Lt. Bobby Elake (La t er Lord Blake.

) Having got an Oxford First need nov

h~~e J oin edup but did join R.A. with Keith Jos~ph. At Larkhill then
50th Div tl and was with Ge orge Burnett (s ee Sulmona e p iso a e). ~ hen a
lon g sea journey ou t int o A tlantic and South Afric a and Te~w fik and
Canal Zone and then Cyprus. '~ hen after 2 Illonths his Bri b ade Palestine,
via Bagdad and Kirkuk }o Iraq then back via Blubek back to the Deser ~ .
After leaving hi s luggage at Shepherds l orE, o t right hand tr c...f fic and
knock ed over.
'We now trundled slowly via El Alamein along the road t o the Gazala
Line and t o one o f t i1 e g reat military disasters o 1· t.he Desert war.'
The r e the 5oth Divis i on took up its stance in February 1942. RB sees
minature flowers spring up f rom the sand with the help of morning dew
only to fade in an hour o r two.
26th May ' Baloon went up ' Brief account of b att l e and route see also KK
who was ins id e the 'Cauldron '. Entered Tobruk on 16th June. An excellent.
account o ~ t h e shambles that ensued with out any cl a r leadership anywhere.
Captur Ed. Petty behaviour of I tg,lians -in t king watches, pe n s etc but one
offered a s wig of rum. Taken back in dans erous lorry rides. At Banghazi
had to use his cheque book as 'loo paper'.
Page s 38,39- 41 Good summary o l th e c aos in the British krmy. (After
read ·ng Carvers books '~obruk '(1 ~64) and 'th e D esert W ar' 1986.
'dilat oriness in the Battle of the Cauldron on 12th June was largely resp
r$sponsible for a e f eat at the turning point in th e ca~paign from which
the 8th Army never recovered.' Rommel was always in control of all his
forces (kncluding Ital ans - no t V f ry legally) . T uchy commanders were
in control of ustralian, New Zealan der s , S 0 uth African and Indian units.
Landed by plane at Leece 26th June. Then Bari for a month. Then Ch ieti.
1 bullyin 0 fa s cist adjutant (Croce surely.) Blake too t a ll to be a tunneler
300 Americans and 1000 British Officer s .( Among POW s was Arfuhur Dodds of
th e RAf who wrote 'D esert Harvest' )
Col onel Marshall th e C .o. t 1J. reaten Court Marshal l for anyone t 1.. yin to
escape.
52/53 story of of Crockatt's stupid order and refusal to cahnge until
too late. La mbs' revelation. "I would gladly jump on Crockatt's ~rave i,f
I knew i ts where a bouts and wa s no t confined t a wheel chk£±-- which makes
jumping on g raves difficult.'
53 Moved to Sulmona Camp. With four others decide to hide in roof rather
t ¥Ja,1 be taken to Germany so with 4 others hi d e in roof (See Burne t t acco
of storag e of food - an ·J at a d ist an ce latrine. In t he end th ey stayed
there, virtu a ll y immobile for 18 days an d nights. Accoun as for Bu rnett
but Blake had one moment o f vital decision. On 'ni ghL watch' he heard
Germans comin £, down the huts thr wing hand grenades -.into them. Should he
or should he not wake the others an J t e ll the must g ive th emselves up.
T·e wai e d grenades were t h rown in eithe r side but their nut. When they fin
get ou th ey can hardly walk ye t alone run. ~ wo g e t captur e d i mmediately.
bey h id e on hillsi e above camp th en taken in to Sumo na itsel.L and were
"'he three an son o f t he house slept in the l ett o matrcil.rnnniale and
two wo men inao the r b ed at the end. All thrr hide in toilet when GG ermans
call. ~ After ten weeks leave the hou s e (in centre of Sulmona facing
the DuomQ on 12th J anu ary to be l e d through the lines b y a paid guide .
Pass throu h Petter no - an empty villag e and the n Palena with wolves
audi h l e • . A R.bert leaves them briefl; but i ·~ caugh t up to wo r L for Germans .
B.B. collapse s at on e point bu t is helped th rough t o meet the Royal West
Kents. They h d go through with a mixture o f Italians and Allied soldier s .
'Mentio n d in Di s patches' for 6 ivin L the timEs o trains at Sulmona stat ic
which w ~ a s then bombed.
 1
Part II War
- '
t.) Iri--S)·
-
Chapter 1

When war broke out on 3 September, I was in no doubt what to do. Hugh Shillito, a

solicitor, son of the local parson and a school friend was in MIS and offered to get

me a job there. People with Oxford Firsts should not be wasted, he said. I

disagreed. Many years later reading Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honour, greatest of

all World War II novels, I realised that Guy Crouchback was expressing in far better

words what I felt at this time. I was sure I should be in one of the Services. I could

have applied for deferment, as I was in the middle of a two year course of reading

for a degree in Law, and the rules of call up allowed me to continue till I took the

exams. But I had no desire to do this. Keith Joseph with whom I was pla~ng to

share lodgings on the Iffley Road made the same decision. We cancelled our

tenancy and both joined the Royal Artillery, but the vagaries of different postings

-meant that we did not meet again till 1946. While I was escaping as a prisoner of
>

war in Italy 1943-44 he was fighting his way up the peninsula in the Eighth Army

whose outposts I reached in January 1944. It would have been fun to have met and

I wish we had.

I have sometimes been asked by those of a younger generation what mine really felt

about the war. Of course we felt different things. At times Southey's Blenheim

came to my mind, and I was 'Old Caspar' replying to his grandson.

Now tell us what 'twas all about,

Young Peterkin, he cries .....

Now tell us all about the war,

 2

And what they killed each other for .....

.. . Why that I cannot tell, said he,

But 'twas a famous victory.

But I did not feel like that for long even in my gloomier moments in the bleak post

war years. We were fighting for - or at least against - something even if it was not

exactly what starry-eyed idealists thought. Most of us regarded ourselves as fighting

a war for national survival. The moment of truth, the sense that war was inevitable,

came on 15 March 1939 when Hitler occupied rump Czechoslovakia. It was no

longer possible to believe that his purpose was limited to the unification of the

German-speaking peoples. It was not irredentism but conquest which he

threatened.

Public opinion made a total volte face. Writing of that moment forty six years later I

used words applicable a fortiori to 3 September

'There was, however, none of the enthusiasm and idealism of 1914.

The war ahead would not be one to end all wars or make the world

safe for democracy. It would not be for a "cause" ... the real issue

was patriotism, the survival of a Britain which despite its defects

inspired the love and devotion of ninety-nine per cent of its citizens.

The British would fight for self-preservation in order to crush a

ruthless nihilistic power before it crushed them. In March 1939

joyless but determined the new war generation with a sombre sense

of destiny and obligation accepted its duty'. 1

1
The Decline of Power (1985) 220-21
 3

It was a war for survival, not to make a 'land fit for heroes to live in', as Lloyd
/ )
George proclaimed in 1918. At the end of it Britannia would be able to say 'j'ai -vect~' Vt..cv..

but she could not say she had created a better world.

I was at home in Brundall when Neville Chamberlain made his uninspiring call to

arms. I repaired to the Oxford recruiting centre to join, I hoped, the Navy (Admiral

Blake!), but my sight was not good enough, and I applied for the Royal Artillery in

which my mother's brothe~, Gilbert Daynes had served in World War I. The rule

laid down by Whitehall as a sop to democracy was for potential Officer Cadets to do

a couple of months in the ranks before admission to an OCfU (Officer Cadet

Training Unit). I was ordered to attend at the Artillery Barracks in Dover early in

October.

My companions were a mixed bunch of young men from what used to be called 'the

Officer class' - some quite rich, others like myself without a bean. In the former

group was one Teddy Rice, son of an oil magnate. 'Good God' he exclaimed on

arrival unpacking a very smart suitcase, 'My Man has forgotten my pyjamas'.

My closest friend in the Army whom I met for the first time at Dover was to be Dick

Henniker-Major, younger son of the then Lord Hennikerj of Thornham Magna in

North Suffolk. He had a law degree from my college's Cambridge namesake (spelt

with a 'e' at the end). I had played cricket and hockey against them but not rugger

which was his game. He was a big man, very East Anglian in appearance. He had a

dry sense of humour and was a most congenial companion and we laughed at the

same jokes. We served in the same regiment till the disaster at Tobruk and have
 4

remained life-long friends. He knew a bit about army drill, having been in the OTC

at Stowe whereas I was a complete greenhorn. There was no OTC at Norwich. My

two months in the ranks passed quickly enough. There was plenty of hard work but
ive...
J the weather was warm - a decepti81:1 prelude to what was to be the worst winter for

fifty years. The Sergeant who drilled us one Macqueen was a very nice man and a

keen golfer. When we had time off he and Dick and I and a few others would play

at Rye or Deal or some other Kent coast course.

Passed for entry into an OCTU in January I went on a short preliminary Christmas

leave at home. Either then or just afterwards the weather suddenly changed. Frost

and ice clamped down for weeks on end. The OCTU was at lark Hill on Salisbury

Plain. This dismal and desolate spot, bleak and windswept was to be my abode for

the next six months learning to be a gunner officer. I can remember little about my

time except a remarkable silver frost which encased branches and telephone wires

and brought them down with its own weight. We trained on antiquated Great War

field guns - eighteen pounders adapted to fire twenty-five pound shells. Not that

we actually ever fired any - which was probably just as well.

We went on regular route marches - echoes of Kipling's 'Boots .. .' We sang as we

IH
?fJ marched mostly songs of Wor!~ W~r 2: ~~though we sometimes hung out 'our
. ~~)
~ /J' washing on the Siegfried line', we.t_<lld not do so often after May 1940. It was usually

; !... a matter of the old chestnuts.< the distance to Tipperary, the number and size of rats

in the Quartermaster's store, the shortage of good whores in Mobile (this latter some

sort of carry over perhaps from the 'Doughboys' of 1918), a wish to go back to 'dear

:> J.. old Blighty~ and 'we're here, because we're here, because we're here, because .. .'.

As Evelyn Waugh makes Frank de Souza say, in Men at Arms 'Last war songs were
 5

all eminently lacking in what's called morale-building qualities'. Did any better

emerge from World War II? If so I never heard them.

Training at Lark Hill was tedious but thorough. I can remember little about our

Instructors except one of them Gordon campbell who was under twenty and known

as the 'Boy Subaltern', not in any derogatory sense but because he really was

considerably younger than most of his pupils. After a gallant war record in which he

was highly decorated and lost both legs he entered politics, became Conservative

Secretary of State for Scotland and then a life peer as Lord campbell of Croy. After

I was myself, 'elevated' we had one or two enjoyable talks in the House about our

ocru days.

When we first arrived the phony war still prevailed. casualties were caused not by

the German bombs but by the blackout which doubled road deaths in a month.

Apart from the Battle of the River Plate, the capture of the prison ship Altmark and

an irrelevant war between Russia and Finland, nothing much happened.

Then in April 1940 the war suddenly became real. Hitler invaded Norway, seized all

the ports and drove out the British forces. On 9 May Churchill replaced Chamberlain.

I remember cheering as we crowded round the camp wireless sets for news. Next

day Hitler launched his long expected attack on France. What was not expected was

the disastrous result - capitulation on 22 June. There were a few who uttered the

foolish mantra 'Better off without them'. Meanwhile 26 May - 2 June occurred the
u.
'miracle of Dunkirk' when the larger p~rt of the BEF was evacuated, minus all but

side arms, across the Channel by a flotilla of small boats. A group of the rescued

soldiers was given temporary quarters at Lark Hill. I almost felt guilty at the
 6

contrast between our own well fed condition~ and theirs drawn, exhausted, and
~/~ fj[ c~ ~c~
eA'laAGipatOO. The war now seemed very real - the more so when I heard the news

of the death in action of John ('Bill') Garnett, a close Magdalen friend with whom I

used to open the bowling for the college. When he left Oxford he had become a

regular soldier in the Welsh Fusiliers, his father's regiment. It was at his house in

Northern Ireland that I was staying for a tennis tournament in 1938 when I got the

news of my First in PPE.

Our squad was passed out at the end of June. We were duly commissioned as tld

lieutenants and posted to various units according to the whim of the War Office. Six

of us were ordered to Knutsford in Cheshire where the 124111 Field Regiment was

billeted. But they were already due to move south to the Bournemouth area to

guard a section of south coast against invasion.

_) Dick and I were posted to 287 Battery) I to "A" Troop he to "B" Troop. There were

three batteries each consisting of three Troops of four guns; eventually 25 pounders,

but temporarily French seventy-fives of World War I rebuilt to fire 18 pounder shells.

"A" Troop was stationed east of Bournemouth, "B" Troop was intended to protect

Poole Harbour. It was a very makeshift business, and one can be thankful that no

German invasion occurred.

The 124111 Regiment was the second line to the 72nd based territorially on Newcastle.

It was the artillery support of 69 Infantry Brigade, the Green Howards and East

Yorks regiments. Along with 150 and 151 Brigades it constituted the later famous
~
50111 Division with T.T (Tyne and Tees) as their shoulder b_lldges under command of

General Ramsden.
 7

We OCfU products were warily welcomed, 'foreigners' in a tribal land whose

inhabitants all seemed to know each other. Most of the officers had been in civil life

on the early rungs of professional or business careers, and had left school at

eighteen to begin earning their living. Few of them had been to a university. The

commander of 287 Battery was a Newcastle solicitor, Harold Bransom, who was

highly efficient, if not entirely likeable. My Troop Commander was George Burnett,

twin son of a colliery manager at Esh Winning near Newcastle and himself in the

0 -rc vi Y\ c; I
J. 1 National and
-~
erovisierml Bank. The "B" Troop Commander was Clifford Wilton who
I ·
'
{
~LA'....-..<
•r•-1
(A '\'\, v'Lr5 I rras 'in shipping' and, exceptionally a Cambriet~e man:nd a;rugger blue. Burnett

was to be one of my two partners in escaping from 5iilmona Prison Camp in 1943

and became a life long friend. He tragically lost his twin brother killed in Egypt while

he was a prisoner of war.

I was aware that an Oxford First might be regarded with a certain suspicion among

some of my brother officers. So without denying it if asked I kept that particular

light under a bushel. I soon found myself accepted and did my best to fit into an

unfamiliar ambience. Dick and I gradually picked up the usages, folklore and

traditions of a county which neither of us had ever visited. And the songs too.

-YJ There was 'the Lampton Worrr~;' and 'the Herrings' Guts', the opening verse of what

seemed like an endless dirge being 'what shall we dee wi' the Herring's Guts we11
)

tarn them into laddies, bea-uts (Geordie for boots) and al manner o'things. The

herring's fins became needles and pins, the herring's scales buckets and pails, and
----·---~
l
so on ad infinitum was 'The Blaydon Races' sung with a splendid rollicking tune

which even someone as unmusical as myself could not forget.

 8

Class distinctions and regional accents in those days were much more marked than

they are today. The Newcastle working class from which the other ranks were

drawn spoke with an accent so broad as to be almost incomprehensible to

southerners like myself. It was as difficult to understand as Glaswegian. I managed

to get the hang of it to some extent, for they modified it a bit when speaking to an

officer, but I was baffled to the end when they were talking to each other.

At an early stage that autumn I was transferred to RHQ as Regimental Survey

Officer, probably because I was considered 'brainy' an ambivalent quality in military

esteem. My function was to be a good map-reader, act as a sort of pathfinder at the

head of the Regimental convoy, and to be responsible for the accuracy of 'predicted

I~-c.v shoots'. TheJ.task was to hit a target invisible to forward observation of fall of fire.
A_
This required a rudimentary knowledge of trigonometry. Sines and cosines puzzled

me as much as decimal points - 'those damned dots' - had puzzled Lord Randolph

Churchill. There were also complicated tables to cope with, temperature, strength of

wind, air pressure etc. Luckily I had a survey sergeant who understood all this. I

cannot say I ·liked him. He was a weedy whinger with the hang dog look of a bullied

school 'swot', but he was sound on cosines and our only predicted shoot, part of an

exercise on Salisbury Plain_) hit the target.

RHQ was in a hotel in Swanage. I struck up a cordial friendship with the Assistant

Adjutant Noel Lockerby who had a sardonic sense of humour and was efficient -

which was more than could be said of the rest of RHQ. Our C.O. Colonel Swales was

about to be replaced, but how the Second in Command, Brook Townsend survived in

post through to the Gazala campaign I never understood. It was War Office policy

to replace Territorial C.O.s with regulars - in our case Colonel Charles Neville.
 9

During the interregnum discipline at RHQ became, I must admit, somewhat slack.

When Colonel Neville arrived at night and ahead of his scheduled time, deliberately

no doubt, the order 'Turn out the Guard' resulted in some of those turned out

appearing in pyjamas, ill concealed by battle dress jackets. Colonel Neville, a large

1!'f and formidable man, was not amused. Nof was he next morning at breakfast,

supposed to be at 7.30 when he found himself the only officer there. Most of us

treated the time as 'for 8.00' like a drink party. I did manage 7.40 on this occasion

but received an acid greeting, as did subsequent arrivals. Having made his point the

Colonel did not himself later bother too much about punctuality. But he saw to it

that others did - and not only at meals. Along with a new Adjutant, Paul Parbury

whom he brought with him Charles Neville transformed us from a body of amateurs

into a regiment of professionals insofar as this could be done with a Territorial unit.

