And No Birds Sang (16 page)

The actual assault, which began at dawn on September 3, proved to be a massive anticlimax. The only show of opposition to the battalion’s landing craft as they puttered across came from a flight of Fiat fighters that swept in from the east, danced prettily in the high sky out of range of our anti-aircraft guns, dropped their bombs harmlessly in the sea and headed home content with this gesture of defiance.

We landed without opposition, reorganized, and struck inland up the black face of the towering Aspromonte massif with orders to seize the heights and defend the beachhead against an anticipated counterattack; but there seemed to be no Germans about, and since the Italian troops manning the coastal defences already knew that Mussolini had fallen, they were in no mood to die heroically in a lost cause.

As the regimental column laboured upward like an attenuated khaki-coloured snake, another descended parallel to it, this one bluish-green in hue. The Italian soldiers came down from the hills, not like members of a defeated army but in a mood of fiesta, marching raggedly along with their personal possessions slung about them, filling the air with laughter and song. For them the war was over.

This cascade of happy warriors kept me and my section busier than the proverbial cat on a hot tin roof as we laboured to identify the many different units hell-bent on surrender, while at the same time trying to ascertain what hostile forces, if any, might still be holding out.

By noon next day we had struggled eighteen miles into the heart of the high mountains and, at an altitude of five thousand feet, found ourselves in a world which by contrast with Sicily seemed incredible. Gone were the skeletal olive trees and cactus, replaced by thick, leafy forests of chestnut, oak and beech. Gone too were the heat and drought. During the next few days it rained steadily and massively. It was so wet that fires could hardly be persuaded to burn and we huddled in our thin tropical clothing under dripping trees and shivered through bitter nights.

My section, ever alert for self-serving opportunities, discovered a mountain retreat belonging to the paramilitary Blackshirts, and in it quantities of the famous shirts themselves. These were much thicker and warmer than ours—which explains how it came about that, shortly thereafter, a patrol of the 48th Highlanders sighted a group of armed Blackshirts skulking through the forest. The Highlanders promptly called down artillery fire on this “infiltrating enemy force,” thereby starting a flap that swept through the whole brigade and sent everyone scuttling for his weapon. Fortunately, the 48th captured no prisoners, so nobody outside my section ever learned the truth. I hardly felt it was
my
duty to become a tattle-tale, particularly since the black-shirted ones returned with a special gift for me, a portable typewriter which became, and remained, my joy throughout the war years.

While we were immured in the dripping Aspromonte forests, great events were taking place elsewhere. Late on September 8 Marshal Badoglio, Mussolini’s successor, announced Italy’s unconditional surrender, and next morning we learned that the U.S. Fifth Army had begun landing on the beaches of Salerno, not far south of Naples. These two events seemed to presage a quick end to the war in Italy, and such was the optimism engendered by that prospect that some of us even thought we could detect the early collapse of Germany looming as a consequence.

Fifth Army’s landing had been designed to trap the bulk of the eleven German divisions then in Italy in the foot of the peninsula, whither it was believed they would have concentrated to counter the threat of Eighth Army’s invasion. The Fifth planned to slice through the ankle from Salerno to the Adriatic Coast, putting this entire German force into “the bag.”

However, when the Fifth went ashore the Germans immediately counterattacked in force and it soon became evident that the invaders would do well to hold their beachhead and avoid being driven back into the sea. The Eighth, whose original role had been to act as bait for the Germans—bait the enemy had declined to accept—was now ordered to speed north to the assistance of the beleaguered Fifth. The Eighth was later severely criticized in the USA for taking too long to carry out this rescue mission, but those of us who took part in that gruelling 300-mile thrust up the mountainous spine of Italy were more than content with our accomplishment.

Although the Germans did not at first oppose us in the flesh, they had done as thorough a job of demolition as has been seen in modern warfare. Not a bridge along the few snake-gutted highways, byways and even mountain tracks remained undestroyed. There was hardly a culvert or an overhanging cliff that had not been demolished to form an obstacle. And everywhere—along the road verges, at blown bridges, in the exits from roads and tracks, even in the few level fields where vehicles could be dispersed and men could camp—were mines, mines and more mines.

