Whicker’s War and Journey of a Lifetime. Alan Whicker
knowledge of the price we paid in Italy saved thousands of lives in Normandy. To escape such a stalemate the invasion planners could now demand greater strength for Overlord. They had learned the expensive lessons of Anzio.
From D + 1 even I could tell that if we were fortunate enough to hold on to our beachhead, we faced a long and desperate battle – so I requisitioned a large house overlooking the harbour. It was a substantial three-storey lump of a place and – I noted approvingly – strongly built. It stood high over the seashore in front of the coast road. The front line was only seven miles away. At a push we could drive – or swim – out of trouble.
From its wide terrace we would get excellent pictures of our shipping being shelled and bombed – and doubtless, sunk. It was an ideal place for a billet and tripod position – but on the other hand it was at the heart of the German artillery’s target area … I’d worry about that tomorrow.
From their observation posts in the Alban Hills enemy gunners could watch every inch of the beachhead, and look deep into our private lives. No man could move without being seen. Little wonder Corncob Charlie rarely left his HQ down in the caves of Nettuno.
In our barren seaside villa we too slept in the cellars until deciding that shells were preferable to rats, and moving back to the ground floor. Our rats were all fat and overconfident – and at a battlefront you knew exactly what they had been eating. Even upstairs I awoke one night to find an enormous rat staring at me across my feet. It was wondering what to do. I knew what to do. I reached for my bedside .38 and – hoping to miss my big toes – shot it.
That awoke the remainder of the unit who thought the Germans had landed. They were about to shoot-back through my door, just to be on the safe side …
Calm restored, Geoffrey Keating and I considered the drill, should the Germans ever come to call. We’d seen some tattered clothes in the garden shed and decided to wear these and head north for Rome, rather than attempt to get back to the Eighth Army through the German lines.
Major Keating, my CO, was a most unusual man. A devout Catholic and bon viveur, he had an extremely high threshold of pain, which could be disconcerting. He just did not seem to notice when violence or death was approaching. He had arrived in Egypt to run Montgomery’s Army Film Unit and, indifferent to General Rommel and the Afrika Korps, began cheerfully swanning around the desert as though gate-crashing other Units’ parties, blithely unconcerned about any battles going on around him. This of course meant he was never injured and survived to win an excellent Military Cross.
He never touched drink – though it might have sustained such a perilous lifestyle. One afternoon after the war Susie, a mutual friend, rang me at BBC Television Centre to say they had just got married … This was another surprise. I had a table at Prunier’s that evening so invited them along, if they had no plans.
Looking through the wine list for something interesting with which to toast his bride, Geoffrey settled for a cider, assuming it to be the softest of drinks and better with fish than a coke. After several country ciders he moved unsteadily towards the marriage bed, and from then on his life and social consumption changed direction. He never looked back – and his wife never forgave me.
At Anzio I went with him around our front-line positions and suddenly noticed that, while we were driving in his open jeep along an embankment, laughing and chatting, we were on the dreaded Lateral Road where nothing else moved. I remembered tanks rarely ventured along it in daylight because of heavy enemy artillery fire and German machine guns with sights locked-on to any movement.
We were looking for a Company HQ. There was no other traffic. Then I saw a few soldiers in the dugout positions below us. They were moving at a crouch or lying looking up at us as we drove happily along, an apparition in a no-go area. Just before the firing began, I realised we were not travelling sensibly.
Needless to say Geoffrey’s reaction to possible death and destruction was so indifferent and outrageous that we emerged unscathed and drove on, still finding something or other funny; doubtless my growing panic.
I found out afterwards that Geoffrey would go to sleep in his dentist’s chair during treatment. By then I had registered one firm Unit rule which saw me through the war: separate jeeps.
The bridgehead solidified along 16 miles of coast and about seven miles inland – say just over 100 square miles. I’ve known bigger farms. Some 20,000 Italian civilians had been shipped back to Naples, leaving Anzio a small and desperate military state and a throwback to the Great War days of static warfare, shelled all day and bombed all night. There was no hiding place at Anzio.
On most warfronts there is a calm secure area at the rear where the wounded can be taken, where units rest when they come out of the line and Generals may sleep comfortably. On the bridgehead there were no safe areas. You were never out of range.
Indeed soldiers at the front would sometimes refuse to report minor wounds which might mean they would be sent back to a field hospital – and so into the heavy artillery target area. Provided it was not a major battle they often felt more secure at the front, where the war was personal and the percentages could more easily be calculated.
Keating and I invited a number of friendly War Correspondents to escape from the barren Press camp next door and join us in our more substantial villa, which in our days of bombardment had already been recognised as Lucky. They included one of the Rabelaisian characters of our war, Reynolds Packard. In peaceful days he had been Rome Correspondent of the Chicago Tribune, and with his wife Eleanor had written a well-tided book on Mussolini, ‘Balcony Empire’. He was knowledgeable, sociable and excellent company but had, we discovered, one foible liable to render him untouchable – even in our Mess.
The villa’s sitting room, where we played poker and sometimes even worked, overlooked the sea and so faced away from arriving shells. It was always pleasantly crowded and noisy enough to discourage the rats, so this was where we set-up our camp beds each night. Reynolds, a portly funny figure, was a notable non-teetotaller and so able to sleep through most bombardments. His only lack of social grace was revealed when he woke in the night and needed to urinate. In the unfamiliar darkness he would struggle out of his bed – and pee wherever he stood.
He had been campaigning too long in open country, sleeping in too many fields without the benefit of indoor sanitation and his behaviour pattern had become lax, not to mention disgusting. Not too many people wanted the bed space next to him.
Such a reaction to a full bladder might be acceptable in a foxhole or on a beach, but was less welcome in our new Mess. After the deluge a chastened Packard would face fury in the morning. He could not deny the offence because the evidence was all too obvious. He was always horrified and full of remorse, blamed demon vino and swore it would never happen again. Next night, it would.
In the early hours we would awake to the sound of running water hitting the tiles. The first weary automatic move in the darkness was to lean down, rescue shoes, put them in the dry zone on the end of the bed, and go back to sleep. In the morning, an uproar of protest, another furious inquest and more craven apologies. The distasteful procedure was in danger of becoming normal.
Packard’s momentary forgetfulness in the darkness of a strange room was not excusable – though perhaps understandable to those living on a war front where the niceties of civilised life could fall away. After some months campaigning in the field and living basically I committed a graceless mistake myself, which still haunts me.
We had been advancing slowly through Tuscany and sleeping rough; but once Florence fell some old friends invited me to a welcome party in their magnificent apartment on the Lungarno, overlooking the river. During that elegant evening in the sunlit drawing room I remember needing to stub out my cigarette. Seeing no ashtrays in the salon, I dropped it on to the deep-pile carpet and punctiliously ground it out with my toe – as one would.
As I turned to continue the conversation I had an uneasy feeling something was not quite right … but could not recollect what it might be.
It was not until later that night when my hostess upbraided me – ‘I saw you’ – that I was