by John Nichol
‘We thought we had done rather well. We had our evening meal cooked for us and sat round after dark pleasantly talking in a camp circle with the gunners. Then we retired to bed, as ever around our truck, which was parked a little way from any one gun, in the middle of the field.
‘I woke up and heard the awful drone of aeroplanes, enemy bombers, invisible, close. Cursing, we all scrambled under the truck and the din got louder. All that night we heard the bombing of big guns, the rat-tat-tat of machine guns, the banging of pom-poms and cannon and then the scream of a plane diving through the flak and the earth-shaking crump, crump of bombs landing. Sometimes there would come a whistle, growing louder as it neared the ground so that you would swear it was going to hit you. Also there was, every now and again, the rattle and whispering of shrapnel falling, bits of shells from the guns. One time a big piece came whistling down and landed about five yards away. It put an awful fear in us; we thought it was a bomb.’
The bombing raid provided Greggs Farish with the opportunity he had been seeking for almost a year. In Algeria one of his corporals had once suggested that a piano would allow them to have a good sing-along after a tough day in the field. He had scoured most of North Africa and then Sicily without success.7
Farish was working on a Spitfire at the small airfield outside Augusta when one of his flight sergeants approached with a grin. He thought he’d found what Farish had spent six months looking for.
Everyone in the squadron knew about Farish’s quest. The flight sergeant told him that Augusta was deserted and there was a lovely upright piano upstairs in a house.
Farish stood on the Spitfire’s wing holding his spanner. Looting was punishable by death, but to hell with it, they’d been fighting the damn war long enough. And he could count on his daring Spitfire pilots to get away with the caper.
He gathered a group of pilots together and they took a flatbed truck to the outskirts of Augusta. Then the flight sergeant guided them to the deserted townhouse.
While inspecting the piano they heard a noise and were horrified to see two military policemen looking down on them from an upstairs window in a house opposite. The policemen grinned and waved. They were doing their own spot of pilfering.
However, Farish’s RAF lorry had been foolishly parked outside the Provost Major’s HQ. The officer in charge of military discipline demanded to know what was going on. The pilots made some excuse about engine blocks. The officer was unimpressed. ‘If I catch any of you looting, you’ll be shot.’
But Farish was too close to finally achieving his quest. He carried on regardless.
‘The pilots got the piano downstairs with great shushes, bumps and curses. I drove up fast with the tail-board down and a tent ready. Quickly we had the piano out of the front door, on its back, all together with superhuman strength lifted onto the wagon, tent over, tail-board up and away before anyone else saw us – except the two MPs opposite laughing. We drove gaily and with what were, we hoped, innocent expressions, through the guard at the main gate.’
But their adventures were not entirely over. On their way back the driver, Sergeant North, stopped the lorry and allowed two Italian women on board.
One got up front with him and the other got in the back where she set about trying to seduce an airman called Fergus. Farish looked on with amusement. ‘Now Fergus is rather serious where girls are concerned and reciprocated by practising Italian which he was learning. She winked, laughed and sang at the rest of us, settling herself comfortably on Fergus’ lap, to his surprise. He didn’t know his Italian was so good.
‘Evidently the girl in the front, having only two airmen to contend with, had aroused greater passion for suddenly North pulled up and shouted, “Anyone else want to drive?”
‘I took over again and realised as I let in the clutch that this seduction was meeting with more success than that of Fergus, for I was shaken by the sight of a pair of knickers on the floorboards. I hurriedly suggested that we stop at the next copse for a few minutes. This was heartily approved. North and his girl disappeared among the trees, while the rest of us had a bite to eat and a smoke.’
With North’s liaison completed, they returned to camp and unloaded the piano.
It proved to be a great boon. ‘Never before had the squadron gone in for any sort of communal entertainment. There hadn’t been time but now a series of concerts were started. Talent sprang up from all directions, from Spitfire pilots to fitters and drivers.
‘Almost every letter I censored at that time mentioned these weekly concerts with great approval; many told mothers and wives about the piano, which some said the Engineer Officer had given them, like I was a fairy godmother.
