Whicker’s War and Journey of a Lifetime. Alan Whicker
jolly the Colonel along, Keating suggested that I take a few personal pictures of him in action – gentle harmless flattery. Pleased with such attention he became more amenable, and subsequently agreed to most of our requests for space and accommodation.
It was curious to be so eager to join an expedition that offered applicants the probability of injury or death as the reward for success. It felt like struggling to get tickets for a First Night, when the winners would probably end up in the first casualty list of permanent Losers.
Afterwards Geoffrey said he would get my pictures developed. I explained that, as usual, I had no film in the camera. We could not take pictures of everyone we met, and it was doubtful whether we would ever see the Colonel again. This was a bit naughty, but practical; we could not burden our hard-pressed Developing Section with social shots not for publication. ‘Red-hots,’ we called them, and they never amused our shy colleague Len Puttnam – father of Lord Puttnam-to-be – who ran the developers and coped manfully with our output.
Geoffrey, more experienced than I, said ‘Fatal mistake. Now you’re going to run into that Colonel everywhere, for the rest of the war. You’ll always be making excuses.’ He was right – so I never did that again.
On January 21 ’44 an armada of 374 ships sailed out to sea, then turned to starboard and steamed north. This was Operation Shingle. We had a fair idea where we might be going because Neapolitan spivs on the Via Roma and around the docks had been selling postcards of Anzio, a place of which I had then never heard.
The weather was perfect, the sea smooth – but we knew German radio had been discussing an Allied landing behind their lines. We prepared for another Salerno bloodbath.
At nightfall troops on our ship wrapped themselves in blankets and tried to sleep on deck. In the wardroom, officers played poker for ridiculously high stakes, trying to get rid of cash. Just when there was no need for money I could not stop winning, of course – so landed with pockets bulging with lire which took months to spend. It was the first (and last) time I have faced that problem.
Our vast armada came to anchor off the small resort and port of Anzio – just as the Neapolitans had forecast. As we dropped anchor in a crisp dawn, braced for enemy reaction, I went below decks for my guide book, to learn that Anzio had been a flourishing commercial city in 490 BC and was the birthplace of the Emperor Nero and the home of Caligula. I do like to know where I’m invading.
Viewed from the deck of our LST at dawn it seemed a pleasant little fishing port bordered by low-rise blocks and villas along the coast, and some substantial patrician homes amid the pines and sand dunes. It had already been damaged by our supporting fire – and much worse was to come.
Along the coast, neighbouring Nettuno looked older, with wine caves at its heart – soon to be taken over by VI Corps as a secure HQ, with life-saving cellars attached. Caligula had wanted to turn Anzio into the capital of the Roman Empire, and Popes and nobles followed his enthusiasms. The fall of the Roman Empire led to Anzio’s decline for centuries, until the 1700s when Cardinal Antonio Pignatelli, returning by sea from Naples to Rome, sheltered from a storm in Nero’s old port and believed his life had been spared. He promised if he became Pope he would rebuild the place – and was a man of his word.
So Anzio had its ups and downs. Unfortunately, I arrived in time for a major Down. After our landing the port area was shelled and bombed by the Germans, night and day for four months. At least it became famous, once again.
To get here during the night our massive fleet had sailed past the Gustav Line and in the distance, Monte Cassino, which now lay 80 miles behind us. The harbour was suddenly busy with warships. Barrage balloons tethered to the larger craft floated protectively above our armada. Destroyers cut through the fleet, laying thick black smokescreens. Further out to sea big cruisers moved ponderously around in semi-circles, rocking as their thunderous broadsides supported our landing.
Red air raid warning flags flew almost permanently – yet we had some 2,000 aircraft in the theatre, the Luftwaffe only 350. Sometimes the RAF or the USAAF held off the attackers, but usually they got through to drop their bombs and hurtle away, low over the water.
The two Navies staged a useful diversion by bombarding Rome’s seaport, Civitavecchia, 75 miles further north. There they carried-out a fake landing so impressive that Kesselring ordered that all harbour facilities should be demolished immediately.
I went in with the 1st ‘White Triangle’ Division on to Peter Beach, just north of Anzio, a broad sandy expanse between sea and dunes stretching towards Ostia and the enticing target of Rome, a mere 33 miles away. The platoon I was landing with that sunny morning was confident and cheerful. The light return-fire had been spasmodic. They were all businesslike and, like me, beginning to feel they had done it all before and knew their way around a landing beach.
What they did not know, of course, was that during the next months at Anzio their division would lose 100 officers and more than 1,000 other ranks. Another 400 officers and 8,000 men would be casualties, or missing.
After our cheerful landing the division would lose 60 per cent of its officers, 50 per cent of its men, but as the warm water and soft clean sand of Peter Beach splashed up to meet our feet such a terrible future was, fortunately, unthinkable.
The US 3rd Division was landing on X-Ray Beach, south of Nettuno, where resistance was also light: the usual 88mm shells and air raids. Most of our early casualties were from wooden box mines hidden in the sand, which fooled the Royal Engineers’ metal-detectors.
I never lost my horror of mines, nor my admiration for the courage of the REs who went ahead and defused them by the thousand. The thought of sudden death springing up from the sand to grab and remove my vitals was an ever-present nightmare, as was the memory of regimental aid posts trying to cope with men without feet or legs who minutes before had been slogging cheerfully up the beach.
General Eisenhower recalled once telling the Russian Army Commander, Marshal Zhukov, of the intricate and extravagant devices introduced by the allied armies to clear minefields – like those great flails on the front of some British tanks. The jolly little ruler of the Red armies – perhaps the greatest Field Commander of World War II – found all those elaborate precautions time-wasting and unnecessary. The quickest and most effective way of clearing a minefield, the Marshal explained, was to assemble a battalion of infantry and order them to march straight across it.
That cruel order was not a comfortable recollection as we prepared to cover a hundred yards of smooth sand, and then the more threatening dunes. In any AFPU pictures of our troops landing on Peter Beach, I’m the one on tiptoe …
The first Germans we met on landing were the 200 who had been sent to Anzio to rest and recover from the fighting at Cassino. Most of them were asleep when they got a wake-up call from a different enemy. Once again we had achieved surprise. The Germans had expected an attack further north, where our feint went in. They were wrong again.
So were we. After a perfect landing in enemy territory, almost nothing went right. The roads to Rome and the commanding hills were open – but we did not choose to take them.
By the evening Major General John P. Lucas, Commander of VI Corps, had landed 36,000 of us, with 3,200 vehicles. He did not land himself until the next day, when he moved into his command cellar in Nettuno; and there he stayed.
I learned afterwards from Prince Stefano Borghese, whose Palace overlooked Anzio harbour, that the ominous approaching rumble of hundreds of ships’ engines out at sea had been heard long before our devastating support barrage began, but the German Harbourmaster thought it was his supply ships returning from Livorno.
After an hour ashore that invasion day my first courier left to carry back to Naples the exposed film we had shot. Our first mishap came when a bomb blew Sergeant Lambert off the quayside. He landed in the water still clutching his bag of film, but no serious harm was done. Just as in a battle zone when any aircraft landing you can walk away from is a good landing, so any naval episode you can swim away from is quite acceptable, in the circumstances.
We headed our preparatory dope sheets: ‘The