5
After this there is a lull, both in my memory and in my diary; also apparently in what on a larger scale was going on. I do not think we stayed in the central mountains much longer; we were told we would be moving to a base area to train for the big push north in the early spring. There were rumours, even, that we were to be sent home for a rest: soldiers keep up their spirits by such stories. Then, in the event we settled in a pleasant complex of farm buildings near Capua, north of Naples, where we were to practise river crossings and close-combat fighting among buildings.
I was aware that I was likely to be in trouble for the majority of my platoon at Montenero having been captured without firing a shot; even though I had contrived to escape. Out of a platoon of twenty-one men only six had managed to avoid capture during the original assault; the wounded man who had fallen in front of me had survived. A request for an explanation for this debacle came from Divisional Headquarters, and I wrote a report: the men had been half frozen; a mortar bomb had knocked out most of my platoon headquarters. It seemed that this was accepted, because I heard nothing more.
But I was haunted by the fact that my platoon had not obeyed my order to open fire; although if they had, as my wounded sergeant had pointed out, we would probably most of us have been killed. So what was to be learned from this — the inadequacy of officers’ training which did not countenance the possibility of orders not being obeyed? The wisdom of men who saw the futility of an order that would result in their being killed to no good purpose? But morally? Militarily? My feeling of shame had been heightened by my peculiar personal history to do with my father. What would emerge from my impression that I had been somewhat miraculously saved?
In the course of our training in the countryside near Capua I remembered what I had felt at Ranby — that for a junior officer to be on effective terms with his platoon what was required was more than a reliance upon orders; it was a two-way trust that had something of the nature of love. So I now set about fitting into the training programme of my platoon some of the stalking and catch-me-if-you-can games that I had played with Raleigh Trevelyan’s platoon at Ranby — for did not war seem to be a horribly over-the-top version of a children’s game? In these so-called exercises my platoon became known as being amazingly keen. In particular, we became the champion team at river crossings. I taught my crew in its flat-bottomed boat the canoeing chant from the film Sanders of the River — Oi ye o ko ho, or whatever — and we won most of our races. E Company, at the instigation of Mervyn, adopted a battle-cry — Woo-hoo Mahommet! — said to be the war cry of the Parachute Regiment. We evolved a private language, which replaced the ubiquitous use of the word ‘fuck’ with the word ‘waggle’; this had to be allied to a suitably insouciant style: ‘I say, just waggle over that hill, will you, and see if there are any wagglers on the other side?’
One of the highlights of this time was when the Brigade had captured from the Germans what was supposed to be an amphibious sort of jeep; this was to be given a short tryout on the river. The brigadier and the colonel and whatever other bigwig there was room for squeezed in; they proceeded in a stately manner down the bank into the water and then straight on to the bottom. To the dozens of watching and cheering men this was a great boost to morale.
My platoon was billeted in a large barn, and for the first time it was correct for me to live and eat and sleep with my men. The only concession to my supposedly superior status was that my thin mattress and blanket were set on top of a large chest like a coffin. When I was stretched out on this it could be assumed that I was asleep or no longer present; then the men could swear and grumble and carry on their ritual cross-talk. And I could listen and wonder about the nature of ‘bonding’; what might be called communal love.
We were happy in our barn, but there had been difficulties in finding accommodation for the rest of the battalion. I wrote to my sister –
I was sent ahead on an advance party to choose billets for the battalion — a most unpleasant job which entails throwing Italian families out of their homes and turning a deaf ear to the calamitous ululations. One old grandam who I bounced into the street had hysterics and I had a tricky five minutes controlling her convulsions. But accustomed as I am to family hysterics in all its forms, it was not long before she was resigned to her ignoble fate. It is strange how unfeeling one becomes — I suppose it is just that one ceases to think in terms of pity and mercy; if one didn’t, tears would never cease to flow down harrowed cheeks. As it was the whole business was rather frantically funny — me hammering grim and gestapo-like on the door, forcing my way through the welter of pigs and chickens which live in the best rooms on the ground floor of all these houses; up to the swarming family who live in ‘orrible squalor in the attic; me ejaculating fiercely in French to an interpreter who passes on the information in even more flamboyant Italian. Then the racket really begins with the grandparents moaning in epileptic frenzy, the parents calling down all the heavens in wrath upon me, the children taking it as a good opportunity to scream and yell to their hearts’ content and have a good kick at anyone they see; and finally the pigs and donkeys and turkeys etc., who blare and cackle their ridiculous animal-grab noises up the stairs in disconcerting unison. But I, the stern jack-booted I, neither flinch nor relent.
But was this funny?
There were the usual rumours about what we were waiting for: it was now mid March and the big spring advance was held up. The Monastery at Monte Cassino, on its hill some thirty miles inland from the western coast, was proving to be an insuperable barrier. The Germans were said to be occupying it in force, though this was later found to be untrue. But they were dug in on the slopes and in the town beneath it, and all attempts in the autumn and winter to take it by direct assault had failed. The Americans of the Fifth Army had tried to bypass it by crossing the Rapido and Garigliano rivers to the south, but this had resulted in such heavy casualties that they had had to withdraw. A more ambitious plan was then hatched to make a large-scale landing at Anzio, some fifty miles behind the German Gustav Line, thus cutting off Cassino and opening up the road to Rome. The landing at Anzio had gone in on 22 January, but the initial success and advantage of surprise had not been followed up owing to timid generalship, and the Germans had been able to regroup. So it was now the forces at Anzio that were in danger of being pushed back into the sea, and there were calls for renewed attacks on Monte Cassino to prevent this.
Assaults by the New Zealand Division and the 4th Indian Division were planned for February, but before one of the divisional commanders would commit his troops he insisted that the monastery should be heavily bombed. This was agreed by higher command; so the huge and beautiful eleventh-century monastery was needlessly flattened by repeated waves of heavy bombers, and the Germans, who in accordance with an agreement with the Vatican had not been within it, were now able to occupy the rubble and construct defensive positions better than any that would have been available to them before. So that when the New Zealanders and Indians did attack in February, both assaults were a complete and calamitous failure.
The London Irish, standing by in Capua ready to exploit any breakthrough, heard rumours of all this; and were ready to believe, yes, that those in command could be so stupid. And then, in March, there was renewed heavy bombing: statistics later stated that 1,100 tons of bombs were dropped by 450 heavy bombers on and around the monastery and town of Cassino for three and a half hours — after which attacks went in with as little success as ever. The bombing this time had made it impossible for Allied tanks to get over the rubble on the approaches to the town and the Rapido river.