‘As I left the Officers’ Mess tent after dinner one evening I heard in the distance the sound of voices singing.’ As he walked up the slope, there, in the moonlight reflecting off a Spitfire wing, was a great circle of dim shapes; men lying, sitting and standing. ‘Here and there a cigarette glowed red and a match lit up faces. The piano suggested a tune which was quickly taken up by the assembled crowd’:
The other night dear,
As I lay dreaming . . .
I dreamt that you were by my side
But when I awoke dear
I was mistaken and held my head and cried.
* * *
For Alan Peart the Sicily campaign was also going to provide him with another ‘first’. With the fighting quietening down, he was sent off for a rare few days’ leave to the sandy beaches overlooked by the ancient hilltop town of Taormina, in southern Sicily.
The relaxation was a most welcome change. ‘It was curious to be dragged out of intense combat and sent on leave. It was strange to enjoy life to the full and then return to the skies and to the killing. We could sleep, relax, stay in bed all day if we wanted – it was wonderful and such a contrast to my life of war.’
But then something else happened one day as they lay on the beach. A striking young Italian woman stripped off her clothes and entered the water. It was the first time the young Spitfire pilot, bloodied in battle, had seen a naked woman. Peart was dumbfounded. He had been in the heart of fighting and dying for more than a year yet still remained naive in other matters. ‘I was just twenty years old and a very inexperienced young man. I was thousands of miles from home, fighting in a world war but knew little of worldly matters! I had killed, watched friends die. I was battle-hardened but I had never before seen a naked lady.’8
It was a curious existence; contact with home had been minimal and letters were few and far between. ‘Because of the censors, there was very little to write anyway – the sun rose in the morning and went down at night. Perhaps I’d heard a bird singing or something like that – you were not allowed to mention the war at all in case it affected morale back home. I didn’t have time to be homesick, though – I was always thinking ahead about what I might have to face and how best prepared I might be to counter every possibility. I wasn’t thinking of home; just staying alive until I could get home.’
* * *
The Sicily campaign was rapidly drawing to a close and in many respects it was a success. Sea lanes were opened to Allied merchant ships, Mussolini was toppled as Italy’s dictator and Hitler had been forced to divert forces from Russia just a week after the massive Kursk tank offensive had begun on 5 July.
But with good leadership and their usual discipline, the Germans managed to withdraw more than 50,000 troops, mainly at night by ship over the two-mile-wide Strait of Messina into mainland Italy, along with forty-seven tanks, ninety-four guns and 14,000 vehicles. While some of the fighting had been hard, with the Allies losing 5,500 dead, the troops knew that taking Italy was going to be a real test. By not entrapping the German troops, the Allies had made it that much harder.
* * *
The arguments to mount a rapid Allied invasion of the mainland proved irresistible: a quick military victory would trap the German army and hasten Italy’s surrender.
As late summer 1943 approac
hed, the Americans accepted the postponement of Operation Overlord – the invasion across the Channel into France – and relented to British pressure to invade Italy.
Many wanted to follow Napoleon’s maxim that Italy should, like a boot, be entered from the top. However, the short range of the Spitfires and other fighters restricted their choices. They chose the narrow beaches with good surf conditions around Salerno, south of Naples and not far from Italy’s ‘toe’.
The Allies’ hand was significantly strengthened by the Italian surrender, announced publicly on 8 September. But the Germans were never ones to sit on their hands and reinforcements were mobilised before the Salerno landings began the next day.
The planning for Salerno was rushed. Among other theories it was argued that in order to achieve surprise there would be no naval bombardment.
