Stories

From here we moved to the Isernio area. We had been working pretty hard with long hours and getting back to the company area at about dark without a stop for sixty hours or so, we were told to remove our windscreens, cover up all glass, all the brass fittings on our rifles, our watch glass and anything else that may reflect light. It was pitch dark when we started off, no moon and especially no lights of any description. We wound our way around a narrow road, very hilly, we had to follow the shape of the canopy of the truck ahead of us. At our destination there was a bloke holding a lantern almost completely covered except for a small area about the size of a penny. He was extremely careful to hold the lantern facing only one way. He instructed us to bead for another lantern similarly disguised, and this was repeated again. Finally we were told to unload our Gerricans of petrol very quietly as they didn't want the Gerries to know what was going on. The German lines were only a few hundred yards further on.

We got out of that area the same way as we got in. We drove back over the road we had earlier travelled on. At one stage I fell asleep driving the truck and ran up a bank, so decided to pull off the road and have a sleep. Next morning I headed back to the unit which was only a few hundred yards away. We were given a couple of days rest as all the drivers were exhausted. The following day the Artillery opened fire and all hell let loose. The next day we picked up the petrol we had taken up in the dark and as the army had moved forward we took the petrol another eight or ten miles further on. Going over that road again in daylight I don't know how we made it in the dark. Where I had climbed the bank after falling asleep directly opposite on the other side of the road was a sheer drop of several hundred feet. Must have been my lucky day.

Peter Fraser

After this episode we had a reasonably easy time for a while, sometime carting ammunition. We were carting twenty-five pounder shells; they were packed in metal containers with loose handles. I was dragging the containers from the front of the truck to the back and got my finger caught up on the handle - it was the middle finger of my right hand - I broke it in three places and tore the nail out. I went to the C.C.S. where they attended to it and put my finger in a splint. I could have gone to the hospital but preferred to go back to the unit as had I gone to hospital I probably would not have got back to the petrol company. While I was in the C.C.S. I met Peter Fraser, the N.Z. Prime Minister who had been paying a visit to the N.Z. Division. He asked what was wrong and told me no one had ever died of a broken finger. I went back to the unit and helped the lads load and unload petrol cans, but it was a bit awkward with only one hand.

Casino fell and we moved several miles north doing the usual things but carting petrol mostly. Rome also fell to the fifth Army, and at the same time the Allies under Eisenhower landed in France opening the second front. Our Skipper Sam Birkett sent another truck and mine over to the tank transporters where we were to pick up a load and take it over to the Tank Transporters who were mostly stationed now on the Adriatic Coast. On arrival at the pickup point, the officer told us he only needed one truck as there were only two engines to go over to the coast. We must have seemed a bit disappointed so he asked us if we both wanted to go and agreed to put one motor on each truck.

Ancona

We didn't know where the Transporters were except some were near Ancona which was about one hundred miles away on the coast. When we got to the coast we made some enquiries about the whereabouts of the Transport Company but nobody seemed to know, so we headed North until we saw a couple of tanks go up a rise and fire a few shots. There were some soldiers lying in a ditch so we enquired about the whereabouts of the Transporters. They said if you go another hundred yards along this road you will meet the German transporters. Needless to say we turned away as quickly as possible and went flat out and finally found the Transporters a few miles south of Ancona. After we unloaded the two motors they gave us dinner and we had a sleep. After breakfast we headed off to a beach just north of Ancona, it was a lovely sandy beach so we decided to have a swtm and stay a while. We spent most of the morning on the beach, and in the afternoon decided to head back.

One of the boys from the other truck had got to know an Italian family some distance off our beaten track over the Appenine way. When we finally got back to the unit our skipper Sam Birkett said: "Where the Hell have you been, you should have been back last night." We pleaded dumb and told him we couldn't find the transporters for ages as no one knew where they were. I am pretty sure he knew we had given ourselves a bit of a break from the usual boredom. Oh what a wonderful war.

