We had another interview with the chief AT, and this time she told us kindly but firmly that we were needed in Italy and must go there. Iris meanwhile had heard from her husband that he was already there, not far from Naples, and so she was of course quite resigned to the prospective journey. I had already begun to think that perhaps it would be more fun to be nearer the war than Algiers, and was quite consoled by the joyful anticipation of yet another sea voyage. Willy was not so easily baulked in her desire for a change, but just then there was nothing one could do but acquiesce and obey orders with as good a grace as possible. This was made easy because everyone was so nice, and we heard of friends from the UK, who were already on the other side, so that everything conspired to ease the situation.
Meanwhile, I was suffering terribly from the insects. We counted about 500 bites, mostly on my arms, neck, legs and hands. I used anti-insect cream, smoked and did everything possible to discourage the creatures, but evidently I was too attractive to the brutes. This was the only fly in the ointment! Thank goodness the locusts did not bite too, for that would have been the last straw. Soon after we arrived, the threatened cloud appeared and lasted several days. Locusts are about two inches long, and the complete span of their wings must be about four to five inches. They are shaped like a grasshopper, but of course bigger, and are precisely the colour of Colman’s mustard. Their eyes are like the old-fashioned black-topped pins, and are beady and knowing. The noise made by their defenceless bodies as you crunch them underfoot is like a cow chewing, but the knowledge of what is happening is nauseating. Of course one should destroy as many as possible, but I could not bring myself to crush many of them like this. Instead, I helped Madame as much as I could to scare them out of her garden into the next-door neighbour’s, as that seemed to be the best method of ridding oneself of the plague. I beat on a mess tin with a pair of scissors, going round and round the garden with this pseudo tom-tom. Madame and her husband and maid were outdoors most of the day, scaring the locusts away with sticks, but nevertheless they stripped a lot of plants, currants and strawberries. Everywhere around us, the air was echoing with the wail of the Arabs trying to rid their land of this really devastating scourge. The family’s food depended very much on fruit and vegetables from the garden and the small patch of home-grown wheat or barley. In the office garden, some of the officers helped the owners to fight the pests with squash rackets, quite an effective weapon for slaying them. The road was covered with their yellow bodies, and every car that passed made a scrunching sound as if driving over partly frozen snow. After four or five days they became less, and the crestfallen farmers and householders began to count their losses. I learned that nowadays modern science is usually able to destroy or deflect a locust swarm by spraying their breeding area with poisoned gas or liquid from aeroplanes, but owing to the disorganisation caused by the war that year, and probably over the previous few years, it had not been done, and hence the invasion. It was said that some of the nomadic tribes still ate locusts, after the manner of John the Baptist, but personally I would have to be at near starvation to consider it.
Arrangements meanwhile were going ahead for our transportation, and on the tenth day after our arrival, Iris and I were once again on board a troopship, waiting to sail, this time for Naples. I was sorry to leave Algiers, which has ever since held great fascination for me and which I long to visit again. It evokes such pictures for me: the white mosques, their interior walls covered with Byzantine mosaics, the cool palmy courtyards of Arab houses, the sunny beflowered villas of the French; then there are the wealthy Arab women with their beautiful silk gowns and yashmaks, below which step daintily the most exquisite silk stockings and the smartest style of Parisian shoe; the children of the Arabs, dirty, ill-fed and worse clad, often in rags, but grinning, impish, insouciant; the patient beasts of burden, the men in their fezzes, smoking and talking eternally in masculine conclaves; the blue sea, and inland the lush, green vegetation; the curious mixture, scarcely a fusion, of Eastern and Western culture, each existing alongside the other, sometimes jealous or overbearing, but always persisting; and the sun, brilliant, exhausting, but to me at least, invigorating and wonderful.
It was with sincere regret that we slid slowly out of port the following night, watching the thousand twinkling lights that defied the partial blackout, leaving Algiers to its night of scents, smells, anxieties, crime, hunger and all the other myriad threads that make up the life of this Western and yet Oriental city, so romantic to the outsider, and, who knows, perhaps to the inhabitants so unbearable, even tragic.
Note
3 Free Fanny – Free FANY (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry)
6
See Naples – and Live!
T his time Iris and I were in a cabin for two, which was converted into a cabin for four, and as we were four ATs, none very small and one unusually large, there was not a lot of space to move. It would not have been so bad if Iris had not declared the first night that she had bedbugs. I was quite exhausted by the packing up, goodbyes, and by the enervating effect of mepacrine, and when she woke me at about 3 a.m., declaring that she was being bitten all over, I was not very enthusiastic, especially as despite an intensive search we could not locate one bedbug. Nearly all night she was tossing and turning, switching the light on and off, and every now and then getting down from her bunk, which was above mine, and altogether the night was a very restless affair. In the morning the steward could find no bedbugs at all, but each night it was the same; Iris was definitely bitten, but by what and how no-one knew. Looking back on it, I think perhaps she was just suffering from heat bumps. She also had to give up mepacrine, as it upset her too much. In between commiserating with Iris, I made the acquaintance of an officer who turned out to be Italian and was being repatriated to work with the Allied forces. There were only we four girls on board, and so we were even more hopelessly outnumbered than before, but there was no social life on this ship. Everyone was bent on getting down to the job without further delay, and the atmosphere was official and businesslike.