A force of nearly 200,000 Allied troops and more than 600 ships set off from ports in North Africa and Sicily to seize the heel of the Italian boot and planned to press onto Rome and beyond before Christmas. At 3.30am, as the landing-craft ramps splashed onto the surf, a German officer speaking through a loudspeaker in excellent English told the wading troops: ‘Come on in and give up. We have you covered.’ Then the surf rippled to the impact of machine-gun bullets and broke apart to the impact of shells. The Germans had guessed correctly where the landing might come. Salerno was about to get bloody.9
* * *
Nine days after the invasion of Italy, Hugh Dundas’ Spitfires were still lugging the 175 miles from Sicily as the Germans remained entrenched within a few hundred yards of the Salerno beachhead in southern Italy. The promised temporary airstrip, cleared by bulldozers and laid with steel matting, had only just materialised. However, it was still right under the shells and bullets of the enemy. Landing there was a terrifying prospect. Not only was it under enemy fire, but there was no organised air traffic control. It was every man for himself.
Despite the dangers, 324 Wing was ordered to base itself on the airstrip, which ran parallel to the beach with an olive grove between it and the sea. With some trepidation Dundas lined up to land.
‘I was nearly frightened out of my wits by a series of explosions which sounded loud above the noise of my engine and were accompanied by many flashes from the olive grove.10 As soon as I stepped onto the ground my eardrums were split by another tremendous blast from behind me. When I had picked myself up, dusted myself off and regained some dignity, I asked what the hell was going on.’
The extremely close artillery fire was coming from the British battery of twenty-five-pounder medium artillery field guns lined up in the olive trees between the runway and sea. To keep the Germans at bay, their firing was almost constant.
Dundas was not best pleased. ‘Before landing I had thought that German artillery would constitute a major threat to our safety. Now it seemed to me that we were in even greater danger from our own guns. I was not given to pessimism but I was quite unable to suppress the fear that if they persisted in blasting away directly across the landing strip while our planes were in the circuit, it could only be a matter of time before a Spitfire and a shell came into the same bit of sky at the same moment, with unpleasant consequences for the pilot.’
Dundas listened to the crash of rounds coming out of the olive grove and sailing straight over the runway towards the German lines. A few seconds later a Dakota came in to land in roughly the same airspace as the twenty-five-pounder’s shells. There was no collision but Dundas was not going to let his men’s lives be endangered by their own side. They face enough bloody risks as it is. He grabbed a Jeep, drove down the runway then into the olive trees to find the Royal Artillery commanding officer. A lieutenant colonel, dressed in white corduroys and cream-coloured shirt, emerged from a tent among the olive trees.
As he walked up to the RAF officer a gun roared nearby. Dundas could see a muzzle flash among the greenery, just over 100 yards from the airstrip perimeter. ‘Wing Commander Hugh Dundas,’ he introduced himself. ‘Would you mind . . .’ Dundas paused as another twenty-five-pounder fired. ‘Would you mind if your guns stopped firing when my Spitfires come in to land and take off?’
‘Stop firing, my dear fellow? What on earth do you want me to stop firing for? My orders are to fire flat out, round the clock. Terribly sorry, old man, but I can’t possibly stop firing.’
Dundas explained that he feared one of the gunners’ shells and one of his Spitfires would eventually come into contact. The officer looked at him as though he was absolutely mad.
‘Shoot down a Spitfire? Good God, who’s ever heard of a twenty-five-pounder shooting down a Spitfire! Hey!’ He called over an officer standing nearby. ‘The Wing Commander here thinks we may shoot down one of his Spitfires. Take him in and give him a drink, will you?’
Dundas was not amused. ‘Still muttering in amazement at the extraordinary prospect I had envisaged, he withdrew. The interview was at an end. The guns went on firing – flat out and round the clock.’
* * *
During the first week of the Salerno landings, at least half-a-dozen warships had been hit by a mysterious bomb that penetrated their armoured decks, all the way down to their hull. An Italian battleship had been sunk and a device had torn a large hole in an American light cruiser’s bottom, killing 200 sailors.
With troops still pinned down on the beaches, the British battleship HMS Warspite was ordered to use her massive fifteen-inch guns to bombard German positions.
