Part 4 - Italy

Waited most of the day for the truck to come off the ship.  We put the canopy up on truck while still in the hold.  Truck unloaded about 2pm.  Filled with with petrol at Orena and left for Cerignola at 4:30 in morning.  Left again at 8am for Foggia.  Pretty tired by now.  Foggia is badly damaged by bombing. Arrived about 5pm.  Ninety miles travelled; four bridges blown up on the way, crossed over on Bailey bridges.  Pretty slow going.

 

Wednesday 17th November.  Headed for Lariny, there must have been a lot of rain as the area is a complete mud patch, got really bogged down.  Four wheel drives' useless, took four hours to get in but had to get a tow in the end.  The tyres are sand tyres; good for sand but useless in muddy conditions.  Moved out next day, had to put chains on the tyres but they were too loose and kept slipping around the tyres so we had to get another tow out.  Rotten trip over the mountains, very greasy surface and several bridges were down.  Arrived at around Furch at dark, just twenty miles behind Gerry lines.

 

The next few weeks with the bad weather things were reasonably quiet; the division was pretty well bogged down.  Shifted the cookhouse to a barn where there was a fireplace and we had a few fires in it which helped to keep us warm.  The weather is getting really cold.  Five days later the outfit shifted twenty miles up the road.  Bloody awful road, slippery, narrow and very winding.  This time we shifted the cook house to a one room school room on the first floor.  The Italian family shared the bottom floor with two cows, a couple of pigs and a few fowls.  Three humans lived there: they slept and ate there.  I don't know where their house was or if they had a house, but I think they slept with the animals for warmth.

 

The Mountains

From this location we went up the mountains.  We could see the bombing and shelling down below us.  Went to Termoli with the water man to fill the water cart and went to the supply depot to get supplies for the cook house.  Apart from this we did maintenance on the truck and watched Gerry getting bombed.  The battle here was a pretty big battle.  With the bad weather the eighth army had been held up at the Sangro River and a lot of N.Z. soldiers had been killed here.

 

25th December.  Had a busy day in the cook house today.  The sergeants and corporals waited on us at dinner.  Our Christmas dinner was quite good: pork, green peas, potatoes, cabbage, plum pudding and custard.  We got two bottles of beer each, plenty of Vino (wine) nuts and chocolates.  Overcast and raining.  Also quite a good tea - tinned turkey and fruit salad.

 

The trucks can't go anywhere because of the bad weather.  On New Years eve it snowed heavily and the M.T.  Sergeant came around at some ungodly time at night and told us to empty the truck radiators in case it froze.  I wasn't going to empty the radiator at night while it was snowing.  The cook house was in a building upstairs and in the morning the lads came in from sleeping in their trucks.  They were all soaking wet and their blankets were soaked because the snow had blown up under the canopies and their beds were absolutely soaked through.  The cooks got their burners going and dried their clothes and blankets.  The M.T Sergeant came in without his false teeth and said he didn't know where he had put them, until one of the lads said they had put him to bed in his truck as he was so drunk celebrating New Years' Eve.  They told him the last thing they saw him do was to put his head outside his truck and was sick.  That gave him an idea: he went and found his teeth under a couple, of feet of snow where he had been sick.

 

3rd January 1944.  Still snowed in but shifted a couple of miles down the road.  Very bad area.  Looking for a better area.  The village we were in was called Peali near Otessa.  Next day we shifted to another area a couple of miles away.  The cook house is now in a barn.  The Italians built us an oven but we didn't have a chance to use it as we moved 103 miles, supposed to be a very secret move, going over to somewhere near Naples.  Crossed over the Appenine Range, very steep climb but a very good road.  Did another 101 miles today.

 

Went out on one of the petrol trucks today, stopped at the base of Vesuvius not far from Pompei.  Have never seen so many starving people.  We stopped for lunch and everyone; especially the kids, were begging for food.  Instead of eating our food we gave it away to the kids mainly, they were fighting one another to get a few scraps, sometimes the men in particular would snatch food out of the kids hands.  We ended up by giving away all our surplus food: we normally carry tinned bully beef, meat and vegetables and baked beans.  I don't think any of us had any lunch that day.