He had the indefinable gift of leadership. He was a disciplinarian but never a

martinet. He knew when to turn the blind eye. Officers and men alike were devoted

to him.

In late October or early November we moved north to Frome. RHQ was in a large

1920-style house requisitioned by the Army, 'The White House'. It was about a mile

from the town centre and commanded a splendid view across the Somerset fields.

There was a hard tennis court. We were enjoying the warm weather of a St Martin's

summer, and played many a set. But most of our time was spent in training and

exercise, and inter alia learning to ride a motorbike - a singularly useless

accomplishment for desert war.

As for leisure drink and sex if obtainable were the major occupations. The Signals

Officer was an indefatigable womanizer

 10

Four of us in RHQ including 'Sigs' had pitched our camp beds etc in the big master
.;)

bedroom. l'Ae Signals Officer-had a dual nationality of loyalty to the unit where they
A
had been posted and to their own Royal Corps. 'Sigs' could thus get away with

almost anything. After dinner he would announce his intention to walk down to

Frome where he had discovered an unexpected equivalent to a red light district. "I

must go and get my end away" - a euphemism for sex that was new to me. When

he returned late and noisy we would challenge him. Had he got his end away? Yes

was the usual smug answer, but on one occasion 'No I was so pissed I could not

even get it up. But she was decent and only charged half price'.

Pubs and restaurants in Frome were dismal. Some of us would occasionally make an

illicit foray to Bath - an eatery called, I think 'The Hole in the wan; which was not

too bad. The full austerity of war rationing had not yet set in, as it had when I got

back to England in 1944 and the waitress's stock reply was 'Spam is off' or 'Don't

you know there's a war on'. It was once after a late dinner there that we found our

truck's radiator had run dry. What to do? The restaurant had been ostentatiously

bolted and barred - we were rather noisy - as soon as we left. Then one of us,

Fred Adamson, had the bright idea of peeing into the radiator. We took it in turns to

supply the liquid enough to keep the truck going till we reached a filling station,

avoiding a tricky situation as we had no right to use army transport and a vacancy in

the parking area at Frome would have got us into trouble.

By early spring 1941 it was clear that the Division would soon go abroad on active

service, and the issue of khaki drill uniforms left little doubt where. The only theatre

of operations was the Middle East. Greece had capitulated on 14 April. Before we
 11

left Frome we suffered one heavy blow. Colonel Neville, medically examined like all

of us was pronounced to have a heart 'murmur', and had to stay in England. His
.I

replacement, Colonel 'Rosie' Ripley, was competent enough but fussy about details

and lacking Neville's cutting edge.

I think we had some sort of embarkation leave. We then headed for Gourock on the

Clyde where we boarded the SS Orduna, a passenger liner which had in peacetime

sailed between London and Buenos Ayres. Life for the officers was by no means

bad. Stewards served us at meals, there was a good Spanish American wine list and

our cabins were comfortable. The contrast with the conditions for the ORs -

hammocks slung in steerage, ill cooked food and inadequate 'heads' (nautical jargon

for lavatories) could not have been greater. The voyage was for the most part very

boring. The officers played bridge into which I was inducted and poker dice which I

knew already. The men played 'housey-housey'. We tried to keep fit by various

exercises but not very successfully. By the time we reached Suez via the Cape and

Durban I was not alone in being flabby and out of condition. Our route took us

almost to the other side of the Atlantic to avoid U-boats and then doubled back to

Freetown and thence to Cape Town.

There was one excitement at the beginning. We were escorted by the cruiser Exeter

and at least six destroyers. One morning we awoke to find that all the destroyers

had vanished and only Exeter remained. What had happened was that on 24 May

the Bismarck, the most powerful battleship afloat, had sunk the Hood off Iceland

with the loss of all but three of its crew of two thousand, and was racing back to

base on the French coast. Every available naval vessel sailed in pursuit and on 27
 12

May Bismarck was caught and sunk. Her intended course cut across ours and she

would no doubt have destroyed most of the convoy if she had escaped.

We put in briefly at Cape Town just after seeing an albatross, the only time I ever

have; then docked for a week at Durban. It was winter, cool, bright and sparkling.

There was no blackout. Lights blazed all night. We were made honorary members

of the Durban Club whose Indian servants produced the most delicious curries I

have ever eaten. Private hospitality too was lavish. Durban was and is the most

Anglophile of South Africa's big cities.

The second half of our ten week voyage was if possible even more boring that the

first. We disembarked at Port Tewfik at the end of June. Shortly before on 22 June

the news came through of Hitler's invasion of Russia. In retrospect a turning point

of the war, this left me and most of my friends devoid of enthusiasm; it would be

another walkover in the dreary sequence of Poland, France and the Balkans. Russia

in the light of the execution of its leading pre-war generals and its poor showing

against Finland in winter 1939-40 did not seem a promising ally.

We spent about a month in the canal Zone. It was stiflingly hot. Flies and 'gyppy

tummy' are my main memories. At the end of July we were shipped to Famagusta

'and the hidden deep that wreathes black Cyprus in a lake of fire'. The German

seizure of Crete had provoked the fear of a repeat performance in Cyprus. In fact

the distances were far too great. Moreover, though this was not known at the time,

Hitler was so appalled at his losses in Crete that he vetoed any future foray by

airborne troops1 c1., <.:"1'-::..A/Ir c :..vvt..

 13

Cyprus was much the most enjoyable interlude in my war. The weather was perfect,

there was excellent bathing at Limassol where we were stationed. We duly dug

ourselves in against the non-existent threat of an enemy parachute descent, and

proceeded to enjoy ourselves. The food in restaurants was adequate, though the
c )
wine was fairly bad, and as for Cyprus brandy fire water was the mot juste; literally

- for a match would set it alight like petrol even if cold, and was a wise preliminary

for drinking it after blowing out the flame. There were plenty of brothels; several

men and more than one officer 'picked up a nail', as the saying went.

We had one gunnery exercise, along the coast off Paphos. The C.R.A. Brigadier

Martin was present. It was, alas, the downfall of Clifford Wilton who commanded

"B" Troop. He performed after "A" Troop which under George Burnett had put up an

excellent show. In gunnery if aiming x degrees to the right of the line of fire one

says 'more x degrees' and if aiming to the left 'less x degrees'. I never understood

why but there it was. Clifford Wilton must have said 'less' when he meant 'more'.

Two rounds fell successively further out to sea when they should have been hitting
(

imaginary invaders landing on the beach. Brigadier Martin could bear it no longer,

threw his hat on the ground shouting 'This isn't a bloody duck shoot' and told Wilton

to stop. He was later transferred to take charge of stores as Battery Captain, and

replaced by a new Troop Commander.

Cyprus was too good to last. After two months of agreeable loafing and no sign of t..

a. hostile parachutist we sailed to Haifa. The reason was to prepare for a long journey

into Iraq to counter another imaginary threat, a German thrust through Turkey or

the Caucasus to seize the vital oil fields. We were there for the whole of September.

Before our departure there was a chance to draw lots for a brief visit to Jerusalem. I
 14

was unlucky. I have always regretted missing 'old' Jerusalem. It was nearly forty

years before I saw the Holy City for the first time. By then from all accounts it was a

very different place. By October the weather was becoming cooler and wetter. Lots

of disagreeable creepy-crawlies began to emerge around and in our tents. Before

going to bed it was as well to check that one's batman had inspected one's sleeping

bag for scorpions and to keep one's boots well protected. At last we set out on the

long journey to Kirkuk. As Regimental Survey Officer it fell to me to guide the

convoy. This was not too difficult. I simply had to follow the pipeline for most of

the route. I shared with the Assistant Adjutant, Noel Lockerby, an eight hundred

weight truck, a Dodge made in the US. We had a driver but his job was essentially

as a mechanic. Lockerby and I shared spells at the wheel. I have never driven a

more awkward vehicle. To change gear one had to do what no one ever needs to

do nowadays, to double declutch every time. Not once in the whole journey did I do

this without a hideous grinding clash of gears. I like to believe that this was not just

my ineptitude. Noel Lockerby, a-Eietightful man with a marvellously sa1donic sense

of humour, was just as bad as I was.

We drove up the escarpment behind Haifa and reached the pipeline at Mafraq in

Jordan, the threshold to the six hundred mile journey to Kirkuk. The landscape was

as dismal as one could imagine - totally flat in various shades of brown, grey and

dirty ochre. Winter was closing in. The sun seldom shone, there was an occasional

chilly shower, and nights were cold, relieved for the officers, not the men of course,

by a tot or two of whisky in our nightly 'brew up'.

St.."-'<.-1~
There was only one touch of colour. We diverged from the pipeline)=o Habbaniyah,

.the RAF base which controlled Iraqf There across some dunes I saw the unexpected
ih ~ i •1-v'l-&v Vv"Vv ·f ~ ~
f)
 15

sight of a pack of hounds followed by riders in top hats, pink (ie red) or black coats,

white breeches and highly polished boots. It might have been the Quorn - Jorrocks

in Arabia', I thought. The riders were from the regular garrison, in pursuit not of the

fox but the jackal.

The flash of colour soon vanished. We continued via Baghdad to Kirkuk where I was

laid low with jaundice and sent to a tented hospital outside Basra. There I passed a

depressing birthday and Christmas - nothing fried or roast allowed, no alcohol

except a mini-tot of whisky as a nightcap. I rejoined the regiment at Kirkuk only to

find that we were no longer needed to defend Iraq. We were no~ to go to the
I
Western Desert as soon as possible. So we set back on the long return journey, this

time by a more northern route through Syria. At one stage we camped at Palmyra.

The R.S.O. when not surveying or guiding was regarded as a convenient dogsbody

for unwanted tasks. Some of our stores had been pilfered by local Arabs in a nearby
u
~ village. I was dep?rted with an interpreter to recover them. When I arrived a

teenage boy suspect was being given the bastinado lying on his back with his legs

propped up vertically while a village elder whipped the soles of his feet with a bundle

of twigs. I got the impression that it was a bit of a put up job for my benefit and

not very serious. We recovered a few tins of bully but nothing like the full schedule

of missing goods. Much more agreeable was a brief visit to the ruins of Baalbek one

of the great survivals of a vanished civilisation.

Passing near Beirut we turned south along the coast road. I remember my na·ive

surprise at seeing on English style signposts directions to Tyre and Sidon just as they

might have been at home to Yarmouth and Lowestoft. When I murmured

 16

something of the romance of these associations with biblical antiquity my co-driver

morosely said: 'I suppose it will be Sodom and Gomorrah at the next turn'.

Now that it was going to see active service the regiment had to travel light with the

minimum of surplus baggage. Since it could hardly lose its way on the road from

Palestine via Ismailia to the coastal road, the R.S.O. 's services were not needed. I

was ordered with a few men to diverge south to cairo and deposit the luggage at

Shepherd's Hotel. After signing an infinite number of receipts in triplicate, and a

good dinner I strolled out into the velvet darkness of semi-blacked out cairo only to

be knocked down by a car driven by an Egyptian judge. I had forgotten the rule of

the road. He could not have been more helpful, took me to the military hospital,

where a minor head injury was quickly dealt with, and gave me his card on which I

scrawled my thanks. Months later on the assumption that 'wags' must always be in

the wrong some clerk sent me a letter asking in tones which suggested the answer

yes, whether I wished to prefer a charge against the Judge. I was happy to reply

no.

I rejoined the regiment, subject to a certain amount of badinage about my alleged

alcoholic state when the accident occurred. We now trundled slowly via El Alamein

along the road to the Gazala Line and to one of the great military disasters of the

Desert War.
 i j
. - '\.
- -
'
l
17

Chapter 2

There never had been nor will be anything like the Desert War. Nearly all previous

wars had in one way or another been basically fought by infantry standing shoulder

to shoulder - or almost - behind a barrage of artillery fire whether in defence or

attack. This had been the pattern in the American Civil War, in World War I and was

to be in Normandy in 1944. But it supplied no guidance in the desert. Given fairly

equal capacity in armaments- and this was largely the case between 1940 and 1942

- victory would go to the side which was better led, more adaptable and less hide

bound by tradition. And that for most of the time meant Rommel's Afrika Korps, not

the Eighth Army of Auchinleck and Ritchie.

Why were we fighting Germany in the desert anyway? The basic reason was

Mussolini's decision to come to the rescue of the victors in the summer of 1940 and

\,\; the potential threat, posed by his forces in the Italian colonies of north Africa, to
\

t ).1 1V' British control of the Suez Canal and the oil fields of Iraq. The Italian army was
1

I ~t;v~~~.t. . t / useless and General Wavell commanding an amalgam of British, Australian, Indian,
J"'X"·v
\) v New Zealand and South African troops in 1940 had no difficulty in driving it despite

its superior numbers from the Egyptian frontier to El Agheila, the gateway to Tripoli.

Hitler decided that he could not abandon Mussolini. Early in 1941 Rommel arrived in

Tripoli and the Afrika Korps drove the Allied forces all the way back to the Egyptian

frontier though it failed to capture Tobruk. In the autumn the Allies turned the

tables and in operation Crusader forced Rommel to retreat to El Agheila relieving

J
Tobruk on the way and occupying Benghazi. But Rommel achieved a partial bounce
J back, recapturing Benghazi and halting at Gazala late in January 1942, which was
 ------------------

18

where 50th Division took up its stance in February. The pendulum for the moment

had ceased to swing.

The Desert was not at all like my mental picture. I envisaged miles and miles of
f'hc ~ ~-{ Vt... . ,A""'"''->
more or less flat sand rather like the area on the north

Norfolk coast multiplied many times over. I had once won an elocution prize at

school reciting Shelley's Ozymandias ending 'boundless and bare the lone and level

sands stretch far away'. Boundless and bare perhaps but not level. The apparent
1 VJ c-.clts , < ~"'.e.( wp ·wvf<-t ~~.,
flatness concealed many hollows 1 and hidden folds: and the coastal belt, ten to
1-. "''

twenty miles deep, where most of the fighting occurred featured formidable ridges

or escarpments, rocky steps which could be very steep and had to be negotiated

before climbing to the Desert plateau. The romantic notion that tanks were 'ships of

the Desert' and could manoeuvre with the freedom of naval vessels on the ocean

was a delusion inspired, like much nonsense about the Desert, by~ E Lawrence.

Two features of the Desert War deserve emphasis. Evervthing had to be

transported by motor to the 'front' insofar as there was one and moved by motor

when it got there. This applied to both sides and included all the basic necessities of

life as well as the materials of war, food, water, clothing, ammunition, petrol and

spare parts. Hence the immense 'tail' of which Churchill complained: it was indeed

far longer for the Eighth Army than the Afrika Korps but this was only because the

distance of Alexandria from the field of most of the fighting was much longer than

from Tripoli.

The other peculiar feature was the problem of identification. 'It may seem odd that

in a country where nothing could be hidden it should yet be so difficult to know

 19

where anybody was, who they were and what they were doing' writes Lord Carver in

his highly percipient book Tobruk.~ The reason was the continual desert haze, the

product of smoke and sandstorms stirred up by battle and by the khamsin, a

ferocious wind which would blow at unpredictable moments. What seemed to be

the rear of a column of friendly vehicles could all too easily turn out to be the

vanguard of a German armoured brigade. Nor did air reconnaissance help; it was

little more use than a ground probe. From the sky it was often even more difficult

than on the ground to distinguish Allied from Axis forces. Both sides had to face the

same problems. To quote Lord Carver again 'At every level the distinguishing

characteristic of these battles was a bewilderment about what was going on, the

greatest difficulty in telling friend from foe, and in sifting accurate and timely

information ... from wildly inaccurate and often out of date reports'. It was a world

of mirages and hallucinations. 'It is little wonder that the battles almost ceased to

have a pattern at all, and to those taking part it all seemed a hopeless muddle'. 3

Experience of battle still lay ahead for 50th Division. Our immediate task was to dig

in on our allotted sector of the Gazala Une where we arrived on 6 February 1942

and remained for the next 3 Y2 months. The war of movement had become a

stalemate. The Gazala Line ran from a point on the coast thirty miles west of

Tobruk southwards for fifty miles to Bir Hacheim. It was not a 'line' but was, in its

northern sector, a series of dug in fortified static positions called 'boxes', in theory

able to give each other supporting fire, though not always in practice. The whole

'line' was protected by mine fields. From the coast southward was the 1st South

2
Tobruk (1964) p 27. This published in 1964 and his Dilemmas of the Desert War (1986)
where he takes account of Ultra are the most authoritative works on the run-up to Tobruk.
Lord carver at the time was GS01, 7tn Armoured Division, and knows what he is talking
about.
3
Ibid p 28.
 20

African Division flanked on its left by 50tn Division under General Ramsden containing

151 Brigade on its right, 69 Brigade in the centre, 150 Brigade on its left. 124tn

Regiment was the field artillery support of 69 Brigade. The two divisions made up

13 Corps under General Gott.

To the south from the 150 Brigade 'box' there ran unprotected mine fields for fifteen

miles to Bir Hacheim the 'box' of the Free French. This and a number of armoured

brigades constituted General Norrie's 30 Corps. We took it for granted that Rommel

would attack sooner or later but just when or where a regimental officer could only

guess while he concentrated on digging and training and not getting bored.

