At length we reached Fremantle and were given two day’s shore leave. Prostitution was legal in Perth and many of the troops went to Rose St (I think this was the name) largely to be able to say that they had visited a brothel. I understand that the prostitutes were not very inviting sorts. I was the third member of the family to pass through on the way to war. My eldest brother Bill had been in one of the echelons and had been befriended by a family in Fremantle. He was very rough and ready and we wondered what they were like. Peter went away with the 5th Reinforcements and he looked them up so I was urged to do the same. They were very homely folk and made us very welcome.
We returned to the ship each night and on the second day Trevor and I went out on the town. Trevor could drink like a fish and I often got ill trying to keep up with him. He had developed a boil on his wrist and they had cut it out requiring several stitches. For some reason as he got drunker Trevor got very angry I think that he was thinking of the woman who had jilted him. He tried to start a fight with some Australians and the Military Police were called. They handcuffed him and I went with them in the paddy wagon. They kept him in the cells until it was time to go back to the ship and by that time the handcuffs had broken the stitches making him very sore and angry.
They took him to the foot of the gangway and were about to release him thinking that he would go up it and they would be rid of him. Instead he dived into the harbour beside the ship with the handcuffs still on. He could well have drowned and I began to abuse the police telling them that if he drowned I would hold them responsible. I don’t think that any of them could swim and it was left to a Kiwi soldier to dive in and pull him over one of the stringers just above water level. They handed him the keys to the cuffs and he was released. He climbed up to the wharf and cursing everyone including me disappeared up the gangway. It was the only time I ever saw him like that and the next day he was back to normal.
We set sail and the next port of call was Bombay. We anchored in the roadstead and only officers were given leave. The water was a muddy brown and the city was covered in haze. We next called at Aden to refuel and then up the Gulf of Suez to Port Tewfik. There we disembarked and were put into rail wagons labelled Hommes 40 Chevaux 8. There were no seats and we spent an uncomfortable six hours or so on our way to Cairo.
There we dismounted and were taken in trucks to Maadi Camp just outside the city. We were tired and hungry and a meal was waiting. As we lined up with our dixies I was waiting to be served when instead of a helping of food a hand was thrust at me and my brother Peter said welcome to Egypt. It seems that he had been invalided out of the Division after being taken prisoner of war at Bardia. He had been released when the Eighth Army advanced but had been quite ill. After spending time in hospital and then in the rest area near the Suez Canal he had missed the move of his unit the 14th Light Ack Ack Regiment to Italy. He had a job in Maadi in charge of the mess orderlies and as a special favour had come on duty to welcome me. We settled in at Maadi and Peter, Trevor and I went on leave into Cairo. We only went once and it was quite an experience. Egypt had been overrun with troops and the locals did very well out of them.
There was the N.Z. Club run by Lady Freyberg the wife of the General but there was no entertainment there. We went out on the town and finished up getting very drunk. The most preferred beer was Stella but this always ran out during the evening and then you could get what the called Onion Piss which actually didn’t taste all that bad. In the end this also ran out and you had to drink Wog brandy which was strong and tasted shocking.
Peter was friendly with Jack Manchester who had been Captain of the 1935 All Blacks. He was a quiet chap who only drank Wog brandy and never seemed to get drunk at all no matter how much he drank. Peter and I finished up incapable and I remember about eight of us making our way down to the Qasr Nil Barracks where the leave trucks were waiting to take troops back to camp. I of course had no idea where we were and neither did many of the others. We were quite drunk and had to hold onto each other to keep standing. We staggered down narrow winding streets until we reached the barracks.
Once we got there Peter and I were unable to climb up onto the trucks which had high sides and had to be hoisted up and then we collapsed in a heap on the tray of the truck. They trod all over us all the way back to camp and somehow we got to bed. The next morning I woke up as bright as a button but it was the only leave I got into Cairo. Peter took me on a train trip some caves at Helwan I think it was. He could speak enough Arabic to get by and liked to talk to the locals. He found out that the man he was talking to had a wife in Cairo and one in Helwan and found it difficult to support them both as well as his need for hashish.
Peter decided that he would rejoin his regiment the 14th Light A.A. and would claim me as his younger brother which was an established right in the Division. He reckoned that Field Artillery was too dangerous and now that our side had air superiority it would be a safer place. The reinforcement which included the members of the Ruapehu furlough draft that had been given home leave to N.Z. set off for Alexandria where we would embark for Italy. We were once again herded into rail wagons labeled Hommes 20 Chevaux 8 and suffered our first casualty. A soldier from Auckland was sitting in the side entrance to a wagon when it gave a lurch going round a steep curve. He was thrown onto the track and somehow one foot went under a wheel and was cut off. His war didn’t last very long at all.
