When Christmas Eve came there was an air of suppressed excitement. I had been out in the country, near Frascati with one or two of the girls, and we had managed to collect a bit of holly and a few Christmas trees. We had come upon a strangely camouflaged house in our search for the trees during what was almost a last resort, as we could not find baby firs anywhere. We drove up a drive at the end of a long winding lane, and at the top of the bend was this house, for all the world camouflaged like an airfield hangar. The inevitable custode and his wife came to see what we wanted, and I explained. He willingly agreed to let us have some trees, and took us through a small plantation of them, where we chose two or three of suitable sizes.
The villa, he told us, had been the headquarters of Air Marshall Kesselring, but was now unoccupied until the owners should return. One could see that the property was in a sorry state, grass growing long on the lawns, and weeds everywhere; the privet hedges were untrimmed and straggly. But the Italians were very friendly, and a few sweets comforted a small boy who followed us round with plaintive eyes. Our Welsh driver helped the countryman to heave the trees into the back of the truck, and we set off once more for Rome, through luxuriant woods, long damp grass and rich leaf mould, on to the bumpy main road.
It had been arranged that anyone who wished could attend Midnight Mass, either at St Peter’s, or at the English church in the Via Babuino. I went to St Peter’s with four ATS girls and several male sergeants. There were one or two others heading for St Peter’s, but we were not with them. An immense crowd had gathered within the Basilica and on the great piazza in front of it. We soon became entangled in the crowd, and despite the densely packed mass of people managed to work our way up the steps and into St Peter’s. The singing was of course magnificent, and the Pope himself celebrated Mass, but one was at best an onlooker, and it was extremely difficult to see anything of the actual service beyond the serried ranks of the faithful. The end of the evening was, however, frankly unpleasant, and put me off ever attending any sort of a festival again. Somehow or other, just before the end, we struggled out mostly by linking hands in a chain; but on the steps the moment came when already tired, hot and breathless, one wondered if one would lose one’s balance altogether as more and more people tried to make their exit, and those in front were quite incapable of progressing even a few inches further on. Somehow or other we managed to get down these steps in the semi-darkness, lit only by the shaft of light from the interior of the great church and the lamps round the square. We all arrived safely back at the unit at about one o’clock, very much the worse for wear. Fortunately no-one was more than bruised or shaken, but I heard next day that a man in one of the other parties had had a rib crushed in the press. I did not know until later that one of the girls with me was subject to fainting fits. I did not volunteer to accompany anyone to St Peter’s for any other celebration.
Decorating the anteroom was of course quite a job, but we managed to make it look quite attractive. The troops ate their Christmas dinner there, as it was the largest room in the building, their canteen being too small to accommodate everyone at once. Two or three AT officers cooked the mess breakfast on Christmas Day, and I thoroughly enjoyed this. All the batmen came and had tea and chatted, and the atmosphere became cheery very early in the proceedings. After breakfast there was a fancy dress football match, for which various articles of feminine attire were begged and borrowed from the ATs. It was very funny, and I believe Doc went as Julius Caesar. The dinner was a great success, and was accompanied by the usual greetings, the band playing, and the ever-popular sprigs of mistletoe in evidence. The officers of course did the waiting. There was an all ranks dance that evening in the village, to which most of us repaired for a time, and where an inordinate amount of white wine and vermouth was consumed, and a thoroughly good time was had by all.
The officers had their dinner on Boxing Night, and afterwards we attended a really first-class show put on by the dramatic people, in which of course there were several good parodies of camp life, and not a few easily recognisable caricatures of camp personalities.