Meanwhile I had my first taste of action. The Brigade sent a column to eliminate an

itWR 0 P based on a small hiiXcalled 'the Pimple'. A 'column' was composed of a

company of motorised infantry and a troop or battery of 25 pounders to support

armoured cars on reconnaissance. Such units had been successful in skirmishes a

year before against fleeing Ralians at Beda Fom, but were useless against Rommel.
""" J,,
However we were ROt )dealing with the Afrika Korps. It was my job to guide the

column to a dawn position. After a brief exchange of fire the 'Pimple' surrendered.

But a shell splinter hit one of our troop commanders full in the face. I was the only

officer, apart from the M.O 'Doc Fairlie', at the casualty clearing centre when he was

brought in on a stretcher. He was a terrible sight. 'Surely he can't live'. 'No he

may. I've seen cases from the last war -lived for years, in rubber muzzles, couldn't

speak, see, eat or drink - kept alive by tubes. I shall put him out'. And he did with

a hefty dose of morphia. It was his responsibility, but I would have done the same,

if it had been mine.

 21

I have another and less unhappy memory of the Pimple foray. Early after breakfast

carrying a spade I had walked alone a decent distance from our position for what

used to be politely called 'a natural purpose'. I noticed as I walked back a little

hollow surprisingly full of tiny flowers. Spring in the desert was accompanied by the

occasional brief shower and this was the result. They were just like the wild flowers

I used to gather as a child with my mother, but only about a fifth of the size. They

would soon shrivel away under the rays of an implacable sun. I suddenly became

rather weepy, thinking of home, my sister and my parents fearful that having lost

one son they might lose another, and thinking too of the sheer awfulness of war. I

felt ashamed of crying, but I remembered Virgil's untranslatable line 'Sunt lacrimae
' (,'

t: ....... ,1t·,. ~ ': rerum et mentem mortalia ~. I wiped my eyes. There were one or two
r I
curious looks on my return but no one said anything. The mood soon passed as the

practicalities of army life reasserted themselves with all their tedious routine.

Another and closer loss came a few days later. Harold Branson, George Burnett,

Noel Lockerby and I were engaged in some routine job outside our 'box' when we

heard the roar of a low flying plane. We threw ourselves on the ground to escape

machine gun fire. Branson and I were unscathed. So was George despite a bullet

through each elbow of his jacket. But Noel was dead with a bullet through his heart.

Branson swore that the plane was one of ours, but, as he said, there could be no

proof, and the RAF would certainly deny it. I had the job of going through Noel's

personal effects to be sent with a letter to his next of kin. I duly did so, discarding

items that might be personally embarrassing like the packet of french letters which
t
most of us kept in our wallets with a view to leave in Cairo; I said nothing about

'friendly fire', as it was later termed, in my letter of condolence.

 22

The next three months, as Churchill wrote in a different context, can be described as

a 'loaded pause'. RHQ settled into a routine. The Division dug in, and the Regiment

engaged in rather desultory training which Colonel Ripley from time to time

inspected. Food was adequate, alleged to be better at RHQ than in the Batteries.

Brook Townend, second in command and in charge of supplies, saw to it that Rosie

Ripley did not lack the ration appropriate to his rank of pink gin and whisky.

I got to know the padre for the first time, the Revd ... (I forget the initials) Budgen.

He wore his religion lightly and would have loved to be an active soldier. He was

reputed to be rich and to drive or be driven around Newcastle in a Rolls Royce - a

car which few clergy could or can afford. Later I learnt from him how this occurred.

He was quite candid. Plenty of people whom I know have married for money, but

Padre Budgen is the only one who has avowedly admitted it. His wife was the

heiress of a rich northern coal owner. 'It has worked out very well', he used to say.

It certainly seemed to have done in his case.

On 26 May the balloon went up. Rommel led his forces in brilliant moonlight south

east from his base at Segnali outflanking the French at Bir Hacheim - a sort of giant

right hook running east and then northwards to envelope the Gazala Line,

overrunning in the process the ill-equipped 3ro Indian Brigade. His force included

21st and 15th Panzer divisions and 90th Light Division - virtually the whole of his

armour, 567 tanks, and a formidable number of anti-tank weapons including 48 of

the dreaded 88 mm converted anti-aircraft guns and a number of the scarcely less

lethal long-barrelled 50 mm weapons. His armour was supported by some 10,000

.
·y
\ supply and maintenance vehicles. Of course we did not know these facts and
'
figures at the time. But the noise made by this gigantic convoy clanking across the
 23

desert and audible in rising and falling volume many miles away left one in no doubt

that 'something was up'.

I shall not attempt to describe in any detail the vicissitudes of 287 Battery of which

at a date which eludes me I became Command Post Officer slightly before the battle

began. Describing the history of a battle, Wellington once said, is like telling the

history of a ball. Things become blurred; times become confused; the order of

events fades from the memory; who said what to whom and when becomes harder

and harder to disentangle; and in the desert the khamsin with its attendant

sandstorms makes the picture even more hazy and obscure. So I can only give

impressions of what it was like to have my first and only experience of 'fighting'.

Otherwise, to help the reader I have given a summary in the light of what I have

subsequently learned of the campaign in a brief appendix to this chapter.

Apart from the occasional lull we were in continuous action from 27 May till the fall

of Tobruk on 21 June. My job was to relay to the battery firing orders from George

Burnett. The enemy opposite 69 Brigade's sector of the line were Italian but no

major hostilities occurred; it was largely a matter of harassing fire aimed at their

vehicles. The nearest we came to 'serious' fighting in the early days of the battle

~ was in giving support on the fringes of the desperate resistance of 150 Brigade

which was dug in some three miles to the south of 69 Brigade and which Rommel

had to eliminate if he was to get his supplies through. By 12 noon on 1 June he had

succeeded, largely thanks to lack of Allied support from nearby armoured units and a

failure in communications. Dick Henniker who was commanding B Troop which had

been detached from 287 battery was taken prisoner that day when his O.P was

.n

-<'~~;d.~.
k~,ttt.
 24

overrun. We thought he had been killed. I was much relieved to meet him some

weeks later at Bari p.o.w. camp.

About 9/10 June 287 Battery was detached from 50 Division and ordered to come

,"' under command of the 32nd Army Tank Brigade (Valentines and Matildas). None of
0
~· ,..r
I c<) . 'V- ;!: us was pleased at this transfer. We would have been even less pleased if we had
[)'" fu.. '
~ ·(t 1 Tf
cJ) :. foreseen the consequences. After the disastrous battle of Knightsbridge on 12/13
' .
June - the turning point in the whole campaign - the two infantry divisions; 1st

)~uth African and 50th British, were in danger of being cut off. They were ordered
f,_:,,·•i

to retreat from the Gazala line to the Egyptian frontier, 1st South African along the

coast road, 50th Division south east through scattered groups of Italian vehicles. The

withdrawal was achieved with scarcely any casualties on the night of 14 June. By

this time 32nd Army Tank Brigade with such tanks as it still had was heading for

Tobruk, 287 Battery following. Our separation from 50tn Division was to do us no

good as events turned out.

At about this time I had my only contact with any of the Top Brass. General

Lumsden rode up on a Crusader tank to my position where we were busy cleaning

and repairing vehicles and equipment. He was the commander of the 1st Armoured

Division and asked for directions to Brigade HQ. I was able to give them and made

bold to ask 'How are we doing Sir?' He paused and I wondered whether I had gone

too far. But he replied after a moment' I'm afraid we haven't been very clever, my

boy'. He told his driver to go on and his tank disappeared in a cloud of dust.

When we entered Tobruk on 16 June another charge of command had been made.

We ceased to be under 32 Army Tank Brigade and were ordered by CRA Tobruk to
 25

join the 25th Field Regiment. We were now stationed in a hollow a few hundred

yards east of the El Adem road a mile behind the Tobruk perimeter defence line.

There was a welcome lull in fighting, and we had a chance to have some rest - we

were desperately short of sleep - and to attend to the repair and maintenance of

guns, vehicles and wireless sets. Everything was curiously quiet. Our patrols

brought no news of enemy activity near the perimeter, but the very flatness of the

desert above the northern escarpment concealed more than it revealed because of

the shimmering heat haze. Air reconnaissance might have helped a bit, but not

much. Anyway we had no planes. During early evening that Friday 19 June George

Burnett, who was patrolling in his carrier outside the perimeter, captured an Italian

officer whose truck had broken down. He was passed back for interrogation. We

decided to invite the neighbouring battery commander to our mess for a drink to

celebrate this extremely modest success. One thing led to another. We had a noisy

evening. There was no shortage of gin and whisky. Our guest decided to guide

himself back through the darkness by firing some verey lights. There were severe

comments over the telephone from RHQ, but we firmly denied all knowledge. I
5: -""'~ (t, ;,..1
went into my tent at midnight in -Mit,of a blur and slept heavily.

I was woken up with a bit of a hangover by a tremendous noise of gunfire. The

dawn was cool, almost refreshing as it always was even in mid summer. Gradually

the dark shapes of vehicles and tents took their familiar forms and the sun rose with

theatrical splendour. I rang the adjutant of 25 Field to find out what was happening

and whether there were any orders. He knew as little as I did. Lack of orders was

to be a feature of the long day which lay ahead. I took a leisurely breakfast on my

own at the battered mess table - the last decent meal, if I had known it, that I was

to eat for eighteen months. And in the absence of instructions I surveyed the scene.
 26

Despite the usual heat haze which settled down at about 10.00 am it was easy to

see that all was far from well. I hoped that George on patrol just outside the

perimeter was all right, and, knowing that my Battery Commander after the night's

drinking might not be in the best of humour when he came to inspect our position,

got on with the numerous routine duties of a CPO.

By now at about 9 am it was clear that communications were very bad - telephone

lines cut by shelling and highly unreliable wireless sets. As the morning wore on the

noise of battle rose and through the haze I could see something which always made

blood run cold even in the desert heat - the shapes of German tanks which

somehow looked as if they had been there for quite a time and were moving very

slowly roughly south east to north west across our line of vision two or three miles

away and out of our effective range and theirs.

By some quirk of the climate the view suddenly became clearer - normally the heat

haze was getting worse by then - and I had a grandstand view of the advance of

what must have been 15th Panzer Division. It was a wonderfully impressive

operation. An artillery barrage followed by motorised infantry with anti-tank guns

and Panzer support moving through the gap in the perimeter defences made earlier

by German engineers silently at dawn. Then came wave after wave of dive

bombers, the terrifying Stukas dropping their load just ahead of the barrage. The

purpose was not only to hit the defenders but to blast a passage through the

defences by exploding the mines which blew up in a sort of chain reaction. There

were smoke signals, often violet in colour I seem to remember, emitted to warn the

Stukas against bombing their own advance guard. The Germans had complete

control of the air. The RAF was nowhere to be seen throughout the long day. Nor
 27

were our tanks much in evidence. This kind of close co-operation between air,

artillery, infantry and armour was something never, as far as I know, practised in the

Eighth Army at that time. Even as I watched I thought what a bunch of amateurs

we were compared with the Afrika Korps. Everything I have read since about the

Gazala and Tobruk battles has only served to confirm this impression.

The day wore on. At last we made contact with George Burnett. The battle had

now moved in our direction and Rommel's tanks were engaged in mopping up our

artillery positions. It was not difficult. Twenty five pounders had a very limited anti-

tank range, even if they had armour piercing shells. The German tanks only had to

keep outside it and could easily knock out our troop positions gun by gun. "A" Troop

was in a desperate plight. I heard the G.P.O (Gun Position Officer) say that they

had three out of four knocked out, and then the wireless went off. He was killed a

few minutes later. Meanwhile our own Battery HQ position was in peril for some of

the enemy tanks had worked round behind us and threatened to cut us off from the

guns of "B" Troop. We had been under continuous shell fire for some time and now

the hostile tanks had crept to within machine gun range. Bullets went by with a

curious high pitched whine rather like an irritated gnat and kicked up little puffs of

sand all round. "B" Troop guns were still firing, but it was obviously only a matter of

time before they would be overrun. Branson gave orders for HQ to withdraw.

Just before this we had our first sight of British tanks at all close. A few Valentines

appeared but they made no attempt to engage the enemy, merely waited behind us.

One could hardly blame them; they had little chance of surviving an exchange with

German tanks. But, if all were behaving as they seemed to be in our sector letting

one gun position after another go, the prospect for Tobruk was pretty bleak.
 28

We moved into another hollow a few hundred yards west of the El Adem road. I

was very thirsty but as usual water was in short supply. By now men as well as

officers realised how serious the situation was. Faces were grim under their

covering of sweat and sand. It was hard to appreciate that these were ordinary

young men, some hardly more than boys who could smile and joke, so much older,

almost gaunt they looked.

George Burnett now arrived. He had escaped after all his guns had been knocked

out. He did not know what had happened to Frank Hurworth, his GPO or his Section

Officer, John Blackah who were the last to leave the position. It was about 2 30 pm.

The dust and mirage were worse than ever. Enemy tanks had now cut us off from

"B" Troop. George who went in his carrier on a brief recce reported that they were

completely surrounded. We could not get a sound out of them on the wireless; their

guns were still firing but not for long. The small group of us, Harold Branson,

George Burnett, Clifford Wilton, myself and a few drivers and wireless operators

were now a headquarters with nothing to be head of. We tried to make contact with

our regimental parent. There was only silence, except from one of the other

batteries which was in the process of being overrun by German infantry mopping up

survivors. We could hear the battery commander who was hiding in a slit trench

and giving a running commentary on his plight. 'I believe they've missed me' then

'No the buggers have spotted me after all, I am smashing the set. Off'. We drove

on in search of 25 Field HQ. We passed by the Guards Brigade, the alleged mobile

reserve and the one unit in Tobruk equipped with six pounder anti-tank guns which

were the only effective Allied weapon against German armour. Under Rommel's

command they would have been on the move with anti-tank guns in the fore. But
 29

they remained static, perhaps for lack of orders, although one might have expected

some sign of initiative. The spirit of 'Up Guards and at 'em' was singularly lacking.

They had behaved with similar passivity in the Cauldron.

We did not find 25th Regiment HQ which, we later heard had been overrun. We

were now out of the main theatre of battle and very tired; after a brew-up George

and I took a brief nap with our heads in the narrow patch of shade cast by our truck.

We were soon on the move and reached the edge of the northern escarpment where

we had a commanding view of the whole garrison area covered with vehicles, some

burning, through to the town and the sea beyond. I had another grandstand view of

the German attack heading towards the town itself - anti-tank guns well in the fore

on a level with the tanks themselves, Stukas bombing ahead of a clearly defined line

of coloured smoke.

As I sat by my truck my eye fell on my driver who was enjoying some sleep. He was

about my age. With his fair hair, unshaven chin, face caked with sweat and dust,

dirty Khaki drill shorts and shirt he might have been the epitome of the young

descendants of north European tribes who were trying to kill each other in a land so

desolate that it was barely possible to exist there, let alone fight. What a bizarre

turn of events that Britons and Germans should be locked in mortal combat

hundreds of miles south of their own green and pleasant lands.

We were soon on the move again, Branson restlessly seeking some sort of

Command HQ to give us orders and tell us what was happening. Eventually we

reached a South African post near a stony outcrop where there was a big cave partly

below the ground. I got out of my truck and went down some roughly hewn steps
 30

to see if I could discover what was happening. The cave was being used as a field

hospital dimly lit by candles and hurricane lamps with hastily improvised beds and

with stretchers laid across packing cases. A surgeon was operating in one corner by

the light of a Tilly Lamp. His patient had a terrible stomach wound which made me

almost sick to look at. I doubted whether he had long to live. All around one heard

uneasy stirrings and stifled cries of pain. One man suddenly stood up raving at the

top of his voice. No one paid any attention. Black and Cape Coloured orderlies

hurried to and fro in the shadows bringing water and generally ministering to the

needs of the wounded men. If one could judge by the indescribable smell the place

had only the most rudimentary sanitation. There was no reason to linger and I

turned to go up the steps. I had to stand aside for a moment while yet another

wounded man was carried down. He lay on a stretcher his body and legs covered

with a blanket, but as the orderlies carried him past me the blanket slipped half off,

exposing the whole of his left leg as a mass of blood and splintered bone mingled

with scorched fragments of his Khaki shorts. His boyish face was immobile and he

seemed unconscious. I heard the surgeon say 'Christ! That looks bad. We11 have to

have it off, but I doubt if he11 pull through'. I stumbled up the steps into the fresh

air.

The light was beginning to go now. We decided to laager with the HQ of a South

African regiment. The colonel asked us for such men as we could spare to help hold

his defence line in the event of a dawn attack. Clifford Wilton and I went along to

show the men where to position themselves behind a low stone wall where with

rifles and bren guns the South Africans hoped to make a stand. They settled down

for the night after a meal of bully beef. George, Clifford and I sat down with

Branson near his truck, and drank the remainder of our gin. It was chilly. I put on a
 31

battle dress tunic and then trousers over my shorts. We were depressed at our

losses, but hopefully discussed the problems of re-forming 287 Battery. We did not

even then realise how desperate was the plight of the Tobruk garrison. We were

encouraged by the rumour that General Gott with an armoured brigade was moving

to our rescue. The story was of course untrue. It may have been a garbled version

of the fact that some days earlier Gott had offered Ritchie to take command of the

Tobruk garrison himself - an offer which Ritchie refused. Or it may have been

wishful thinking based on nothing at all.