The war moved, on pretty quickly at this stage. Both the Fifth and Eighth armies had made good progress and pushed the Germans back. The fifth army had taken Borne and were about forty of fifty miles further on. The Petrol company was stationed round about the Narni area and no 2 platoon was detailed to cart ammunition from the Anzio area to an ammunition dump north of Rome - a distance of approximately seventy miles. We were to do two trips a day covering two hundred and eighty miles each day. By the time it took to load and unload the ammo it made the day pretty long. We were helping the Tommy A.S.C. out and were given X amount to shift in a given time. To do the two trips each we had to pass the Tommy convoys; cutting their convoys to pieces. They were only doing one trip a day compared to our two, and they stopped every hour for a ten minute break. On the fifth day at the Anzio pick up area Brigadier Crump the NZ A.S.C. commander was a few yards from me arguing with the Pommie brigadier. The Pom was lecturing Crump about the way we were messing up their convoys. The short answer from Crump was either your drivers do two trips the same as the N.Z. drivers are doing or I will withdraw the Kiwi trucks and you can cart your own bloody ammunition. The answer to that was according to Kings Regulations they were only allowed to travel at certain speeds and the drivers had to have a ten-minute break every hour. After that Crump came over to us and told us to load up and deliver the ammunition to the ammunition point, then go back to our unit. So that was the end of that job.

Sienna

In the middle of July we moved to the Sienna area; the dust on these roads was as bad as the dust in Egypt. There were so many trucks pounding the road that the road surface just turned to dust and it was difficult to see where the road actually was. We did a lot of shifting the petrol points towards the Adriatic coast. About this time the old Ford and Chevy Four wheel drive trucks that had been through the North African campaign were replaced by Dodges.

The division moved to a sight near Rimini on the Adriatic Coast. No 2 Platoon was given the job of carting Cyprian troops and their mules. We proceeded to an area near San Marino. San Marino was a very small independent country within Italy. We parked on a road above a small valley where the Cyprian troops were looking after their mules. All of a sudden there was a huge explosion as one of the mules stood on a mine. The mule was thrown well up in the air. After the area had been searched for further mines we loaded the mules and set out for a river about eighty miles away where the Cypriots unloaded the mules and fed and watered the animals. We stayed by the river that night. My spare driver went to a small village nearby and came back about mid-night - under the weather as usual. The Cyprians were in the cookhouse cooking up some meat and Joe feeling hungry, joined them. He was offered a steak which he duly accepted and enjoyed. He said to the cooks that he couldn't understand how they got fresh meat and all we got was tinned bully beef. After he had been offered another steak he was informed that his lovely steak was the mule which stood on the mine earlier in the day. Tough as he was, he brought up his steak.

Next morning we loaded up the mules again and transported them another hundred miles or so. This area was about twenty miles south of Florence. We had travelled one hundred and eighty miles where the actual distance in a straight line from where we picked them up was only eighteen miles. The reason for this long trip was that all the land in between was occupied by the Germans. The mules were needed for steep hill country behind Florence.

Florence

From here the division took part in the attack on Florence. Four divisions were involved: the South African on the N.Z left flank and an Indian and Scottish division on the right flank. A huge artillery barrage went on most of the night and at dawn the four divisions were supposed to advance to within a few miles of Florence. All but the South African division reached their objective and this left an area of ten miles on the N.Z. left flank open. Fearing a counter attack on this flank all the other Divisions artillery kept a constant barrage up to stop the Germans cutting the divisions off. This meant a heck of a lot of work for us. One of the petrol company platoons carried petrol while the others carried ammunition. Ammunition and petrol dumps were located as close as considered safe and some distance behind these dumps other dumps existed . This was necessary in case of a German counter offensive where our army had to retreat. These dumps were in existence many miles behind the front line. We carted twenty-five pounder shells from one dump then another one further back. So many shells were fired that after a while that instead of picking them up and delivering them to our ammunition dump we were delivering them direct to our guns as the artillery trucks couldn't keep up the supply.

