew the truth, or thought I didn't.
Tie piaus aluve sudiculy biuhe fiviii cacli vilici uiid ficw inupposiie
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


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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
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 ersalz coffee and her half-starved stale had
something to do with it. I gazed at the bombardier's face wobbling with
disillusion. Ile 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
Iad a wonderful bright directuess but he would have IUIIE ofher. Ile was
lucky, I suppose, to have kept his Civvy Street disgusts. They were due to be
blown away.


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Four
n Intelligence picture of how the enemy was feeling in the Aurunci mountains
and on Monte Camino trickled down to us. They were well-clothed for
Amountain extremes and commodiously dug in with regular food kitchens on
secure supply lines.


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The same could never have been said for us. It 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
matters. Not even by the end ofl December had it 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 was at this moment bogged down in rain and
mud and blocked by swelling rivers. His big attack on November 20th (the day
before Hiller gave Kesselring full powers) ran into bad trouble, though he had
five times the strength, in men and munitions, of the Germans facing him. His
advance from the southern lip of Italy had been cautious in the extreme, which
Hitler took note of Montgomery complained that no effort was made to
establish contact between his army and our Fillh. This was really a complaint
about General Alexander, commander of Italian operations, whose job it was to
bring unity to a situation that promised disarray. In the Alexander Clurk
Montgomery combination alone you had three biological opposites---an
English uristocrul iii Alexunder, i Liisk Eiblicul liinii in Munigumery und u h uryhically
X ase Texan in Mark Clark so different from the other two as to call for interpreters.
Eut eveii te ulinusi Cuntuct coull ultei authing ofu teiruiii taut culled
solely for stealth units. To try to pass a huge concourse of men and armour and


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supplies along provincial pot-holed lanes that wound uphill and downhill
damned whatever strategy you might choose.
The Big 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 they were. The normal margin of error in shell-delivery was also much
increased in mountainous conditions by the varying air currents and pressures.
And the very thinness of the enemy line (a few men in command 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 excellent cover. The shells found not earth but
stone, and did their worst in empty air.
The first F.0.0. mission our ballery 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 because any bombardment of a ridge got
our own troops loo.
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 pul on as
much heavy clothing as we could get together and started on our trek.
Afler 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


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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 (as Giordano Bruno said of this same landscape over a half a thousand
years ago, and was roasted alive for it and other divine attributions to material
earth).
This was still ancient Italy, a last appearance perhaps, and we the
harbingers of her future dissolution.
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
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 bul il 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'l
he buried? It didn't occur to me that he may but recently have been blown into
the air, already dead, then halfburied in the fountain of earth. And who was
there to see to burials on slopes inaccessible to vehicles?
We looked back once more 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


A WAR BETWEEN FR RIEN ND DS
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 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 liny drifl 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 liny command post, under a massive julting rock. A Bren
gun was mounted to one side ofit to provide any covering fire that might
suddenly be needed al the ridge.
The Guards were in somewhat somnolent mood. They told me you have
to be careful how you slep over the pebbles because they aim al noises. At the
ridge the Germans were SO close you could hear them cough. So at the ridge


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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 palh home,
his feet splayed out in that questing way of his, his men shuffling behind him,
glad lo 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 lalked 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. Morlar-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


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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 frequently either. My
men and I were also nervous about having nowhere to put ourselves except in
the open. I chose aj position low on the slope, below the Guards command post,
where we'could build a defence of small boulders against bullet at least.
The Guards were preparing for another attack that evening. When I had
finished settling us in our little roofless half-circle home I 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, Ifyou
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.
It was when a hand-grenade came over that you realised how close they
were, lying exactly like us, a few inches from the top. My Guardsman began
lalking aboul 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 oul 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 away and of course Jerry fires at the voice, and as fast


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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'tyou?
The attack didn't come but the heavy bitingly cold rain we feared did.
My men and I began to shiver in our sopping 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 socks were sponges and our half-circle home a
running stream. 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.
We slept without moving all night long, in a warmth like summer, in all
that water, which must have warmed with our four bodies. And we rose in the
first merciful sun to put on our drenched clothes and in the next few hours we
stood steaming as the heat rose to midday fullness. The blue dome of the sky
came down and touched us. The rocks steamed and then gleamed and by the
end of that day, after we had made a fire behind a wall of boulders and cooked


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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 is warm
and still.
Next 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 there with a smile,
actually standing at the very top, and he told me, They've asked for a 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 slowly up to a distant stony horizon,
and there before me, about fifty yards down, a small 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!, 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 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


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twym
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 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 command post was
empty. I took my men down to a narrow defile between high white rocks where
we hugged the walls to avoid the flak. There was talk of our having breached
the enemy line.
In a sudden lull we moved again and came across an officer and seven
or eight ofl 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 just
as I was. I was itching to move on and could see he was too. Ifyou keep
moving you have a better chance (why you cannot specify).