We were camped in a desolate area outside the town and went into Alexandria only once. It was there that I had my first meeting with Sikhs. I went to have a shower and there were several of them doing the same. They were quite tall and I noticed that they didn’t strip off to shower but kept their underpants on apparently their religion forced this unusual modesty even in the army.
We were loaded onto a Polish vessel named the Batory that had been commandeered while trading in the Mediterranean at the outbreak of war. Peter set out to show me the skills he had acquired in two years overseas in escaping unpleasant duties. We were told that it was no use trying to dodge and that we would all get something to do on the voyage. Peter, Trevor and I stood at the rail looking out to sea while slowly sidling away from where they were choosing people for jobs. The first to be chosen were those to man the air defenses which were largely Oerlikans which were heavy machine guns mounted high above the decks. Then followed other defensive duties and so it went until there were only a few minor tasks.
I eventually was appointed to be in charge of three soldiers whose job it was to clean out the sleeping quarters. The weather was cold crossing the Mediterranean and I was grateful not to be spending two hour watches half way up a mast. We reached Taranto safely having detoured close to Malta to keep within the protection of RAF antisubmarine patrols.
We disembarked and travelled to the Base Camp near Bari. Here Peter was struck down with the flu and that was the end of his scheme to claim me to his regiment as he never rejoined it. He remained at Bari until he went home on furlough and had an easy if adventurous life as a despised ‘base wallah’. He soon learned the ropes and got onto a good thing. Each soldier overseas was entitled to a cigarette issue of fifty per week. In addition Sergeants and above got a spirit issue of a bottle a month. In a transit camp there would seldom be more than twenty at any one time as they moved from their units to hospital or on transfer however in any week there would be up to fifty inmates and it became the practice to apply for an issue for every person who had spent even one day in camp. This left a sizeable surplus which could be disposed on the black market and Peter soon made contact with willing Italian buyers.
At one stage the army S.I.B. were on his trail but hey never caught him. He also got jobs delivering new army trucks up to the front line units particularly to the Canadians. At Xmas he found out where our unit was when we were out of the line at Matelica. Being Peter he had no qualms about parking the truck in front of the Colonel’s casa and spending the night with us. It was a bit embarrassing at times for me because he knew a lot of the people in my Battery better than I did having come overseas with them and been in the Desert actions.
I joined the Division at Caserta and as an ex officer I had first to interview the legendary Steve Weir who was in charge of Artillery. It was just a formal occasion prompted I think by some complaints from N.Z. that ex officers were not being treated fairly on joining the Division. I was posted to the 36th Survey Battery and became a Sound Ranger. They had developed a system of placing microphones at surveyed spots and measuring the time difference in the sound of an enemy gun firing as it reached each microphone. From this they could plot it’s position and bring down fire on it. I had received no training in this and the unit was in reserve at the time.
It was just before the final battle for Cassino and the Fifth and Eighth Armies were obviously waiting for the weather to improve. I was not exactly welcome into the battery particularly as a newcomer holding the rank of Lance Sergeant. They were a close knit outfit and undoubtedly viewed me as a threat to the promotion of long serving people there. They had not suffered many casualties so promotion was slower than in the Field Artillery.
I was put on a truck with the motor mechanic and another man who did something quite unimportant. Our main interest during his period was training for the divisional athletic games. The Survey battery had several good runners and I trained with them. First were the Artillery elimination races. I ran in the half mile and was carefully coached by a wily Dunedinite who was our three miler. He knew that I had done very little training and advised me to go for third place which was enough to qualify. Sure enough the two hot shots in the field raced to the front, I hung back until the final straight and sneaked into third place. From then on I was jocularly referred to as the ‘fleet footed sergeant’. However the war was resumed and we never did hold the games.
The Yanks had bombed the area around Cassino so heavily during the last battle and there had been a lot of rain so that the shell holes were filled with water and even the tanks could not get through let alone trucks. When the attack began it was accompanied by a heavy artillery barrage so that there was no scope for sound ranging. We were in reserve and after the break through followed on behind the rest of the Division taking up a position in the Liri Valley when the advance was halted by some very intense artillery shelling from the heights above the valley.
I was suddenly transferred to the 4th Field Regiment and was placed in 26 Battery Headquarters as a technical assistant in the Command Post. The work was quite familiar to me except that they did things in slightly different ways to what we had been taught in New Zealand. The result was the same but on one or two occasions I found myself at odds with some of the older hands. I soon fitted in however and by the time we had advanced towards Florence I was part of the team.
At about that time they decided that all of us who had not been recommended for recommissioning would revert to the ranks so I became Gunner Gilbert yet again which suited me fine. The advance continued at a slow pace until at length Florence fell and we anticipated some time in a rest area. However it was not to be and we then crossed to the Adriatic Coast and engaged in the time honoured charade of covering all the markings on our vehicles and guns as well as taking off our New Zealand epaulette flashes and our hat badges.