We talked for half an hour, settled down at about midnight. I wriggled my way into

my sleeping bag divesting myself only of my boots. For a few minutes I gazed up.

The dust had died down. The atmosphere was incredibly clear. The stars in the

dark blue-black sky were immensely bright. Those stars! No one who has slept in

the desert can forget them, and, if unable to close his eyes, watching their dignified

and slow wanderings through the heavens. No wonder the ancients tried to find

recondite significancies in their patterns, the Great Square of Pegasus, the Bear,

Cassiopeia, Perseus, Orion and his Belt and ... but sleep overcame me.

I woke just before dawn, a cold breeze down my neck. Soon everyone was stirring,

and when the sun came up, brewing up for breakfast now that the flames could give

nothing away. Suddenly something struck me as odd; there was no sound of

gunfire or bombs though dawn was normally the time when battle raged most

noisily. Then another strange thing occurred. A German JU 88 flew overhead.

Bofors and bren guns, were fired from the ground. The plane suddenly dipped its

wings from side to side - the normal recognition signal made by British planes when

as all too often they were fired at by our own Ack Ack. Shortly after this a message
 32

came through our own wireless- General Klapper's order to surrender. We were

stunned. We could hardly believe it. What to do next? Harold Branson gathered

together the remnants of HQ. He told us to destroy all vehicles and equipment. I

cannot remember why we had to destroy our only mobile means of escape -

perhaps because we were almost out of petrol. We were to try and get away,

irrespective of General Klapper's orders, every man for himself. Vast clouds of

smoke from burning trucks and carriers almost obliterated the sun and the town of

Tobruk was invisible though one could locate it from the sound of exploding

ammunition dumps.

We (Branson, Wilton, Burnett and myself) decided to tramp on foot as far as we

could in an easterly direction and lie up in any shade we could find when the heat

became too much. We would then resume our trek in the cool of evening and night.

We walked for three hours till we were about four miles south west of the perimeter.

We met no one and twice crossed the coast road without seeing an enemy vehicle.

Then at about 11.00 am we saw in the distance what looked like an enemy convoy

and decided to lie up in some slit trenches in the hope of concealment and shade.

We now had very little water. The next three hours were most uncomfortable. I

had lost my tin hat and solar topee when leading the Battery in a hasty withdrawal

from hostile tank fire near Knightsbridge. They had fallen out of my truck and I had

neither time nor inclination to pick them up. A side hat is no use as a protection

against the sun. There is not much shade in a slit trench and it cut one off from

whatever faint breeze there might have been above ground. I dreamed of cold

water and an iced 'John Collins' at Shephard's Hotel - a reverie cut short by the

sound of an approaching vehicle. It stopped fairly near, there was silence, then the

sound of foreign voices getting closer and louder. Then came shouts of glee as one
 33

by one my companions were discovered by Italian soldiers. I hoped I would not be

caught, but in vain. I was the last to be found but that was no consolation.

We were bundled off in a lorry under guard to the HQ of what I think was the Trento

Division where I was interrogated politely by an Intelligence Officer. I simply gave,

as ordered by Kings Regulations, my name, rank and number, to which he nodded

assent and asked me no more questions. He then gave me some delicious cold

water - a better gift at that moment than any thing else I could have had.

We were shepherded into a wired pen and then bundled into an open lorry

westwards along the tarmac coast road meeting a stream of traffic going the other

way, towards Tobruk - German, Italian and captured British vehicles driven much

faster than we were ever permitted. The drivers and their crews radiated a busy

cheerfulness but no jubilation or triumphalism. They did not seem to have bothered

much about desert camouflage. Many were painted dark grey. Every now and then

a German Mark III tank would rumble along. With their 50 mm gun positioned in

the turret they contrasted with our best model, the American Grant, which had its

main weapon, a 75 mm mounted on the side. It thus had a limited traverse and

could not fire from a hull down position. Another liability, we were told, was that it

ran on high octane petrol which was much more inflammable than diesel.

But I did not reflect for long on the rival armour, rather on how very closely the

German troops resembled ours, especially if as was often the case they were

wearing captured British khaki drill. Stephen Crane, the American author of that

great book about the Civil War, The Red Badge of Courage speaks of the strange

fascination which even the most ordinary details of life on the other side of the
 34

enemy line hold for those who find themselves there. It is a forbidden land where

somehow everything is invested with the atmosphere of the super normal. So it is

with a faint and illogical sense of shock that one finds the enemy's mode of life so

like one's own; illogical because nothing should be less surprising than to discover

that armies everywhere, being organised for the same purpose, resemble each other

far more than they differ. Yet it took me quite a time to become accustomed to see

the Germans doing just what we had done, laughing, singing, whistling, brewing up

and eating their rations as they sat or lay in the shade of their vehicles.

The lorry pulled up at a solitary stone building in the Gazala area known as 'the Half

Way House'. We were ordered to go in under the guard of young fascisti of the

worst type, arrogant, offensive and many half drunk. They proceeded to strip us of

our watches and other removable paraphernalia. I was lucky. A guard took it,

looked at it and gave it back, presumably because the face was cracked, though the

mechanism worked all right. I sat down on the stone floor utterly exhausted and

very depressed. Then I received an unexpected act of kindness. One of the guards

proffered a bottle of rum and invited me to take whatever the Italian is for a 'swig'

which I gratefully accepted. I felt temporarily slightly better.

A few minutes later we were herded into a large lorry covered at the back by

canvass. It was driven by a German youth with a face like a muffin. He was an

atrocious driver. We were so crowded that we had to stand. If anyone did sit he

made the crush all the worse- which of course did not stop some people doing it.

We had no guards. At one stage the driver and his mate who were unarmed halted

for a pee. It struck me how easily we could have overpowered them, but to what

purpose? There were miles of empty desert between us and any sort of base. Most
 35
I

of us were by now completely exhausted. The journey was resumed only to end
I

with a crash which pitched us in a heap to the cab end of the lorry. The driver had

hit a stationary truck. Water poured from his radiator. 'Kaput', he superfluously

observed. We sat disconsolately by the road side watching the sun go down and

feeling a slight breeze - pleasant at first but the precursor as we well knew to a

chilly night. It was then that I became conscious of how little I and my companions

had in the way of clothing - just a shirt, shorts and stockings, and a handkerchief,

not even a battle dress jacket. I had a razor and the survivor of two packets of

blades - one had been pinched by a guard. I also had a glass water bottle, my

army equivalent having been mislaid long before, but it had no water in it.

After hours of waiting a lorry arrived to convey us to Tmimi. It was dark by now but

one could see a huge crowd of captured prisoners. Officers were separated from

men. I lay down on a stony bit of ground shivering. Even at the height of summer

it could be very c9ld at night in Libya and we had no blankets. Next day we were

packed like the proverbial sardines into lorries taking us to Derna. It was now very

hot, and when there was a halt for water, there were signs of discipline collapsing

and something of an ugly rush, only quelled by a tough colonel who called us to

order. The approach to Derna took us away from the desert. There were signs of

cultivation, occasional olive groves and greenish fields. We passed through Derna

airfield and took the steep descent into the town. The white houses and the cluster

of small boats in the harbour set against a dazzling blue sky made a pleasant change

from the endless arid brown landscape. Our lorry drew up at dusk by the gates of

what was called 'the Old Fort' - a square of white walls enclosing a dilapidated

barracks. It was reminiscent of Beau Geste and the Foreign Legion. I passed a very

uncomfortable night with my companions in a long low stone building -again no

 36

blankets, no bedding and unglazed windows which let in an icy draught. The

sanitation was indescribable. The hum of flies round the urinal was audible yards

away. I was glad that acute constipation made it unnecessary for me to visit the

region beyond.· The next leg of our seemingly endless journey took us to Barce

where conditions were much better - Italian bully and cooked vegetables to eat,

beds, blankets and straw palliasses to sleep on. I had a reasonably good night.

Next day we were once more put into lorries this time for the last leg of our journey

to Italy. We were to be flown there from Benghazi. The ORs were to go by ship.

One trivial but disagreeable accident occurred. I was sitting - there was less of a

crush this time - with my back against that of a South African officer who was rather

incongruously wearing a Sam Brown belt. He suddenly stood up and a stud on the

belt tore a gaping hole in the back of my shirt. I was angry and showed it. The

shirt was my only one. He mumbled some sort of cursory apology. I did not reply.

It was dusk when we reached Benghazi. It had been heavily bombed by the RAF

and we were greeted by such members of the public as were about with hisses and

catcalls. Our rations when we were taken to a gloomy warehouse were surprisingly

good - tinned tunny fish - not the coarse salty stuff of which we were to get our fill
I

· later but the real article which used to be quite expensive in England. Our only

complaint was that there was not enough. When I retired later to the latrines I was

· 'Confronted with a dilemma. There was no paper. All I had was the leaves of a

cheque book and a few Egyptian pound notes. I chose the cheques. which did not

seem likely to be of much other use in the foreseeable future. During the night the

RAF was active: The more patriotic of us cheered at every explosion to annoy our

guards. I was unashamedly glad when the bombardment ended.

 37

Next day after a somewhat broken night we were conveyed to the airport and split

into groups of sixteen to board Savoia Marchettis, the normal Italian transport plane.

I had never flown before, but it was a pleasant experience, blue sky and perfect

weather. Luckily no British planes were in evidence. After about five hours we

landed at Leece in the 'Heel of Italy'. I was trying to adjust myself mentally to an

indefinite captivity, but I soon fell asleep. I was still like all of us very, very tired.
 38

Appendix to Part II Chapter 2

This is a summary of what I now know or believe were the causes of the fiasco at

Gazala. It is largely based on Lord Carver's two books Tobruk (1964) and Dilemmas

of the Desert War (1986). They have to be read in conjunction, as there are several

references in the second to the earlier one. In the 1986 book Lord Carver was able

to acknowledge the role played by 'Ultra', the decoding of German radio

communications, which till a few years earlier had been a closely guarded secret.

He was also able to speak with greater candour about the principal British

commanders who by then had all died, the last being General Sir Neill Ritchie in

December 1983. Lord Carver, unlike the academic historians, was personally
'I<.,..\_"- \.J
involved as GSO of 7tJ:1 Armoured Brigade and kmwlls what he is talking about.

The history of the Desert War has been the subject of two controversies. One of

these, 'Auchinleck v Montgomery', concerns the Battle of El Alamein. It is irrelevant

as far as this book is concerned. I was 'in the bag' well before that occurred. The

other, which is relevant, is 'Auchinleck v Ritchie'. Auchinleck before he died

authorised an account of the Gazala campaign by John Connell4 which is highly

critical of Ritchie and greatly distressed him though he refused to stir up controversy

by defending himself publicly.

Lord Carver while fully admitting Ritchie's mistakes argues that he was far from

being the only person to blame for a disastrous defeat. Above him there was

Auchinleck based on cairo too remote, often out of touch, and constantly harried by

Churchill. Beneath him were his two Corps commanders Generals Norrie, 30th Corps

4
Connell, Auchinleck (1959)
 39

and Gott, 13tn. They were close friends but Norrie was indecisive and Gott though

the opposite often made the wrong decisions. Lower in the chain of command were

Generals Lumsden and Messervy 1st and 7th Armoured Brigades, whose dilatoriness

in the Battle of the Cauldron on 12 June was largely responsible for a defeat at the

tuming point in the campaign from which stn Army never recovered. Ritchie was not

responsible for this nor for General Klapper's mismanagement of the defence of

Tobruk on 21 June. There were unfortunate personality clashes, notably between

Ritchie and his two corps commanders who believed Ritchie to be too much under

the thumb of Auchinleck. Ritchie had been Auchinleck's Brigadier General Staff

(BGS) and, in Lord Carver's words, 'never recovered from starting off on the wrong

foot with Auchinleck- as a charge d'affaires, not a plenipotentjary'.

Rommel suffered from no similar difficulties in his chain of command. He kept his

Italian allies under firm control whereas Ritchie had to cope with a widely disparate

collection of Australian, New Zealand, South African and Indian contingents as well

as the British. Rommel was not harassed by Hitler. His eyes were fixed on the

Russian campaign and he regarded North Africa as a side show. Rommel had

another advantage over Ritchie. His radio was far more efficient. The wireless sets

used by stn Army were very unreliable, and the conduct of its operations was

throughout bedevilled by failures in communication. Did he have a similar

superiority in planes, guns and armour, as most of us at the regimental level

believed?

The answer is in general no, with one important exception - so important that it

largely determined the course of the battle. Tank for tank the Afrika Korps was

roughly on a par with British armour, and Ritchie had a considerable numerical
 40

superiority. What gave Rommel the edge was better anti-tank guns and bolder use

of them - often at the front of his attack, even ahead of his own tanks. In the

smoke, heat-haze and sandstorms it was difficult to know whence the flashes of

enemy gun fire emanated. British tank commanders tended to assume the source to

be enemy tanks. Partly because their own 2 pounders were ineffective they

underestimated the power of Rommel's anti-tank weapons, the 88 mm and the long

barrelled 50 mm, which were the real danger. The British 6 pounder was to be their

equal, but only a few arrived in time for the Gazala battle, and they were dug in to

protect static 'boxes' which the German tanks sensibly circumvented. They were

never used in the mobile and aggressive style of the Afrika Korps, of which I had a

personal view in Tobruk (see pp 26-27).

The various branches of Rommel's army, Stukas, tanks, anti-tank guns, field artillery

and motorised infantry, were much better co-ordinated than the forces under

Ritchie. Rommel himself had been an army instructor, an artillery officer and a tank

commander. He trained his soldiers to act as a team in combined operations. He

was bold to the point of recklessness. But against the slow lumbering Allied forces

his risks nearly always paid off.

The British army had not been trained for combined operations. Neither at Lark Hill

nor later in exercises at Frome or on Salisbury Plain were we taught anything about

branches other than field artillery. All accounts of peace time soldiering agree that

'I' tanks, cruisers, infantry and artillery had little practice in working together and,

partly owing to social snobbery and atavistic tribal loyalty, little inclination to do so.
 41

There were three further difficulties for 8th Army. The Gazala line was intended not

only for defence but as a spring board for an attack which was never mounted. The

deployment of the Allied forces was thus ambivalent. Huge dumps of supplies were

positioned near the battle zone and their protection hampered the whole plan of

defence. Auchinleck believed too much in morale-raising language and put

excessively optimistic interpretations on the sporadic and garbled news of battle

which got through to Cairo. Ritchie kept his headquarters too far away from the

front, unlike Rommel who on occasions led the attack in person and was much more

aware of what was happening on the ground. Rommel concentrated his tanks and

guns, fewer numerically than Ritchie's diffused total, but decisive where it mattered.

Both sides were faced with a war in unique conditions for which no precedent or

guidelines existed. The verdict must be that at Gazala, the Germans displayed an

adaptability and initiative which 8th Army for all its courage and effort never came

near to emulating.
 42

Chapter 3

We landed on Leece airfield about 7.00 pm on 26 June and were taken in lorries to

the town centre. From there we were marched for a few hundred yards to our

quarters for the night - a big empty hotel. A large crowd assembled to watch us,

but there was no triumphalism. They seemed if anything rather sorry for us 'Come

sono belli' I heard a woman say. I thought her standard of male beauty must be

fairly low. None of us looked exactly at our best. I felt especially disreputable with

the huge tear down the back of my shirt.

L~ t-
&\_ L(e._ Y\..
After a reasonably comfortable night wefeRtr-ai"@g next day to Bari, the principal

transit camp for POWs. The journey seemed interminable and we arrived fairly late

but before turning in had to submit to a lengthy search. My wallet was closely

examined. I happened to have in it one of those plastic cards issued in those days

by the Wine Society with years marked horizontally at the top and generic names of

wine vertically on the left with points on merit marked 0 to 9 horizontally against

each year so that one could eg read, say, 1928, Champagne, 9. The NCO searching

me pounced on this with glee deeming- it no doubt to be some sort of cypher and
(/_

hauled me before the camp Commandt1J!nt, an elderly Alpino with a feather in his

hat. Although the card was not likely to be of any practical use in the foreseeable

future I did not want to lose it, and I explained its purpose through an interpreter.
Cv-v\ l
The Command~t, looking at me with rather less dislike than at first, said 'Ah

.: ; k Cognitore di vino'. I gave him a~ghtly mendacious assent, and he returned it to me.

I kept it till quite recently as a souvenir but have lost it now.

 43

We were in Bari all July. It was very hot. Day after day brought blue skies and a

glaring sun. For the first ten days we were theoretically in quarantine, our huts in a

barbed wire enclosure a bit away from and above the main camp. Our quarters

were very over crowded, double decker wooden bunks so close together that it was

difficult to walk between them. The smell at night was revolting. I felt ravenously

hungry. We had been well fed in the desert almost to the end, and the sudden

change was very unpleasant. Later most of us found that our stomachs became

~ adapted to some extent t6 tl'\e €Range. The pangs of hunger and obsessive dreams

of food did not disappear but they were never so acute and vivid as in Bari.

A typical day began with coffee brought by Cypriot orderlies at about 7.00 am -

ersatz of course - and many theories were held about its basis - acorns, grain or

even more unsavoury elements, but it was better than nothing. After that ther~ was

little to do except munch what fragments one had kept from the day before by a

great effort of will so as to have a bite for breakfast. At first I used to lie on my

bunk to make up for the many sleepless nights since the Gazala campaign began.