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We 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 ofyou? 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 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 him- -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 had been chatting to earlier. He and his men were
sitting side by side on a huge tree trunk and they were looking up at me. I


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noticed as I came further down that they were beginning to stare. One of them
nudged the officer and he too looked up at me, staring. Their expressions were
ones of shock. They stared harder and harder as I came close to them.
But we saw you! the officer called out to me. 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, with a smile. But I was strangely
unconvinced, as if death could come and go and the dividing line wasn't strict.
And I also found 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?
But then, I thought, ifyou can go in and out of death it must be easy for
the new life you find yourself in to provide you in a flash with all its memories
SO that you never know if you've been translated into another life or not.
And then all of a sudden my thoughts on the subject ceased, and were
finished and done with. And I was left with my life as it was, new or old. I


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thought instead of the man whom they had mistaken for me, he who had died
in my stead.
It appeared that our line hadn't moved after all. We hadn't penetrated
their western flank where I had done my stroll.
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 ifJerry isn't enough'. . I
snatched the mike of my radio and said, Stop firing, stop firing, but the shells
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 paltry chit-chat. I returned to our stone warrens relieved to be
back, under the blue pristine dome that made light ofit all.
I was getting bolshie. There was nothing for an F.O.O. 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


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the spit in my mouth to aim it at him but I swallowed it again and found I had
no real intention of doing it. 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 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 Ijoined 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 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
ofl 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


AWAR BETWEEN FRIENDS
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 earth I pulled out my revolver I couldn't fathom even at
the time. I suspect some delirium was present on that mountain.
The 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.
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. Imade 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.


AWAR BETWEEN FRIENDS
We heard later 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 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
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
mountain training. We all knew that the Goums, as these Moroccans were
called, would 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 Goums made a deep impression on our army commander-
as being entirely unconcerned about the matter of death. But that was where it
had ended.
As we now know, General Juin sat in a jeep with General Clark for quite
a long. journey at about this 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 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


AWAR BETWEEN FRIENDS
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, Eir marochini, dove sono? where are they?
Because the Goums weren't (yet) used, the Fifth army 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.


AWAR BETWEEN FRIENDS
Five
emoved 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
Wdeepgratitude 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 offl 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.
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


A WAR BETWEEN FRIENDS
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', 9 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.
They were all experiencing the daily gnaw ofh 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.


WAR BETWEI SEN FF EN DS
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 ifit 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
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.


WAR BETWEEN FRIENDS
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 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.
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


WAR BETWEEN FRIENDS
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 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.


A WAR BETWEEN FRIENDS
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 pocket. She was Viennese, the
daughter of a woman who had led a communist revolution in Hungary. I
remembered that mother's soft patient voice. She had steel-grey eyes but her
softness overrode their steely single-mindedness. 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 she was really my girlfriend, which she wasn't. We had said a last good
bye on a London railway station. But I needed her now as my lucky talisman. I
didn't care about deceiving myself (and others), it was easy.
1 - Ifelt bolshie all of a sudden -in the lonely manner of the reinforcement Istal
who hasn'tyet joined his crowd. L asked myself what am I doing in this bloody
war anyway? All we had ever known about it was that it was suddenly on. We
just found ourselves in it. A bolt from the blue, without a by your leave or
explanation. It didn't sound right even when it was being announced on the
radio by the prime minister/ Neville Chamberlain's voice wobbled as if the
euen
matter hadn't been thought about at Which it hadn't, seeing that war was
gop
declaredito protect the independence of Poland/ which the French armies,not
SO say the British ones, couldn't possibly reach. So the minute the declaration
was made (with Churchill's gleeful assent) Polish independence was lost at
once. Clurlill's A ca vechmup IWa
a noaddta


Notae cu
a . I
dicli
kusw
D2umla
six wechn huckiy
ttui il te Salemo bece. lerute
Sna
Kit
dilota
detao 3