At the end of the first day of the northward trek I was directing a column of supply trucks off the main road into a stone-walled farmyard. The entrance gap was narrow and one large truck, making too sharp a turn, threatened to pin me to the wall with its front fender. As my mouth opened to scream at the driver, a rear wheel ran over a Teller mine.

A savage force crushed me back against the wall then slammed me forward against the truck with such ferocity that I lost consciousness. When dim awareness began to return, I knew beyond doubt that I was dead. I seemed to hear the distant but mighty roaring of the sea in some vast cave, but could see nothing except a shimmering, translucent haze in which I appeared to float weightlessly. There was no pain, and in fact I felt euphoric—like a disembodied spirit drifting in some other worldly void. Intensely curious about this new state of being into which I had been so summarily dispatched, I allowed myself to drift toward the luminous edge of the haze...

... and staggered out of a pall of dust and smoke to fall full length over the body of a man whose head had been blown off.

Someone grabbed my arm and pulled me across the road into the ditch beyond. Then Dicky Bird was bending over me, his lips working furiously but soundlessly. He vanished momentarily, to return with a precious bottle of whisky which he began to pour down my throat.

“My goodness
gracious,
Squib, you should have
seen
yourself!” he told me some time later. “You popped out of that dust cloud as white as a rat in a
flour
barrel, and with the
silliest
expression on your face... like a girl who’s just been
kissed
for the first time.”

If kiss it was, then it was very nearly the kiss of death. Seven men were wounded by the explosion and two killed. We survivors had been incredibly lucky. The truck was carrying a ton of 3-inch mortar bombs which, by all the laws of probability, should have exploded too.

Apart from being severely bruised and temporarily deafened, I suffered no real injuries; but within three days we lost eight vehicles and more than twenty casualties to mines of one kind or another.

As we continued north, blown bridges stopped all vehicle movement with the exception of motorcycles and the occasional jeep which could be manhandled over or around the demolitions. The leading infantry units therefore had to proceed on foot, and since time was of the essence, they slogged wearily along for endless hours. I was able to avoid some of this ordeal by virtue of sharing the I-section’s Norton motorbike with Sergeant Richmond.

On September 10 the rifle companies staggered into the small coastal town of Catanzaro Marina, having marched sixty miles in two days and nights. The men were at the end of their tether, yet within the hour Kennedy was ordered to strike inland to the city of Catanzaro itself, which lay in a high saddle between 3,000-foot peaks some twenty miles from its port.

Our advance along the coastal road had been unopposed thus far, but in the mountainous interior overlooking our route many units of the Italian army awaited the outcome of the Salerno battle, and the consequences of Badoglio’s capitulation, before deciding whether to surrender or to continue with the war. According to an Italian lieutenant who surrendered to us at Catanzaro Marina, Catanzaro itself was heavily garrisoned, but the lieutenant did not know whether or not the forces there were prepared to fight.

I told Kennedy what I had learned, and he muttered an-grily as he stared at the map spread before him.

“
No
artillery...
no
tanks...
no
transport... not even any anti-tank guns... and the men are beat. Hell’s bells, we can’t just go blundering up into those mountains hoping for the best!”

He turned toward me and his light-blue eyes glinted ominously.

“Well, Squib, somebody’s got to do a recce, and the only mechanized unit I’ve got is you and your motorbike. Take someone on the pillion and find out what in hell is going on.”

Which is how Bruce Richmond and I, mounted on one ailing motorcycle, briefly became the vanguard for the glorious Eighth Army.

It was a fine fall day with an azure sky and a sun that warmed but did not sear. As we began chugging up the zigzag road into the mountains, Richmond bellowed in my ear that I shouldn’t fret about mines because the Norton was too light to set them off. I did not believe him and was fairly gloomy about our prospects, but as we climbed higher and higher and nothing untoward occurred I began to feel elated. The scenery was superb. Below us the Ionian Sea lay quiescent in a sapphire glare. The mountain maze ahead, shrouded in somnolent shadows, seemed to exude a sweet sense of peace. It was something special to be on our own in such a superbly beautiful no-man’s land.