It must have deceived no enemy spies as we still had black diamond patches on our berets and at each stop left behind lots of tell tale evidence such as copies of the N.Z.E.F.Times. We were to take over from a Canadian Division that had taken a bad mauling in trying to break though into the Lombardy Plains at Rimini. We supported them with a barrage and I think that the Infantry relieved them however the Germans withdrew without much further resistance.
We were worried about a railway mounted gun that they were using from a position just north of the town. It was a big one and as was usual for them fired at regular intervals on a set line of four target points. One of them we later found was the house in which we had our headquarters. We had dug slit trenches and pitched pup tents over them which was rather unusual for us. The Observation Post ack who had a reputation for attracting enemy fire had come to visit and sure enough during the night we were subjected to harassing fire from the big gun. The shells passed just over the house and exploded in the fields close to our tents but far enough away to be harmless. The last one however landed quite close to our visitor’s tent and tore it to shreds. We later found that another had landed even closer but had been a dud and didn’t explode.
We were pleased to be withdrawn from the line and went up into the mountains near a town called Iesi. The village was I think called Matelica and was very restful. The locals were friendly and we had many parties. All too quickly we were sent back up again. The advance had been slowed at Forli and we were needed to dislodge a very stubborn enemy. The Italian campaign was, I believe, designed to draw off as many seasoned German troops as possible in the lead up to the Normandy landings.
The N.Z. Division and the 56th London Division was used to stiffen up a collection of troops including a Greek Brigade, a Jewish Brigade, some Poles and some fairly green American and Canadian outfits. Opposing them were paratroopers supported by Tiger tanks, Nebelwerfers and 88mm guns. The latter had slightly diminishing bores and the shells had soft metal outer layers which became molten with the friction and hard cores. When they struck an enemy tank the soft exterior would be still molten and would stick to the metal allowing the hard core to penetrate the armour. Once inside the shell would ricochet around destroying the interior and killing the crew.
The weather was atrocious and even a small river required an artillery barrage to force a crossing. There are dozens of them and the enemy put up a fierce resistance at each. Eventually we reached Faenza and it was decided to wait for better weather. We returned to our rest areas in the mountains much to our delight. It was there that I obtained a cushy job. I became the barman in the Regimental Officers Mess. Many I knew having served with them in New Zealand so it was a very informal atmosphere. The Assistant Quartermaster was a member of the Turnbull family that endowed the well known library of that name in Wellington. He was an atheist and took Shakespeare as his Bible. He would quote Falstaff on sack as his excuse for getting drunk.
We went to Ancona to buy some decent grog for the mess and had a great day. We had to gain permission to buy anything from the Town Major. Once the towns had been liberated they appointed a Town Major and a representative of the organisation known as AMGOT. (Allied Military Government of Occupied Territories). He was very good at convincing them of our need for alcohol and we soon had all the liquor we could afford. He was a pleasant unassuming chap and the driver and I had no trouble in talking him into taking down all his insignia of rank so that he could come into a NAAFI with us for a meal. There would have been a big stink if the Poms in charge saw an Officer hobnobbing with Other Ranks. We made our way home in fine condition and were congratulated on the quality of the new stocks.
At about that time we had received further reinforcements including officers who had served in the Pacific. Some of them were not very popular and one who was a regular soldier was particularly hated and despised. He had a nasty mouth and I was given the job of ‘sewing him up’. He was partial to free drinks and one night they took turns at shouting him while I mixed his drinks. He finished up in a bad way but I didn’t have to worry as next day we got orders to move and he wasn’t in my battery anyway.
We returned to Faenza where it was still damp and cold. It was a funny situation as the Germans still occupied part of the town yet we went there for showers. We were in the brickworks to the South with the guns deployed in an open paddock to the front. The RHQ was in the brickworks and I was amused one day when I was sent to get some maps of the areas we would have to advance through to find the RSM another regular soldier marching around the parking area with his leather Swagger Stick tucked under his arm as though he was on parade. I had no hat or tunic and he roared at me that I was not properly dressed. Luckily I was on my way back so I just waved to him and departed. It was not a good spot for the drivers who had to bring up the rations and ammunition. There was a straight stretch of road that was under enemy observation. Most things were brought up at night but even then they could suffer a bit of shelling.
As the weather improved it was clear that we would soon attack. As a diversion two of us were sent up into the hills a little way into the lines occupied by the Jewish Brigade. There we sent dummy messages by radio intended to make the Germans think that the Division would attack from there. We had a pleasant time and our hosts treated us very well. Each night we played Bridge and were very comfortable. When we got back we found that it had been a waste of time. When we went to town for showers the Maori Battalion boys told us that Ted (the Italian name for Germans is Tedeschi) knows we are here. We play him ‘In the mood’ on the machine guns when we do night firing across ‘no man’s land’.
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