Whicker’s War

Montgomery told us: ‘The Italian overseas Empire has been exterminated; we will now deal with the home country. The Eighth Army has been given the great honour of representing the British Empire in the Allied force which is now to carry out this task. Together we will set about the Italians in their own country in no uncertain way; they came into this war to suit themselves and they must now take the consequences; they asked for it, and they will now get it…’

He concluded: ‘The eyes of our families and in fact of the whole Empire will be on us once the battle starts. We will see they get good news and plenty of it. Good luck and good hunting in the home country of Italy.’

Wandering around the decks, I saw no one showing anxiety, no animosity, no heroics. There was too much to think about. Fear is born and grows in comfort and security, which were not available at that moment in the Med. Or perhaps we were all acting?

Action! was at first light on July 10 ’43 when British troops returned to Europe, wading ashore on to the sandy triangular rock that is Sicily. It was the first great invasion. Cut! came two years later, and was untidy.

The Eighth Army had 4½ divisions, the US Seventh Army 2½ Along the coast to our left the Americans and 1st Canadian Division were landing. The 231 Independent Brigade from Malta, the 50th and the 5th Divisions hit the beaches in an arc north towards Syracuse. Some 750 ships put 16,000 men ashore, followed by 600 tanks and 14,000 vehicles. We were covered, they assured us, by 4,000 aircraft. I saw very few – and most of those were Luftwaffe. I presumed, and hoped, that the RAF and the USAAF were busy attacking enemy installations and airfields elsewhere, to ease our way ashore.

While driving the enemy out of Africa the Eighth Army had settled the conflict in Tunisia by capturing the last quarter-of-a-million men of the Afrika Korps. Many could have escaped to Sicily had Hitler not ordered another fight to the death. At the end most were sensible, and surrendered – including General von Arnim with his 5th Panzer Army.

The triumphant conclusion of the North African campaign left the Allies with powerful armies poised for their next great offensive. President Roosevelt, unhappy on the sidelines, was determined to get his troops into action somewhere, and Italy provided the best targets available while building-up forces and experience for the Second Front. Despite their African victory the Allies were not yet dominant nor confident enough to invade France – certainly not the Americans, with little or no battle experience.

So at Churchill’s insistence we were to attack ‘the soft underbelly of Fortress Europe’. That’s what he called it. In the event, it was not as soft as advertised; indeed, it grew almost too hard to resist. After only just avoiding being pushed back into the sea a couple of times, we became resigned to Churchill’s brave optimism.

The strategic intention was to knock Italy out of the war and to tie down the 25 German occupying divisions – 55 in the whole Mediterranean area – which could otherwise have changed the balance of power on Russian battlefields or turned the coming Second Front in Normandy into a catastrophe.

The Germans were now compelled to withdraw units from their armies around Europe to reinforce the Italian front: the Hermann Goering Division from France, the 20th Luftwaffe Field Division from Denmark, the 42nd Jäger and 162nd Turkoman Divisions from the Balkans, the 10th Luftwaffe Field Division from Belgium … were the first to leave their positions and head for Italy. By drawing some of the Wehrmacht’s finest units into battle, we supported Germany’s hard-pressed enemies everywhere.

Mussolini’s Fascist regime had already been demoralised by the loss of its African empire and army, and if we could now drive Italy out of the war our frontier would be the Alps, and the Mediterranean route to the Middle and Far East secure. To defend Sicily with its 600 miles of coastline, the Italian General Alfredo Guzzoni had twelve divisions – ten Italian and only two German: 350,000 men, including 75,000 Germans. With Kesselring’s instant reaction, by the end of August seven fully equipped German divisions were attacking us in Sicily.

To clear our sea route to this battlefield and obtain a useful airfield, the Allies had first attacked Pantelleria, a tiny volcanic island 60 miles south of Sicily. It surrendered without a shot being fired on June 11 after severe bombing, and was found to have a garrison of 11,000 troops – a ready-made prisoner-of-war camp and an indication that Mussolini’s strategic planning could be haphazard. The only British casualty during this invasion was one soldier bitten by a mule.

Though the Allies dropped 6,570 tons of bombs on that Mediterranean rock the garrison suffered few casualties and only two of its 54 gun batteries were knocked out. Such pathetic results did not lead Allied High Command to question the efficacy of future saturation bombing.

Our landing in Sicily was also preceded by the first Allied airborne operation of any size. A parachute regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division and a British Glider Brigade were flown from Kairouan, Tunisia, in some 400 transport aircraft and 137 gliders. This daring night operation was the first ever attempted. It was not a success.

Poorly-trained pilots had to face dangerously high winds, so only twelve gliders landed near their objective, and 47 crashed into the sea; they had been cast off too early by their American towing aircraft. The fact that our aerial armada was fired-on by Allied naval vessels did not help. The 75 Dakotas also dropped the US paratroops far from their target of Gela, scattering them across Sicily.