WAR IN ITALY
BAARMMRARIR
MAURICE ROWDON 2008


ANAR BETWEE EN FRI IE DS
SAMARY
One
- V S7
We 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. We were reinforcements---urgently
needed. It was September 1943 and I was twenty.
udlains
These beaches had been invaded by the American Fifth Army, some
A n"
days before, on September 8.4twas-dn-umexplained-surprise for us tobein-an-
American-armybutwe-thoughtofitasakindofexotic-privilege.
Not that the Fifth Army was really American. It was just what we called
it. And what its commander Mark Clark, who was from Texas, called it.
Officially it was the Allied Fifth Army, meaning that its troops came from
every part oft the world.
ila
Y ud
Arplor
We sampled't their food on the two-day journey to the virgin white and
yellow-sands of the Algeriancoast. We gasped at theturkey and/jamthey musla
scandalously deposited side by side oneur trays, without our ritual greens and
gravy-Who could have dreamed that, leavinga"Scottish port in a crammed
trooper ship and being escorted through the Straits of Gibraltar by smaller craft
whieh we could see all round us from the decks, we would land SO to speak in
America?
fnethe X
a6V
Net ane -
eva
Asermh
Wej jumped down into the shallow wash, were required to make no
splashing noises as we waded to shore in the deepening twilight of a hot
autumn day. The trees higher up, even the fig trees, cast quickly deepening


AWAR BETWEEN FR RIENDS
shadows and if we turned and looked back to sea we could comfort our eyes
on the destroyers and landing craft at anchor that carefully watched over us.
Yet the hush was perplexing. MAAAM
We reached those beaches, in war dialect, on D+8, that is to say on the
16th of September, namely eight days after the landing. I had the first pip on my
shoulder as a second lieutenant and I had a photo of my girlfriend in my upper
as as bossilt
left pocket, that closelto my heart.
We reinforcements (told to keep our voices down) went to our various
Ccth tmy stvela. 2 Beeca
assembly points/ The captain who welcomed me -with a nod as if we already
knew each other -was modest, pleasant. Then after my second salute he
turned away as if to say we don't need polite exchanges here.
The gunners were grimy. That was another perplexing thing---why were
they here at all, since artillery belongs far behind the forward lines/Buti if this
HT tacr erafe e
beach was now far behind the lines (I had already comforted myself thatitwas)
why were we hushed quiet by higher officers, as if the enemy could hear us? I
began to think that it was a military exercise. After all, the army could get up to
the strangest antics, everybody knew that.
And then there was the fact that the Germans would soon be pushed out
of Italy, they were caught in a trap and were fleeing as hard as they could. We
this
had already decided that in our stifling bivouacs in the Algerian desert. Italy
was just no use to Hitler, being a narrow peninsula too cramped for fightingi
d7y
pparnt * aB A N
and with hundreds of miles of coast which we allied forces could invade/at the
drop of a hat.
trm ttuse


A WAR BETWEEN FRIENDS
idead
We were badly wrong. Yes, Italy is, Mostly a very 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 could be
under enemy observation (as I quickly found out). But this made it easy to
und
gince
defend and the very devil to attack/IfHitler wanted to lay waste our armies at
on ttie Ntis ha
h p,
little expense to himself, this was his chance. Barthen he needed all his armies
to face the Russians---and the allied invasion of Normandy which he knew
was imminent.
These small, sensible and mistaken arguments crowded into our minds
to explain the hush that lay over Salerno.
I saw corpses in the distance. They were close to the last wash of the
waves. Exactly as they had fallen. They were ours. I thought they were an
unlucky exception. But the way they had of remaining there--somehow they
kept plucking me by the sleeve! And I looked again and again.
Isaw
As darkness gathered I walked uphill to where the trees began/d large
hushed group of men standing close together. As I came nearer I noticed that a
Brigadier was at their centre, addressing them. I could see the red tabs on his
Speaieiu
shoulders. He was tatking in a low voice. I thought it remarkable that a
brigadier should be addressing Other Ranks man to man. That was a
lieutenant': S or captain's job, a major's at most.
The Brigadier was saying in his careful murmur, almost a whisper (we
had to gather closer to hear), Jerry's right behind me on the other side of this
lane (it lay between trees a few feet away). He said, you're going to stop him


