Whicker’s War and Journey of a Lifetime

The troops roared their welcome. Churchill seemed surprised and delighted at a reception made even more dramatic by perfect Roman acoustics. ‘Get a picture of that,’ he said, spotting me in the stalls busily focusing on him. He waved towards the amphitheatre behind me. ‘Don’t take me – take that.’

I wanted to explain that several of our cameramen were at that moment filming the cheering mass as he stood at its heart, that he was the star and a picture of a lot of soldiers without him was not new or significant … when once more that famous voice ordered, ‘Get a picture of that.’ He was clearly not used to saying things twice – certainly not to young lieutenants. For a moment I wavered. General Anderson, breathing heavily, took a step forward and my court martial flashed before me. ‘Take a picture of that!’he snapped.

I took a picture of that.

I had to wait until Churchill was well into his panegyric before I could turn and sneak my shot of him amidst his victorious army. Afterwards he walked out to his car, took off his pith helmet and waved it from the top of his stick, gave the V sign and drove away with his Generals. That bit of our war had been won.

There was a brief pause while the armies digested their victory and prepared for the next invasion, and at the beginning of May ’43 our life became almost social. It was spring and, what’s more, we were still alive. We requisitioned a villa at Sidi Bou Saïd, near Carthage. It overlooked the Bay of Tunis and had indoor sanitation, to which we had grown unaccustomed.

My Austin utility was still bent from the weight of jubilant Tunisiennes, so to support our celebrations I had liberated a splendid German staff car, an Opel Kapitan in Wehrmacht camouflage. We were not supposed to use unauthorised transport, so along the German bonnet we craftily painted some imaginary but official-looking numbers – my home telephone number, if you must know.

The start of it all … Directing our first picture sequence in the murky back streets of wartime Holborn, before we sailed for the Mediterranean. This assignment from Pinewood Studios was to film church bells ringing a Victory peal. They were a couple of years early – but it worked out all right in the end …

Ready to go! Identity Card picture.

Invading Italy!

We are shepherded onto the landing beaches by the Royal Navy.

The Landing Ship Tank was the star of every invasion beach around the world …

War! What approaching death must look like to an unlucky soldier: the final German shell explodes …

Infantrymen clear a village, covered by a Bren gunner and a couple of riflemen.

The Royal Artillery’s 155mm gun goes into action.

Throughout the length of Italy German engineers delayed our advance by blowing every bridge in our path.

The Royal Engineers’ first solution sometimes looked slightly insecure …

Briefing AFPU cameramen on how we’ll cover the next battle. The regulation De Vry cine-camera, next to water bottle.

Sergeant Radford had been filming a Regiment of Churchill tanks in action. His film stock is replenished …

… and the footage he has shot is taken by dispatch rider back to the Developing Section at base.

We were issued with Super Ikontas, inadequate cameras without telephoto lenses.

Celebrating our Sicilian victory at Casa Cuseni in Taormina, while awaiting the invasion of Italy. We even had time to perfect the Unit’s ‘Silly Walks’ – some 30 years before Monty Python.

I can’t remember the reason for this outburst of warrior’s relaxation. (It was in the morning, so demon vino was no excuse). Excessive exuberance, perhaps.

The Mess dining room, 60 years ago. Today, unchanged, even the pictures are the same …

… as is the terrace. In those days …

… and now.

I thought we had got away with it until my contraband car was admired at embarrassing length – by King George VI. As I stood to attention before His Majesty, it seemed cruel that the only finger of suspicion should be Regal.

The King had just arrived in Tunis at the start of his Mediterranean tour with Sir James Grigg and Sir Archibald Sinclair. In the welcoming cortège at the airport he spotted my unusual Afrika Korps convertible and pointed it out to General Alexander: ‘That’s a fine car,’ said His Majesty. ‘Very fine.’ The General, compact and elegant, studied it for what seemed a long time. Following his eyeline, all I could see was my phone number growing larger under Royal inspection.

‘Yes Sir,’ he said, finally. ‘A German staff car captured near here by this young officer, I should imagine.’ He gave me a thoughtful look – then they all drove away in a flurry of flags and celebration. I took the phoney car in the opposite direction, quite fast.

It transported me in comfort for some happy weeks until, parked one afternoon outside the office of the Eighth Army News in Tunis it was stolen by – I discovered years later – a brother officer from the Royal Engineers. Stealing captured transport from your own side has to be a war crime.

The King sailed to Malta in the cruiser Aurora, and we scrambled to reach Tripoli by road in time to cover his reception there. The Libyan capital was a cheerless contrast to exuberant Tunis, where they loved us. Streets had to be cleared of sullen Tripolitanians who evidently much preferred Italian occupation. I waited for the arrival ceremony in an open-air café and for the first time heard the wartime anthem ‘Lili Marlene’, played for British officers by a bad-tempered band. It felt strange to be unwelcome – after all, we were liberators.

The immaculate King was greeted by General Montgomery, who as usual dressed down for the occasion: smart casual – shirt, slacks, black Tank Corps beret, long horsehair flywhisk.

Filming with us was our new commanding officer, Major Geoffrey Keating, who became a close friend until his death in 1981. Keating had cut a brave figure in the desert; his photographs and those of his cameramen first made the unusual and unknown Montgomery a national hero. In truth, with high-pitched voice and uneasy birdlike delivery, he was a man with little charm or charisma. He seemed unable to relate to his troops, though on occasion he would try – proffering packets of cigarettes abruptly from his open Humber. However, he was a winner – and because of AFPU was the only publicly recognisable face in the whole Eighth Army.