 

On the 25 January I went into Naples with Soppy our 2nd Lieutenant and his driver Robbie.  Didn't see a great deal of Naples, we drove through the town and also saw the Port from a distance.  Quite a lot of damage by bombing.  One building of about seven or eight stories was leaning in all directions; the lift well was in the middle of the building and a bomb must have gone down the lift well and exploded in the basement.  We weren't supposed to be in Naples as there was a typhus epidemic there - later on we were inoculated against Typhus.

 

Casino

We were now on the West coast and under the American 5th Army.  The East coast side of Italy was under the British 8th Army.  The N.Z.  Division was to help the Americans to breach the German Gustov Line and then proceed on to Rome but unfortunately this did not come about.  The Gustov line runs roughly from the coast to past Casino then over the Apennine Mountains to the East coast.  We were camped about the Gaserta and Benevento area.  Casino seems to be the hold up as there is only a small area behind the mountains to allow the army to penetrate.  At about this time the Americans landed at Anzo, the idea being to force the Germans to retreat from Casino or have their forces at Casino cut off.  Unfortunately the Germans didn't retreat from Casino but brought their troops from Northern Italy to combat the Anzio landing.

 

This left Casino fully fortified.  Petrol company gradually moved forward through Alife and were stationed about twelve miles south of Casino at about Magnona.  In this area the first real scare happened - we were stationed just over a small hill with several hundred trucks scattered over a large flat area.  We had been playing a game of rugby when we heard a plane coming - a German Messersmit Fighter.  As it cleared the hill it put its nose down and strafed a fairly large area.  It was followed by a Spitfire which shortly after fired its canons and the Messersmit went down in flames about half a mile away.  We were just getting over this when another Messersmit followed with another Spitfire on its tail.  After the Messersmit strafed the area again and the Spitfire opened up with its canons the second Messersmit also burst into flames and disappeared over a hill.  After a few minutes a third Messersmit flew over, this time flying at five or six hundred feet.  It was also followed by a Spitfire: the two planes disappeared over a hill and a few minutes later the Spitfires came back and did a victory roll over head, so we knew that all three planes had been shot down.

 

The next day we had been playing rugby again.  Bob Scot who later toured South Africa with the All Blacks was playing for the opposition.  At this stage Bob wasn't known any more than I was but he made his mark in rugby and I didn't.  While we were playing a huge armada of heavy bomnbers passed over.  They were in formations of fifty and sixty planes, heading for Casino, we could hear the bombs in the distance.  As one formation appeared the previous formation disappeared towards Casino.  After dropping their bombs they made a big circle on their return trip.  We counted the number of planes as they went over and as they returned, and on one occasion one plane was missing.  We felt very bad at one plane missing, however shortly after we saw a single plane, it was losing height and had obviously been hit by anti aircraft gun fire.  We later learned it had got back to an allied base and none of the crew had been hurt.  That day we counted over twelve hundred bombers in a matter of a couple of hours, a really great sight.

 

At this time the N.Z.  Division had taken over the battle for Casino and had occupied the Railway Station and half of the town.  One side of the main street was occupied by the Kiwis and the other by the Germans.  The N.Z.  forces withdrew before the bombing and had hoped with the support of tanks to push forward and take the town before the Germans could re-organise themselves.  However this was not to be as the bombing had done a lot of damage to the only road into Casino and the tanks couldn't get through.

