The Paras - The Inside Story of Britain's Toughest Regiment. John Parker
paratroopers collected all the wounded and with their help we bandaged them as best we could. Lieutenant Colonel Koch meanwhile made off in pursuit of Lieutenant Colonel Frost and his party. They knew all this had been going on. They were watching our drop from two miles away. We actually saw them – three Arabs with a donkey. Little did we know then they were three Germans in disguise and on the donkey’s back was a radio set through which they were giving details of our drop and the number of men. I had chased them away and they were quite happy to get away without a scratch.
And so now we and our party of wounded were left with Major Jungwirth while Lieutenant Colonel Koch attempted to catch up with our battalion, or what was left of it. Jungwirth, in turn, jumped on a tank and left us with a group of Italian soldiers. In due course a German staff car drew up from the road to Tunis and an SS officer got out and surveyed our forlorn group and decided there and then that we should be executed although we had Parachute Regiment regulation dress on. We were marched into a farmyard and lined up against a wall and a machine-gun was placed ten yards from us, and a German or Italian got down and took aim at the first man – which was me – and was going to sweep right down the line.
At that moment, one of our officers, Lieutenant Buchanan, stepped forward and asked the German officer for permission to shake hands with us all before we were executed. Permission granted. So he shook hands with us all and he said: ‘Don’t forget, when I step back into the ranks, give them the V sign and let the bastards see that we’re not afraid of them.’
When he went back into line, we all gave the V sign and the German officer lost his temper and shouted at the gunner to fire. At that very moment Lieutenant Colonel Koch reappeared on the scene, to find out what had happened to his adjutant and the rest of the party. He saw immediately what was just about to happen and even before his armoured car stopped he jumped off, ran across to the execution party, kicked over the machine-gun and pushed the gunner aside, and turned round to the SS officer and shouted at him in German. He turned round to us and said: ‘You’ve no need to be afraid, gentlemen, you are paratroopers and brave men and we’ll look after you safely.’
Lieutenant Colonel Koch put us all on to a German lorry and he got on the top along with us and told the driver to drive into Tunis. We left the dead body behind in the school with the French schoolmaster. But we drove back into Tunis with the wounded and we were put into a fort there. General Nering came out to inspect us. We all stood in line and then we were put in a cell for that night. There were no windows about, so actually we were beginning to think that we were going to be gassed. But in fact the ventilation came through the big door. And after about an hour or so a German came down with a big container of food for us and we settled in for the night.
In the morning they took us in parties of five upstairs for ablutions and we washed and shaved the best we could. The German paratroopers’ sleeping quarters were up there. And the first party were away so long that we began to wonder what had happened to them. The Germans came down for another party of us, the last of us and the officer, Buchanan, and as we walked up and we looked through into the barrack room here were our friends sitting round one of the Germans’ beds – all the Germans were round them – talking about how many jumps they’d done. The Germans were boasting they’d done as many jumps as us. They were giving them cigarettes, they lent us their shaving gear and everything to get cleaned up. They treated us like honoured guests.
The next day we were taken on to an airport in Tunis to be flown to a prison camp in Italy. And while we were sitting in the plane American Lightning bombers came over and bombed the airport and the plane that we were in was raised right off the ground about ten feet and crashed back down again. Some of the ammunition boxes strapped to the side of the fuselage inside fell down on some of the lads and split open their heads. A German medical officer came rushing out in a car and asked if any of us had been wounded or hurt. Anyway, he bandaged some of their heads up and before we took off they gave us life-preservers, life-jackets; they were just fitted on like a waistcoat.
The pilot told us that if we did get attacked by the Americans, which he expected, he would fly low over the water at the first sign of attack and pancake. We were to swim around until we were picked up by rescue launches. The day before we were doing our damnedest to kill one another and now they were doing their best to save our lives. We landed safely in Italy and went to a prison camp nearby called Capua. It was a small tented encampment and the fellows already there were out sitting in the sun, had their shirts off. I went up to one of them and I says, ‘What’s that you’re doing?’ He was delousing and he said, ‘Don’t worry, Jock, tomorrow you’ll be out doing the same as me.’ And as sure as God, the next morning I was. The camp was lousy, in the truest sense.
Fortunately we were moved from that camp after a week and we were put in a top-security place, a new camp that had been built about 500 yards up the road. This place, we noticed, had a big drainage system which started inside the camp. It had an iron grating over it so that you couldn’t get down. We had already formed an escape committee with the officers in charge. We soon found a way of breaking through the grating and pulling it up. It had been newly laid and it led right away out to the main road. Six of us paratroopers decided that we’d get into this drain and crawl along the piping and come out at the main road and make our escape. Little did we know that the piping ran right under the sentry’s box and the sentry heard the scraping of our boots on the concrete pipe above and he gave the alarm. They were waiting at the other end and we were marched back, and sent into solitary confinement.
When we came out, we were kept in a wired compound. We decided that the only way out was to volunteer for a working party. There were about ten of us – and we were to go away to a place called Bergamo, outside Milan, to work in a large factory. It was terrible work, cleaning up old Italian uniforms taken off the dead and wounded in the Abyssinian war. So you can imagine the stench that was coming off the cloth. Civilians would not touch them. We got extra food for it … and it gave us the chance to look around for a new escape route.
Every Sunday we used to get marched out to go to church. I got friendly with the Italian sentries and with the officer in charge – we called him Colonel Pappi. The Germans killed him when they took over the camp because they believed he had been too friendly with the British. The colonel asked if any one of us wanted to go to confession and he gave us a wink. Being a Catholic, I went in and soon discovered that the priest was in the Italian Resistance. I made several visits, over time, and used them to plan an escape.
He promised to give me and one other soldier refuge – he could only take two of us at the church. Several of us planned to escape – to climb the compound wall at the first opportunity and make a run for it; this we achieved on the night of a bombing raid on Milan. The Italian sentries were running about like blue-arsed flies, so it was quite easy to make a break for it. Some of the boys made for Milan and they were caught by the Germans the next day at the cathedral. They were brought out and they were shot just in front of the main doorway of the cathedral. We were told about it by the priest who was hiding us at Bergamo. We were up in the belfry. He brought us up food and water and we stayed there for three weeks. Every night we used to look out of the bell tower and we saw a big glow in the sky – which was Switzerland, 60 miles away. We decided we would try to reach the border and told the priest.
On the following Sunday he brought us down to a café and then took us to a school and he showed us what the Italian Resistance were doing. There were a lot of girls in the cellar of this school. They all had typewriters, copying propaganda against the fascistas and the Germans – young schoolgirls and boys risking their lives every night, distributing their leaflets. That very afternoon a German lorry drove up to the school. A fascista spy had given away their headquarters; we sat, meanwhile, in the café not far away, planning how to get to Switzerland. We heard shooting and there was a panic. The place cleared and I couldn’t get out the front way because of the Germans who were swarming all over the place. I ran to the back door and in panic, tried to bash it open… if I’d looked down I would have seen the bolt. Then, one of the women at the café came and lifted up the bolt and I just flew out into an alley, into the toilets, and closed the door. Within a minute or two there was a knocking, and the Italian woman was saying, ‘Come, come, come!’ We ran into her house, where she told me to get into her bed. I was to be her