The survivors of the Glider Force saved their part of the operation from complete disaster by causing some chaos among the defences around the Ponte Grande across the River Anapo. These elite troops removed all demolition charges from the bridge, enabling the 5th Division to drive straight across, head for Syracuse and occupy it that night with port installations little damaged.

So Sicily was a curtain-raiser for Europe’s major airborne landing at Arnhem in September ’44 – which was equally unwise and unsuccessful.

Otherwise the first great invasion was going well. Only four of our great fleet of some 3,000 ships in convoy had been torpedoed. Kesselring did not seem to have noticed our arrival. We learned later there was frenzy at the Field Marshal’s HQ – but this did not show.

At Pachino our LST came to anchor offshore. A few enemy miss-and-run spotter aircraft roared over, too high for pictures. When it grew light we needed to get closer in, so with Sgt Radford, I thumbed a lift on a smaller Landing Craft Infantry. We slipped from that into the Med, struggling armpit-deep through the gentle breakers and holding our cameras high. The LCI Captain, a young Australian Lieutenant with whom during the tense dawn I had been considering life, the future and everything, this Ozzie very decently jumped into the sea and waded behind me, holding my back-pack full of unexposed film up out of the Med.

On the continent of Europe I took my first sodden steps on the long march towards the Alps. So far, so surprisingly good.

At that stage of the war nobody knew much about assault landings, about storming ashore and facing mines on the beaches and machine guns in pillboxes backed by mortars and artillery and bombers. Despite hesitant or invisible opposition, there was a new naked sensation. Standing tense on that soft warm beach and gazing around I was ready to burrow into the sand for protection. I felt exposed and enormous – a perfect target. I could sense a million angry eyes were watching me over hidden gun barrels, trigger-fingers tightening. Who would fire first?

We had been prepared for everything – except an invisible enemy, and silence.

Before any hostility arrived, we scrambled off the beach, moving between white tapes the Royal Engineers were already putting down to show where mines had been cleared. Then we set about filming the landings.

On our beach, landing troops tried to dry out in the early sun; then formed up and pressed inland through the fields, interrupted occasionally by Italians who wanted to surrender to somebody – please!

Beachmasters were already in control. Tank Landing Craft disgorged enormous self-propelled guns, armoured bulldozers and Sherman tanks. RAF liaison officers talked to their radios. The Navy flagged craft into landing positions. One LST was on a sandbank, another churning the sea and trying to tow it off. Three-ton amphibious DUKWS – great topless trucks that swim – purred purposefully between ships and shore. The first prisoners arrived back on the beach, and wounded were carried into regimental aid posts. Royal Engineers were clearing mines and Pioneers laying wire netting road strips. Military police came ashore and began to control landing traffic. Bofors crews took up defensive positions and dug in. Fresh drinking water was pumped from LST tanks into canvas reservoirs. Petrol, ammunition and food dumps were started. A de-waterproofing area for trucks was marked out. Pioneers started to build and improve tracks and work on Pachino airstrip, which had been well ploughed by the Italians; by midday it was ready for use. All that was what the months of planning had been about.

We filmed the Eighth Army getting set to go places – and so far, to our relief and amazement, few shots had been fired in anger. XIII Corps took a thousand prisoners, that first day. I saw some of our invading troops with tough NCOs actually marching smartly up the enemy-held beach in columns of three – not a scene you expect to see on the first day of the re-conquest of Europe. What – no bearskins?

We had been braced to face the fury of the Wehrmacht. In fact, all we faced were a few peasants and goats, and the usual hit-and-run Luftwaffe dive-bombers. It was quite a relaxed way to start an invasion. So far we had on our side most of the military strength and all the surprise, and as the troops came ashore some of our hesitant Italian enemies – local farm workers – waved and smiled. It’s always comforting to have the audience on your side.

Towards the evening of D-Day I rounded up a few sergeant-cameramen who had landed nearby with other units and we settled in a field for our first European brew-up. On went the tea in its regulation sooty billycan and the bacon sizzled, supported by our first trophy of war: fat Sicilian tomatoes. A few Messerschmidts came over and did what they could, bombing ships and strafing beaches, but I don’t think my new Scottish friends of the 51st Division suffered many casualties. Our surprise had been total.

At dusk, finding our blankets were still somewhere at sea, we settled down on the damp rocky soil of the tomato grove and in an unnatural silence, slept uneasily.

Such lack of enemy opposition was unexpected – and so of course was the hidden fact that, after this first easy day, it was going to take another 665 days to fight our way up the length of Italy, from Pachino to the Swiss frontier by way of Catania, Messina, Salerno, Naples, Anzio, Rome, Florence, through the Gothic Line and out into the Po Valley, to Milan and Venice … and victory?

I did not know that I faced 22 months of battle that was going to provide some of the worst experiences of my life – and a few of the best.

