Whicker’s War and Journey of a Lifetime. Alan Whicker
understanding what we were doing, tended to approach us with impatient exasperation or amused confusion. Usually when they saw we were quite professional they would submit to direction or just leave us alone – which for a junior officer, was ideal.
We drove north and found the 7th Green Howards had captured a large Italian coastal defence position of 12-inch gun-howitzers which could throw a 6101b shell 20 miles. They were pointing towards our carefree arrival route and positioned to do terrible damage to any invader, but were only as good as their crews – who fortunately were not working that day.
We noticed with some bitterness towards international Arms Kings that they had been manufactured by British Vickers-Armstrong. Our 74th Field Regiment got them firing on German positions outside Catania, the biggest guns the Eighth Army had ever operated – so I suppose it worked out all right in the end.
Another capture worked out equally well, and Sergeant S.A. Gladstone got some expressive pictures of happy troops liberating cellars containing 7,000 gallons of good red wine. As trophies go, this was vintage and generally accepted as even better booty than tomatoes.
After our carefree advance from the beach, resistance had toughened in front of the Eighth Army. German paratroops had been flown in from France and the Hermann Goering Division replaced the timid and apathetic Italians. After tough fighting on the beaches, the Americans enjoyed an easier run through east and central Sicily, then followed the Germans around the giant sentinel of Mount Etna as they pulled back and prepared to retreat to the mainland.
As for our enemies, we soon discovered that the Italians in their rickety little tanks were anxious to become our prisoners, and the Germans in their enormous 57-ton Tiger tanks were anxious to kill us – so at least we knew where we were …
Sergeant Radford and I set off across the island to be in at the capture of Palermo by General Patton’s army. That pugnacious American General had just been in deep trouble after visiting a hospital where he slapped and abused two privates he believed were malingering. The soldiers were said to be suffering, like the rest of us, from ‘battle fatigue’. They had no wounds though one was found to have mild dysentery, yet they seriously affected the war. Patton’s exasperation was demonstrated in front of an accompanying War Correspondent, and the resultant Stateside publicity put the General’s career on hold for a year – and in due course provided a tragic death-knell for Churchill’s Anzio campaign, which needed Patton’s drive and leadership.
As we drove through remote and untouched mountain villages, we were the first Allied soldiers they had seen. Wine was pressed upon us and haircuts (including a friction) cost a couple of cigarettes. Even the almost unsmokable ‘V’ cigarettes made for the Eighth Army in India were eagerly bartered.
In Palermo householders peeped timidly around their curtains, wondering whether our dust-covered khaki was field-grey? The city was peaceful – blue trams were running and the police with swords and tricornes drifted about, as well dressed as Napoleonic officers.
After an RAF visit, the harbour was full of half-sunken gunboats, each surrounded by shoals of large fish. We caught a few by hitting them with stones. Izaac Walton must have been spinning.
Posters showed a monstrous John Bull, the world his rounded stomach as he swallowed more lands. Another was of a grinning skeleton in a British steel helmet. I took pictures of them while passers-by hurried on, fearful lest I turn and blame them.
We returned across Sicily to the Eighth Army HQ on the malarial Lentini plain – indeed a large number of our casualties were from mosquitoes. During the night we felt huge shuddering explosions outside Catania and watched sheets of flame light the sky. The Germans were blowing-up their ammunition dumps – so they were about to start their escape to the mainland.
A new officer had arrived to join us: Lieutenant A.Q. McLaren who, captured in the desert by Rommel’s Afrika Korps while using two cameras, had refused to hand one over because it was personal property and demanded a receipt for the War Office Ikonta. He later escaped, still carrying the receipt.
As we were meeting, an operational message came in saying that Catania was about to fall. We scrambled off to get the pictures. McLaren was driving ahead of me, standing up in the cab of his truck watching for enemy aircraft, as we all had to. This gave a few seconds’ warning if the Luftwaffe swooped down to strafe the road.
We drove in column around the diversion at reeking Dead Horse Corner. In the dust ahead lay a German mine. McLaren’s warning scream came too late. It was his first day in Sicily.
The patient infantry plodding past us moved on silently towards the city. They had seen another violent death and perhaps they too would soon stop a bullet or a shellburst. In an hour or so some of them would also be dead, and they knew it.
The whole direction of their lives now was to reach some unknown place and, if possible, kill any unknown Germans they found there. In battle, death is always present and usually unemotional, and when it approaches, inches can mean the march goes on – or you are still and resting, for ever.
However its proximity does wipe away life’s other problems. Those plodding figures passing Dead Horse Corner and McLaren’s body were not worrying about unpaid bills or promotion or nagging wives or even sergeant majors. Getting through the day alive was achievement enough.
It took the population of Catania some time to realise that the Germans had gone. Then they came out into the streets to cheer and show their relief, carrying flowers, fruit, wine … It was hard to see them as enemies. Our pictures showed Italian nurses tending the wounded of the Durham Light Infantry.
At this point Sergeants Herbert and Travis arrived and unintentionally captured Catania’s entire police force. This was not in the shot-list. They had left their jeep behind a blown bridge on the road into town and were filming on foot when a civilian car came out of the city towards them. Surprised by such an apparition in a war zone, they commandeered it and ordered the driver to turn round and take them into Catania.
Speeding ahead of the Army, he whizzed excitedly along back streets and finally through two huge gates into a palace courtyard full of armed carabinieri. As the gates slammed behind them and they looked around at massed uniforms … suspicion dawned that now they might be the prisoners.
Then the Commandant in an elegant uniform arrived, saluted, and asked for their orders. That was better. They ventured that they were just a couple of photographers who did not really want a police force, not just then. However, they did want transport.
They were instantly ushered into a large garage crammed with every type of vehicle, their choice was filled with petrol and the ignition key presented with a flourish. Amid salutes, the conquering sergeants drove out through the massive gates, at speed. Honour had been satisfied on all sides.
The object of much planning-ahead during the final fighting through Sicily was not the capture of Messina, straddling the enemy’s escape route and well-protected by Kesselring’s massed anti-aircraft guns, but of Taormina, an hour’s drive to its south. This charming honeymoon-village of the Twenties climbs the rocky coast in the shadow of Mount Etna’s 11,000 feet. Like Capri, its flowers, pretty villas and bright social life gave it a sort of Noël Coward appeal. It was untouched by war, of course, as all armies protect places they might wish to use as headquarters, or billets.
It was a placid scene, as we arrived. Out in the bay a British gunboat lay peacefully at anchor, while a number of anxious Italian soldiers were standing on the beach trying to surrender to it. They would probably have been almost as satisfied if anyone else had paused to capture them – even a passing Film Unit – but by this time we had all become rather blasé about Italian prisoners. They had lost their scarcity value.
My CO Geoffrey Keating and our War Artist friend Edward Ardizzone had reached Taormina ahead of the army patrols. I was surprised poor old Ted could climb the mountainside because he seemed to be overweight and getting on a bit – he was at least 40. However he struggled up the 800 feet from the seashore – not as elegantly as Noël arriving at the beginning of Act 2 but in time for them to requisition, breathlessly, the Casa Cuseni. This splendid little villa built of golden stone was owned before the