A Strong Song Tows Us

by Richard Burton

  The squadron arrived at Freetown, Sierra Leone, on 22 May for four days of rest and recuperation before heading off for Durban in South Africa where they arrived on 9 June. This part of the voyage made an impression on Bunting. He wrote to Dorothy Pound after the war that the place he really wanted to see again was Africa. ‘I want to know what is behind the Lion Mountains from which Sierra Leone gets its name, which are lovely – as sharp of outline as the Appenines above Rapallo, but covered in bright green forest. I liked Zululand too: to say nothing of the Zulus themselves.’50 Bunting enjoyed wandering alone in the bush, meeting Zulu farmers and Indian settlers who had set up as market gardeners. ‘Bathed from surfy beaches,’ he told Zukofsky, ‘pulled wild guavas, bananas, etc.’51

  The squadron enjoyed a month at the Cape, with plenty of sporting fixtures and visits to local townships, before embarking once again for a passage across the Indian Ocean on an American troopship (less crowded and better food) on 7 July. By now Bunting had written a textbook on Persian in fairly challenging conditions and had been promoted to ‘Acting Unpaid Corporal’, which seems to have annoyed him. ‘I get nothing for interpreting,’ he told Zukofsky, ‘and am annoyed to think that I’d have been a fully paid corporal long since if I’d still been at home.’52

  On 23 July they arrived in Karachi (mistakenly – they were supposed to have gone to Bombay) and the following day set up a miserable camp eight miles from the city. Many of the men succumbed to stomach complaints, probably because ‘the food is monotonous and served with flies’.53 The men kicked their heels playing football and cricket but Bunting involved himself in the local culture:

  I made one or two friends – a learned Brahmin, who talked about religion; a Gujerati poet with the same name as Mahatma, M. K. Gandhi; a Persian restaurant keeper from Most Sacred Yazd in the Eastern desert. There was a dinner party in a chemist’s shop one Sunday, with chutneys that cried aloud for the Fire Brigade. Good mangoes in the bazaar, tasting strongly of turpentine. Paludè, in tall glasses. Palm toddy, and a mad old Englishman, down a backstreet. And a wild animal, cat kind, that growled outside my tent one night for quite a while. I think it was a leopard or an ocelot – as big as an Alsatian dog or bigger.54

  On 30 August they embarked on the City of London for the final leg of their journey to Basra which they at last reached on 6 September after a journey that had taken four months. The following day a convoy of thirty-four vehicles took the entire squadron on an eighty-five mile desert journey to Ahwaz, near the Iranian border with Iraq, which was to be their permanent base. While they built the base they waited for their supplies. The first supply of hydrogen didn’t arrive until the last day of October and the first balloons followed on 6 November. But by then the plans of Allied Military Command had moved on and on 19 November 982 Squadron learned with ‘deep regret’ that it was to be split into detachments at Teheran and Bahrain.55

  Bunting was not impeccably equipped to fulfil his translation brief. He recalled that ‘I never expected to hear [Persian] spoken or to speak a word of it. In fact, I didn’t hear a word of it spoken until I arrived in Persia and was called upon to interpret for a court martial. You can imagine how difficult that was. I hope they put the right man in jail. Very fortunately it wasn’t one of those cases where it would require shooting or hanging.’56

  He already had experience of trying to use a medieval language to communicate. His Italian had been learned from Dante and ‘it was as if someone came along in England speaking a Chaucerian mode’.57 In Persia he was able to communicate with the Luri and Bakhtiari tribesmen, whose dialect is similar to early medieval Persian, far better than with Teheranis. The Bakhtiari, a tribe from the south west of Iran, consider themselves to be descendants of Shah Fereydun, a legendary figure from Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh. The Bakhtiari had played a significant role in Persia’s Constitutional Revolution and continued to have enormous influence on Iranian politics in the 1940s, as we shall see, particularly in the figure of Morteza Quli Khan. Bunting was correct about the Bakhtiari dialect. No less a figure than Sir Austen Henri Layard (‘Layard of Nineveh’) had observed that: ‘The Bakhtiyari speak a Persian dialect which is generally known as the Luri, and is a corruption of the pure old Persian without the modern intermixture of Arabic and Turkish. They maintain, indeed, that it is the ‘Farsi Kadim’, the language of the ancient Persians. It more nearly resembles the language of the ‘Shah-Nameh’ than it does that of the works of the later Persian poets and of modern Persian literature.’58 Layard, like Bunting, loved the Bakhtiari people,