Altogether, we were four days on the journey, and we passed the coast of Sicily about the third day. Doubtless the ship was making long detours to avoid detection by enemy aircraft. Due to the war on the bedbugs, I overslept the morning we entered Naples harbour, and awoke to find the others up on deck, and looking through the porthole I saw the white houses on the waterfront. I dressed hurriedly, and rushed up on deck to find nearly everyone else leaning over the side. We were almost in by then, and certainly the approach to Naples by sea is worth seeing. Vesuvius, now smoking gently after its recent eruption, towered up on our right; in front were the city and port, surmounted by the ancient castle of the Kings of Naples, and to the left many houses, lining the cliffs as far as the end of the promontory. There was a slight heat-haze, and everything was bathed in the warm, pinkish sunshine of early morning, for it was only about eight o’ clock. Above the houses, on the hillsides and the slopes of the volcano, were acres and acres of greenery, which we later discovered were the vines, from whence doubtless the famous local wine, Lacryma Christi or Tears of Christ, is vintaged.
But we had no thought that morning but to gather up our baggage and prepare ourselves for landing. There were other troopships in port, and all along the quay stood a large and varied collection of army vehicles, troop-carriers, 15cwts, PUs, jeeps, gun-carriers and a few tanks. Troops were unloading in long, buff-coloured columns, laden with heavy packs, slung about with haversacks and gas masks, with tin helmets on their heads, and pushing bulging kitbags down the gangways of the ships or dragging them along the quay to the waiting transport. They seemed cheerful enough despite their back-breaking loads, but it suddenly pulled me up with a jerk and reminded me that only 60 miles away to the north lay the Front, where our men were consolidating their positions, preparing for the advance on Rome. These soldiers were probably reinforcements or replacements – some of them would perhaps never sail the sea home again. It was a sobering thought, a
nd perhaps fortunately the busy atmosphere of efficient organisation, the brilliant scene and the by now familiar sight of small boys holding out grubby hands begging for ‘shooey ga’ or ‘shocolato’ helped to dispel the sense of melancholy it engendered.
Iris and I waited on deck, according to instructions, and presently a captain in a Scottish bonnet, khaki shorts and bush shirt came and asked for our names. He said, ‘That’s right, you’re to come with me’, and he gave us a hand with our baggage and led us down the gangway on to the quay, where after walking two or three hundred yards, dragging our bags with his help, we found a PU waiting for us. He told us he was the adjutant, and before long we were out of the dock, which was closely guarded by British and American MPs, and bowling through the streets of Naples, which seemed untidy, dirty and tatty, and showed considerable signs of bomb damage, and perhaps of street fighting too, as many of the buildings were pockmarked by either bomb splinters or shrapnel. There seemed to be mountains of fruit everywhere for sale, and dark, plump women in black dresses, or olive-skinned swarthy men with flashing black eyes, were superintending the transactions. There were the same bead curtains as in Algiers, and similar small shops. And children seemed to be everywhere, ragged, bare-footed, scrounging and with naughty eyes.
We were soon leaving the outskirts of Naples and jogging along the Salerno high road, one of Mussolini’s broad concrete autostradas, in the direction of Vesuvius. The small village streets we passed went under the autostrada, and I noticed the verdant fruit trees on either side of the road, and the umbrella pines dotted everywhere. The umbrella pine is one of the most characteristic features of southern Italy. It has a tall trunk, bare over halfway up, and then the branches spread out at right angles to the trunk, so that the effect is indeed that of a large capacious umbrella.
Presently, we turned off the main road down a narrow alley beside the entrance to a detention camp, which was well protected by barbed wire and huge lights; these latter, I later saw, illuminated the entire perimeter of the camp at night, so that it would be no easy job to escape. The alley soon joined a narrow side road with a cobbled surface, and we plugged our way uphill, very soon turning into the courtyard of a large villa. This was the mess, and we were taken in and allowed to tidy up, for it was nearly lunch-time.
The first thing I remarked was the water shortage – there was a large tank for refilling buckets, and any other containers, standing in the front garden. We soon learned that the drainage had been badly damaged, and for the time being there was practically no water laid on at all, but it was brought up every day, well chlorinated, for human consumption, cooking, washing-up, etc. We had our first taste of chlorinated drinking water for lunch that day, and did not greatly care for it.
At lunch-time we were introduced to the colonel, our future CO, who was very charming, and quite disarmed me by calling me by my Christian name at once. He gave us confidence and made us feel at home and part of the show, in spite of our newness.
Once again, we were tremendously outnumbered by the men, and I felt very insignificant and mouse-like, and am sure blushed deeply whenever spoken to. This was Saturday, but there was no half-day holiday; indeed, days off, we learned, were nonexistent, for the army was preparing its further advance, Rome was expected to fall in a few days’ time, and our unit had its part to play, like every other military, air or naval establishment in the command. Willy, however, had the brilliant idea of insisting that we must have the following day off for our unpacking, which seemed reasonable enough. Iris had been given the day off, as her husband had been advised of her arrival and was coming to visit her.