I 2h 0
wcl
A BETWEEN FRIENDS
VALSA
HAR
(& uxTen
the Jn
A erilen
Grumbling to myselfI remembered the recruiting interview I'd had in a Sue
wus i py fnv
little Oxford room. The man facing me was disarmingly differential. Would I
fight in this war?
And when I said yes I was surprised at myself---it didn't seem my own
decision. But it was. Unhesitatingly. I was going into this war because of the
Nazi concentration camps. This alone made the war different from all others--
it was justified.
lcry Hu e wgr be
m ad)
Ruow
Bat Whatt thatdeclaration of Wàr did was to trap the Jews inside Hitler's
unicli
how
kow
regime (it stretched as far as the Ukrainey
And this for six
Truy
long years. Little did we know that Churchill would one day agree that this
A lcy
i C 4
declaration was tragically ill-judged' . At the time he was elated by it. It would
uny
be a 6-weeks war, he said.
hoa
w d ttrr
I strolled back to where the fruit trees were, the last of the day's hot sky
lighting my way. I began looking for somewhere to put my sleeping bag (being the
loar
a gunner, not an infantryman, I had no watch duties). I chose a soft leafy place Csinal
right under a plump fig tree, overlooking the fact that, this far south, figs ripen Gcirn
early and fall from the branches with a plop.
wok
But when, breaking from the sky like a monstrous hot breath, there came timghrs
hin
the sound of what seemed an engineless plane crashing to earth, followed at
unele
Kiston
once by a thunderous metallic crash near by in the woods, I thought perhaps
this isn'ta training camp after all, we aren't behind the forward lines after all.
soldi i
Another heavy one came over and another. And had I been seasoned,I
might have thought that these were the prelude of an attack.
prer bt hulal
puail elci i
decidts K ttie l
nt Ihned
d tal arin
dcad-
lindeis, Ite tou
AuR -
to wi lm,
swn ki
SELF-AETINCINy


A WAR BETWEEN FRIENDS
vezhicall, dpt too
Small mortar bombs began coming over in quick succession. These
were preceded by a loud thump when expelled from the cannon (from just
Thez Loce bouul X almor re vertiely, Lo Ih
across the little road). They came down-en-you vertically, with hardly a
warning swish. They brought changes in the air-- from warm to stifling.
Then darkness came with the characteristic Italian swiftness. The firing
stopped. No attack came. At last we could hear the silence that rightfully
belonged to this beach and the woods that watched over it. It was like an
exchange of whispers.
Italy was still in its pristine mediaeval state at this time, her slopes and
copses and streams in secret close liaison with the sky, a liaison we were to
live with for two years.
hfetrdrowsy Islipped down inside my sleeping bag, that little womb I
was to carry unwashed to the top ofl 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. And as I dozed a certain nervousness gathered in me, a
foreboding that stirred sleepy feathers of fear inside.
The possibility ofl being trodden on by Germans in the night didn't occur
to me, though 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 thick little purple pools, one of them on my brow. As for my new
sleeping bag the stains would dye it for its lifetime. I picked myself up and
stumbled with my kit to another fig tree and there I fell asleep, as if moving


AWAR BETWEEN FRIENDS
had done the trick. Even my belly-feathers of fear went, my slumber an
expanse ofstillness of the kind you wake from suddenly---and utterly fresh.
With 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 and when he laughed you could see his slightly buck
teeth. 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 home. The captain and I quickly discovered how devoted we were to
the Struggle against Fascism---words that covered a vast left-wing movement H ha
once stretched right across Europe, with the Soviet Union as its-chierignide,
Bhilosopher and supposed Fiend."We Strugglers had a lot to do with starting
this war. I proudly told Captain H. how I had walked up Whitehall with my


AWAR BETWEEN FRIENDS
girlfriend and a hundred thousand others yelling Down With Chamberlain and
Chamberlain Must Go.
lu fact,
chewar.
Yes, it was we ofthe Struggle who had put Churchill there. We hoisted lii
S k pedk.
up on our sole shoulders/His own party would have had grave doubts. Here
lais hesguddou
was as right-wing and war-minded man as you could find-- in a love affair
with the left. So this was very much 'our' war.
Still sleepy, I wandered away from our command post up the hill to
where Texan infantrymen huddled in their hastily dug slit trenches. They
seemed surprised to see me, watching me from below, as who wouldn'tto
witness a youth strolling about an observed area. 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, with all six feet of me exposed. They said, You British uilp'
must have war in your blood, it's like you're on holiday. Charitably, they didn't
tell me I was a bloody fool. Yet I had already, quite unawares, learned
something. The evening before, I'd seen men throw themselves to the ground
when a big one 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 talking affably. I was glad to be thought
ap pre-packaged soldier. 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 the last unthinkable hell that did for them. hen alway tou
Captain H. filled me in with a clear strategic picture of what was
finttu up tt me) A
happening. Our division was in charge of Salerno the town/ while the enemy
tkn Phrey casrid h. falwe loyv 2 ttei felé
Lar