  a splendid race, far surpassing in moral, as well as in physical, qualities the inhabitants of the towns and plains of Persia—the men tall, finely featured, and well built; the women of singular beauty, of graceful form, and when young almost as fair as Englishwomen. If the men have, for the most part, a savage and somewhat forbidding expression, it arises from the mode of life they have led from time immemorial. They are constantly at war, either among themselves or with the Persian Government, against which they are in chronic rebellion.59

  Bunting wrote to Louis Zukofsky about his adventures with the tribesmen: ‘My men became the envy of other units. And out of hours (and out of bounds) they entertained me every now and then as Bakhtiaris should, with pipes and drums, dancers and singers, sweetmeats and rice and strong drink, and a man to fan me all the evening – very welcome in the terrific heat of Khuzistan (139° in the shade – and it had been 145? a little earlier).’60 Bakhtiari hospitality impressed Bunting. Asked to recall one meal that stuck in his memory above all others he had no hesitation: ‘During the War I drove up to dine with some Bakhtiari in the mountains of central Persia. We began with alternations of tea and whisky and little sweet cakes for nine or ten hours. About nine o’clock in the evening we sat down to a large plate of porridge, followed by half a turkey per man, smothered in rice, followed again by a leg of mutton per man. Then we were allowed to retire to bed; a good thing, since I was half dead.’61

  Bunting was mainly occupied managing a gang of labourers who were impressed to the point of devotion by Bunting’s knowledge of their language and poetry and the fact that his children were named after national heroes and heroines. He was also busy interpreting evidence at courts martial, working from 4 a.m. until 7 p.m. in one of the world’s most testing climates, regularly pushing 120° in the shade. He also had one of his periodic runins with the authorities, having become ‘quite innocently’ involved in what he described as a ‘shindy’ in the local town. His punishment, twenty-one days confinement to camp and fourteen days stopped pay, prompted him to ask to be reduced from his rank and transferred to another unit, but even Bunting didn’t think that was likely.62

  THE MEDITERRANEAN, 1943–1944

  Bunting volunteered a little information about this part of his war to Jonathan Williams:

  I found myself in charge of a vast number of Luri workmen, and that was simple enough. I got on very well with them. We wandered about the country a bit, then went off in pursuit of the Eighth Army. We had to take in some shells, because it had become obvious that the Germans were not going to get down through the Caucasus while there was Stalingrad on the flank … They were simply unable to capture Stalingrad, so we could be spared. There was a hell of a great convoy of lorries full of shells waiting for anyone that would take them. Our squadron leader, without asking whether anybody could drive or not said, oh, we’ll take them. Then they found that by putting on everybody who had ever taken a milkcart a hundred yards down the street and by making all the officers drive, we could just manage. We had to take on a few Indian drivers as well to cross the desert. We set off and were a month getting from Basra to Tripoli. A month of very hard fare, yet one of those I’ve enjoyed most in my life. Seeing vast stretches of the desert; and from El Alamein onwards there was this vast pile in all directions of abandoned, broken arms, broken guns, broken airplanes, broken cars and lorries, lying about. One of the two or three most astonishing things I’ve ever seen in my
life – I’ve described it in ‘The Spoils.’ As I said, we went to Tripoli, and one or two of us went as far as Wadi Aqarit, where the fighting was going on at that moment. There I was obliged to take a commission, which I’d never wanted, and I set off to Cairo.63

  On 29 March 1943 Bunting was posted to Headquarters Middle East Command in Cairo for two months until he was discharged as an airman on 1 June and granted the commission he’d ‘never wanted’ the following day as Flying Officer on probation. On the day he received his promotion 982 Squadron was posted to Tripoli where Bunting and a friend apparently played an elaborate practical joke on their comrades:

  He and a friend were visiting some natives in the desert where they saw a strange looking tree which bore castor nuts, from which a certain useful oil could be pressed. They took a bag of the nuts back to the squadron and explained to the cooks that they were a delicate native spice used to flavor all kinds of food. The cooks believed the story and used the nuts wantonly. The next day, half the squadron spent most of their time running for the latrines while Basil and his friend slapped their knees with laughter. The culprits were discovered and reduced to the ranks, but Basil thought it was worth it.64