So after lunch and the making of these arrangements, we were taken along to our billet. We returned the way we had come, past the detention camp and out on to the main road. We turned right here, towards the sea, which was actually some way from us, and passed a row of white stone houses, very dirty, bullet-marked and slummy-looking. A host of the familiar grubby and cheery children played on the waste ground in front of these houses. At the end of the terrace, we turned left into the village street of Bellavista, another cobbled, winding, narrow lane like the one where the mess was. We walked for a few yards along the street and then turned right down another narrow alley and came to a large villa on our right, with a spacious porch and two doors. Iris and I were shown our room, which was one of three adjoining rooms in a fairly large flat, complete with bathroom. One other girl had the middle room. Willy was accommodated in the end room. The remaining three AT officers of the unit were in another villa. We comprised the whole female personnel – seven in all. Now for the first time we realised how useful our camp kit was to be. In the bedroom was a cupboard and some shelves and one chair, nothing else. Iris and I set to work unpacking our beds and set them up with some pinching of fingers and tugging and pulling to fit the canvas on to the prongs of the framework. My tin trunk became a bedside table and dressing table combined. It took us most of the afternoon to get sorted out.
The view from our bedroom window was magnificent. We looked north-west over the Bay of Naples. Below us were the apricot groves and the scattered houses of Bellavista, or ‘Beautiful View’, as the translation of the name goes, and very apt it was. Here and there, the tall umbrella pines towered over the landscape. In the port below several troopships lay at anchor.
Our house was so constructed that whereas our front door was on the ground floor, the bedrooms were on the first floor. The portion beneath our windows was occupied by a Neapolitan family, a nice vivacious little black-haired woman, with two attractive daughters and two or three small children, all of whom went barefoot. Her daughters cleaned our rooms and brought us a meagre ration of hot water to wash with in the morning, except when there was not enough water even for this purpose. Fortunately, we usually managed to procure one small canful each, but the sanitary system certainly was a trial. Baths were unknown, but occasionally the shower in our bathroom had enough water to make it workable in slow motion. I had not thought it possible to go more than a day without a bath, but soon found that one could quite happily go several months without it and although one missed it at first, one became accustomed to washing thoroughly and keeping clean, even in the intensely hot Italian summer.
That night a party was being given by an RAF unit affiliated to us, and they had invited the colonel and second-in-command, and any of the women officers who would like to attend. The others did not want to go, and so Willy and I were asked if we would like to. It was an opportunity to meet some of our future colleagues, and not having dates like some of our seniors, we accepted. It was not without some trepidation that I envisaged this evening with our CO. It was quite the first time I had been out in such august company, and I was very conscious of my humble rank and total lack of knowledge of local custom and savoir-faire, for everything here seemed different from Algiers – the people, the mess, which was British, the billets, and army life in general.
After dinner in the mess, we were packed into the back of the colonel’s car, and soon found ourselves once more on the road for Naples. It was nearly dark by the time we reached our destination, and so I did not have much opportunity of observing the city. In any case, I was far too busy concentrating on my Ps and Qs, and hoping that my tie was straight and not ‘under one ear’, as one of my previous COs had told me I usually wore it.
We arrived and were introduced to a naval commander, various RAF officers and two WAAFs. This inter-service business was certainly varied, and you never knew whom you would meet with next, what service, rank or even nationality. I soon found a flight lieutenant of my acquaintance from UK days by the name of Hugh Tredgold. He had a lovely tenor voice and had sung with Sadler’s Wells Opera before the war. It was not surprising that he was asked to sing, and as everyone crowded out on to a tiny balcony overlooking the bay, he sang some of the Italian songs that became so famous during the Italian campaign, such as ‘Torn’ a Sorrento’, ‘O sole mio’ and ‘Santa Lucia’. He also sang some airs from Verdi�
�s operas, and I remember ‘La donna è mobile’ from Rigoletto. His voice rang and echoed across the water and penetrated the mild serenity of the night. I was thrilled with the singing, and war and the Front seemed to fade out of the picture. For a few moments of sheer enjoyment we must all have forgotten why we were there. But the singer tired, and then there were drinks all round, followed by community singing, and finally the well-known ‘Green grow the rushes, O’, which usually provided the grand finale to most of our parties. We arrived back home at about midnight, and I was soon sound asleep after the heat of the day, the excitement of arrival and the unaccustomed drinks.
Next morning Willy came and told me to hurry up and get ready. Surprised, I said, ‘But there’s no hurry, we have all day to do our unpacking.’ ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said, ‘we aren’t going to finish it now, we’re off to see a bit of the country. I have asked for a transfer to Bari, where someone is needed for translations, and so I intend to see what I can while I’m still here.’ I did not argue, seeing that she was determined, and anyway the idea was attractive, especially as there were apparently to be no days off. After all, we were tired after the journey, or was it the party of the night before?
My Italian Adventures Page 6