The chief mule man had one of Marlborough’s indispensable gifts, and used it like the great duke himself upon equally doubtful allies. He could turn away wrath with charm – and his reception included a huge smile and vast quantities of undrinkable gin.
My first task that morning, after lying up for a few hours, was to complain to Paddy about the mules, the muleteers, and the lost loads and animals – and maladministration by all concerned beginning with himself. Complaints to Paddy were like water off a duck’s back, but he took me round at lunch time to see the Indian mule commander. Of course, I immediately found that he was a splendid chap, devoted to his animals, and adored by his drivers, who showed a touching tenderness for their revolting creatures – which I had certainly not noticed the previous night.
After we had been subjected to half a pint of that foul Benevento gin, it seemed quite ludicrous to complain about the misconduct of his men and their luckless charges. I had intended to tell him that most of the losses were deliberate, due to fatigue or fright on the part of the drivers, who were clearly acting in collusion with their satanic beasts. Instead, we talked of other matters.
Norman Bass of the Faughs joined us there. Norman was usually to be found in such places – where the hospitality had a reputation, and service with it. A cheerful red faced character from Belfast, Norman was the Faughs’ MTO, the opposite number to Ivan Yates and equally durable. In the Faughs, anyway, the MTO’s duties covered all aspects of transport – four legged or petrol driven, and Norman was equally at home with both.
The Indian mule team lost men as well as animals most nights. As with all who share a common lot under such conditions, the usual bonds soon developed, and each successive night’s operation was easier that the last.
That night, Rodney and I went out at dusk in our jeeps with a number of guides to picket the route to Caira village. This was easier for us than for the guides, who had to spend at least four hours in that sinister valley with the scent of death around them. The guides were in pairs with an NCO and I think it would have been intolerable to have left our men on their own in these circumstances.
The Rapido valley here was in fact no-man’s land, and open to both sides after nightfall. Enterprising fighting patrols by our paratrooper adversaries could have made our supply system to Castellone impossible at that time, but they may have been too tired for many activities of that kind just then. Nonetheless, it was a grim enough place for our pickets, with extreme tension to accompany them as the hours passed by and never knowing for sure if the approaching sounds, or shadowy silhouettes against the night sky, were those of friends – or the enemy.
This valley was an un-cleared battlefield with dead, fortunately mostly mules, scattered haphazardly among the debris. From end to end of the route, there were wrecked or burned out vehicles of one kind or another, and quite a number of shattered tanks dating back to the first American attack on the place.
We collected our men as the mule teams came back in the small hours, and everyone seemed rather quiet and subdued. The loneliness of their vigil had affected them and this was one of the tricks of that eerie locality. The battlefield, itself, was quiet for once too, and the night was a bitterly cold one. But there was always rum for company on return, and the cheerful presence of Ivan and Rodney Cockburn. No one in the Irish Brigade was subdued for long.
A few nights later, I had one of our riflemen in front of me. I suppose it is technically desertion when one of the mule escorts has had one trip too many for his system to absorb. As such, that would be penal servitude at the hands of a court martial. He was a good chap, high principled and with quite a good record. Nonetheless, he had bolted under fire the previous night. After a few minutes chat with him, I left the matter. Nothing could be done, and the man had obviously done his best. Furthermore, he had reported back afterwards. Perhaps other forces would come to his rescue to redeem the lapse.
I had six other similar cases before the long spell on Castellone had ended. It was not a long list in view of what our rifleman had been putting up with night after night.
On the night of 3 April, I went up the line with Geoffrey Phillips and G Company, who had been left behind when the rest of the battalion had taken over our sector. The mule column also accompanied us as usual. The purpose of this operation was to relieve E Company, who had only been on the job for three days and had hardly had time to learn their sector geography and the local habits of the enemy. It took four hours to effect the relief, and the whole operation took all night. I am afraid that I found it necessary to enter grim discussion with Ion on the subject at his HQ that night, thinking that reliefs at all under our present circumstances were pointless as well as being highly dangerous.
I dossed down at 630am and a quarter of an hour later received a state visit from the support company colour sergeant with Clanachan as escort, bringing me breakfast in bed, cooked by none other than themselves. They also had been up all night, and as a gesture of friendship to an alien second in command, it was beyond belief. It was also a revelation of attitudes, and the small incident affected me more than other weightier matters just then.
The following night, we ran out of mule column escorts and I felt obliged to press gang the pipers and our MT drivers for the task, thinking that the exercise would be beneficial for them. They behaved impeccably like most of our Irish soldiers do when assigned duties not usually their own, though someone expressed the hope that we would not make a habit of such treatment of them.
