My Italian Adventures
Page 7
We set off at about 9.45 a.m. with some sandwiches from the mess. We stood on the main Naples–Salerno road and were very soon picked up by a 15cwt and were driving comfortably along. On either side we gazed at the vineyards and apricot groves, rising on the slopes of Vesuvius, which came nearer every moment. The eruption had not long since ceased, and indeed our own unit had at one time had fears of having to move, as the village that suffered this time, San Sebastiano, was only one or two kilometres away. On each side of the main road, the whole way to Salerno, were huge piles of black lava, which looked like gravel, but black. It was very dusty and one’s eyes itched with the combined heat and dust. Our lift only took us halfway, as he had to turn off, so we were on the roadside again but before long had hailed a captain of the Royal Signals in a PU. He was going to Salerno and then on to a small rest-camp for his men, near Amalfi. We wanted to go to Amalfi and Positano on the Sorrento peninsula, which we had heard were fantastically beautiful, so he promised to take us as far as he was going. As he had taken part in the Salerno landings, he was able to explain to us exactly how it had all happened. Salerno itself was a bay with a small seaside town in its curve.
We struck off right along a narrow, winding road along the top of the cliff, and after half-an-hour’s drive the captain stopped at a small white house perched on the edge, and told us that this was his destination. We all went in and found the Italian family, the owners, on their veranda overlooking the sea, from which there was a sheer drop of several hundred feet. They were about to have some food, and offered us wine and spaghetti. We in turn made them taste our sandwiches, and we all made an al fresco meal together in the living room, which was plain and very clean, with a red-and-white checked tablecloth and straight-backed chairs with rush seats.
After this, our escort told us he had business to see to and must go, but would drive us a little further. In actual fact, he took us past Amalfi, on to Positano, and then dropped us off at the top of a narrow winding lane down to the sea. There we parted company, he having first taken our telephone number, as his unit was soon holding a dance and he wanted us to be there.
Amalfi was very attractive, with a lovely cathedral, but we had no time to stop that day and hurried on to Positano. This remains in my memory as one of the loveliest places in Italy, that land of every kind of beauty spot. The tiny alley down to the beach was overhung with trees, after the manner of a Devonshire lane. Here and there were houses, or covered gateways, cactuses in pots, and creeping pink and red geraniums. There was a tea pavilion at the bottom of the alley, and then you turned right to the beach, along which there were several cafés and some rows of changing cabins. There we had the best bathe I ever had in Italy. The beach is sandy, and shelves down only gently. Positano is in the hollow of a small bay, so that the water is sheltered for bathers, and that day there was no violent surf, only a gentle swell. We were easily able to swim out to the diving raft. There were not many bathers, and they were all members of the Allied Forces. We got into conversation with an officer at one of the cafés where we had some lemonade.
When I came out of my cabin after the bathe, I could not see Willy anywhere, and finally discovered her seated at a table in the pavilion, drinking tea with three or four Canadians. I did not feel much in the mood for pleasantries, but as I was at once invited to join them for tea, and indeed hailed by everyone by my Christian name in a most familiar fashion, I had no alternative but to comply as graciously as possible. The Canadians were very chatty and jolly, and it was not long before I discovered that it was more or less of a foregone conclusion that they would drive us back to Salerno to dinner in their mess that night, and afterwards return us to our billet. I was disappointed to go back the way we had come, instead of via Sorrento and Castellamare, but, as Willy said, they were willing to take us all the way, and they were very friendly. I thought she was getting on exceedingly well with them.
It was by now about six o’clock, so we had drinks all round, and at about seven o’clock we left the sun-bathed pavilion, and once more climbed the lane with its uneven paving stones to the main road. There we saw white villas, one above the other on the steep hillside, embowered in their gardens full of fruit trees and vegetables, with here and there pots of cactus and geranium.