  He remained in Tripoli for three weeks or so, long enough to witness Operation Scipio, the Battle of Wadi Akarit, before being posted with 229 Squadron to Air Headquarters Malta in Valetta on 21 June 1943. He spent fourteen months in Malta, moving to Krendi (a ‘strange landing ground’ according to Air Vice-Marshall Sandy Johnstone, with a runway ‘constructed hard against the edge of a cliff’),65 on 4 October 1943 and then to Hal Far on 10 April 1944, where he stayed until 16 August 1944. Along the way his promotion, to Flying Officer on probation, was confirmed on 2 December 1943. Johnstone’s account of 229 Squadron’s arrival in Malta shows just how ad hoc operations in the Mediterranean theatre could be:

  229 Squadron had had an interesting career as it had arrived in Malta as 603 Squadron … after having flown off an aircraft carrier midway between Gibraltar and Malta. It had been their intention to make only a transit stop in the island for refuelling purposes before proceeding to the Western Desert where the ground crews of the unit, having travelled out by sea, were already waiting for their aircraft to turn up.

  Intensive operations were taking place in Malta when they touched down and it was decided that the sixteen Spitfires would serve a more useful purpose on the island than in the Western Desert, so they were retained. Consequently, it was found there were two 603 Squadrons – one in Malta with aircraft, but no ground crews, and one in Egypt with ground crews, but no aircraft.66

  229 Squadron ran Spitfire operations in Malta and Sicily, patrolling over Allied Cruisers and Destroyers and attacking enemy airfields in the region. On Christmas Day 1943,

  in view of attacks on shipping it was decided to station one complete flight at Catania in Sicily. Eight pilots in 8 Spits of “B” Flight and the I.O. with 32 N.C.O.s and airmen in 2 Dakotas flew to Catania to form 229 Detachment. It is regretted the move took place over Christmas but all the airmen had an enormous Christmas dinner before climbing into the Dakotas. The ground crew welcome the change but the aircrew are not so eager, most of them already know Catania and the work of convoy escort is equally as tedious whether it is done from Malta or Sicily.67

  The ‘I. O.’ was Bunting. This part of the war seems to have oscillated between intense activity and suffocating tedium for Bunting’s unit. On the one hand he told Dorothy Pound that he had been responsible for arranging ‘the “war-room” for Eisenhower for the Sicilian invasion, & then went over to Catania with a fighter-squadron: captured Cotrone [Crotone in Calabria] on my own initiative: in Naples during the fighting north of the City – I just missed being blown up by the delay-action bomb which destroyed the Post Office there.’68 On the other hand the Operations Record reports many days in Sicily without a single operational flight,69 and is occasionally reduced to reporting non-military issues in order to fashion a daily entry. On 14 January 1944, for instance, ‘F.O. Bunting with two Italian sub. Lieutenants searched neighbouring peasants house for stolen blankets with no result except to make an impression. F/Sgt. Manley was requested to shoot a sick dog. After passing through the dog the bullet ricocheted and just missed a high American Officer.’70

  Bunting sent his own version of dealing with Catanian peasants to Dorothy Pound: ‘When I wasn’t busy with “warfare” in Sicily I was organising a peasant’s market in Catania, tracing lost persons in Randazzo and Enna, or riding a motorbicycle up Etna. Randazzo really was bashed, by artillery, during a big battle. Some Maltese nuns got me to trace their relatives there, & so I am now being prayed for in perpetuity in two convents. I haven’t noticed any good effects.’71 He told Gael Turnbull, many years later, that he had swapped a bottle of Scotch he had got from Malta for two BSA motorbikes. His Spitfire mechanics equipped one with a pair of Rolls Royce Spitfire cylinders and he reached 110 mph on it on the airstrip.72

  He described a life of intense attention to detail:

  De-briefing is taking a pilot’s report and cross-examining him to compare what he actually did on a sortie with what he was instructed to do. In a Fighter Squadron, the Operations Officer and the Intelligence Officer are one and the same man. He receives a rather general order from H. Q. and works out all the implications down to the exact minute of every detail, using not only all the official information he has on file, but also his personal knowledge of his pilots, their capacity & temperament. He then ‘briefs’ everybody concerned – passes on the now exact orders together with every scrap of useful information he can get – where the flak is, what the route looks like, what sort of bloke commands any enemy squadron likely to intercept them, & so on. He checks the planes as they go off, investigates crashes at take-off & reports to H. Q. When the sortie is over, he interviews each pilot separately and compiles an exact narrative of all that took place or was seen. That is the ‘de-briefing’, which has to be done like lightning and still remain perfectly accurate. It is good mental training: you can almost feel yourself getting shrewder in your estimate of men. I am glad I had a year of it (even though, in action, as we mostly were, you get hardly any sleep or food, being always at work), & I think it probably helped me in surpassing other political intelligence officers and minor diplomats who had not had any similarly strenuous training.73

  One such debriefing occurred after a raid on Rapallo itself. ‘It was a flight of Mitchells that first bombed Rapallo,’ he wrote to Dorothy Pound after the war. ‘They were sent to get the Zoagli viaduct but couldn’t get into it because of weather conditions. One of them landed at Catania where I was, for the moment, in charge, and I had to de-brief the pilot. It was part of the preparation for Anzio.’74

  The deaths of so many of these young pilots haunted the poet, and their ghosts made occasional appearances, as we shall see, in Bunting’s post-war poetry. He hated having to record the details of their deaths as part of his duty.75 A later letter to Dorothy, the main thrust of which was to refute the Pounds’ ‘redherring of anti-semitism’, described the composition of 229 Squadron, of which he was Operations Officer, as ‘extremely polyglot. You heard Czech and Polish, Belgian, Afrikaans, Yankee, Cockney, Maltese and Hebrew being spoken in the mess … It was a Jew who was killed before he could be decorated after landing on an enemy aerodrome and carrying off one of his mates who had just been taken prisoner there after parachuting …’76

  Bunting’s unit was clearly stretched:

  I found myself practically in charge of a unit working beyond its strength. The C.O. was in Malta, the Flight Commander always away. I had to take all responsibility. I’ve even signed documents as Medical Officer! … I planned operations, interpreted orders from above, ruled everything, without official authority or backing. I even started and regulated a civilian market (not black but stripy), caught and punished thieves, traced a spy, instituted liaison with an Italian regiment. Between Xmas day and 1st April I had ten hours of liberty all told.77

&nb
sp; It isn’t surprising that his unit was this stretched if a story he told Gael Turnbull was true. At one point he was given half a squadron of Spitfires, half a squadron of Mosquitos and a free hand to clear the Adriatic of German reconnaissance planes. ‘We did.’78

  On 1 April 1944 229 Squadron left Catania by road ‘and reached Messina, where it was accommodated in barracks’. After a day in Messina ‘getting baths’ the men were ferried to Reggio on 3 April in landing craft where they boarded a train to Catanzaro. The train stopped at Pellaro to enable Bunting and an adjutant, accompanied by the engine-driver, to buy a barrel of the famous local wine for the men. Unfortunately for them, according to the squadron’s log, the two heroes ‘having sampled the barrel too freely, sold the wine at a little over half price, to general satisfaction’. They continued by train to Naples for the next two days and then by truck to Bellavista where, on 6 April, ‘by the hospitality of Professor Doctor Frollo, some of the officers made the acquaintance of certain Neapolitan young ladies who proceeded to make our stay pleasant’. On 10 April Squadron 229 left Naples on SS Leopoldville and anchored in the Clyde on 22 April, from where they went by train to Carlisle and Leicester on the following day. From 24 April Squadron 229 covered the invasion of Normandy from an airfield near Hornchurch in Essex.79

  The difference in conditions in different theatres was enormous. Bunting told Turnbull that in Sicily he had direct contact with Eisenhower during the Sicilian invasion, ‘But they lost very few pilots at all. They were highly skilled. When Normandy came up, the squadron was taken back to England to do cover work and close support, because of this. “It was terrible. Even during the Battle of Britain, if a pilot did two or three sorties in a day, it was considered a lot. My pilots were going out six or seven times in a day. Working low all the time. They were just worn out completely, in no time. We lost nearly every one.”’80