A WAR BETWEEN FRIENDS
was still in control of several roads leading down to the coast, i.e. to us. So they
frm
were in a good position to cut us and the Texans offsupplies of either
ammunition or food (in that order of importance).
Salerno was ill-chosen as a landing place. You could see why on the
map. A big force could be throttled just by the terrain, its flanks and retreat
with the w Y
Cre
U ubth
exits squeezed with ease! What we didnot know was that our army commander
nol mlg
Mark Clark wanted to pull out of Salerno but--because of the consistently high
casualty rate---the entire Italian campaign. Yet he proved to be the chief
ta Cres
fut
instrument ofthe-vast-tetlofdead-andwounded-and-shocked-in-that-campaign.
Fheugly-faet-was-that-the-Germans-held-the-dice-all.the.wayuup.the
Italian-peninsula At this moment we had the 16th Panzer Grenadier division
facing us, their task being to keep us from our objective, the road to Rome, for
as long as possible. 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 defence of Italy.
d seen
Hitler saw at once that such a terrain could be defended economically
and attacked only at great cost. This was perfectly illustrated 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, being acutely
Hetler
intelligent like SO many unbalanced leaders, hereckoned he could prolong this
agony all the way up the peninsula. He took one gamble--that his enemy might
be as intelligent as he. But he need not have worried.


AWAR BETWEEN FRIENDS
We were aware of none of this. From-our-point-ofvicwwe-were-simply
advancing upanarrow.-peninstule-and-itdependedsotely on us whether we did
this-fast-or-slowly. As for Captain H. and I, two bright buttons of the Struggle
against Fascism, we didn't even cotton on to the truth by slow degree. We thus
shared the principal self-disabling delusion of the entire polyglot army that
Churchill had got together with reckless zeal---New Zealanders, Indians,
Moroccans, Australians, Canadians, Poles and Frenchmen and Americans and
Russians (yes, even Russians kept a presence in Italy), tre La
- t - nsttup
Haus
One man planned every movement made by this vast concourse and he
wasn't on our side. Even at this moment Kesselring was ordering his army to
make a teasingly slow disengagement (as he himself called it) from the
Salerno area to the difficult river Volturno, north of Naples, where he was
planning our first big casualty-toll.
Kegsalmny >
And Hitler was paying attention to higevery move. The more we
(45 fl es
entangled ourselves in theKessetring traps the more hé was impressed by
fall
Kesselring as the right man to be commander-in-chief ofItalian operations.
Solely for this reason we on the Salerno beaches hadn't woken up under
the heel of a German boot. But our version of events said that our naval gunfire Ael
and nearly two thousand air sorties had done the trick. It had made it possible
for us to 'chase' a harried and frightened German army off. It was what our
al hone
JEW
newspapers, were saying, after all, guat-as-we-and-theMinisteryofinformation,
asitwas calted,were-agreedon-the-illusion.we-must-fotlew-as-the-basis-ef
attied-straregy


AWAR BETWEEN FRIENDS
This word 'strategy' means trying to pre-empt the enemy intention but
we failed to understand Hitler's sole strategic intention of creating death-traps
for us.
All of a sudden, just seven days after we reinforcements had landed,
Salerno became a backwater. Our forward lines broke through' to the road to
al A
Naples on September 26th. - But theyj didn break Ahrough-anythingbet U ug
emptiness. The Germans had quit three days before---to be exact, in the course
of one night. What kind of'chasing' was this?
Our beach was a holiday beach again and our battle cruisers looked like
pleasure boats. We felt happily forgotten. The days were balmy and sweet, the
air SO heavy with the special haunting hot scent of wild thyme that we began to
think that this peninsula war might have begun to peter out already, just as we
had generously promised each other on another, Algerian beach.
Fgay
We heard birds (always silenced by battle). In a characteristic Italian
rhythm the colder sea air of nightfall was, each evening, drawn to the still-
warm mountains inland. And at dawn the chill mountain air rushed back to the
sunlit and already warm sea---an inhale at nightfall, 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
cement 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


AHAR BETWEEN FRIENDS
saw her as my future wife, which might magically, in the rosy haze of wine,
banish the impossibility of that.
We moved our guns north, troop by troop, each convoy leaving
separately. Captain H. led our troop into the hills and we found ourselves in a
meadow high above the sea cupped round with elm and beech and cypress,
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'd never seen a sky SO deep
and domed and infinite, yet sO close, and SO unassumingly true that I had to
believe it false. In fact, 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 the agreeable Italian manner that denotes Apted 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
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 to be milked and the
peasant family coming and going. There was slush at the barn entrance and hot
close wet-hay smells and the occasional decisive stamp of a cow, and it was all
a good-luck sign for me.
Ofcourse such quiet betokens imminent attack and is easily recognised
by those whose ears are attuned. We had wind of a coming barrage--from our


WAR BETWEEN FRIENDS
side---but as yet we knew nothing ofi its size. I wasn't even sure what the word
'barrage' implied. Much less was Iaware that the size of a barrage is
commensurate with that of the battle timed to follow it. Which meant that this
attack was ours. 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 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