The drive there had been gentle and agreeable; the drive back was rather terrifying. We travelled in a large shooting-brake, which took the corners on the winding coast road at never less than about 50 miles an hour. I tried to concentrate on the scenery, which was not so easy as it changed with the rapidity of a whirlwind. But we arrived safely in Salerno and were taken to the Canadian mess in the main street, which seemed a rather gloomy building. I remember we had a well-cooked meal, but my chief recollection of this evening was the pressing invitations we received to stay the night, as there was plenty of accommodation, or so they said. But we insisted absolutely that we must go back, as we had to start work early next morning, and so eventually our hosts agreed to drive us back to our unit. We positively raced along the autostrada at about 70mph. I have rarely felt so frightened, but we got back safely at about midnight. I finished my unpacking the following evening.
In this way we passed our first complete day in Italy, and I have nothing but happy memories of it: the sunshine, the vegetation, the flowers, the scenery, the bustle of the army base, the obvious interest taken in us by quite 70 per cent of the officers and soldiers we came into contact with, the cheerful though rather needy Italian peasants, and the knowledge that, insignificant as we were, we would work to the best of our ability in the great cause we were all defending. All these thoughts combined to banish homesickness and promote even further my enthusiasm and joie de vivre. But publicly I kept it hidden and appeared reserved, for I remembered still that I was the newest new girl, Willy being superior in rank and Iris knowing the country and speaking the language like a native. For a long time to come, shyness was to be my greatest problem. As for the saying ‘See Naples and die’, that seemed paradoxical. Surely it ought to be ‘See Naples and live – to the full!’
7
Just the Job
W ork began officially at 8.30 a.m., but the really keen types were there by eight. Breakfast began at 7.30 a.m. and went on until about 8.30 a.m., but everyone had finished by then. I soon discovered that if I went to breakfast early I escaped the masculine horde that usually surged in at about eight o’clock, and therefore I would get up by 6.45 a.m. and away by 7.15 a.m., as it was a good quarter of an hour’s walk from our billet to the mess. It was lovely at that hour when the dew was still glistening on the trees and plants, and in the spiders’ webs, which looked like silken tracery in the early morning sun. The heat of the day was not yet upon us and it was the best time to be out, other than in the evening after sundown.
Willy went off to Bari at about this time, and her room was soon taken by a different junior commander, by the name of Cicely Fowkes-Clevedon. She was another Italian speaker, like Iris, having been brought up in Florence. She was a tall, very slender girl, with medium-fair wavy hair, and she seemed possessed of a boundless enthusiasm for life. Perhaps that was what attracted me in her; at all events I came to know her quite well, and sometimes we went for walks together, up through the vineyards and the apricot groves to the slopes of Vesuvius. She was keen on walks before breakfast, but this meant rising by 6 a.m. at the latest, and I found that rather too much, especially as the heat during the day was very exhausting, and at that time we worked right through until seven o’clock or even later. But Cicely was used to the heat and it never worried her. I preferred to spend the evening at the window of our bedroom, from where I could watch the changing colours of the setting sun and the pink glow that suffused the port and the white villas. As the glow faded to pale blue, night gradually fell and the evening star shone ever more brightly in the sky, the only clear object in a world of softly blurred outlines and changing pastels.
In a flat adjacent to ours, part of the same house, were two or three male offi
cers, and I soon made the acquaintance of one, as he was also an early riser and we met on the way to breakfast. He was called Toby and we became firm friends. Going into breakfast with Toby I did not feel quite so self-conscious as I did on my own. Sometimes Cicely would come along early too, but generally she liked to put a walk in first, saying she must keep fit, or something of the sort. Meanwhile we were introduced to our new work and met our future colleagues at work as well as at play.