At several of the closest dumps, stocks had been emptied out. This meant we had to collect supplies from a huge reserve dump at Lake Tresimino, fifty miles back. We were doing two trips a day, covering two hundred miles. I think it was either the third or fourth day trip to Tresimino that our Captain Sam Birkett came out of the Pommie Orderly room and announced to us that he was told that we had had our ration and he couldn't give us any more. Sam went back and asked the Pom. Colonel if he had a field telephone and on being told "yes" he told the colonel to get hold of the N.Z. Division headquarters and ask to speak to General Freybergh. "I couldn't do that, I couldn't speak to a General" was the reply. Sam said: "You get the N.Z division and I will talk to the general." After telling Freybergh the story about us having our ration of ammunition, Freybergh said: "Put that Colonel on to me!" and that colonel got a blast. "When my boys come for ammunition you give it to them - there is a bloody war on up here" was Freyberg's reply. I think we collected another load from that dump but by this time Florence had fallen and we went back to mostly carting petrol.

The Adriatic Coast

Shortly after this the division had a short break and we transferred to the Adriatic coast area and eventually Forli fell. The weather was starting to deterorate. We moved in to Forli and my section was supposed to move into an area just outside a factory of some kind. When we got there the Tommy Transporters were there - they were to leave the following day so we had to move around the comer. The original area was big enough to hold six trucks so we all picked the spot where we would move to the following day. Just on dusk we were having dinner not far from where we should have been parked when Gerry sent over four planes from different directions. While the Anti-aircraft fired another plane would come from a different direction. The last one dropped what we believe to be a thousand pound bomb and it landed right where my truck would have been. There was a mass of twisted steel and a hole in the ground as big as a house. Our cookhouse was about fifty yards from where the bomb landed but we got covered from rubbish after the blast. We had just finished our dinner and the anti-aircraft fire was still going up. We were lying on the ground as you are supposed to do under these circumstances when my spare driver stood, threw his dixes in the air and yelled out, take that too you buggers. It broke the tension of the situation.

The Italian Family

As we couldn't go back to our allotted sight we stayed around the corner and my section made its headquarters in a partly damaged room of a house. There were no doors or windows left, so we hung up some canvas over the door and window. There was a fireplace in the room and as the weather got colder we were to make use of it. In the back part of the house an Italian and his wife and young son lived. When we got there first the Italian- Amado by name, seemed quite friendly and after a few days he said his wife wanted to cook us dinner. This seemed O.K. to us, but as they were short of food he asked us if we could give them some tins of bully beef and some other things; tins of meat and vegetables and baked beans.

His wife cooked us a lovely meal and we said we would get some wine. But he wouldn't let us - saying we would only be able to get rubbish; so he also supplied the wine. We got very friendly with the family. Jovany, their son, was a lovely little fellow, the boys used to make quite a fuss of him. We couldn't speak much Italian and they couldn't speak English but we got by. We found out that he used to be a carrier and under the German occupation he took his truck to pieces and hid it all round the countryside. He had a donkey cart and after a few days he would arrive back with bits and pieces of his truck, and eventually the truck took shape. The weather started to get really bad and we were snow bound a lot of the time - meaning little work for us. The army being bogged down also there wasn't much call on petrol. Sometimes we didn't move for days at a time. It got pretty boring and a lot of cards were played. The maintenance on the trucks was done. We went looking for firewood for our fire which came from the bombed houses. We would cut it up and keep it in a pile in the comer of the room.

One night we had a good fire going, the snow was pretty heavy and it was very cold when a couple of Red Caps (Pommy Military Police) came in our canvas door and asked us directions as they were lost. They said they saw a couple of our dark skinned N.Z. troops outside but it wouldn't have been any good asking them directions as they wouldn't have been able to speak English. Our reply was they are Maoris and the Maori can speak far better English than you can.

Armadao and his wife and Jovanny often used to come in with us in the evenings - he used to play a Piano Accordion which helped the time to pass. The Petrol company workshops were close by and they used to generate power so we wired up our Italian friends house with lights while we were in Forli. They thought the Kiwis were just O.K.