A WAR BETWEEN FRIENDS
deafening roar along the whole front and I started awake at last, mouth open,
stunned at the endless 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. Istood 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 spectalor, 1 ilched to be al 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 waler
returned to themselves and the acrid cordite smell gave way to the hot scent of
wild thyme, and the way the trees slood placid and still again, was a
disappointment to me. What had it all amounted to if everything became as it
had been before, with the silence, into which all sounds die, victorious? if
nothing remains recorded?
Bul this sudden quiel was only for us. Not yet had I cringed from the
horrifying precipitate swoop of a shell to earth and heard the screams, the ones


A WAR BETWEEN FRIENDS
of the living and the ones of the dying. Not yet had I learned that a barrage at
the receiving end changes tears of exultation to ones of sorrow.
Yet I knew perfectly well that I wouldn't be with the guns much longer,
and that my real job was in the forward lines. Ieven knew that my song would
change. Very shortly I would be guiding these very shells to their destination, I
would be calling for the barrages by radio. 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 there I would direct further fire.
I would not only be in the forward lines but must be prepared to find
myself beyond those lines, in enemy ones.
That is, I was to be a Forward Observation Officer or F.0.0., as we
called him. The army textbooks called him The Eyes of the Army.
And then these guns of mine and this command post would become for
me a haven I rarely tasted, being well behind the lines. The roar of a firing
programme 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 lo me than fireworks.
We were ordered to move yet again 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 just what it didn't do. Light as their shells
were, our guns still made a hell ofa racket getting hitched up and sel down
again.
Cava wa,n umld lau heen ( Cung Jlar tearm,
tha lovetiine 2 ploces k be, atie mauy- flovrel
villas d
ns 3 aek 1 thal 1 ttiad ly
ane unrd,' pesce. lE Ind
Sleel uune desly,
AcL 4 trealen - wekefuluen i ttre desd )
iciu Ue w hae IC Stun luly 1 th 1
h - Djiees
Cn eu HE gunners.


AWAR BETWEEN FRIENDS
deligur
lhes à roun
The Germans had just vacated Cavader Tirreni/and it was obvious c lear
(though notfor us) that they had quickly taken up positions with a perfect view
Valle
of the valley in which our guns were now/put down---within spitting distance
eye tall,,
of our neses, SO to speak.
a tiny rotto
our four guns down,under the cover of night, in the bed of the
Evepuo
U ae ail mn ee
t L vele nohwoni 2 un (anvpe tag
valley, with steep vine terracesrisingi abcad tofusand on both flanks. [hen, n
after putting out sentries, we walked stealthily back into Cava de' Tirreni,
m an I owed
where we had taken over abig house. I shared a tiny nursery room with another
junior officer. We took it in turns to sleep in a child's cot, relieving each other
every few hours for guard duty at the guns. To get to the guns all we had to do
walk
was to take a winding path that couldn't be observed. It all seemed so safe.
Cava de' Tirreni (meaning the quarry or mine of the Tyrrhenian seas, on Italy's
western coast) was tiny then. Its humped houses appeared to be piled on each
other and it smelled the same as all Italian war-time towns sun-dried herbs
and old walls and wood smoke and sewage and chicory.
Also those vine terraces where we put the guns had a great beauty.
There were mossy statues and a fountain and green garden benches where the
women who tended the vines would sit. We started digging ourselves in during
the night but by dawn, that first morning, we were only down a few inches. We
fine
as best we
'igee
camouflaged the guns
could. Then we returned just before dawn.
Mslen
Bul the moment the sun put its first blinding tip an inch above the horizon there
Caha crasig
was a swift hoarse breathing in the sky and mortar-bombs/cmathed among the
tout
leaves, their/smoke rolling flatly away, hugging the dew. Most of the first stuff


A NAR BETWEEN FRIENDS S
fell near the benches and statues. A splinter caught an Italian girl. She
screamed frantically. Somehow her screaming seemed to inspire the enemy and
the bombs spread to the terraces where we were and we began scrambling up
and down them, flung ourselves to the wet earth and as quickly jumped up
again as they came down in clusters and the pugen smoke got into our lungs.
One of the men shouted down at the girl Shut up! Shut up! in the illusion that
she was attracting the fire. He threw himself down by me and murmured, She's
not hurt as bad as all that.!
I lost two men in that sacred green hollow. One was my.nwrsignatter.
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 theman coughed blood into it
SO that it swelled up and fell with a plop to the cement floor. Then his head fell
forward.
Fhis-was-aman L felt closer.in.than-anyone I hadmetinshe-army,o-
evem-powrheps.bofoxe/He was older than 1, probably no more two or three years,
Vastty
Yer,
but it made him seem mature to mel He was to be my chief signaller throughout
A loos. anol 3o nla € cu rep sahip,
the war. Both of us knew this./there was a wonderful formality between us
Hus
that strangely reinforced the sense off perfect, immediate understanding
berweents that needed only a nod or a word for a message of eyes that would
Yen,
have needed
whole sentences in the case of another person.] He was to
all
accompany me on/my F.0.0. missions, this was understood between us. Just a


