8.  The Invasion of Italy

That was the end of our Sicily invasion, and we had to wait until the next job could be found, which was to make a landing at Taranto, on the heel of Italy. It was the largest naval base, used by the Italians, and the British had been told that the Italian navy would be happy to surrender, sailing to Malta, so we could make an assault landing against very weak German troops. Our general was sure that our casualties would be light, never dreaming that he himself would be killed by a sniper.

We wondered what kind of boats would take us to Italy, and were amazed when we reached Bizerts to find we were to board the Cruiser Abdiel, which was said to be the fastest ship in the Royal Navy, used for mine laying. The Welsh Parachute Batalions and the anti-tank gunners boarded first, then the field ambulance climbed aboard. Just as I brought my section to the gangplank, the captain called down, “Not another man aboard”,  My C.O. begged him to let me come, possibly in exchange for the padre, however he said “No!”. That was it, and we had to march back along the wharf to find what other ship could take us. The next in line was an old commando troop-carrier. We marched on board, and couldn’t help feeling sorry for ourselves.

Early next morning, at first light, we were put on small assault craft to go ashore. One of the sailors said, “To bad that big ship went down. She hit a mine.”  As we moved toward shore, we passed bodies floating on the water, picking several up. It was only when we got to shore, that we learned that the Abdiel had split in two, taking hundreds of men down with her, and many of those on deck had drowned. My best friends, Dick Sharpe and Tinker Palmer were missing, while the colonel had a broken spine and we never saw him again. As soon as I could, I sent letters to the next-of-kin of all our officers and men who were missing.

We were stunned by the loss of so many of our unit, but we still had a job to do, and fortunately the general had been right about what little resistance we should have to meet. We spread through Taranto and the surrounding district immediately. The most amusing event the first day was when one of our boys saw a man riding a bicycle, and stopping him to take his bicycle, asked him where he was going. He said he was going to open the German commissary liquor store. Whereupon, our bright man, I think he was a corporal, went along and said he would look after the place. So we all received bottles of chianti. Somebody tried to say that it should have been seized officially, then sold to us in the name of the Crown. What an absurd idea!

Volumes have been written about the Italian campaign, and in the minds of those of us who went from the initial landings to the final surrender, there must be a great variety of memories. It is the first of everything that tends to stay clearest in ones’ mind. We captured quite a few Germans, but usually only those who were wounded, the others retreating carefully.

Our first such casualty was a German sergeant-major, whose spine was fractured by a bullet, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. He was a fine gentleman, speaking English quite well, and anxious to let us know that although he was a loyal Deutschman, he was no Nazi.

Our next was a very young, ex-Hitler Youth, who refused an intravenous, which he badly needed. He said that he would rather die than live in a P.O.W. camp, and he might well have had his wish, since he had to be sent by boat to North Africa to the nearest hospital, since we couldn’t afford to keep anybody. Since our surgeons had fortunately been able to swim, they were both saved and could operate, but we did very little surgery in our dressing station, which I should explain always resembled the American MASH, made popular by the TV story.

Gradually, we worked up the eastern coast of Italy, through a number of villages and small towns, the names of many now forgotten. Bari was one town well remembered, because it was at that fairly large harbour that the ship carrying our transport and heavy supplies was struck by German bombers. They also hit an American vessel, blowing it up and sinking it, with many crew members having to swim to shore. One man complained of his skin being irritated right away, then developed blisters. The smart old doctor who was called to look after him, a veteran of World War I, thought the lesions looked like the mustard gas cases he had treated in his war. Imagine the embarrassment of the Americans when they had to admit that the ship was carrying many cans of lewisite, their brand of mustard gas. They were bringing it to Italy, just in case the Germans decided to use theirs!

Histories are always boring to me when they go into too much detail about every stream crossed or hill climbed, and how many rounds of ammunition were fired or tanks destroyed. The Italian campaign was very slow, and Monty insisted that it should be won mile by mile. Many of us amateurs thought that airborne troops could have hit behind their coastal defenses, allowing our commando types to rush ashore followed by tanks, but the one time that this was tried, at Anzio, it was a failure, though they had to admit after that their planning was poor. In any event, we moved slowly against very strong German defenses.

Our 2nd Parachute Brigade was part of the 1st Airborne Division, but then it was decided to send the rest of the division back to England for the major attacks on the continent. Our brigade was to be kept for the Mediterranean theatre, as an independant brigade, to help the Americans land in southern France and then invade and hold Greece. Each time we were moved, it seemed that we were fighting alongside different nationalities.

First we came under the New Zealanders, then the Indians, then the Canadians, when they were having their battle of Ortona. At the time, we were sitting just South of Orsogna, which we gazed at, watching their big guns fire at us.

I was able to drive to Ortona once, in my jeep, to visit an old friend, Dr. Harold Midgley, from Galt, Ontario, though its name is now change.d  They had just installed a mobile bath unit, so I was able to have my first bath for months, except for occasional showers when it was warm enough from a British fighter’s little auxiliary petrol tank, which it had dropped, when empty. We had set it up, so we could fill it with water, with a make-shift shower below. Our area was terribly muddy, and our jeeps often had chains on all four wheels. It was a terrible place, but there were tragi-comedies too.

As I mentioned, the Germans had big guns in Orsogna, and regularly hit the main road near our lines. We called it suicide road. One day I was racing across that road in my jeep, when the jeep in front of me was hit. We slammed on our brakes, as their little car went up in the air and stopped. Their jeep wasn’t really damaged, nor was the driver hurt but our intelligence officer’s head was sliced half off, as neatly as if cut with a scalpel. He was still sitting in his seat, neat as ever, with a scarf around his neck. His driver and I just placed him in the back of the jeep, and we left fast, before the next shell might hit. What struck me and still remember so vividly, was the strong smell of perfume. He was quite a dandy and was driving to the nearest big town to meet an Italian girl.