THEY ENLISTED THE GODFATHER… (#ulink_9a88e16e-1ffe-553a-94ed-21c67aa26ef8)

The stunning thud of bombs shook us awake. The lurid nightscape was bright as day. We jumped up in alarm, our shadows stretching out before us. The Germans had finally reacted.

Their night bombers were dropping flares and hunting targets. They had plenty. We covered the coastline and were impossible to miss. Attempting to hold them off, thousands of glowing Bofors shells climbed up slowly in lazy arcs through the night sky and into the darkness above the flares. They were pretty enough and encouraged us, but did not seem to worry the Luftwaffe. The invasion fleet and the beaches were bombed all night.

There may be no justice in life, but in battle the percentages go even more out of synch. For instance, my batman-driver Fred Talbot was a regulation cheery Cockney sparrer and peacetime bus driver. We saw a lot of war together, without a cross word.

During the planning for the invasion he had been much relieved to learn that, while I was directing our team and carrying my camera along with the first wave of infantry ashore, when I could reasonably expect to get my head knocked-off … there would be no room for him. He would have to stay behind with our loaded jeep and sail across in the relative comfort of a larger, safer transport ship. This would land with some dignity a day or two later, when hopefully the shot ‘n’ shell would have moved on. It was just his good luck, and he was duly thankful.

However on invasion day my first wave went in, as I said, to mystifying silence. The worst we got was wet. Meanwhile, Driver Talbot’s ship, preparing to follow the fleet to Sicily and proceeding through the night at a leisurely pace from Sousse towards Sfax and well behind the armada … hit a mine and sank immediately.

Talbot spent some hours in the dark sea before being picked up, and another ten hours in a lifeboat. He was one of the few survivors.

When he caught up with us some days later he was rather rueful about the injustice of it all. I passed a few unnecessary remarks about life sometimes being safer at the sharp end, but understandably Talbot was not amused.

My relief at his return was clouded by the knowledge that our jeep, loaded with everything we possessed, was at the bottom of the Med. Down there in the deep lay the Service Dress and gleaming Sam Browne I had worked so hard to achieve and only worn a few times. Now I had nothing resplendent and should have to attend what I anticipated would be the vibrant social scenes in Rome and Florence in my invasion rig – a bit basic and underdressed for any hospitable Contessa’s welcoming party … War can be cruel.

Then there was my religiously-kept wartime diary. Had those notes brimming with excitement, dates, facts and figures not become an early casualty of war … had that mine not destroyed my tenuous literary patience at a time when life was becoming too busy to sit and think and remember and write … had that ship not sunk – you could have suffered a version of this book half-a-century ago!

Strangely, having lost everything but my life, I felt curiously light-hearted – free and fast-moving. I would recommend travelling light to any Liberator. You sometimes approach this silly carefree mood when an airline has lost your luggage in some unfamiliar city and suddenly you have nothing to carry, or wear, or worry about.

Talbot and I met only once after the war, late one night going home on the District Line, Inner Circle. He was in good shape and told me he was working in Norwich as a ladies’ hairdresser.

Next day, still curiously carefree, I watched General Montgomery and Lord Mountbatten land from their Command ship – the Brass setting foot upon Europe. Our piece of their global war was getting under way and, apart from the bombing, we’d met little opposition – certainly not from the crack Parachute and Panzer Grenadier Divisions we were expecting to attack. We moved inland cautiously.

The Italian defences in our sector seemed admirably sited. Their pillboxes commanded excellent fields of fire, were strongly constructed and most had underground chambers full of ammunition. In main positions were six-inch guns, some made in 1907. All sites were deserted; their crews had melted away.

A handful of small Italian tanks did attempt a few brave sorties but their 37mm guns had no chance against Shermans with 75s and heavy armour.

Fifteen miles from the landing beaches, our first capture on the road north to Syracuse and Catania was Noto, once capital of the region and Sicily’s finest baroque town. Thankfully it was absolutely untouched by war, and bisected by one tree-lined avenue which climbed from the plain up towards the town square and down the other side. We did not know whether this approach had been cleared of enemy and mines, so advanced carefully.

The population emerged equally cautiously, and lined the road. Then they started, hesitantly, to clap – a ripple of applause that followed us into their town.

You clap if you’re approving, without being enthusiastic. Nobody cheered – the welcome was restrained. We were not kissed once – nothing so abandoned. It seemed they didn’t quite know how to handle being conquered.

Like almost every other village and town we were to reach, Noto’s old walls were covered with Fascist slogans. Credere! Obbedire! Combattere! – Believe! Obey! Fight! – was popular, though few of the locals seemed to have got its message. Another which never ceased to irritate me was Il Duce ha sempre ragione – The Leader is always right! Shades of Big Brother to come. Hard to think of a less-accurate statement; we were in Sicily to point out the error in that argument.