2 3 ue - alds
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IN SERT
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A WAR BETWEEN FRIENDS
glance conveyed all, no need for orders. This in your signaller is precious as
gold.
Aihelidin
Andi-was-hotding him rinhis dying I must have known that no man
could survive such deep wounds in the rear of the chest. Tears flooded to my
eyes and I held them back because you somehow get the command to do so,
from within. And
5 fhis is the true baptism of fire, not the shock of shells or the screams or
the terrified eyes of friend or enemy but the first death and ifi it is the death of
someone closer to you thanatmost any man basbeen-in your life then this is a
9 frie
baptism deep indeed. R i te ides ) Are laplish ) fire beip
oa things were suddenly quiet. My face still puckered up against the
tearsyou are crying for all the future ones too, the ones who are going to die, So
wvn a
old M L si
for you wiltnof cry again/ yet-they were talking to you but a second before and
now they lie with the ashen stare of shock that denotes the last breath.
A peasant woman in black stood by the hut door and moaned quietly to
herself. The gunners trod about respectfully, thinking, bitter. We cursed Jerry
who had done it because cussing gave us an outlet. Fhe 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'teven fire the sodding things. To fire
out of that hole you would need a vertical trajectory, your own shit would fall


no's
faiw
t finv RE adjistiee t luntop Sheil jared mip crnp.
Ihu Hhefin desth ner, a (Jay, t Keoty P snalchet
hace rm te eyer be
lmetr seg-
idulgeu ( - self, Kca do thu Whe 4
OTII, virtuells,
clild, lE 5 ny Holr i the tne
me un Vv e
tar early twestes. Hot =
ae 1


HAR BETWEEN FRIENDS
back on you. You have to be a madman to put artillery into the forward lines
>ragiv
where Jerry can just look,down on you etc. etc.
Afterwards there were boring hours. A death isn't forgotten. It simply
becomes part of that strange assembly of dead men who have gone, and live
men who might any minute go.
I enjoyed strolling in Cava de' Tirreni's narrow lanes, with a silence all
Tine
round you never get in peace 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
Iwas, walk up.[waved back and smiled and walked on because once up there,
for all I knew, I might disappear, then who would look for me? 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'tyet learned that Italians were as straight as a die, even when crooked.
I was impatient to get my first F.O.O. assignment over and done with. It
would have been useful to get some gen (pronounced with a soft 'g'), our word
F.o, o ula
for information. But none came. It hadn't figured in my training either. You
9 Coz Co uAD
could be trained for surprise but notfor the surprises when they actually came.
aapongnn
Il knew the bare logistics you took three or four men with youf (sta
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


WAR BETWEEN FRIENDS
your command post back at the guns you had to be economical in radio use.
furgens
Your firing orders had sometimes to go far beyond your own command-pest to
evenn
engage the guns of a whole brigade or division, and the reply had to come back
. radio
down that hierarchy, SO you needed plenty ofjuice. 1 was after the word Ready
deum
had been passed/to you from all the assembled waiting guns that your final
frm L w wal panlin
order of Fire! went through and then, almost instantaneously, you heard/the
baleful whirring of the shells above your head.
These twenty-five-pounder guns of ours were, for artillery, the lightest
you could find. They were General Montgomery's favourite weapon, he being
an unusually humane commander The shells fell in clusters and-you-hed-tobe-
veryelose-to-their-ferward-blast.to.catch.a-packet What they did do most
effectively was create panic---the air becomes full of blinding cordite smoke
Yeu
and the crashes are ceaseless and relentless. |The craters were the shallowest
made by any form of artillery.
It was these shells that as an F.0.0. I could call up at a moment's notice
but I also had access to the other heavier artillery available both in the division
and the Corps (two divisions/ whenrtheyhappened-te-be-working-together)
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.O. assignment draws near, like mine now, came from utter bafflement
as to what to expect.


ains
who toa aghic t finv/rotiat -
to Jn C 2/7
f - tere
the sufely 2 a


ANAR BETWEEN FRIENDS
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 44th Austrian infantry (the
most amiable of opponents).
Such a man can be a treasure for the infantry since he carries about with
him an invisible armour shield. So the tendency of infantry officers was
therefore to treat him with awe if he was good and amiably disregard him ifhe
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
a A lervals,
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.O.O. 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
+Le fe tl I
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


S Yon 7 inspired K lie Jevd I Y
wish ton Ftr
- u I iVel nym men. lt i Dw
drnggel
its L - Nr ly olin
veny
self.