Tony and I planned to give a party for the ATS girls, which would be as homely as possible, and to this end we had decided to find somewhere in Rome where it could be held at reasonable expense. We hunted high and low without success, and finally, almost in despair, we asked the porter at the Eden Hotel, and he suggested the Pensione Giulia. So off we went, and I had to do the translating, for the two little old ladies who ushered us in, the Signorine Giulio, owners of the pensione, spoke very little English and Tony very little Italian. They received us with old-fashioned courtesy, agreed to lay on a supper for us, and showed us two rooms that we could use. We arranged the menu, and on the day itself took small presents and decorations along. The male element was composed of Tony and a few sergeants and corporals from the office staff. Altogether there were about a dozen of us. The affair was a great success, thanks largely to the Signorine who cooked us a magnificent meal, including spaghetti with tomato sauce, roast chicken and tinned Christmas pudding, the latter which we took along and showed them how to heat. They provided suitable wine, and with great charm and real kindliness made us feel welcome and at home. Afterwards various games were played, some for prizes, but the favourite among the girls seemed to be forfeits, and towards the end Postman’s Knock was mooted. Fortunately it was time to depart, for their passes expired at midnight. This party was such a success that another was organised later in the winter. This time the girls made time for Postman’s Knock.
We attended one or two other unit celebrations, and certain units gave parties especially for some of the Italian children, who were having rather a thin time of it that Christmas. We managed to provide Signora Pinto and Maria with quite good Christmas Boxes, with which they were overjoyed.
The next great celebration, of course, was New Year’s Eve, and the New Year was ushered in according to tradition with Auld Lang Syne. There were great jollifications, for in spite of the stalemate in the Apennines and the grim winter that our fighting men were enduring, which made our discomforts very negligible, everyone felt that it would be the last Christmas of the war, and that the New Year would see the end of Hitler and the Nazis.
Just after Christmas, Jonathan came down from the Indian division to which he was attached to spend a couple of days’ leave in Rome, and brought with him one of the divisional interpreters, an Italian officer, now seconded to the British forces. He was a very charming man in his thirties, I believe a film director in private life, and invited me to accompany Jonathan to dinner at his house one evening. He was a bachelor and lived with his mother in Parioli – one of the smartest parts of Rome – and here they had a comfortable house in a pleasant garden, and were well looked after for domestic service, as far as one could discover. I was most impressed with their arrangements. The other ladies of the party wore evening dress, but as usual I had to appear in uniform, not that it was a hardship. I was rather proud of it, in fact, and could never understand girls going absolutely manic about getting themselves dolled up in civvies, when half the time, if they did but know it, uniform suited them just as well, if not better.
There was a third man in the party, an elderly, distinguished friend of the family, or uncle. We were six altogether. The dinner was exquisite, and I learnt just how perfectly the Italians could do things. The waiter who served the food wore white gloves, and everything was spotlessly dainty and fresh. I have no recollection of the menu, except that everything, each course and wine, followed by coffee and liqueurs, was perfect and in keeping with the other. Afterwards, the ladies retired to the salon and I had the opportunity of getting to know Tenente Battisti’s mother – a perfect Italian gentlewoman, well educated and cultured. All in all, the evening was a great success. My one regret was that, in spite of cordial invitations to visit them, with the passing of time and our isolated position outside the city, I could not keep up with such interesting and charming acquaintances.
Jacky had
applied for a transfer to India, as her fiancé was stationed out there, and she hoped to join him there and get married. She continually harried the CO to get herself transferred, and was allowed to go to AFHQ for an interview early in January. She was away for about three days and in her absence I became acting PA.
Just before Jacky went off to AFHQ, in the midst of cold spell, when we even had some snow, Jimmy and two friends turned up from Caserta. Jimmy as usual was hot on the track of antiquities, real or imagined, and insisted that I accompany him to Tarquinia. I did not know what or where it was, and felt sure that it was utterly foolish to go looking for old pots in the snow. However, they persuaded me into it, and one icy January morning found us bowling down Via Aurelia in a howling gale, with snow floating periodically into the open sides of the jeep. I had to sit in front with Jimmy, and his two friends at the back, though from the warmth point of view I would have preferred to be behind, and was not at all sorry when after Civitavecchia we picked up a pathetic and frozen-looking priest with a suitcase. It was nice that we should give this shivering padré a lift, and I was then able to climb into the back and sit between the other two, and thereby at least gain protection from the wind. Even a stop for coffee in Civitavecchia had not succeeded in defreezing us. We had found a queer little café among the ruins, with a few tables and sawdust on the floor; there we had some good coffee and chatted to the proprietor and his family. There was nothing much to be bought – just a few biscuits. But that did not worry us, as we intended to scrounge something later on in Tarquinia, if we could.