We ensured three weeks of living on our mountain tops, but I never learned to like the nightly journeys across that dreary valley. Writing from the top of Castellone to father one day, I mentioned, ‘in the nature of my duties I have no fixed abode, but lately I have resided in one of the most remarkable places I have ever been in. Just like sitting on the top of the world with the surrounding countryside mapped out at one’s feet…we have herbaceous borders, the admiration of all, at our HQ – profusion of cyclamen….There are quite a lot of partridges up here but unfortunately the cunning birds seem all to have migrated to spots where one can hardly go after them without incurring the displeasure of the opposing team. The latter are very nice chaps but not up to last year’s vintage…it’s so difficult for anybody to get at anybody. Although the Master Race is in residence nearby, there is an impassable chasm between us…2,000 feet deep so where are you? One can just hurl abuse and that is all, some places are so steep, one would need scaling ladders and one could carry on successful defence heaving down rocks and boiling pitch.’
There were quite a few instances of light relief. On 7 April, I was instructed to meet General Keightley and to come with him to Pat’s HQ. The journey, fortunately, was less exciting than usual, though the enemy gunners put a fine bracket on us half way down the route. Nearly all of the shells were duds – for once – and these, when one is the target, usually leave one bereft of conversation. Anti-climaxes are not often dramatic, but a dud shell dropping beside one leaves most people thoughtful.
I had a strong suspicion that the general’s principal motive in coming was to check in Pat’s health and mobility, and he asked several apparently guileless questions on the subject. I do vaguely recall replying that anything that stopped our brigadier from milling around on the top of Castellone was positively beneficial – and at least that was one of our anxieties eliminated under present conditions. Pat later remarked, ‘He asked me to think out a plan for capturing the monastery and as I did not altogether take to the idea, I said that I thought the best plan was for someone else to capture it.’
A few nights later, coming back in the small hours with Paddy in my jeep, the escort behind developed electrical trouble half way down the pitch, with the result that his headlights went on every time he applied the brakes. As the bends, where he applied them, were also registered enemy DF targets, there was some excuse for the faint traces of embarrassment, which Paddy and I detected in each other – or thought we did.
Basil Kentish also distinguished himself on the same run with one of the Faughs’ carriers, though what they were doing down there with any machine so slow and noisy I never discovered. Basil was a most open hearted and generous character, but technical assistance on his part was liable to be expensive. I wrote afterwards, ‘I am seeing Basil this evening. The last time I saw him two days back, he was helping a warrior with a carrier that had gone wrong. The carrier was later observed to be burning fiercely….’
One month on Castellone was the most static of any period that I ever knew while actually in the line. The topography was partly the reason for this, as both sides were relatively inaccessible to each other. On Castellone, the Rifles had that colossal chasm on their immediate front, and not even a patrol could climb down it, and up the other side, without rock slides to advertise their presence. And shelling soon dissolved even solid rock surfaces into scree, which was often impassable.
Life in the line at that time was not particularly dangerous, and the enemy shelling of the forward position was largely a waste of time providing one sat tight. The real hazards only existed for those, who were above ground, or on the move at night, owing to the German habit of intermittently shelling the approaches. It was, of course, a first essential to cut all movement at night, or at any other time, to a minimum, and this was the main objection to the frequent reliefs of the forward companies. This latter practice was also quite unsettling to our soldiers, who I knew by quite long experience to be adaptable in virtually all conditions. In consequence, I also knew that once safely in the line, they were best kept there until tactical or other necessities determined the matter. By such a policy, an unavoidable one in the past, the troops acquired intimate knowledge of their sector and, above all, of their opponents, which could never be achieved in any other way.
In daylight, it was quite possible for individuals to move about in the battalion sector without being fired on, though this could never be taken for granted as one was in pretty well full view anywhere. But this could not be done in the forward posts on the hill tops without the immediate blast from a Spandau. In consequence, the company pickets had to sit absolutely tight in daylight, literally motionless, and waiting for the night to hide them before they could even stretch their legs. For these men, daylight reliefs were impossible, but all depended on them. Lower down, the surviving olive trees provided at least some cover from view.
Digging in along the tops of the mountain was virtually impossible as the key parts of the feature were the living rock. Because of this, our pickets and observation posts had to lie up behind rough sangars built out of rough boulders. Most of these were pushed together during the night in the vain hope of protecting our men from the small arms fire. Certainly, they provided for nothing else and new ones had to be built most nights, if only to mislead the enemy as to which ones were occupied. The Germans had no such problems on the opposite crags, having had months to prepare their positions with explosives.