Montgomery would never start a battle he was not sure of winning, so his men – who had suffered more than their ration of losing Generals – followed him cheerfully. His main military principle was that Army commanders should plan battles – not staff officers and certainly not politicians. Unsurprisingly he was not too popular with his Commander, Winston Churchill, who since Gallipoli and South Africa had longed to control troops in action.

On top of all his achievements, Churchill had a lifetime yearning to become a warrior-hero. He did not hide this improbable dream. An early biographer wrote, ‘He sees himself moving through the smoke of battle, triumphant, terrible, his brow clothed with thunder, his Legions looking to him for victory – and not looking in vain. He thinks of Napoleon; he thinks of his great ancestor the Duke of Marlborough …’

After the Gallipoli disaster in the Great War he did achieve a few months of frontline battle as a Lieutenant Colonel commanding a Rifle battalion in France. Ever afterwards he looked for another commanding role on some dramatic battlefront. At last Anzio emerged – the assault landing no one wanted. We who went there soon understood why.

Keating had flown to London with his victorious General and returned with the news that, as expected, we were about to assault Italy. The Eighth Army, the US Seventh Army and the 1st Canadian Corps would first attack Sicily, that hinge on the door to Europe, and then pursue the enemy north towards the Alps.

Invasion forces for Operation Husky were gathering at Mediterranean ports from Alexandria to Gibraltar, so I left hateful Tripoli with a convoy of new AFPU jeeps just off a ship from the States and headed flat-out across the desert back to Sousse, from where our invasion fleet would sail.

At the Libyan border we slipped off Mussolini’s tarmac road on to the sandy track through Tunisia. This had been deliberately left in poor condition by the French to slow Mussolini’s armoured columns – or that was their excuse. Through Medenine and the Mareth Line the hot desert which had so recently been a desperate battlefield and seen the last hurrah of the Afrika Korps now stood quiet and empty. It was dotted with the hulks of tanks and armoured cars, and the occasional rough wooden cross: a few sad square feet of Britain or America, Italy or Germany.

Sousse was bustling as XIII Corps got ready to fight again. We placed cameramen with the battalions which were to lead the invasion. I was to land with the famous 51st Highland Division which had battled 2,000 miles across North Africa from El Alamein. The Scots are rather useful people to have on your side if you’re expecting to get into a fight, and I was promised a noisy time.

Before the armada sailed I dashed back to Sidi Bou Saïd with secret film we had taken of the invasion preparations for dispatch to London. Coated with sand and exhausted, I arrived at our requisitioned hillside villa to find a scene of enviable tranquillity: on the elegant terrace overlooking the Bay, AFPU’s new Adjutant was giving a dinner party.

At a long table under the trees sat John Gunther, the Inside Europe author then representing the Blue radio network of America, Ted Gilling of the Exchange Telegraph news agency who was later to become my first Fleet Street Editor, and other Correspondents. In the hush of the African dusk, the whole scene looked like Hollywood.

After a bath I joined them on the patio as the sun slipped behind the mountains, drinking the red wine of Carthage and listening to cicadas in the olive groves. In a day or two I was to land on a hostile shore, somewhere. Would life ever again be as tranquil and contented and normal? Would I be appreciating it-or Resting in Peace?

Watching the moon rise over a calm scene of good fellowship, it was hard not to be envious of this rear-echelon going about its duties far from any danger and without dread of what might happen in the coming assault landing. Dinner would be on the table tomorrow night as usual, and bed would be cool and inviting. I had chosen military excitement – but forgotten that in the Army the hurly-burly of battle always excluded comfort and well-ordered certainty. I took another glass or two of Tunisian red.

Back in Sousse next day, envy forgotten, I boarded my LST-the Landing Ship Tank. This was the first use of the British-designed American-built amphibious craft that was to be the star of every invasion across the world. A strange monster with huge jaws – a bow that opened wide and a tongue that came down slowly to make a drawbridge. Only 328 feet in length, powered by two great diesels, it could carry more than 2,000-tons of armour or supplies through rough seas and with shallow draught, ride right up a beach, vomit its load onto the shore, and go astern. Disembarking troops or armour was the most dangerous part of any landing, so was always fast. Sometimes, frantic.

Anchored side by side this great fleet of LSTs filled the harbour. Once aboard I wandered around sizing-up my fellow passengers. They were all a bit subdued, that evening. An assault landing against our toughest enemy was rather like awaiting your execution in the morning; there was not much spare time for trivial thoughts or chatter.

We were in the first wave, and the approaching experience would surely be overwhelming enough, even if we lived through it. During that soft African twilight there was little shared laughter.

THEY ASKED FOR IT – AND THEY WILL NOW GET IT… (#ulink_520d3398-c415-59be-a838-d7cfc3039f51)

The fleet sailed at dusk on July 9, ’43, setting off in single file, then coming up into six lines. The senior officer on each ship paraded his troops and briefed them on the coming assault landing. We were to go in at Pachino, the fulcrum of the landing beaches at the bottom right-hand corner of Sicily.

Back in the wardroom our Brigadier briefed his officers. Then, traditionally, we took a few pink gins. The intention now was to knock Italy out of the war. We were off to kill a lot of people we did not know, and who we might not dislike if we did meet; and of course, we would try to stop them killing us. ‘Could be a thoroughly sticky landing chaps,’ he said, awkwardly.

I have often wondered whether scriptwriters and novelists imitate life, or do we just read the book, see the movie – and copy them, learning how we ought to react in dramatic and unusual situations? Noël Coward showed us, with In Which We Serve; no upper lip was ever stiffer. Ealing Studios followed. Even Hollywood, in a bizarre way, looked at Gunga Din and the Bengal Lancers. We all knew about Action! but in Sicily, in real life, no one was going to shout Cut!