That soon palled. The heat was oppressive, the flies innumerable, replacing by day

the bed bugs which plagued us by night. The first meal was in theory at 12 noon,

the second at 6.30 pm. But they were, especially the first varying from 12.30 pm to

2 o'clock, moveable feasts. Not that there was anything festive about a diet in

which the midday meal was a thin vegetable soup with small quantities of rice or

macaroni floating in it and a daily ration of six ounces of tasteless bread - fruit if

there was any or tomatoes, and a minute ration of meat twice a week. The evening

meal was the same but without the bread. This regime was to be much the same in

Chieti, though relieved later there by Red Cross food parcels. We sometimes had

unsalted pumpkin, about a nasty a dish as one could meet in a month of Sundays.
 44

The frequency of tomatoes has given me a lasting distaste for that vegetable/fruit.

We had mess tins, a mug and a fork and spoon, but no knives. Not that there was

anything to cut, as I observed to a companion. 'Except our throats', he morosely

replied.

Bari was essentially a transit camp. No one was going to be there for very long.

The ordered framework which sustained one in army service had collapsed. 'Every

man for himself' was too often the mantra. There was no Senior British Officer

(SBO), no proper chain of command as there would be in permanent POW camps

like Chieti.

Selfishness was exemplified by a RASC colonel (name of Cameron Cook) who before

being taken prisoner had been lucky enough to pack a holdall with various extra

comforts including some spare blankets and a large supply of cigarettes. No one

could cavil at it. We would all have done the same, given the chance. Cigarettes

were common currency, and he was rumoured to secure extra food by exchange

with the Cypriot orderlies who formed part of the camp staff. One evening an
cf
officer, Guy Gourietlthe 12th Lancers was brought in slightly wounded. The camp

Y~ authorities, blootminded as ever, refused, since it was after 'closing time' for the

camp store, to issue blankets. Someone went up to the colonel who had made no

secret of his reserve supplies to ask him to lend a blanket to Gouriet for the night.

He refused point blank, and, when some personal remarks of a highly insubordinate

nature were made, threatened: 'I shall see to it when we get back that you will

account for this' and proceeded to make a note of some of the names. The incident

in retrospect seems almost incredible, but it was only the most flagrant of several

others.
 45

The month I spent in Bari was the most hateful period of my life. The humiliation,

the squalor, the despair at being a prisoner, the heat, the revolting food, the sheer

boredom, the indefinite prospective period of incarceration, all combined to induce a

mood of black despondency, such as I have never experienced before or since. I did

not feel quite like this in Chieti, our next camp. By then I had become more

resigned and acclimatised; there was an ordered regime, plenty to occupy one's

time. It was an extra-ordinary irony of fate that, when eighteen months later,~nd ) A..

my two friends escaped and were being sent back to base from the Eighth Army

front south of the Apennines, it should be Bari of all places, now in British hands,

that was the transit camp in reverse for those en route for Taranto and the voyage

to Britain (see below). Of course the conditions were quite different. But my

temporary euphoria at having escaped evaporated into a mood of anger and self-

pity, deplorable no doubt but, I think, forgivable in the circumstances.

The only silver lining at Bari was the sight in a separate compound of Dick Henniker

in a queue for medical treatment. He had after all survived the destruction of 150

Brigade. 'Hullo Dick' someone shouted 'why aren't you dead?' 'No I was only pinked

in the arse. I'm going to have it dressed' and he shuffled on with that inimitable

unmilitary slouch which distinguished him 100 yards away. He was destined for a

different prison camp from the one to which I was sent. We did not meet again till

after the war.

After about a month we were moved to Chieti, a permanent POW camp. Chieti is in

the Abruzzi region about eight miles from the Adriatic port of Pescara and on roughly

the same latitude as Rome. The camp was well guarded with a high wall
 46
:I'-""''"¥{

surmounted by barbed~nd sentries every fifty yards or so. It was illuminated by arc

lights at night. Any escape over the wall was impossible. The camp was not too

bad. Recently built its two tier wooden bunks were not much infested by bed bugs.

Sanitation was reasonable. One had to squat Arab-wise over holes in a concrete

floor and supplies of water were just adequate. One was given a shower at intervals

and there was some sort of trough at which one could wash and shave. Our captors

were reasonably tolerant with the exception of a bullying fascist adjutant who

dominated the easy-going camp commandant and deliberately held up mail and Red

Cross parcels. But the Italians adhered to the Geneva Convention. There were far

more Italian prisoners in British hands than vice versa, and a Red Cross official who

visited the camp put a stop to the worst malpractices.

Escape, food and ennui were the leitmotifs of our waking hours, the last two of

everyone'sJhe first of a minority. Escape _could not be a free for all. Individual

initiative had to be carefully controlled like every other POW camp. Chieti had its
·""
escape committee responsible to the Senior British Officer. It co-ordinated and

decided upon escape projects. Only a limited number could be authorised. I was

not involved. Tunnelling was the only plausible method. I suffer from mild

claustrophobia and being over six feet did not have the ideal physique. One seldom

saw a tall miner when such people;,_existed. I took my turn as a lookout to warn

tunnellers to hide their surface traces when a guard was anywhere near. The plan

was a bit like the famous "Wooden Horse" only with black-boards as an apparent aid

to lecturers in the courtyards at the back of each of the four residential blocks. Each

had a well, and the soil was emptied down it. None of the four tunnels had reached,

as intended, the bushes round the perimeter of the camp when the Germans took
 47

over in September 1943, but I heard later that a number of escapers made their way

upwards in the dark and managed to join the outposts of the Eighth Army.

Food, one of the other two themes of our existences, was never far from mind. We

were not starved but were certainly under nourished. The diet was much the same

as in Bari. Like most of us I dreamed, not of castles in the air but menus on the

table, especially roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. Although short of protein I was

never ill except once early in our sojourn. This had nothing to do with diet. I had a

painful abscess in a tooth.

There was a RAMC dentist in the camp. He borrowed the necessary instruments

from the camp's medical authorities but they could not or would not provide

anaesthetics. Would I be willing to do without? The pain was now so acute that I

said yes. He added that there was plenty of rough brandy available, and this might

help. I vaguely recalled reading how in Nelson's navy amputees were sedated with

heavy doses of rum. The brandy did help - up to a point. But I shivered all day

after the extraction though the temperature must have been in the high eighties or

more - shock, I suppose. The experience was the most painful of my life till 25

years later bathing off the Norfolk coast I trod on a weaver fish. That really was

agonising, though happily it did not last very long.

Boredom was endemic in the early weeks. There were perpetual rumour and gossip

about people, events and the progress of war 'Have you heard ... 'was the constant

refrain in the interminable queuing before meals. I and another officer who shall be

nameless (but only because I have forgotten his name) thought it might be fun to

start a rumour and see how soon it got back to us. Our 'Have you heard ... ?'was
 48

that two officers in the block furthest away from ours had been caught flagrante

delicto in an improper embrace and had been summoned to see the SBO. This was

at the breakfast queue. Sure enough by the time of the supper queue ten hours

later it had become common currency. Somebody asked their names but, not

surprisingly, no one seemed to know. I relate this discreditable story only to show

the expedients to which some of us were reduced in order to relieve boredom.

Both hunger and boredom were alleviated when Red Cross parcels began

sporadically to arrive despite the obstruction of the fascist adjutant. Food parcels -

one for every two prisoners - were what mattered. My memory is of tinned meat,

biscuits, sugar, cheese, butter and a sort of iron ration chocolate bar. There were

cigarettes too which non-smokers like me could use as barter for food from the

nicotine addicts. I was once asked whether I had any qualms about this exchange

which was obviously bad for the smokers whose diet was even further reduced.

'None whatever', was my reply adding if in a biblical mood 'I am not my brother's

keeper'. Of course one did not know then about the perils of lung cancer, but I fear

that my reply would have been just the same if I had known. Eventually clothes,

rudimentary sports equipment playing cards, chess sets and books came via the Red

Cross as well as food. Chess and bridge, particularly the latter were the great time

killers. Culbertsons's 'Red Book' was much in demand. I was taught bridge on
I J
voyage from Gorrock. I became competent but had no real flair for it or chess and

played little of either after the war.

Books were what really mattered. The parcels were a miscellaneous lot largely dog

eared copies of inter war novels - Edgar Wallace, E Phillips Oppenheim, Warwick

Deeping, Ethel M Dell, P C Wrenn and if one was lucky the occasional John Buchan
 49

or P G Woodhouse. But there were serious books as well. I read the whole of the
~
Bible (omitting Genesis 36!), most of Macau~y's History and Gibbon's Decline and

Fall, the latter in two volumes with parallel columns of very bad print on each page.

I got through all Shakespeare's plays discovering how bad some of them were and

recalling George III's dictum: 'Sad stuff Shakespeare, Eh what. But we mustn't say

so must we. What, what, what!'

There were about 300 American and 1000 British officers in the camp and a

sprinkling of ORs to do the chores. Field Officers, ie majors and above, had been

hived off at Bari and sent to a separate camp, the only exception being an Indian

Army colonel by name of Marshall who was the Senior British Officer. He had the

task of representing us to the camp authorities and transmitting their orders. He

was elderly, pickled in gin and whisky, and not above getting 'perks' on the side
<L"'-"C
from the camp CommandllleAt-. We had littie respect for him. Another group of

POWs at Bari was the large contingent of South African~aken at Tobruk. They were

moved to a separate camp as being supposedly more amenable to Axis

indoctrination than the British. It was true that South Africa which came into the
...,.
war by only one parliamentary vote contained a number of Afrikanerr sympathisers

with Nazism - their racial doctrines were not dissimilar - but the South African army

were all volunteers. I doubt if the Italian authorities got much change out of them.

The inmates of Chieti were, as one would expect, a mixed bag, a cross section of

social classes. The 'upper crust' were old Etonian guardees many of them caught

when their 'boxes' were overrun in the Cauldron of Tobruk. They were pleasant

enough, and, if they tended to keep themselves to themselves, this was only natural

in a group, most of whom knew each other well from school and family connections.
 so

I remember two: one was Hamish St Clair Erskine who barely concealed his surprise

that a Territorial gunner should have been a friend of his cousin Tony (Lord)

Loughborough whom I knew well at Magdalen. Hamish Erskine became a

conspicuous bohemian sodety figure after the war. The other was Tony Maxtone

Graham, older than most of us, who wrote a witty one act play which was acted in

the improvised camp theatre. It was set in Victorian club land and largely turned on

the rules of an obsolete card game Ecarte which I understood at the time but have

now totally forgotten. At the opposite end of the social spectrum there were one or

two officers promoted from the ranks. I remember Lieutenant Lilley whose

command of barrack room language belied the purity associated with his name.

When asked to do something with which he was already familiar his reply was a

variant on the proverbial admonition about grandmothers and eggs. 'Don't teach

your father to f ... '.

We soon settled down into an organised routine. There were lectures on almost

every subject. There was sport; football but on medical advice only ten minutes in

each half; there was even cricket played on the asphalt path through the camp.

Among our number were two eminent Test players, F R (Freddy) Brown and Bill

Bowes the famous Yorkshire fast bowler. Amateur theatricals were another pastime.

More seriously there were regular church services not the less moving for being

conducted with an improvised altar of old packing cases, the congregation squatting

on the floor - very different from Magdalen College Chapel but no further, one

hopes, from God.

Four of us in adjacent bunks formed a sort of 'mess'. Three were from my battery;

Clifford Wilton, the battery captain and an ex-Cambridge rugger blue, George
 51

Burnett my troop commander and a banker, and myself, his command post officer

(Cf>9). The fourth and youngest was Arthur Dodds, RAF, navigator and bomb

airman whose Wellington had been shot down near Derna in the western desert. He

was an athlete and a good fast bowler. He was also deeply religious and believed

he had heard the call of God. He later took Holy Orders. I have freely drawn on his

impressive book Desert Harvest which has jogged my memory in a host of ways.

The fifteen months of Chieti were monotonous and frustrating. Nothing changed

except the seasons, two baking summers, one pleasant spring and one wet and cold

winter when we shivered in our thin blankets. 'What did you do about sex?' an

elderly and somewhat prurient don asked me over the port in the Christ Church

Common Room soon after I became a member in 1946. My reply was that my libido

and testosterone on a prison diet were not high, but I did what most young men do

in crowded quarters with no female company and no inclination towards a male

alternative viz revert to the practices of adolescence, in plain language wanking.

The spring of 1943 brought some hope. Even the Italian press could not conceal the

massive German surrender in Tunisia on 7 May. The SBO like most others had

clandestine links with BBC News. The Allied seizure of Sicily and the fall of Mussolini

on 25 July gave us an euphoric hope for our own liberation. No such luck! The

armistice signed by the new Italian government was followed by German occupation

of the whole of northern and middle Italy. In Chieti the Italian guards vanished

overnight. For forty-eight hours we could have walked out of the camp but we were

given categorical orders by the SBO, said to have emanated from London, that we

should stay put. Colonel Marshall was so zealous in carrying these out that he

threatened court martial for disobedience and even had officers patrolling the camp
 52

to prevent escape - a truly Gilbertian reversal of form. One or two ignored this

nonsense and did in fact walk out. I have always been ashamed that I was one of

the vast majority of sheep who remained in situ. At the start of the third day we

woke to find the walls of the camp manned by German paratroopers.

The story of the orders to stay in the camp is amazing and scandalous. It only

emerged many years later, first in MRD Foot's history of MI9 (1979), The War Office

Department responsible for POWs and much more fully in the late Richard Lamb's

War in Italy (1993)5 • There are few if any references to it in the Memoirs of the

British leaders, Churchill, Alexander, Montgomery, Alanbrooke, Eden.~ Macmillan etc.

Small wonder, for it was a disgraceful episode. The key order through secret radio

and encoded letters was made on 7 June 1943 by MI9 which informed Allied Forces

Headquarters (AFHQ) in Algiers and Cairo of a fait accompli 'we cannot authorise

[mass breakouts] owing to possible danger mass reprisals16 • Brigadier (later Major-

General) Richard Crockatt, one of the Deputy Directors of MI9, was responsible for
\
\ what Lamb describes as 'this atrocious order'. Lamb adds that 'it is impossible to
\

find out from the archives whether he consulted with superiors before sending it'7•

Crockatt's order was disputed by the Middle East Defence Committee in Cairo and by

Lieutenant-Colonel Simonds who was in Sicily and responsible with a minuscule staff
8
for POWs escapes • He had a rational rescue plan of his own. Crockatt would have

none of it burbling on about the danger, for which there was no evidence at all of

mass reprisals (against whom?).

5
Chapter 9 pp 160-75 passim
6
Quoted Lamb 160
7
Ibid 161 It is hard to believe thet: 5Uch significant orders had no authority beyond that of an
MI9 Deputy Director
8
See Times Obituary 12 JanllilfY 1999/
 53

Far too late in the day there was a change of heart. During the armistice

negotiations Churchill had insisted that the Badoglio government should do all it

could to prevent Allied prisoners falling into German hands. Orders to that effect
a. 'YI t"
were given by the Italian War Office to camp Command~. It is doubtful whether

they got through to any but a few of the 72 camps. On 8 September, the day of the
'VV\ '' "' ,{[;:{.
Salerno landings Crockatt counter-~ his earlier orders. By then the pass had

been sold. The Germans had seized nearly all the camps in Italy. As a result most
j' A<.
of the 60,000 Allied POWs were conveyed to Germany and spent the next eighteen

months in captivity. A few escaped before the move- I with my group was one-

but far more would have done so if Brigadier Crockatt's insane order had not been
~
given. Writing Rearty sixty years later my blood still boils at this piece of war Office

ineptitude. I would gladly jump on Crockatt's grave if I knew its whereabouts and
(;'V\ ~ r CVV'e. s
was not confined to a wheel chair- which makes jumping difficult.
"

On 23 September we were moved from Chieti to Sulmona. It was immensely hot

when we were dumped about midday on the parade ground-cum-football pitch at

the northern end of Sulmona camp; a blazing sun and a brazen sky. My morale was

very low as I squatted, with my few possessions in a haversack and a cardboard box

tied with string, awaiting one of those interminable roll calls which were a bane of

POW life. There was no shade, and it became intolerably hot as theyday wore on.

There was a tap in one of the huts by the parade ground. We were allowed in small

groups to fill whatever containers we had with water; it tasted like nectar. At last

we were dismissed to find places in one of the large number of long single storied

huts with red tiles and white walls which filled the vast camp. It had been built

some twenty five years earlier to house Austrian POWs taken in the campaign of

1917-18. It was quaintly named 'Campo di Concentramento Fonte dell' Amore'. It

 54

was situated two or three miles from the town of Sulmona, an undistinguished place

notable only as the birth place of Ovid whose selected poems, with the omission of

the Ars Amatoria, I had been taught to read at school in Latin lessons. I soon got

hold of the forbidden verses - harmless erotica which, however, stimulated my study

of Latin far more effectively than the usual boring stuff one gets in set books.

Sulmona's only other claim to fame is manufacture of sugared almonds, said to be

the best in Italy.

I
The town lies in the Abruzzi in a valley/about 700 ft above sea level and is almost

surrounded by a ring of mountains rising up to 6,500 ft. To the north beyond them

we could see the Gran Sasso d1talia (9,500 ft). On 12 September a few days before

our arrival Mussolini who had been interned by the Badoglio government in a winter

sports hotel near the summit was 'rescued' by a glider force under a gigantic

flamboyant SS officer, Otto Skorzeny and flown to Rome. The operation was a

complete sham. The Germans were by then in total control of the whole area.