Not long after Civitavecchia we came to a hill on our right, and on its summit, perched almost in the clouds, was a small walled town. ‘There you are,’ said Jimmy, ‘That’s Tarquinia for you – we’ll have some grub first and then look for the Etruscan tombs.’ We drove up a narrow winding road and under an arch into the main street of Tarquinia and a sort of square, on which stood a church. We found a ristorante almost straight away – a completely Italian one, and my first experience of such. We had the usual spaghetti, sprinkled with Parmesan cheese, a strong-flavoured cheese that takes some getting used to. The ristorante seemed to be almost entirely full of men, but beyond a cursory stare we did not attract attention, although we must have been the only troops in Tarquinia – at least we saw no signs of any others.
Yet the war had not passed this ancient stronghold of the Tarquins by, and the museum next to the ristorante, the ancient Palazzo Vitelleschi, where we inspected some interesting Roman remains, had had a direct hit. What there could have been to bomb in Tarquinia I have no idea – perhaps the Germans had had some concealed fortifications there.
We saw the cathedral, a plain stone affair and touching in its simplicity, so different from the trappings of many Roman churches. Then we piled into the jeep, with our guide on the running board directing operations, and drove through the deserted town. All Italian towns seemed to be deserted at that time, particularly in the afternoons. We then came out on the other side and drove down a tiny country road, which ran the length of the hill-brow. Suddenly, our guide said, ‘Ecco, ci siamo’. Jimmy stopped and we stepped out into the snow. ‘Venite qui,’ said the guide, and led us into a field.
We went down several steps into the snow-covered ground and entered a small room, perhaps about 12ft square, and every wall covered in what looked like painted tiles. I was quickly informed that this was a tomb of the Etruscans, whose civilisation was predominant in central Italy prior to Roman times, and whose art was famous and has influenced much art since, including Raphael. The designs were remarkable, especially the birds and animals, which struck me as being very realistic, and the colours were pure and bright as if new. Flowers and plants were rhythmically intertwined, and the whole formed beautiful artistic frescoes, of which the main impression was of airiness and grace. I was thrilled; this was much better than Jimmy had ever done before, and I felt the cold drive in the snow had been well worthwhile. We visited several such tombs, and all had been decorated in the same graceful style, with pure, delicate colouring, and various designs of birds and flowers and animals. It seemed incredible to think that the artists who had produced this work had lived more than 2,000 years ago.
We lingered quite a long time, and then transported our guide back to the town and bade him a cordial adieu. The drive back was dark and exceedingly cold, but it did not matter, for we had seen something that afternoon that we could never forget, and that certainly proved to be one of the highlights of that winter in Rome.
15
Roman Winter II
R ound about this time I was also elected messing officer, and so my duties increased and I found myself really busy. Messing officer was a job that appealed to me immensely. Once a week I went into Rome to the flower, fruit and vegetable market on the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele, and bargained for spinach, cauliflowers or eggs, which I suppose were really ‘black market’, although in Italy there never seems to be a distinction between what is ‘black’ and what is ‘white’ market – maybe it is all ‘grey’. To my astonishment, along the kerb beside the market, under a colonnade, I saw rows and rows of motor tyres, and almost every conceivable spare part neatly displayed for sale. This must have been where the vehicle parts were disposed of that disappeared daily from unattended Allied vehicles, unit parking-places, transport columns and even chained and locked cars and trucks. The strictest vigilance could not stop it, for the thieves were artists indeed. I have heard that on one occasion a jeep chained to a lamp-post was found in the early hours of the morning without any wheels, still tied to the lamp-post. Sometimes whole vehicles would disappear. I also heard that bicycle inner tubes were sent abroad in letters to soldiers, who then traded them on the black market. If that were true, you could hardly blame them for doing it, for the exchange was still officially 400 lire to the pound, whereas the real exchange, i.e., the black market, was 700 lire at least. Therefore, for each English pound of one’s pay, one received just over half in lire.