 

Bombing

The night after the bombing I walked over to see Bill about half an hour away at the ammunition company.  Just as I was leaving and we were in the middle of the ammunition dump there was a terrific explosion followed by many more.  Ammunition of all description was going in all directions - whole shells and lots of shrapnel was landing all around us.  We crouched behind a truck for ages being bombarded by all sorts of metal pieces.  I don't know why but fortunately I was wearing a tin hat which I rarely did and one piece of shrapnel put a big dent in the middle of the hat.  That piece of shrapnel landed about three feet away so I thought I would grab it for a souvenir.  Unfortunately it was too hot to handle.  After a while we dashed from one truck to another for some form of shelter until we were out of the danger area.

 

The Inferno Track

As the main and only road to Casino was now blocked the only way to get supplies in was by what was known as the Inferno Track.  We moved up to an area near Isemia, not far from the Inferno Track.  About five or six trucks from the platoon were detailed to make a special trip down the track.  We were told that no three ton trucks had used the track before: only jeeps had been able to traverse the track to supply Casino by this route.  The story has it that General Freybergh was taken down the track by the American General Mark Clark - the American commander of the American Fifth Army.  The N.Z Division was in Casino but had been supplied by the main road which was now unusable after the bombing.

 

The N.Z. Division had taken over from the Americans.  Freybergh asked General Clark why they didn't use three tonners instead of Jeeps.  The reply was because trucks would not be able to negotiate the track.  We understood that Freyberghs answer was that: "My boys will be able to do it."  We were given a run down on what to expect.  The track was supposed have been an old creek, which the French had diverted.  It was very narrow; only enough width to negotiate as it narrowed above the track itself.  It was very steep - a one in five gradient in places.  The trouble wasn't only the steepness, but the surface was very rough and we had to use our four wheel drive most of the way.  The cliffs on both sides must have been fifty or sixty feet high and narrowed towards the top.

 

Near the bottom of the track was the Hove Dump where a C.C.S. ( casualty clearing station) was with other supplies.  Another hundred yard down was our destination an area called the Bowl.  We were told that this area was one thousand yards from Casino but was a safe area with high cliffs and because of the cliffs, too high for the Germans to land shells in.  It was very rarely that we were told in advance what to expect.  Usually we drove without any knowledge of the conditions, very often not even knowing where we were going.  However this time our five or six trucks loaded up with troops of an RAF regiment and headed for the track with about twenty-eight troops in the truck.  A few hundred yards before the entrance to the track a huge camouflage net hung over the so-called road.  It must have been about fifty feet square.  It was a small area visible from Monty Casino.  My spare driver got out of the truck and held on to the botton of the net, at this point a strong gust of wind blew it and took him up to twenty feet above the ground.  There was Joe in mid air yelling for help, but he had to wait until the wind dropped before he hit land again.

 

From there we proceeded to enter the track and for a few miles wound our way through the narrowest of passages with only inches to spare on either side of the canopy for long distances at a time.  It was a real nightmare of a drive but finally we reached Hove Dump and then on to the Bowl.  The Bowl at first seemed O.K. with high cliffs facing Casino.  We unloaded the troops and they set off walking down the track heading for Casino.  We were only there a few minutes when the shells started falling in this so-called safe area.  I think about forty landed in a few minutes.  Fortunately most of the trucks were parked under the cliff except a couple.  We all sheltered under the cliff by our trucks.  There were two trucks however parked in the middle and their canopies caught fire.  I found out later that my corporal and another driver ripped the burning canopies off and drove the trucks up to the Hove Dump.  Fortunately their action saved us all as one of the truoks was loaded with mortars and had they gone off they would have killed everybody in the area.

 

A while later stretcher bearers brought back large numbers of those we had taken in not long before.  Many were badly wounded and several were killed.

 

We stayed in the bowl that night and were supposed to go out what was known as the North Road which was five hundred yards from Casino, however that night the Germans shelled and blew up the only bridge, so that meant the only way out was to go out the track.  Going over the track once was enough but having to go over it again was frightening, but we had to get out and that was the only way.  On the way up I was a little too far over one side and I caught the canopy of the truck on one side of the cliff and bent it fairly badly, but finally made the top, as did all the other trucks.  Thank goodness I only had to make that trip once.

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