Mussolini could have been transported by an ordinary motor car, but Hitler wanted a

dramatic gesture. We knew about the 'rescue', but naturally not what lay behind it.

The four of us who had 'messed' together at Chieti, Wilton, Burnett, Dodds and

myself together with a commando officer John Craven who had been captured much

later than we, in Algeria made up a quintet. We agreed that our last chance of

escape had come and co-opted two gunners from 67 Medium Regiment, Ken Lowe

and the Adjutant, Beverley Edge, as reserves. There were three possibilities,

tunnelling being ruled out for lack of ti~e~(l) eluding the guards/by some trick (2)
I )

'jumping' the train to Germany (3) hiding somewhere in the camp pending the

expected arrival of advancing Allied troops from the south and in the hope that the ~ c
 55

Germans, having as they believed despatched almost all· the POWs northwards

would use the camp as a staging post for their own troops but relax the strict guard

- an armed sentry on the walls at fifty yard intervals - needed to prevent escapes.

This was the option we chose, encouraged by the fact that in two places, one on the

east, the other on the west, the wall had been partly demolished by earlier escapes.

In the event our calculation proved correct. Guards were reduced to a minimum and

no one repaired the gaps, though the arc lamps flood lighting the walls were kept

on, no doubt to put off Allied bombers and give the impression that the place was

still a POW camp.

The question was where to hide. The camp was full of rubbish, cardboard boxes,

tables, discarded wooden bunks, planks of all sizes and a vast amount of general

debris left from previous occupations including incredibly a small improvised ladder

made by some earlier hopeful escapee. These gave some possible though not very

promising hideouts. But we agreed that the best hope was to hide in the rafters

above the ceiling of our hut. We were not the/only prisoners to have that idea, but

most made their entry into the rafters from below inside their huts, leaving a clear

sign to any searchers. We resolved to get in from outside and, having got in, block

our entry so as to leave no external traces.

There were two lines of bricks between the eaves and the top of the wall of the hut.

There was plenty of space horizontally, but only the height of the bricks vertically.

The aperture when we had removed the bricks, by standing on an old table and a

rickety ladder looked very narrow. The process was slow because there were

perpetual alarms about being spotted by soldiers wandering about the camp on

desultory and sporadic patrols. Eventually the coast seemed clear and first George,
 56

then Arthur and myself who had thin figures made the experiment of entry, rather

like posting ourselves through a letterbox. But letter boxes do not take parcels;

John Crawford and Clifford Wilton who had played rugger for Cambridge - and

looked like it - were too deep in the chest to get in. There was no way of enlarging

the entry vertically. So our two reserves, Ken Lowe who was very tall (6ft 4 in) and

thin and Beverley Edge also thin, took their places.

We now had two tasks. The first was to insert planks to make a partial platform

resting on the transverse rafter beams. We could lie or sit on these without danger

of falling through the lath and plaster ceiling of the hut below us. Our second task

was to fill the area with as much food and water as we could master and to plan the

sanitary arrangements for our sojourn which would be, we optimistically reckoned,

be reasonably brief.

We stored water in cylindrical pint tins, which had originally contained powdered

milk and came in canadian Red Cross parcels. KUM was the acronym, though I

never knew what it stood for. There were any number lying about. The idea was to

drink and use the emptied ones to pee into. Beverley Edge says in his diary that we

thus fortified ourselves with 60 pints of water - twelve for each of us. We also

inserted into the rafter area as much food as we could get hold of, again largely the

contents of Red Cross parcels - tinned meats, biscuits, cheese, margarine. We

made a sort of catwalk of planks to the most distant corner of the area where we

put an earth box - a very large biscuit tin in which we put a suitable quantity of soil

and anti-flea powder which, we hoped would have some kind of disinfectant

property. This was our too, toilet, lavatory bowl or whatever you wish to call the
<Wi YIV 11 f-
vessel into which one defaecates. The moving journey was exhausting and
 57

uncomfortable. The roof at its highest pitch was only about three feet above the

planks. And we soon were all afflicted with acute constipation, though this had its

advantages. The less one put in the less came out -and usually in the form of hard

pellets which did not exude too bad a smell.

Having made these preparations we relaxed for about a week spending our time in

the usual occupations of cards, reading, gossip and exercise. The interlude ended

on Thursday 30 September, which happened to be George's birthday; at 12.15 pm,

the 'grub queue', as we called it was interrupted by a summons to an unexpected

roll call on the parade ground. We reckoned that this meant the move to Germany.

The five of us at once made for the hut and climbed in. Wilton and Crawford

attended the roll call which was indeed the prelude to a move to Germany. Like the

rest they were given a short time to collect their belongings; they used part of it to

tell us the form and, along with Gunner Spall, Edge's driver, to brick us in and
}
remove any outward signs of entry. We wished them good luck in th~ir (journey and

settled down for what we hoped would be a week at most. In the event it was to be

eighteen days. Had I known this at the time I doubt whether I ~auld have taken

my place on the roof.

 58

Chapter 4

As the sounds of activity in the camp died away we took stock of our situation. It

was cramped and uncomfortable lying on the planks. We could see nothing of what

was going on outside depending entirely on our hearing which by the end of our
·'\
stay in the roof had become preter naturally acute. The only light came through
\.__../

small chinks between the roof tiles. Arthur studied the Bible, and George his much

loved Culbertson's Book of Bridge. We had a pack of cards and tried to play

patience, occasionally even bridge. My only reading was a pocket English-Italian

dictionary to improve my Italian - more practical use than the Good Book or

Culbertson. My rudimentary acquired knowledge of the language was to come in

handy when we eventually got out of the camp, for the others did not know a word

at that stage and I had to do all the talking.

Beverley Edge describes the scene in his diary entry for Monday 4 October:

It is pretty quiet now (1.30 pm). Ken (lowe) is lying on his back studying

the roof - George has just tired of Poker Patience and is following Ken's

example - Bobby is sitting with hands round his knees, head slightly bent to

avoid the roof, casting a vacant scowl at our small dark world. Arthur is

reading the Bible by the small beam of light that comes in under the tiles

through the loose bricks where we made our entrance. I am writing this by

the same beam. The light is very bad, and it is only possible to read, write or

play cards when the sun is at its brightest; if a cloud passes over work must

be temporarily abandoned.
 59

It was in this 'small dark world' that we were to live with little change for eighteen

days of boredom, discomfort, fear and hope. I am sorry I surveyed it with 'a vacant

scowl' but I dare say a vacant smile would have been even more irritating to my

companions! It was certainly not a scene to give one much cheer. Through some

trick of the light the faces of my companions and me too no doubt looked like the

cadaverous elongated visages of an El Greco painting .

.f. j( 'VI I 'YJe_

Writing at the age of eighty f.etlr, fifty seven years after this experience I am sitting

on the terrace of my Norfolk house enjoying the lengthening shadows of a warm

September afternoon and the view over my sloping lawns of the Yare and the

marshes beyond - a far cry from the rafters of our hut in Sulmona. I have before

me on the table a photocopy of Beverley Edge's diary. He kept it throughout our

eighteen days and left it in the rafters when we finally baled out. Nineteen years

later in 1962, through the help of the Italian War Office, it was restored to him fully

intact and in good condition. It is the most authentic account, being written

contemporaneously. I also have George Burnett's story written soon after our

escape, my own account written about two years later and Arthur Dodd's published

version in Desert Harvest. From these I could reconstruct a detailed day to day

history of our 'Eighteen Days'. But it would make tedious reading. So I shall single

out the more memorable episodes and try to give a general impression of my

experience which still seems detached from all my other memories. I know it

happened. I can remember bits of it vividly. They come to me occasionally in

dreams or more often at times of insomnia. But there is a curious sense of unreality

about those days in retrospect. They stand apart from anything that happened

before or after. War disturbs everyone's equilibrium, routine and prospects. It was

strange to cease to be a law student at Magdalen, to be an ocru cadet in Lark Hill,

 60

to be in a Geordie gunner regiment, moving from England to Egypt, Cyprus,

Palestine, Iraq, back again to Egypt, thence to Libya and to captivity in Italy. Nor

had anything prepared me - why should it have - for life in Campo P G 21 - a sort

of cross between remand home and a gaol. And, jumping forward three weeks, I

had no idea what it would be like to live as a fugitive in German occupied Italy for

nearly three months. Yet, strange though all these episodes in my life were, they do

not quite have the same dreamlike sense of unreality as those eighteen days in the

rafters. 'Give me back my eighteen days' I sometimes murmur, like the populace in

18th century England who; when the Gregorian replaced the Julian calendar and

September 2-13 1752 were expunged cried 'Give us back our eleven days'.

This is a digression. Back to our first day in the rafters. I was not cheerful. We had

surmounted one hurdle but our chances of escaping discovery seemed remote. All

we would have to show for our efforts would be the loss of possessions we had left

~ beneath us. This meant a lot_p(POWs- things that we had acquired over the past

fifteen months, warm underclothes, pullovers, books etc which made the difference

between poverty and wealth in that restricted world. I remembered shivering in our

first winter in Chieti. captured in the height of the Libyan summer we wore only K D

shorts and shirts and had to keep warm with blankets round our shoulders. And

winter was again near.

Whatever hopes we had of seeing our treasured trivialities vanished next day when a

horde of OR prisoners entered the hut for loot. 'Stingy bastards', one said 'they've

taken the lot'. But we hadn't, and a triumphant note of glee was sounded when

they seized a pullover - probably mine which I had left on my bunk. 'They're like a

swarm of bloody locusts' said Arthur applying his eye to our only peep hole and
 61

using words not entirely suitable for a future ordinand. We should have been glad

that our men rather than the 'enemi- 'Ites' [Italians] or Boches- were benefiting.

But we were not glad about it - or about anything.

The next day (2 October) a Sapper officer, Lieut. Ripley Duggan who was at large in

the camp, moving from one hiding place to another, and knew where we were,

called out from below with the latest 'griff' (news) about the war. Naples had fallen

and the 8th Army was at Avellino. An hour or so later the German guards using

some sort of buttering ram knocked a large hole in the roof of the hut just below us,

looked into ours, luckily did nothing, and then gave the same treatment to the hut

above us. Both these huts had been entered from below and the ceilings showed

the signs. We complacently congratulated ourselves on our prudence in making the

entry into our rafters from outside - leaving minimum traces.

There were sporadic searches by the guards for the next few days, much tapping of

walls and floors. They luckily seemed more tunnel-minded than roof-minded. By 4

October all the remaining POWs had been evacuated, so Ripley Duggan told us.

Perhaps the searches would relax. But in the late afternoon another threat surfaced.

German troops, Duggan said, were going to occupy some of the huts. Would one of

them be ours?

Arthur who was on guard at the peep hole which commanded most of the hut

except the area immediately below whispered that some German soldiers had

entered the hut, 'they're quite a number. My God they're opening the doors'. There

was a roar as of a heavy truck in low gear. 'They're backing the bloody thing in

here. But they may not sleep here'. 'They're sure to leave a guard of some kind' I
 62

said, 'but if they don't sleep things may not be too bad'. 'They're bringing in

blankets. They're here to stay'. They were and the next three days were hell.

There were about a dozen soldiers, apparently in charge of some sort of repair unit

(in British military jargon LAD or Light Aid Detachment). They lived below us for
t{_«-;-_:i
three days. The~ were very noisy, shouting and hammering, and playing a

gramophone with apparently only one record, The Lambeth Walk repeated ad

nauseum. So we could move and talk with reasonable security.

But when they turned in for the night at about 9.00 pm silence descended save for a

sentry pacing up and down and every now and then flashing his torch up to the

ceiling so that slim slivers of light played among the rafters. This was disconcerting

through he could not possibly have seen anything. We took turns to keep awake.

Ken Lowe and Arthur Dodds had heavy colds. It was on one of those nights that I

remember deplorably whispering when on guard to one of them. 'If you sneeze or

cough I will murder you' - a ridiculous threat but a symptom of one's edgy nerves.

Then on 7 October they suddenly departed, leaving on one of the walls some sort of

unit sign.

But our sense of relief was soon broken by the voice of Ripley Duggan shouting in a

hut somewhere below us. 'I have been recaptured'. He spoke in a wooden tone.

'The camp Commandant ... '. The voice came nearer as he repeated his message to

every hut. At last he reached ours. 'The Camp Commandant has told me to say

that he knows that there are prisoners hiding in the camp. He advises them to give

themselves up before eleven. If not a party will come round with guns and

grenades and blow them out. I am saying this at the Commandant's request. I do
 63

not know whether it is bluff or not'. And he went on from hut to hut repeating the

words till they died away in the distance.

Was it bluff? After a council of war we half-decided that grenades might be risked

but if the German showed signs of tommy-gunning the ceiling we would bale out.

But the decision would be left to whomever's turn it was to keep watch at the peep

hole. The rest would disperse themselves at the edge and on top of what seemed

the most solid supporting timbers to minimise blast. The peep hole observer was

the most vulnerable. At eleven o'clock it was my turn. Two minutes later there was

a big bang in the upper ie southern area of the camp. 'It may be a truck back-firing'

murmured some optimist. It was not. The bangs grew louder. There was an

explosion and the noise of falling plaster in the hut about us. 'What are my orders?'

'We leave it to you Bobby'. A disagreeable responsibility. A group of Germans came

in, one holding a basket, full presumably of grenades. No sign of tommy-guns. The

leader came half way into the hut and looked around. I remembered the old army

adage 'if in doubt what to do, do nothing'. I was half paralysed by fear. To bale out

would be to give up the fruit of all our efforts. Not to do so might be fatal. The

basket holder retraced his steps and turning round flung some sort of object - it

turned out to be an old boot - into the hut. The party then moved on and slung

hand grenades into the hut below us, and continued the process downwards till the

bays became less noisy. I was covered in sweat. 'For Christ's sake relieve me'.

Arthur took his turn in my place. 'I know why we've been so lucky. They must have

spotted the Bache sign on the wall, and assumed there couldn't be any escapers

here'. He was probably right. It explained why for the second time our hut was the

lucky one between two others which had been suspected. We were to have further
 64

nights from time to time with unwelcome tenants of the hut below us, but no one

seems to have suspected anything.

On 12 October after twelve days in the rafters we reduced the daily water ration

from half a pint to two fifths and eventually to one third, which is very low indeed.

Our food rations were also becoming very thin, but thirst was even more debilitating

than hunger. We could not stay in the roof much longer, but we still vacillated.

Then an event took place which decided us. Early in the morning of 17 October we

were wakened from our uneasy slumbers by the scream of a shell overhead, then

another and yet another. There seemed to be some sort of systematic

bombardment for about one and a half hours from 7.30 am onwards - we guessed

by 75 mm field guns. It was not clear where the shells were falling but apparently

somewhere in the upper or southern sectors of the camp. In fact, as we later

learned the shelling was part of a gunnery practice exercise and the target was a

deserted shrine or hermitage several hundred yards up the slopes beyond the

southern perimeter of the camp. But it seemed much nearer. Were the Germans

shelling the upper end of the camp with a view to flushing out POWs? It seemed

improbable, but, in our fevered minds not impossible. We must bale out as soon as

we could.

It had long been our plan to make our getaway on a night so windy and stormy that

any noises would be drowned. There had been one or two such nights, but

perversely the weather was now still and dead calm prevailed. We gave ourselves

one more night. But the fine weather continued. Our food and water had finally run

out. So on 18 October we had to break out. This was not too easy. It was

important not only to remove the bricks which had blocked our entry but to lever
 65

them back into the rafters rather than push them out, which would have been easy

but they would fall on a pile of disordered tins and other rubbish and make a

clattering noise which might give the whole game away. George Burnett and

Beverley Edge managed this exhausting operation with complete success about

8.30 pm.

It was agreed that Ken Lowe would go out first backwards so that he could just

reach with his feet the windowsill below. Then we would pass out a plank by which

the rest of us would descend. Ken Lowe did his part to perfection, got over the pile

of tins silently and had his feet on the ground. 'What's it like?' A pause 'OK I am

just getting my breath back. I feel rather groggy'. No wonder after 18 days of

immobility. 'can we put the plank out?' 'In a moment. I don't feel too good' ... OK

shove it out'. We pushed it through with elaborate care. 'All right it's safe as far as

I can tell. I can't hear a sound in the camp'. We cautiously slid down one by one,

the last man remaining to push down our bundles of kit, followed by himself.

It was a strange feeling. We were like Ken Lowe, very shaky on our feet. It was a

brilliantly starlit night with a thin rising moon. The lamps were still on. There was

complete silence but for distant sporadic singing from the direction of the guard

room. A more welcome sound was the drip, drip of a tap nearby. It came from one

of the wash places. We made for it at once and I drank and drank and drank. I had

once read that this is a very bad thing to do after being short of water for a long

while. Rubbish! I drank my fill and felt all the better though I did feel slightly sick

after a second drinking bout and decided that pro tern enough was enough.
 66

We now did a recce of the camp. As we had already observed there were two

places, one on the eastern, one on the western perimeter, where earlier POWs had

broken down the wall. They were dead ground for sentries, if any, posted at any of

the corners of the vast quadrilateral of the camp. As far as we could ascertain there

were none on the eastern, western or southern perimeters, though clearly the

northern and the guard room area would be protected. We decided to divide our

forces - safety in the minimum of numbers. Edge and Lowe would try crawling out

by the western gap, George, Arthur and I would after half an hour's interval attempt

the eastern gap. We did not see our companions again till after the war. Edge and

Lowe made their way out at 1.00 am under the wire, but, as we heard much later,

ran almost at once into a German patrol and were recaptured. It was sheer bad luck

and could equally well have happened to us after we had crossed the wire.