E Company held the most southerly of our posts, and Mervyn Davies said that he spent his days there looking down on the monastery and keeping it under the closest watch. At times, it seemed close enough to reach out and touch in the clear mountain air. Mervyn remarked that there was never a vestige of movement visible in daylight, but at night the whole area was alive with streams of tracer, signal lights and shell explosions. He also said that after his month on top of the mountain, he was never more thankful to leave any place.
In my capacity as second in command, I probably had a more varied life than Ion did at the time. I was back with our B Echelon – this is our supply base, or rear HQ, for much of the day and most nights went up with the supply column as far as the Bttn HQ – for an evening chat with Ion. One usually had to take cover several times en route, mainly on the cliff track up to the HQ itself, which was a small rather badly knocked-about building. It had been hit several times already.
The climb up to Bttn HQ was about 1800 feet, and a good many of our people found this quite tough until they got used to it. In fact, the climb itself was hardly more than similar ones in the hills of our Scottish Highlands, though Castellone had too much of the Glencoe about it for my liking.
We usually contrived to dine in state either before, or after, the supply mission was over and, when circumstances allowed it, Hugh and Basil joined us, or invited me over to dine with them. The pleasant companionship made up for most things.
None of us slept very much at night at this time, and the usual siesta was first thing in the morning. I must say that Clanachan looked after my comforts pretty marvellously just then, and his wonderful glum old face was a quite rewarding sight to come back to in the late night. So was Ivan Yates’, the MTO.
In the middle of this phase, I spent four days with the battalion – relieving Ion, who was due out for a rest. This I found to be quite a relaxation myself as I was no longer required to be on the move during the nights other than for social visits to the forward companies when the dusk had fallen. During this period, I mentioned in a letter to father, ‘….I am getting to know these chaps pretty well, and they are an extraordinarily nice lot. The main difficulty is that our own regiment (Faughs) is so totally different in its way and general behaviour, to any other, so one has to be awfully careful not to hurt their feelings. They are very efficient – so much so that I really have little work to do under normal circumstances.”
As I handed over to Ion again on the night of the 17th, we were heavily shelled, and this was followed up by a particularly vicious mortar concentration. In consequence, we lost four of our men. I dislike the attentions of German mortars more than any other weapon. One cannot hear these unpleasant missiles on their way down which, unlike approaching shells, at least give some momentary warning to the initiated.
We were relieved on Castellone by the Poles on the night of 25 April. This was an experience and the whole operation actually took three nights – that is to get the whole Irish Brigade out and our Polish friends in.
Pat said, ‘The essence of this relief was a race against time. The hours of darkness were barely sufficient to get the Poles across the Rapido valley, and in to their mountain positions, and our people out and back before daylight…The business of getting the Poles to the right place with no common language….and a fair amount of shelling to impede, was no ordinary undertaking. To avoid being caught in the open at dawn, we had smoke canisters laid out across the valley, thickened up by 25 pounders. Cassino, itself, was kept in an almost continual pall by this means…’
The relieving unit was the 6th Lwow Brigade commanded by Colonel Nowina. I did not have the pleasure of meeting him but he made a considerable impression on Pat Scott, and all three of his regimental commanders were splendid chaps. They had been assigned the unenviable task of capturing the monastery and breaking through behind it in the next battle. Pat said that their attitude was unusual by British standards, and there was some question as to which brigade would lead the assault. Pat went on, ‘…after their general had expounded the plot, one of them got up and asserted that his men had fought at Tobruk, were seasoned warriors and would naturally do the attack. But the other brigadier at once rose and immediately said no – he was the senior and he would do it.’ Apparently, feelings became so strong that compromise was impossible, and General Anders, their corps commander, had to resort to Solomon’s solution. ’…the brigades were split in half and the brigadiers commanded part of each….’ Pat also observed that such zeal in our army might have been misinterpreted.
I must say from my own observations, I thought that the Poles were very remarkable people. Some of their officers could talk French and a few, English, but there was no way of communicating with their NCOs and their soldiers. However, their motives were as clear as they were simple. They only wished to kill Germans, and they did not bother at all about the unusual refinements when taking over our posts. They just walked in with their weapons and that was that. They were quite imperturbable. Ion, of course, did his best to explain matters to his opposite numbers when handing over the sector.
The Rifles came back from Castellone at about 0300 in the morning, and reached San Michele at it was getting light. Three hours later, they found themselves twenty miles back from the line in the village of Formicola, surrounded by a maze of wild flowers and the spring blossom of unspoiled country. Here, they were greeted by CSM Hamilton with a draft of thirty reinforcements – just about the number we had lost during the last month’s static campaigning.