She was about to become the next victim of the Nazis’ latest secret weapon, the Fritz X, the world’s first guided anti-ship missile. Developed in great secrecy, the Germans had created a 3,000lb device that could penetrate five inches of armoured decking then burrow down to explode under the keel. It was mounted on Dornier 217 bombers and guided onto the target by a bombardier who used a transmitter to adjust its large fins in flight via the bomb’s receiver. A skilled aimer could guide the missile to within at least 50ft of his target 50 per cent of the time. Being launched from three miles out it also gave the Dornier crew a good chance to get away before a ship realised it was being attacked.
The Warspite’s sailors had felt reasonably secure operating under the umbrella of Allied aircraft above. In the mid-afternoon of 15 September, just as they were about to launch another salvo, the unmistakable scream of a bomb was heard coming from the sky above. For a millisecond the crewmen looked at each other. How could this be? There were no bombers about; no thump of anti-aircraft guns.
Then they heard the cruel rent of metal being struck and torn.
A Fritz X struck a funnel, pierced through six decks then detonated in the hull, creating a 20ft hole. The Warspite shuddered to a halt. The smell of burning and screams of the wounded rose from the decks below.11 The orders went out – the Dornier 217s were to be intercepted and destroyed.
* * *
Alan Peart could not help glancing again at the fuel gauge and feeling a sense of irritation. It was almost 200 miles from their base in Sicily to Salerno and already he’d used more than a quarter-tank of fuel. Even with their drop tanks, they still had only thirty minutes’ patrol time with little to spare if they got into a dogfight. Of course, there was the emergency strip at Salerno, but they’d been warned that it was under constant shellfire, as ‘Cocky’ Dundas had already discovered, and only to be used if you’re really desperate. He’d even heard rumours that it was close to being overrun.
His eyes scanned the horizon ahead. Navigation at least was not a problem. The long columns of smoke, the wake of ships and the shadows of aircraft above all signposted Salerno.
As he got closer Peart’s gaze swept the sky and the sea. Something was wrong. Instinctively he knew his superb eyesight had picked up something amiss.
He squinted, searching the ocean. Dark smoke belched from a battleship below. He looked in the sky. Nothing. He focused on the water around the ship, searching for the telltale sign of a torpedo foam trail. Again, nothing. He turned back to examine the blue overhead. He thought
he’d glimpsed them before and dismissed them for being too far away, but two dots in the sky, just a few miles away, were streaking northwards. And they were bombers. German bombers, he was sure of it.
He knew this was why his boss ‘Babe’ Whitamore had put him in charge of 81 Squadron’s flight of six Spitfires. Peart had the best eyesight and the most experience to lead half the squadron.
‘Dog One, enemy bombers bearing 280 degrees.’
Peart squinted ahead at the distinctive pencil-shape outline of a fast Dornier 217. The sky was thick with Allied fighters and bombers and yet the Luftwaffe had managed to sneak in and attack a warship unnoticed.
He pushed the throttle wide open and felt the Merlin power him forward, quickly gaining on the Germans. Peart knew the new Dornier 217s could nudge over 300mph, but the Spitfire IXs were whippets; travelling at nearly 400mph they closed fast. The German crews were clearly no mugs. Within a minute they had spotted the six Spitfires closing on them and split up.
Peart ordered three aircraft onto each bomber then tore after his target with his two wingmen. As the gap closed he felt his heart pound once again with the excitement and trepidation of impending combat. He scanned the sky and then his instruments, took a few deep breaths and felt the familiar icy calm settle over him.
He silently urged the Spitfire forward, closing the distance on the German plane.
The range reduced from 400 yards to 300 yards. He flicked the gun switch from ‘safe’ to ‘fire’, then brought his aim to well ahead of the Dornier, calculating the deflection shot needed to strike a target moving ahead at speed in a flank attack on the port side, away from the rear gunner’s bullets.
The distance shortened to 250 yards. Another two seconds and he’d open up with everything he had, sending a thick stream of lead that would shred everything in its path.
His focus fixed on the gunsight.
Then it was empty.
Peart blinked. He glanced left and right. Bloody hell, these boys are good.