At about 1.30 am we set out for our chosen gap in the wall. George led the way

and we crawled under the wire pushing our satchels and blankets in front of us,

each in turn lifting the wire for the next man. We crossed the earth track outside

the wall and negotiated a second wire barrier when the camp lights suddenly

blacked out. This was somewhat disconcerting but was probably a power cut. They

soon came on again. It was about 2.30 am by now and we walked away as fast as

we could making a detour round the southern perimeter and heading upwards

toward the lower slopes of the mountains. Our long immobile stay in the roof was

about the worst possible preparation for a scramble through the stones and scrub of

the foothills.

When we had been walking for some time I looked round and saw a patch of water

probably a reservoir far below, between us and the camp, reflecting the moonlight.
 67

I had a temporary sense of euphoria. I had no idea where we were heading and

what the future held. But we were FREE. Even if we were recaptured next day, it

would have been worthwhile enduring all the hardships of our escape for a few

hours of liberty.

'We can't stop any longer', said George, 'we've got to get clear of the camp and up

into the hills before dawn'. George was our leader. We plunged on and as we

climbed higher the noise of stones sliding under our feet seemed a certain give

away, but we had to risk it. The light of the setting moon gradually merged into

that of dawn. We lay down for a rest behind some bushes. At that moment a

tremendous noise of Germans shouting, lorries rewing up and an occasional shot

distracted us and seemed alarmingly near. But it faded away. It may have been the

occasion of the recapture of Edge and Lowe. I think the episode occurred far further

away than we realised with our acute sense of hearing, the result of so many days in

semi-darkness.

The next 48 hours are a blur in my mind. We wandered higher up the slope, rested

under some bushes hoping to descend at dusk and contact friendly Italians down in

the fields. We could see a few white walled houses and people working near them,

but we could also see German trucks moving back and fro on a track in front of

them. We called out to a woman working in the fields 'Acqua per favore, Signoria,

'Molto sete'. 'Shosho guarda bene, Molti Tedeschi'. But she brought us on her head

a pitcher of water. We settled down for the night on the stone floor of the ruins of a

broken down dwelling. On the way I passed out altogether and when I came to I

felt incapable of any action. It is at times like these that one is so grateful for

companionship. George and Arthur were stronger than I was at this particular
 68

moment. On my own I would have 'thrown in the sponge'. They kept me going at

the darkest moment of my life. My gratitude is infinite, however inexpressible.

Hiding in a ditch next day we were contacted by an elderly peasant farmer, a

relation of the woman who gave us water. He was a grizzled gnome-like figure,
1(.,
small and earthy. 'English?' he said, 'Prigiouieri di Guerra?' We nodded assent. 'I

speak English, thirty years in America'. He did but in an accent which was barely

comprehensible. His name was Antonio (Toni) Cercone. He and one of his female

relations brought us, carried on her head an enormous basket with a cooked lunch

of gnocchi - a luxury indeed - accompanied by plenty of bread and a flagon of

rough red wine. The Cerconis were genuinely shocked by our appearance which

was certainly not much to look at - bloodshot eyes, a pallid complexion, 18 days

growth, a straggly beard. Toni urged us to stay for the (alleged) advancing Allied

forces and directed us to sleep at what he called a 'capanna'. 'What's a capanna?'

'It is for grapes'. 'Well, if we're hungry, we can, I suppose eat our beds' said

someone. 'Bobby you know Italian. What's he talking about?' 'I've no idea. But we

can't be worse off than here. We'd better follow him'.

The capanna turned out to be a small straw hut used for the storage of grapes, but

luckily now empty. It was a tight fit but the three of us were able to lie on a straw

covered floor in reasonable comfort. At least it was better than the rafters of the

prison hut or the stony slopes of the hills. And for the first time we had met genuine

help and charity. The days were hot but the autumnal nights were chilly. We had a

couple of great coats and some blankets to keep us warm. We were in full view of a

large white-walled farmhouse used by the Germans as a billet; much traffic moved

to and fro in our field of vision. We hid by day, and were brought supplies by the
 69

Cerconis. We issued fopith at night to wash in a stream close by. The water

flowing from the hills was almost icy. We were there, and later in another capanna,

two fields away, for nearly a fortnight. The Cercone family washed our shirts and

underclothes, brought us food and wine and some patched-up civvy clothes. There

were quite a number of escapees wandering about; some of them made contact

with us.

We were by no means sure what to do next. We were well fed and felt far fitter and

stronger than we had been. But we possessed no map and had only the vaguest

idea of our whereabouts. What was clear was that we could not stay indefinitely in

the fields. As winter drew on it would be much too cold. On 29 October we were

contacted by a young man called Mario di Cesare. He had, he said, been looking for

us at the behest of one of our 'camerate' and was charged with the task of giving us

help. He was eighteen years old, employed as a telegraphist on the Ferrovia - the

Italian state railways - and had a German pass. He gave us what purported to be

the latest news from the Front. Isernia had been taken by the Fifth Army and Vasto

by the Eighth. His story was a bit mysterious and my Italian (I was the only one of

our trio who could speak it at all) was very rudimentary. One of the ORs who had

contacted us at the capanna referred vaguely to some sort of escaping organisation

in Sulmona. It may be that a member of it knew about us and had primed Mario, or

there may have been a misunderstanding. The next day Mario brought us some hot

food which ought to have been welcome but meant that we would be gorged before

the Cercone contribution, due to arrive 1 Y2 hours later, provided us with a second

meal. However, we managed somehow. We had by now moved to yet another

capanna much higher and more comfortable and with a roof that did not leak. The

only snag at night was the rustle in the straw of mice and rats. A cat would have
 70

been welcome but one cannot, as George philosophically if platitudinously observed

'have everything'.

Mario offered to put us up in Sulmona. I envisaged a house in the suburbs which

would not be much more dangerous than our lodging in the fields. I had no idea

that it would be a flat in the centre of the town, still less that it would be our abode

in a German occupied area for the next ten weeks (5 November 1943 to 13 January

1944). None of us entirely trusted Mario who seemed bumptious and boastful. But

we had to move. The weather was cold and wet and not likely to improve. I

furnished Antonio with a long letter which expressed our thanks for his help and

which he could use to claim a financial reward from the relevant Allied authorities if

they ever reached Sulmona. Mario promised to guide us into the town on 4

November, in the afternoon. We did such packing as we could. The day passed by

- no sign of Mario. So we settled in for the night, worried at his absence. Next day

he turned up at about 8.00 am looking flustered and anxious. There had been what

he called a 'rastrellamento' in Sui mona the previous day - literally a 'combing out' to

conscript young Italian males to work as labourers for the German army. It had not

been safe to wander into the fields. It was he said 'sicuro' now and he wanted us to

move at once. The morning was grey and misty. Mario led the way with George

who being shortish and black-haired was the only one who might have passed as an

Italian. Arthur and I who could scarcely have looked less Italian were told to follow

at an interval of a hundred metres.

After an hour or so Mario dumped us near another capanna and said he would go

ahead and see whether it was safe to proceed. He came back at 10.30 taking

George with him into the town, promising to return for Arthur and me which in due
 71

course he did bringing with him a swarthy figure of villainous appearance in fascist

uniform, 'mio zio' (uncle) he said. Mario went ahead with Arthur. I was to follow a

hundred yards or so behind with 'loiio'. Suddenly just before we reached the main
j

Sui mona - Aquila road, the uncle saying something about spied and being suspected

abruptly departed telling me to follow the others who were now at least two

hundred yards ahead crossing the bridge into Sulmona. I dared not run or even

wall< too fast for fear of arousing suspicion. But I was terrified of losing Arthur and

Mario, for without the uncle to guide me I had not got the faintest notion where to

go. There was plenty of military transport on the road, but the drivers ignored me

not surprisingly and the occasional Italian pedestrian looked at me curiously, no

doubt guessing that I was an escapee, but said nothing beyond 'buon giorno'.

I crossed the bridge and as I did so Mario and Arthur disappeared round a bend in

the road. Mario of course believed that I was under the safe care of his uncle. I

passed two or three groups of Luftwaffe soldiers. Wearing blue side caps and khaki

drill shorts, for it was now quite hot, they could have come straight from the RAF.

They did not give me a second glance though I felt and probably looked highly

guilty. There was no sign of Mario, as I came to a three-way junction. Should I

follow the left turn with its tramways, to the town centre or the right fork to the

railway station or the middle route toward a narrow side street? I plumped for the

tramlines, correctly as it turned out, for Mario appeared from a door on the right and

beckoned to me. In two minutes I rejoined George and Arthur in the Di Cesare flat

on the first floor. Seldom have I felt a greater sense of relief.

 72

Chapter 5

The flat was to be our home for the next nine weeks, (5 November 1943 - 13

January 1944). We were at once introduced to Mario's mother Signora di Cesare,

the widow, so Mario claimed of a general- which I somehow doubted. She was, as

Arthur Dodds described her in his book (Desert Harvest 35), 'quite a well built lady

with a large heart and plenty of courage'. Our debt to her is beyond price. She

shared the flat with her sister-in-law who 'was a small nervy creature as excitable as

Signora di Cesare was calm'. I refer to them henceforth as the Signora and the

Signorina. Mario took after his mother in stature and appearance but not in

character. He was 'boastful, bumptious and at times rude'. I never liked him or

entirely trusted him, but we owe him our thanks all the same. His motive in

sheltering us was one of insurance against accusations of being pro German as he

had taken in laundry from some soldiers to be washed by his mother and also

entertained one or two of them in the flat - actions for which he was under constant

suspicion from 'friends' and neighbours. A written certificate of his help to escaped

POWs would be a talisman when Allied troops 'liberated' Sulmona, if they ever did.

But I was determined not to give it till we had some chance of being guided to the

8th Army outposts. I had a feeling shared by George and Arthur that the Di Cesare

wanted to keep us as testimony in person to their endeavours to help us.

As the only one who could speak any Italian at all I got the full benefit of her

oratory. She explained why the spare bedroom in the flat had been walled up by a

large cupboard against the door. It was there that their valuables were hidden to

avoid plunder by the 'Tedeschi' (Germans). They had, she said, pillaged everything

in the flat of someone in a neighbouring 'palazzo', as she called the blocks of flats on
 73

the main street. I became weary of her constant: 'hanna rubato tutto, Signor

Roberto, matterasse di lana, poltrone (armchairs) biciclette ... tutto, tutto, tutto ...

tutto, tootuto ... ' her voice rising to a crescendo on the last 'tutto', all uttered in

unbelievably rapid succession. 'Terribile, terribile' I would reply, but not always with

enough conviction to forestall another outburst to make sure that I had got the

message.

It was not a welcome one, for she was explaining why all six of us - the three

escapees, she, her sister-in-law and Mario would have to sleep in the same bedroom

next to the sitting room-cum-kitchen where we spent most of our day. There was a

large 'letto matrirl)~nale' to accommodate the four men and a smaller bed for the

sisters. The proprieties were by the escapees and Mario if not on night duty going

to bed first. Then a hand would come from behind the door, and switch out the

light, and the ladies in their slips would occupy the small bed, always getting up very

early so that the men could later dress themselves undisturbed and attend to their

ablutions etc on their own. The flat consisted, apart from the big bedroom, of a

living room-cum-kitchen with a charcoal cooker, a sink, chairs and a table. There

was a small lao at one end. The living room with a big window had a good view of

the street, and a cafe at the corner much patronised by German soldiers and one
~0

could just see Sulmona cathedral. We were near but could i\actually see the railway

station, though we could easily hear the sound of the trains and even see their

smoke. Sulmona was an important junction for supplies to the southern front. It

occurred to me that one ought to memorise the times of the trains, so whether there

was a regular pattern or time table so that if we did escape it would be possible to

convey the details to the relevant authorities when we got home. It would of course

be folly to write anything on paper. I was deputed to be the 'memoriser' when I

 74

was 'de-briefed' after arriving in England in January (1944). I was able to give

information which, as I learned later, enabled the RAF to hit a German ammunition

train or trains in Sulmona. I only hope that there were no civilian casualties. Arthur

and George did not leave it only to me but used their own memories too.

The letto matrimoniale was wide though not enough to accommodate four side by

side. But it was also long and there was space for someone to sleep transversally at

the bottom below the feet of the others. Mario was not one for doing much

washing. The odour was strong. It was agreed - by a vote of two to one - that the

duty of being the transverse sleeper should go to Arthur whose sense of smell was

diminished by the catarrh which he had never shaken off and which had prompted

one to threaten murder if he sneezed in the camp rafters while German troops slept

below us (seep 62). He accepted the decision with Christian fortitude. Fortunately

these odious arrangements did not last too long. Signora di Cesare relented over

the blocked spare bedroom and Mario occupied it much to our relief and, I imagine,

his too.

Our existence centred on the living room table where we ate, played cards and read

such books as we had. It soon became clear that we were far, being the only

prisoners on the run in Sulmona, and we had numerous visitors including two

officers accompanied by a couple of girls whom the Signora described as 'fallen

women'. We discouraged further visits, not on moral but security grounds.

Prostitutes might well confer their favours on German soldiers and give the game

away. The food which the Signora provided was bread and milk for breakfast,

minestrone for lunch and some sort of stew for supper. From time to time Antonio

Cercone or one of his relations, who had fed us in the fields turned up with further
 75

supplies. We managed to have an occasional bath in a large wooden tub conjured

up from somewhere and filled with hot water. The Germans did not seem to be

worrying much about POWs. But one day just after lunch we heard the heavy tread

of army boots and were hurried by the Signora into the loo. Some five Germans

came into the living room with Italian carabinieri and stayed talking for quite a time,

though I could not make out what it was all about. They departed, fortunately

without paying a visit to the loo - which would have been fatal to our chances. The

chief danger for us was what was called a 'rastrellamento', literally a 'combing out'.

It was a matter of press-ganging young Italians into temporary forced labour to dig

trenches etc for the Germans. They were not on the outlook for POWs but a search

of the flats was as likely to catch us as the Italian youths they were looking for. I

came to dread the cry of 'rastrellamento', for it meant climbing through a trap door

above the loo into the soffitto, the roof - we had had enough of roofs by then - and

waiting cold, covered with dust and cobwebs for hours till the all clear was

announced. Sometimes we were ushered into the neighbouring flat of a family

called di Berardo who had a sort of love-hate relationship with the Di Cesares. They

had had something to do with branding Mario as a collaborator. We called them the

'Black Beetles' as they were all small, round and dark. There were four sons whose

ages ranged from 23 to 10 and whose names all began with E - Enzo, Ennio, Elegio

and Ermano. The elder two had been 'per forza', as they said, members of the

Fascist Youth Party and its Youth Movement, the GIL. But they uttered, for our

benefit blood curdling threats of what they would do to the Fascists when the Allies

arrived. I nodded assent.

We now turned our minds towards the practicalities of escape. A first need was to

have our khaki trousers and jacket dyed black and on 7 November the process was
 76

set in train. But it was not easy to know what to do next or whom to believe. There

was an enigmatic character called Josef who was a Czech and had been a hospital

orderly at Chieti. He spoke Italian 'come un Italiano', as the Signora said and a host

of other languages too. He claimed to have contacts who would put us in touch with

organisers of an escape route through the southern Apennines. By now thanks to

illicit wireless sets in the palazzo we had some idea where the Allied Eighth Army

had reached, along with strong indications that it was settling into winter quarters.

At this stage we finally decided that, whatever the optimistic stories about Sulmona

soon being 'liberated' we had got to make our own way to the British outposts

although the Di Cesares were very reluctant to agree. In fact the Allied forces did

not reach Sulmona for about eight months. We tried to find out from the various

prisoners and other characters 'on the run' whom we met what arrangements there

were for escapers. Our most promising contact was Josef. But he had been

arrested on suspicion. He was released, however, and though he had not given

anything away he decided that the place was too hot to hold him and made his way

to Rome where the Vatican City was full of POWs and others who were fleeing

German rule. We had to hope for some other contact.

Meanwhile life was one of boredom interspersed by continuous alarms - Sulmona

was to be evacuated and the able bodied to be scooped up in a giant rastrellamento.

Alternatively it was to be garrisoned by fresh troops and governed by strict military

rule with the severest penalties for harbouring prisoners of war. Or .. . but the

rumours proliferated, and nothing came of them. We played endless card games:

'Tre Setto with the Italian ten card suit which the Di Cesares taught us, and 'Slippery

Sand' with English packs which we taught them. Both games were very tedious and

I have forgotten the rules, but the Italians never tired of them.
 77

I did not keep a detailed diary of life in the flat. So my memory is one of

kaleidoscopic and disconnected images- some of them distorted by memory. For

example I have a vivid picture of myself, George and Mario playing bar billiards with

a German soldier in a crowded cafe nearby. The game really did happen and

George was furious at Mario inveigling him into such a risk. But although I can see

it so vividly I was not in fact there at all. I have evidently conflated it with a later

episode when I too was persuaded by Mario to have a drink on my own with him in

the same cafe which was again full of German soldiers again contrary to Mario's

categorical guarantee, but there was no question of setting cue to ball or talking to

any Germans. It is a measure of how bored we were that we took such risks at all.