We had climbed perhaps ten miles and had achieved a happily relaxed state of mind when the road abruptly swung around a jutting cliff and brought us face to face with a 75-mm anti-tank gun manned by a dozen Italian soldiers.

The Italians, who had of course heard us coming, were nervously fingering their rifles and machine pistols. In the shock of the moment I never even thought about my carbine slung across my back. In fact, I was seized by such an urgent and almost irresistible need to have a pee that nothing much else registered until Richmond muttered sharply in my ear:

“Keep ’er rolling, for Christ’s sake! Bluff the bastards!”

Obediently I gunned the engine while he waved a peremptory hand in the direction of still-distant Catanzaro, meanwhile shouting something unintelligible in a commanding tone of voice. Crouching a little, we sped past the muzzle of the gun, whipped gratefully around the next bend—and were appalled to find ourselves confronted by a column of troop-laden trucks completely blocking the road ahead.

“Oh, shit!” snarled Richmond. “Now we’re fucked!”

But no... out of the corner of one eye I saw a side road splitting off to the north. I did a skid turn on it and our wild ride continued. Afraid to stop, afraid to turn back, afraid to go on, I prayed we would soon find some sequestered spot where we could hide and catch our breath, quiet our pounding hearts and decide how the devil we were going to extricate ourselves from this cauldron of
minestrone.

Unfortunately, the road now levelled out and open fields appeared on both sides... fields crowded with tent camps, artillery and transport parks, and large numbers of Italian soldiers who stared at us with a wild surmise as we nipped smartly past. Then we were faced by a barbed-wire roadblock around which there was no detour. The wire, and a sentry with a Beretta submachine gun levelled at us, brought us to a palpitating halt.

At that moment the only thing I had in mind was to avoid being taken prisoner if possible but, if capture was inevitable, to ensure we were taken into custody by someone in authority. I had an irrational fear of being set upon by a pack of Italian privates lusting to avenge the defeats inflicted on them by Eighth Army.

Bluff had worked once, and in any case there was no other course open to us. In my best or worst
vino Italiano,
I squeakily demanded to be taken to
il generale commandante.

“Subito! Subito!”
I added, patting my map case in hopes the sentry would take us for dispatch riders.

I don’t know what he took us for—some kind of apparition maybe—but he sent for the sergeant of the guard who in turn sent for an officer who had some English. While we waited I had been madly improvising a story. As haughtily as possible, I informed the officer that we were special emissaries of General Montgomery himself, bearing an urgent dispatch for the commander of the Catanzaro region.

“Ah,” he responded, with genuine admiration in his voice. “
Generale
Monta-gomery?
Si.
Ees a very gooda
generale!
I lika him a very more!” with which he cheerfully escorted us to his regimental headquarters, whence we were taken in a staff car to a large
casa
by three amiable officer escorts. There, after a brief pause in an anteroom, we were ushered into the presence of a rotund, much-beribboned general who formally introduced himself as the officer commanding the Mantova Division into whose midst we had blundered.

“Delighted, gentlemen,” he said, shaking hands heartily with both of us. “Do please sit down. A glass of wine perhaps, before we talk? Giovanni!”—this to a staff colonel hovering in the background—“some San Severo, if you please.”

It was quite a scene: two dusty Canadians sipping excellent wine in the general’s quarters, not quite sure if they were awake or dreaming.

In case the general might be a little puzzled that Montgomery’s emissaries should be of such lowly rank, I explained that we were merely outriders and would shortly be followed by Brigadier O’Brian-Bennett (the name just sprang to mind), Montgomery’s chief-of-staff, who would negotiate the status of the Mantova Division.

“Excellent, gentlemen,” said the general affably as he poured more wine for us. “Except for some of the execrable
Fascisti
units, I believe most of the army is ready to abide by the terms of the armistice. I shall be happy to receive your brigadier. Now, is there anything I can do personally for you?”