On the way to breakfast each morning, little Italian boys and girls would rush at us from the terrace and shriek excitedly, ‘Shocolat, per favore, signori caramelle’, and sometimes ‘Sigarette per Pappa’. I always tried to have a few sweets with me to distribute to the throng of eager little bambini, but there were scarcely ever enough to go round. Each day at the camp cook-house a small crowd of civilians would collect our leftovers, stale bread, etc., and I heard the admin officer saying that he did not know how to sift out the scores of applications from Italians to be taken on as civilian personnel, i.e., cooks, batmen, cleaners, etc. There were two women employed as cooks in the officers’ mess, and they did their best, even to the making of porridge for breakfast. They had only an open coal fire to cook on, and consequently the toast was like rubber and usually burnt. Everything was rather greasy, cooked all’ Italiano. Nearly all the rations were tinned or preserved in some way – tinned milk, dehydrated meat and potatoes, dried peas, dried egg, tinned bacon. The bread was American, made with white American flour; there was no butter, but an unpleasant, strong-tasting fat, which one could hardly honour with the name of margarine, and it took some getting used to.
The army imported almost everything at this stage, as the civilian population was very nearly starving. The only fresh food we had was fruit and occasionally a little salad. I felt very hungry, as the rations, though probably adequate in calories, did not seem to satisfy one, and as we had been starved of fruit for so long we used to buy it whenever possible. A week or so after my arrival the apricots were ripe, and for the first time I learned to appreciate a fresh, rather than a dried apricot. After that I must have eaten at least half a pound a day. In the mess we also had nespoli, something like a medlar, and later cherries. The fruit was wonderful, juicy and fresh and in limitless quantities. It was probably the standby of the Italians, for even flour was in short supply and they were hard put to find their daily dish of pasta.
On 4 June, just a week after we had landed in Italy, Rome fell. There was great rejoicing, and as some of our people went into the city immediately after, or at the same time, as the forward troops, we soon had news of conditions there. Reports began to come in after three or four days, and drivers, or officers reporting back, had wonderful tales to tell of the magnificent reception accorded the liberating army by the civilian population. Prince Doria was made sindaco, or lord mayor; he was well known for his pro-British leanings and his wife was Scottish. There was a purge going on of Fascist elements in the city government and among civil servants. Spies still lingering to report to the Germans were being rounded up, and everywhere the girls were out in their best frocks, with smiling faces, greeting the soldiers and welcoming them to the Eternal City. The children soon learnt the trick of wheedling bonbons or biscuits out of the sternest ally, and for a while the Romans forgot the horrors of the Gestapo and the spectre that had haunted them for so long – hunger. In reality there was little food, and for some time to come the citizens would be on very short commons. But the notorious torture chamber in the Via Tasso had been expunged, and the gates of the Vatican were once more open. Caruso, the infamous police chief, had been executed. A Highland officer, attached to us, arranged a parade of Scottish Pipers in St Peter’s Square, and they were greeted with great enthusiasm.
Quite a number of escaped British prisoners and civilians who had managed to flee the internment camps had taken refuge in Vatican City. It was a joyful day for them when the Stars and Stripes and the Union Jack were unfurled on the Piazza Venezia, opposite the old palazzo of the same name, where Mussolini had been wont to speak from his famous balcony to crowds well drilled in the art of automatic appreciation. Rome Allied Area Command was set up and, as for most other units in our district, plans were going forward for our move up to Rome. An advance party went off to contact our forward members, and the rest of us kept our baggage semi-packed, ready to move at a moment’s notice. Meanwhile, we enjoyed what we could of Naples.
The second Sunday I spent in Bellavista, some of us went up to the Palace of Caserta in the afternoon, where the Advanced Headquarters, Allied Armies Italy (AAI), were then situated, to inspect one of the first Panther tanks captured from the Germans. We were sitting in the back of a 15cwt, very much bumped about on the road, which was rough and uneven from shell holes and the passage of many tanks, enemy and Allied, and other vehicles. After we got back I did not feel very well, and developed some sort of ‘gippy tummy’ that night. This was an internal upset, some kind of chill in the stomach, and everyone seemed to get their dose sooner or later, and at periodic intervals. I was in bed for about three days, during which a kindly Aberdeenshire batman brought me marmalade sandwiches and weak sweetened tea in a Thermos from the mess, as there was no possibility of procuring any food at our billet. How I looked forward to that tea, and also to the water that he or one of the girls brought me, the water in the taps being quite undrinkable.