The centre of the huge square was completely taken up with a mass of stalls. The flowers were up at one end, a blaze of colour, and there were stalls for meat, vegetables, eggs, fish, nuts and everything edible down one side; at the other end were clothes, underclothes, ties, materials, elastic, lace and silk stockings. Here you could buy everything, provided you had the money. In a side street, you could also buy every kind of NAAFI provision from tea to palm olive toilet soap or English razor blades. I used to walk all round the food stalls before making any purchase for the mess and compare prices, for my messing money was not much and had to be carefully eked out over each week, at the end of which I was provided with a fresh allowance by the captain or mess secretary. Fortunately the mess sergeant kept very accurate accounts, and so we always knew where every lira went. The sergeant was a dour Scot and I am sure greatly disapproved of me at first, but after a time we got used to each other, and I liked him immensely for his accuracy, reliability and even enthusiasm. We had long discussions on menus, small comforts that could be provided, and on all and sundry, including football, for he was a prominent member of the unit team.
I went up to the kitchen every afternoon to look round and discuss the next day’s menus and what rations had come in, and to inspect them. I was only learning, and although perhaps he did not know it, Sgt Macduff was in many ways my instructor. So also was a middle-aged male cook, an old soldier, from whom I picked up a lot of hints about what to do with indents, kitchen equipment, rations and a thousand and one things that I must have learnt about at OCTU, but until then had never had to deal with. Among other things, we experimented with different methods of serving the hated ‘M and V’, or ‘meat and veg’, which can be quite palatable if curried or otherwise disguised. I introduced one or two new dishes that proved popular, and picked up as many ideas as possible from the two cooks. We were all keen to make the messing a good show, for after all food does affect morale.
Of course the officers complained – they considered grumbling a
sacred rite – but I did not allow it to trouble me much, for I was convinced that the best possible was being done with the catering, and that the staff were all co-operating in making the food as enjoyable, and stretch as far, as the rations would allow. So I told a particularly vociferous grumbler on one occasion, ‘It doesn’t matter what you say, it’ll just go in one ear and out of the other.’ His reply disconcerted me for a moment, and raised a laugh at the table, ‘What can you expect,’ he said, ‘when there is nothing in between to stop it?’
In the grey days of February, when we shivered at night, and huddled round the ante-room stove in the evenings, and slept in all our clothes, I began to have an uneasy feeling that all was not well at home. Then one night I had a most dreadful fear for my father, that he was in great danger or his life threatened. The following day I received a telegram telling me that he was dangerously ill. ‘Try to come home’, the wire said. It was as if I had been struck with a cosh – for a few moments my mind just did not register, and then everything in the world seemed different, strange and seen through a mist. The CO was most kind, and tried to arrange for me to have a compassionate posting home. A further telegram urged me more insistently to try for compassionate leave, but of course I knew nothing of the complaint, nor what caused it. So the CO arranged for me to journey down to our unit in Naples and have an interview with the compassionate postings branch of AFHQ to see whether anything could be done, though no-one seemed very hopeful. An application was sent in, and one cold, biting morning about two days later, I departed in a jeep with another ATS officer, Roberta, who was temporarily over from Greece before being posted home. We sat muffled up in our greatcoats, for it was bitterly cold in the jeep – although it had a roof, it lacked side screens, and the wind seemed to drive right through us. We took Route 6, now open to military traffic, and were soon in the mountains, which rose stern, aloof and snow-covered on each side of the road.
My Italian Adventures Page 17