Alan Whicker - Whicker’s War and Journey of a Lifetime

While escorting Correspondents around the Front in search of their stories, he refused to go anywhere near the fighting. ‘Might get the Humber damaged,’ he would explain, apologetically. ‘War Department property, you know.’

It was true that PR only had a few Pullmans left from the desert, and that some Correspondents were quite content to go along with his careful timidity and fight-the-good-fight only upon their portable typewriters; but the more gung-ho reporters would not be fobbed off by the gentility of ‘Sir Gerald and Lady Boles’, as Ted Gilling called him scornfully. They were missing all the action and the subsequent stories. After indignant protests from the Press it was decided that Sir Gerald had to go.

He was too endearing a man to humiliate by RTUing, by returning to his unit, so his seniors cast around for an acceptably safe job away from the Front where Sir Gerald could pursue a gentler life undisturbed by explosives. They finally decided to send him back to Bari. This port was then miles behind the Front, but a sufficient number of Correspondents were passing through on their way to Yugoslavia and the Balkans to justify the posting.

With touching relief he turned his back on the war, leaving his brother officers to get on with what could be quite a dangerous role – without, as it transpired, further casualties. Sir Gerald drove south and settled into a sea view suite in a comfortable harbourside hotel to sit-out the rest of the war peacefully in that tranquil unscathed city.

In a surprise Luftwaffe raid a few nights after his arrival, an ammunition ship anchored in the harbour outside his hotel suffered a direct hit. It exploded and sank, taking sixteen other ships with it. The blast was felt for 20 miles. Sir Gerald was blown through several walls, and into eternity.

I always enjoyed the ‘Sign Wars’ which could relieve the monotony of any journey. There were the useful warnings: ‘Dust Brings Shells’, the rather laboured, ‘If you go any further, take a Cross with you.’ Even the decisive, ‘Don’t be a bloody fool.’ Should you pass one saying ‘Achtung! Strasse liegt unter Feuer!’ it meant, roughly translated, You’ve come too far – turn round and get the Hell out of here.’

In another category there were those which gave units a chance to publicise their achievements, or get their own back. All Americans were keen on public relations – drivers were always being ‘Welcomed’ to some village or river crossing ‘by courtesy of’ a US Infantry regiment which was just doing its job. Often it seemed we were on Route 66 and would soon be offered a giant hamburger.

On one mountain road where as usual the Germans had blown every bridge, the first replacement had a large sign saying proudly, You are Crossing this Bridge by Courtesy of the US Fifth Army Engineers who Built it in 3 Days 14 Hours and 26 Minutes!’

At the next blown river-crossing the familiar British Bailey bridge had a small notice: ‘This Bridge was built by the REs in 9 Hours 42 Minutes’. Underneath in brackets and small print: (‘There is nothing unusual about this bridge’). They must have been the Sappers who invented Cool.

There was also the tantalising problem of naming defensive Lines – and the enemy had plenty. To infantrymen the war in Italy was one fortified German Line after another. Break through one and there was always the next, just ahead. Ford a river – and there’s its twin, behind an identical mountain. We had the Attila Line, the Caesar Line, the Bernhard Line, the Trasimene Line, the Barbara Line, the Olga and Lydia Lines, the Paola and Mädchen Lines … As the battle moved north it seemed the Germans were thinking more of home and the wife, even amid the big-time Gothic and Gustav Lines built for the Todt organisation by Italian prisoners.

A name had to be resonant, defiant, gallant and worth fighting for. So to restore the billing it was obvious that a major line should have been named after the Führer – heads were due to roll. The Adolf Hitler Line needed to be the most brave and steadfast of them all. This would please everyone back at Command in Berlin.

So fortunately when the formidable Gustav Line was breached, the Germans had just established a deeper defence running across the Liri Valley, near Pontecorvo and Aquino – at last, the Hitler Line!

This blocked any Allied movement along Highway 6 and up the valley. It was even more substantial than the Gustav and featured permanent concrete works, the turrets of Panther tanks buried in the ground at key points, and 75mm guns. Every defensive position was, as usual, cleverly sited.

Then suddenly in January ’44 the significant Adolf Hitler Line was renamed the Senger Line, after the Commander of the 14th Panzer Corps responsible for the defence of Monte Cassino, Lieutenant General Fridolin von Senger und Etterlin.

The reason for that urgent name change was not too subtle. Someone had read the runes – and the future was uncertain. A defensive line liable to be humiliatingly breached by Allied armies – or even worse, ignored (remember the Maginot Line?) could not be allowed to go down under the name of the Führer. Generals had been executed for less. Fridolin would doubtless be more amenable, so he was in the charts for a few weeks. He must have been thoughtful and accommodating for he tried to save the Abbey of Monte Cassino, was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford and reportedly disliked Hitler.

That name change was fortunate for some, and just in time. The Senger Line crumbled – indeed General Clark became concerned lest its quick penetration by the Eighth might lead to a sudden dash to Rome. He would much rather see his own Fifth Army held down and savaged than have the Eighth triumphant on his Road to Rome …

I missed much of the fun and games of Naples and Bari because in that bleak winter the Army was being decimated, not by Germans but by jaundice.

This spread through all ranks and did far more damage than high explosives. First it made you feel like death, while you still looked fine. Then you turned bright yellow and felt fine, while looking like death. It was a confusing and unpleasant plague.

I was carried by ambulance many uncomfortable miles from the snow-covered mountains of central Italy, south to Bari – to experience the first flight of my life. It was not stylish. I was in the middle of a stack of stretchers in a packed Red Cross DC3 which flew back to Catania in Sicily, then on to Tunis. After this an ambulance train took me across the border to Constantine in Algeria and finally, a truck on to hospital to start treatment. By then I was almost well again.

Strange that the first of the many millions of airborne miles I was to cover around Whicker’s World during my lifetime should have been endured lying flat on my back. Now of course you pay extra to travel like that.

The Anzio Experience has remained with me, mainly because I never expected to live through it. One retains a proprietorial attitude towards any hazardous expedition experienced totally, from planning to victory. Having invaded Sicily and then the mainland of Italy, I’d had two lucky invasions and was hoping the next assault landing would complete my quota: Third Time still Lucky.

I had worked my way back to the Front line from the hospital in Algeria, three or four countries away, and rejoined AFPU on the east coast of Italy just in time for the unit Christmas party. This was as jolly as could be, considering our billet: the Vasto Theological College.

On that Adriatic sector I joined one of the best divisions in the Eighth Army, the 78th ‘Battleaxe’ Division which had fought its way here from Medjez-el-Bab in Tunisia and was now being replaced in the line by an old partner, the tough 1st Canadian Division. To capture the gaunt mountain town of Ortona they faced the entrenched 1st Parachute Division, most disciplined and feared of Kesselring’s armies. It was the battle of champions.