We were a rather unruly wild group, the parachutists, interested in daredevilry rather than the traditional military values!  Honours and awards struck us as rather silly, being for people thinking of their days in retirement, when they would be Colonel Blimps, with O.B.E.’s which we called “Other Buggers’ Efforts”. We used to say that the War Office could put their medals “you know where”. None of my unit ever won an award, although I came pretty close. It was a typical Kerr venture.

One night, when our section was in a rather miserable hilly area, we had no serious casualties to watch and things seemed very quiet, so I went for a walk, with my cook, a bright corporal, who had given us a good supper. We wanted to see if we could find an artillery unit that had moved a little too close to our location. It was a counter battery, long-range guns used to aim at enemy artillery guns as soon as they could be located. Which is why the guns had to move frequently. In any event, we thought they were too close to us, and wanted to see where they were. We had only gone half a mile or so, when there was an explosion just ahead of us. We knew it was a shell, and each moved behind a tree. Then we heard a man crying in pain. He was only a couple of hundred yards further, so we ran to him. His leg was cut and he obviously had a compound fractured femur.

I put on a shell dressing, and we asked him how far it was to the nearest shelter. It wasn’t far and we carried him around an embankment and through a door. There were his pals, not realizing that he had left and was missing. So we splinted his leg and sent him straight to the nearest military hospital.

The next day, our victim’s C.O. came to my section, thanked us for saving his man’s life and said that he was going to make a recommendation. Of course we said that it was nothing, and heard no more about it. Somewhere in the War Office files, there may be a report about a Canadian medical officer and a cook who helped an artillery man!

Having spoken of the German defenses, Casino must be mentioned. We were sent up into the hills, just east of the castle, under the Indian Division at that time, and with a Sikh mule team to transport all our heavy supplies up the trail, which was quite mountainous. Amazing beasts, they carried loads of mortar ammunition, food etc, on flat saddle-like little platforms on their backs. Quite a few were hit by mortar shells, unfortunately, so were some of us, and the smell was terrible, since they were hard to bury.

However, when there was no shelling or machine gunning, it was very quiet, and there I heard my first cuckoo-bird. We didn’t stay too long before being moved down, right in front of the castle. This was a terrible place, where we could be shelled.

Many of the British there were very fed up, and I remember one man, who after several close calls, committed suicide. The padre wanted to bury him in the temporary cemetery, where the others had been laid to rest, however the “higher-ups” said that a suicide had to be buried at a cross-roads, suitably labelled as a suicide. I never saw this, but some of the men claimed it was so. We fortunately left there when a way around Casino was discovered.

The next important stop was Rome and now life changed. However, I nearly forgot one village that we went through. We were pretty hungry, and seeing what looked like a restaurant, we stopped. Not wanting wine and forgetting to begin by saying “Non parlo Italiano”, I told the waitress, “Nous avons faim”. She smiled, recognizing my English accent and said, “You want a lady?”  I smiled too and suggested pasta. Anyway, we had some spaghetti, so all was well and asked her to join us for a drink. Incidentally, my boys all thought that we should have an Italian motto, so we had a contest, making use of words that we had all seen repeatedly. “Non sputare par terre” won. In case you don’t speak the language, that means “Don’t spit on the floor!”

I can remember only one exercise that we held, while in Italy, when we flew from Rome to Naples. At one time, they had planned to drop us there, ahead of the troops who landed but that was cancelled. This time, the countryside was peaceful, and it was decided that we would land in farmland not far from the city.

Our plane did very well, and we all dropped where we were meant to be. The next plane wasn’t so lucky. It had been used to carry mixed cargos including bottles of sulphuric acid, one of which had cracked, splashing the corrosive liquid on the parachute straps. The first jumper left the plane and his strap broke, so his “chute” didn’t open. Fortunately, the jump master saw this, and stopped the next man and all the others. In another plane, a more amusing incident occurred when one of the men realized that he was heading for a barn. He landed on the roof, but it was rotten, and he went right through, onto a cow’s back. Apparently the animal wasn’t too concerned, but might not have given as much milk as usual that day.

It was almost forgotten that we had an interesting experience, while camped near Naples. Vesuvius erupted in 1944, for the eightieth time since A.D. 79. It was like a blizzard, but instead of snow, a fine ash fell on our tents and on us. We had to wear masks at one time. Having wandered through the ruins of Pompeii and passed Herculaneum, which has since been excavated, it made us appreciate the history of this part of the world. Not being professional sightseers, we were glad to get back to Rome.

We were very fortunate in having a Catholic padre who had studied in Rome, and knew people at the Vatican. He arranged for us to visit several times, and heard that the Pope planned to hold an audience for the Free French parachutists. He asked if I could join them since I spoke French. His request was granted, so I went to the Vatican to meet Pious the Twelfth, or “Pie Douze”, as we called him, naturally. It was easier to remember him by that name, since I grew up near Pie Neuf Boulevard, where my brother and I had our worst motorcycle accident!

Meeting the Pope, for anybody, even though not a Catholic, is a momentous occasion, and he tried to speak to each of us, almost two hundred, I would think. He was most interested when he saw my ”Canada” badges, wondering how I had ended up in Rome. I began to wonder too!  Speaking French with a perfect accent, we heard that he had served for many years in France, on his way up from Bishop to Cardinal. A very learned, scholarly individual, but rather shy and unlike the more recent popes.