After I had recovered, the MO prescribed a mosquito net for me – which the quartermaster at first said was un-procurable – as I was still continuously being bitten, and the flies were really cruel in the office, attacking one’s arms and legs under the table. I believe the proximity of the battlefields made them particularly venomous that summer. It was sensible to have a fly switch, but I am afraid I never got one; I remember one man saying later on that he had swatted a hundred flies a day. I don’t know what other swatting he can have had time for.
With a net one was at least safeguarded at night. I was beginning to have a real fear of malaria, but perhaps it was due to my conscientious consumption of mepacrine that I did not get it. The MO also elected to inject me for tetanus, but for some reason known only to himself he injected the serum into my forearm, fortunately the left one, but I spent several uncomfortable days with it – the prick itself was like a wasp sting. After my attack of gippy tummy, however, I suffered very little from any ailment, so perhaps it was as good as an inoculation. Our MO was a little, thickset Scotsman from ‘Glasgie’, and he was always kind to me. I remember being slightly startled when he visited me the Monday after our expedition to Caserta, and asked me what the matter was, and then enquired what medicine I would like.
After my few days off sick, I was back at work again, in an office, with two other ATs, the walls covered with maps. It was interesting work, again of a secret nature, with a direct bearing on the fighting taking place daily within a hundred miles of our office, so that one did feel near the war, although the doodlebugs were now devastating London. That was something I missed, leaving England just before they started – I hardly know whether to regret missing them or not. There was one air over Naples shortly after our arrival, and a great firing of Ack-Ack, but nothing was hit. That was the last time.
We worked very hard, and the work was absorbing. In the evenings, however, we were free to do as we liked. I met Jacky again, and one evening she suggested that we should supplement the rather unsatisfying mess dinner with a meal at a sort of ristorante, halfway up Vesuvius. One could get fresh eggs, she said. The idea was tempting, and we had so little diversion that I welcomed it as a change. It was a beautiful, warm night, and we set off at about eight o’clock, having about three-quarters of an hour’s walk before us. I stuck to the main path, the tiny short cuts being in uncertain sandy ground that might give way and cause us to slither down at any moment. For this reason, I was terrified when Jacky would insist on taking these short-cuts, and with her long legs would plunge into the undergrowth and leave me to join her, panting and puffing, some way up. I was al
armed at the idea of her spraining an ankle or breaking a leg, for I was sure it would be impossible to carry her a yard, and it was an isolated part of the countryside.
As it was, we arrived safely and sat at a bare wooden table on the terrace overlooking the harbour, with Vesuvius towering above us, its slightly smoking crater a rather forbidding sight in the dusk. The padrona brought us two fried eggs each and some small fried new potatoes. We washed this feast down with Vesuvius wine, which I found a little bitter. Afterwards we paid our bill, which with the exchange at 400 lire to the pound, cost us about 10s each, and set off down the mountainside again. This time Jacky kept me company, so I was spared the worry of seeing her glissading down the scrubby slopes, on which everything grew in old lava, in the half-light. Vesuvius looked rather eerie as darkness fell, and I was glad to be back near the busy high road again, in the village street. But it was an enjoyable evening. All pleasures have to be paid for, however, it seems, and that night I suffered miserably from indigestion and vowed never to taste the wine again. Later experience taught me that it must have been immature, and indeed there was very little good wine about then, the Germans having commandeered every litre they could lay their hands on. ‘Tedeschi portano via tutto’ (‘The Germans have taken away everything’), the Italians said constantly, in the elliptical language of infinitives they often used for the troops.
Sometimes our evenings would be spent in a short excursion into the vineyards to buy a few apricots from the peasants, and chat to them about the war, as far as we could. They spoke for the most part a sort of dialect, at least it was not pure Italian, and seemed even to have occasional words of French, or something similar, in it. For instance, after nearly every sentence they would say, ‘Compris?’, to see if we had understood. I discovered also the irritating way they had of talking in infinitives. This was with the best of intentions, to make the language more easily understandable to us, but as my teacher in London had gone out of her way to make me learn the verbs, I found it easier to follow a normal conversation with the proper verbal forms.