A WAR BETWEEN FRIENDS
more unlucky is that handful of men who become your favourites, the 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.
J L
Likewise if the F.0.0. was good he was always in demand. Ifhe washt
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 /ital
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
perfecel rel ale
impossible to havelspod/Intelligence about forward lines because they move SO
fast, especially in close terrains like those in Italy. So it is the F.O.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
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 was 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
alio
their penalty for stealing copper wire had been death. There was a favourite


A WAR BETWEEN FRIENDS
rssin
iglo - Saxa
apocryphallstory 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.) Ko -
nehe
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
A I
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 proprietress in my poor army Italian which always got the
accents hopelessly wrong -we called the Rapido river the Rapeedo whereas 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 skfg do). But it was our rule and no Italian
dared correct us.
The proprietress was a large young woman with black curly hair and an
easy sisterly manner. She asked me ifl 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 make this
country my own (which I later did). I left her some cigarettes, which were
considered gold.


ANAR BETWEEN FRIENDS
A few days later I sat with five other officers in a barracks on the city's
higa uive
outskirts/the sea silver and flashing farbefow, the light failing.
The Battery commander said, We shall have to decide who is going up
with this one. I held my breath, 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.
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.


A WAR BETWEEN FRIENDS
Two
Most 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


AWAR BETWEEN FRIENDS
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 ofl 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
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
tak
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.


A WAR BETWEEN FRIENDS
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
aj 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 oft the Italian campaign. The Salerno operation, having been 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
impetant
particularly lively on our sector because the main Naples-Rome highway
passed just ahead.


AWAR BETWEEN FRIENDS
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 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
they
Le faning
m ade
mortar bombs right where we were het breaths of suffocating cordite
hot
CAA
ed/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.
Screauei thes Jky as they A ARRA a a
tessmtoed
ue doem


A WAR BETWEE EN FRIENDS
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
ar man would dash for the ditch at the side of the causeway as ifl 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/in fact growing masses of infantrymen. s
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
tey shouted ,it hall up Haur {
can't go up there!I dashed over to one oft 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 ofit. The Nebelwerfers were concentrated
here. A Nebelwerfer puts six bombs at a time into the air and their trajeetory
mekes-atorrifying-howling.noise-like-a-vest barrel organ in the sky which turns
d. a un
into a dense hungry roar close to your ear as the bombs crash te-carth from
their almost vertical trajectory.
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


A WAR BETWEE CE CN FRIE ND OS
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 te
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
6do
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 but the hands kept doing it and tswear my men on either side of me
Same lescmule
were doing itteert # verysamesitliness. I saw, Ay actions SO clearly, stood
away from myself because these were my last moments on earth---that was
how it was for me 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'tit, running away? And because these were
our last moments on earth our thoughts were sharp and clear and intensely


AWAR BETWEEN FRIENDS
eith
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. Av d lcanhol vecull roday.
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, ifever.
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


A WAR BETWEEN FRIENDS
got out of that crater SO that you 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, 2 hadn'tgot
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
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.


A WAR BETWEEN FRIENDS
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 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
Buc
among us, just short of the river.JMachine-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.


AWAR BETWEEN FRIENDS
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 of these were at once destroyed, this time with 40
casualties.
Allied
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 ifthey 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', 9 as it was called, started about this time preyed
walke
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.
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


AWAR BETWEE CEN FRIENDS
tto
wag
Salerno'. . 179 of these were put in prison for a year or SO while the ringleaders
L A
were given five years.
Hinhl
They mutinied because their officers had told them they were going from North
wmldec
TRose
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 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.
Y up
- fe
Aaa
Moy


AWAR BETWEEN FRIENDS
Three
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
Alazy 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.


AHAR BETWEEN FRIENDS
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 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-called dags with which we recharged our radio


A WAR BETWEEN FRIENDS
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 it.
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.
no U
We had a laugh afterwards and resolved never to touch gin again. But we
hip.
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-wwas-at-on-beek-and-call, leased from the reactionaries'
solely for the duration of the war. 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


AWAR BETWEEN FRIEND
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).
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, se-wewoutd-firsthavete-hop
thistesserhurdle.
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.