Arthur wisely did not join on either occasion, though he did once go for a walk in the

park with George.

With the approach of Christmas the weather became colder and wetter. The Di

Cesares were keen to celebrate the Festive Season and my birthday which is on the

23rd. The two celebrations are now rather confused in my mind. At one of them -

or both!- I got very drunk. And at one of them- not both- I had to be supported

to bed. A notable delicacy at Christmas lunch was promised - half a sheep's head,
rlJ'i
the piece Sfa~resistance being the eye. I am told that the correct way to eat it is to

swallow it like an oyster but none of us three felt like making the experiment and at

the risk of offending the Signora gladly relinquished our claim to Mario who gobbled

it up with relish.

After Christmas things began to move. We were contacted by an Italian officer who

had deserted. He was called Dino and was accompanied by a youth called Gino who
 78

looked remarkably un-Italian with ginger hair and blue eyes. The Di Cesares did not

trust either. 'Questa biondo non mi piace' said Signora Di Cesare when they had

gone (I don't like the look of that blond boy). He was probably descended from a

by-blow of one of the innumerable northern soldiers who have descended on Italy

via the Alps over many centuries. But that was no reason to distrust him, and he

proved to be a reliable support. When Dina was arrested by the police, fortunately

without any incriminating papers his side-kick could not have been more helpful.

After a New Year's Eve spent in much discomfort with the 'Black Beetles', for fear of

another rastrellimento we were told by Mario that there were plans for an escape

party headed by one, Alberto, a shepherd known as the 'wolf of the Mountains' who

would guide us through the Maiella Pass to the nearest Allied military outpost. It

had been snowing for some days but with any luck the snow would freeze giving us

a reasonably firm surface to walk on. Would we join the party? We agreed with

alacrity. It seemed our best chance. As far as we could find out, Alberto was

reliable and there was no reason to suspect a trap. We prepared for a cold night.

Dina had brought us overcoats, and we still had our battle dress under which we

wore as many pullovers and sweaters as we could stuff in. I was hampered by my

wretchedly thin footwear. The others had boots but there were no spares. In the

event my shoes just lasted long enough. After one postponement on 4 January

because of lack of frost, we said farewell on 12 January to the Di Cesare family

except Mario who was to guide us to the rendezvous with Alberto. There were many

tearful embraces. The Signora was genuinely sorry to lose us, but I hope she was

privately relieved, for Dina's arrest and increased activity by the Carabinieri were

making her and the Signora's position more and more precarious. I left a letter
 79

which she could show to the British authorities if and when they reached Sulmona

imploring her to take the utmost care in hiding it.

Dusk in January was at about 4.30 pm. We spent the day packing. We each had

haversacks, Arthur in addition had a small suitcase. Into these we put our valuables,

and some of our food. George keeping his Culbertson's Gold Book as a sort of

talisman. At 4 o'clock we set out, Mario and Arthur taking the lead while George and

I followed about a hundred yards behind. Mario and Arthur walked at a speed with

which George and I could barely keep up. Indeed we lost sight of them in the

twilight and took the wrong turning where the paths out of Sulmona forked. Luckily

Mario came back and we had to walk even faster because of the time lost by our

detour. Eventually we got ourselves to the rendezvous, an isolated farm house

about two miles out of Sulmona. There we met Alberto for the first time heading a

group of about twenty five --a mixture of military escapees of diverse nationalities

and Italian civilians wanting to get out of occupied Italy for a variety of reasons.

They were there on sufferance. Alberto gave them a low priority. He was paid for

escorting Allied POWs but nothing for his fellow countrymen. It was a cold clear

night. The moon had not yet risen. Alberto briefly addressed us. Within 24 hours

we should be in friendly territory. It was vital to keep together. Stragglers would

have to take their chance. Alberto was a tough stocky mountaineer and a man of

few words unlike his voluble compatriots. He could have been a shepherd from the

Highlands or the Dales and there was something about him that inspired confidence

well justified as events were to prove.

We started at once on our journey, Alberto setting a pace which we found very hard

to keep up with. At an early stage we jettisoned the suitcase which we had taken
 80

turns to carry. This meant abandoning some of the food which the Di Cesares had

provided but we were buoyed up by the promise that we would only have to stay

one night in the mountains before reaching our goal, and reckoned that we had just

enough. It also meant abandoning George's Culbertson. He was more distressed at

that than the loss of food. Arthur stuck on to his pocket bible and I to my pocket

Italian dictionary in case we were recaptured.

The first break Alberto allowed us was just after we had passed though a deserted

village, Pettorano, I think, and were beginning to climb up the Maiella Pass on the

side of a steepish slope. Down it in the valley lay a few houses and the mountains

rose steeply on the other side still hidden in shadow as we were. Then I saw one of

the most lovely sights I ever remember. The moon had just risen though one could

not see it and its rays suddenly struck the tops of the mountains across the valley to

the south. The sunny peaks were covered in a misty silver glow of incredible

beauty. For a moment or so I stood entranced at the spectacle. Then as the moon

rose the shadows lessened on the other side, the magic moment went, and the

mountains looked like ordinary snow covered mountains in moonlight. The

moonlight on the snow shining on us too made one feel alarmingly conspicuous.

Soon after our halt I realised how extremely cold it was. From profusely sweating I

quickly started shivering and thanked my stars for the overcoat which Dina had

given each of us. George who had chucked his away a bit earlier because of its

weight looked very cold indeed. We began walking again and continued on a

winding track now up, now down, but the prevailing direction was a steady climb.

The valley lay always on our right and the mountains on the other side towered

above us never seeming to change from whatever angle we looked at them. At one
 81

moment there was an alarm because German sentries were said to keep observation

on the track. We halted and then moved on again at fifty yard intervals. We were

on the edge of quite a steep cliff and could see the tops of trees below us and

occasionally the dark shape of a house. Nothing happened but it was an eerie

moment coming out of the shadows into the moonlight and wondering whether a

shot would go off. Eventually we closed up and took a break in the shadow of some

pine trees.

I was astonished after a few minutes to see another party as large as ours following

along the same path which we had taken. We now met Gino again. He had

expected us to be in the rear, misinformed - typically - by Mario. He gave me a

swig of brandy from his flask and some wine from another bottle. But no one

seemed to have any water which was what we all really wanted. I realised for the

first time that melting snow in one's mouth and swallowing it does nothing to

quench one's thirst. It merely makes you feel sick.

At last a general cry of 'avanti' was passed along the line and we were off again at

about 9.30 pm. We plunged on through even deeper snow and more precipitous

paths. The going got worse as we encountered bushes and pine trees. I already

felt very tired as the column wound its way before and behind me, black figures cut

out against the moonlit snow like those in a picture by Lowry. It suddenly struck me
l
what a weird adventure it al was and how abruptly it could end with a single cry of

'Ait' from a German soldier. Then back to the old routine of the prison camp, though

in Germany not Italy. But at least there would be regular meals even if they barely

assuaged one's hunger, one would not be too cold, one would have a bunk to lie on,

books to read, cards and chess for recreation. Perhaps it would not be too bad after
 82

all ... . I then pulled myself together. Escapees should never think that life as a

prisoner is 'not too bad after all'. This is to echo the defeatism of the great areas of

Europe which had succumbed without a struggle, the French under Petain and many

others. There was no turning back. We simply had to get through and we would.

These rather sententious reflections were abruptly ended by an unexpected sound

and sight. There was a discordant cross between a howl and a wail from a ridge

about 200 yards to our right and silhouetted against the moonlight we saw a couple

of wolves. I was brought up as a boy on Macauley's Lays and at one time knew

chunks of Hosatius by heart; I remembered:

... And in the nights of winter,

When the cold north winds blow

And the long howling of the wolves

Is heard amidst the snow ...

We could see others from the pack, their eyes gleaming red. Signora Di Cesare had

warned us about wolves as a hazard in the mountains, but I had not really believed

her. The pack shadowed us for a mile or two. I was not unduly frightened for I had

read somewhere that even a pack will not attack a body of men as long as they keep

together. A straggler would be another matter. I walked more carefully than ever.

It was vital not to sprain one's ankle - which, with thin leather soles, would be quite

easy to do, especially as one was walking on ground which sloped to the left and

gave an insecure foothold. However, the wolves soon abandoned us as a bad job

and disappeared higher up the mountain.

At our next halt I had a chance of seeing some of the group who had along with

Gino joined us. There were three officers who like us had escaped at some stage
 83

and had been living in Sulmona; Fergus Panton of the Indian Army, David Roberts
r
and Rodney Hill who were both gunners. ,Jt' think it was at this stage about 2.00 am
that Alberto firmly declared that because of a heavy fall of snow we could not make

it to the Eighth Army that night. We would have to get as far as we could before

daylight and lay up in some suitable place for the next day till dusk when we would

make the final effort to reach our destination. This was gloomy news and caused

some consternation in the party. Most of the POWs were beginning to feel very

.
exhausted. After much palaver Alberto determined to press on, but a good many of

his followers decided to turn back. Our party now consisted of too guides Alberto

and a younger sidekick, Francesco, together with Gino and eight Italian civilians.

The British consisted of Bombardier Rosen who we had met in Sulmona and who

was fluent in Italian, we six officers and ten British other ranks - about 30 all told.

We walked on up towards the saddle of the Maiella - the Cucci Pass which separates

the Sulmona from the Sangro valley to the south. The last stages of the climb were

fairly steep. The light was that queer mixture of brilliant moonlight and whitening

dawn which slowly merges into day without one quite realising it. Gradually I could

see the mountain landscape behind us take shape. At first the peaks deep in

shadow seemed almost black despite the snow, the whole scene looking like an

etching or a pencil sketch in black and white. Then in almost theatrical display the

sun turned the snow into the peculiar shade of pink which no painter would dare to

imitate for fear of being an out and out vulgarian but which is so peculiarly lovely 'in

real life'.

14 January was a miserable day. Despite bright sun it was intensely cold and the

wind seemed to follow the sun round so that it was impossible to be both in the
 84

sunshine and out of a freezing wind. We laid up in a sort of semi-scrub. Some of

the party lighted fires from the pines and brambles in which we hid. They produced

plenty of smoke but little heat. I tried to dry my wet socks but the wind at first froze

them into a solid lump. The fires were useless, but after being hung in the sunshine

my socks did get a bit drier eventually.

The Italian members of the party were in high spirits. 'They say it is only ten

kilometres to go and down hill all the way. It will be easy, we shall be there before

midnight, 'sicuro'. In fact none of us knew except Alberto who after an hour or so of

rest had gone ahead to 'recce' the route. The plan was for the other guides to lead

us after dusk to a rendezvous down the slope where we were intended to meet

Alberto. The journey involved passing near a village called Palena where there were

said to be Germans and Alberto's mission was to find a safe path round the village.

The day passed slowly. In order to rest most of us longed to lie down, but lying in

the snow is very uncomfortable, especially as the wind grew stronger and colder

blowing little clouds of powdered snow across the flat bottom of the shallow hollow

where we lay. I was just too exhausted to sleep although dog-tired.

I was not sorry when at about 3.00 pm the guides decided to move down a few

hundred yards to a ruined house. It had n<froof but at least there were walls which

gave some shelter. We crowded in and began to eat what food remained. Not

much since George, Arthur and I had thrown a lot away to lighten our haversacks,

optimistically believing the confident prophecy that the journey would only take one

night. However, Gino seeing that we were short generously passed food on to us as

did other Italians some of whom seemed to be carrying almost a week's rations.

There was no water, we had to rely on melted snow and the occasional sip of
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grappa from a friendly flask. I took more than I should and found it hard to swallow

the dry bread on offer.

Shortly after 4 o'clock we set off again. We could now see nothing of the valley to

our south. It was covered with clouds - a flat fleecy platform some hundreds of feet

below us, stretching as far as one could see. The sun still shone above. So we had

the sort of view familiar to mountaineers and airmen but quite novel to me at that

time. Alberto had gone ahead to reconnoitre a route round a Palena said to be

occupied at times by Germans whose fresh ski tracks reminded us of our peril. At

about 4.00 pm we set out again led by Francesco to a hut which was our

rendezvous. 6 o'clock and no sign of Alberto. Should we continue without him? We

assumed that Francesco knew the way but after a lengthy colloquia - Bombardier

Rosen told us that he was in fact not at all sure of the route. Alberto was the only

person who did know it. We had better wait. The moon came up shortly before
Q~~
midnight, and at last Alberto appeared. He had been caught in a rastr,illamento and

spent several hours shovelling snow for the Germans. There was a shepherd's hut

nearby inhabited by friendly Italians who fed Alberto. After a short rest we set out

again to try and get as far as we could before daylight.

My memory of the next few hours is blurred. I recall negotiating a mountain stream

where one had to jump to a rock in the middle and take another jump to get to the

other side. George fell in and got soaked to the waist, Arthur who was a good long

jumper at school managed easily. I scrambled across somehow but in the process

badly stubbed the big toe of my right foot. It was no~ too painful at the time but

was to give me hell later after we had reached safety. At some stage, soon after

dawn I had a complete blackout, fell down and lost consciousness altogether.
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According to George's diary I looked 'absolutely frightful' which I can well believe.

By now we were beyond the German outposts and there were no more ski tracks

which always filled us with alarm. We were in a sort of 'no man's land'. An hour or

so later we reached an 8th Army outpost manned by Royal West Kent regiment.

They had been following with binoculars and much suspicion the course of our

journey. We were driven to their RHR at Casoli where I was delighted to meet 'Bin'

(Robin) Baillieu, a Magdalen contemporary who was very nice, and also as it

happens very rich being a scion of a wealthy Australian family. We had a bath, a

decent meal and clean clothes for the first time for what seemed ages. Next day we

were driven to 14 Corps HQ at Paglietta and closely interrogated especially on our

information about the times of German trains at Sui mona.

This did in the event prove to be of some use. Many weeks later the RAF bombed

Sulmona station and blew up an ammunition train, basing their timing on our

information. For this modest contribution to the war effort we all three received the

lowest military honour a 'Mention in Dispatches' which entitled one to an oak leaf on

the relevant campaign medal. Nothing much to boast of, but I confer to mild

irritation when I overheard the following conversation at the bar of my club. 'I

believe Charles got a Mention'. 'Oh that's all. It comes up with the rations I'm told'.

Years later I told the story to Keith Joseph without knowing that he had had exactly

the same experience. He was much amused.

Escaped POWs were always returned to England. We were due to be shipped from

Taranto in the 'Heel' of Italy but the process of getting there was anything but

speedy. After the first euphoria induced by successful escape I had a sharp mental

reaction. Depression set in and was not alleviated by the curious chance that one of
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the transit camps in which we were accommodated was in Bari, the very same camp

which had received us as POWs 18 months earlier. It was of course more

comfortable - it could hardly have been less than it was at our previous sojourn.

But in my rather gloomy frame of mind it somehow seemed the last straw. My

companions went out to savour whatever delights the town could provide at night. I

stayed behind - my toe was giving me acute pain - and sat down to read one of the

few books which were lying about. It did not exactly cheer me up - John Buchan's

Sick Heart River, the last novel he wrote. He was an ill man and the story of his

hero stricken by fatal disease trying to find a vanished tribe in canada of which

Buchan was Governor General was not calculated to revive my spirits. P G

Woodhouse would have been more appropriate.

My stubbed big toe had now become very swollen. The Medical Officer at Taranto

camp said that he would have to remove the toe nail or else the whole foot might

become infected and have to be amputated. He did it with a local anaesthetic.

When its effects wore off the pain was as bad as ever. 'It'll wear off of its own

accord before long' he cheerfully said, adding that on the troopship I would have

plenty of duty free alcohol for a pain killer. Alas when on 26 January we boarded

the P & 0 Liner SS Ranchi I soon discovered she was 'dry'. So that particular relief

was not available. However, the M.O. was right on one thing. I woke up, just after

we went through the Straits of Gibraltar, to find the pain had vanished during the

night of its own accord, and it did not recur.

We landed at Gourock early in February, and were at once entrained for London.

There we three were separated. Arthur was sent to the Air Ministry for

interrogation. George and I were told to report at the Selsdon Park Hotel for
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debriefing before leave. The hotel, somewhere south of London attained a short-

lived celebrity in 1969-70 as the scene of a Conservative Party meeting under Ted

Heath's chairmanship. A general election was imminent and the Party issued a

manifesto which the Labour leaders then in office claimed to be so reactionary that

the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, gave the Tories the collective sobriquet of

'Selsdon Man' on the analogy of Piltdown man. We went through a fairly tough

cross-examination - POWs were regarded as potential defectors - but passed it

satisfactorily. We were then granted leave. To my surprise and pleasure I got six

months whereas most officers seemed to be getting only three. At the time I

attributed this to my medical report, for I was only skin and bone and looked about

as unfit as anyone could be who was still standing on two legs. In fact, as I learned

after the war, this was not the reason. My first cousin Guy Daynes, a doctor, had a

desk job in Whitehall at the time. One of his duties was to vet applications for sick

leave. Seeing my name with three months against it he promptly substituted six,

and no one queried the change. As a result of this commendable piece of nepotism

I had time off till July instead of April to spend at my leisure before the Army

claimed my services again.