Approach of the storm - Chapter 30

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Approach of the storm Chapter 30
By
Thomas Arthur Russell

The days passed by and air activity died down. Now came an opportunity to go ashore on a motor launch.

Weapons were carried in the shape of one or two rifles with the petty officer’s pistol. Stokers had to provide anything they could find. I armed myself with the hunting knife I had bought some time ago in Mombassa, although what I’d really do with it if it came to the crunch, I didn’t know. I never fancied sticking it in anyone and in any case, it wouldn’t do much good against a struggling sniper.

The party fell in. Rig was optional, from shorts or boiler suits to bathing trunks. It was a motley bunch that clambered aboard the launch and the Carley Raft, which it was to tow.
“Don’t forget, take any green stuff you can lay your hands on chaps and lets have some fresh fruit and vegetables aboard. Okay foraging party away.” And with a smile, the captain waved us off. “Christ, we look more like old Jenk’s pirates than British sailors,” a seaman said. “He might as well have brought the f****** cutlasses out and done the job properly.”

We ran to the beach and clambered ashore, splashing in with just a feeling of apprehension. Leaving two men with the launch and the raft, we made our way inland. It was easy to see how fiercely the battle had gone. Here and there, behind low stonewalls, bullets still in belts lay scattered around, along with little pieces of empty cartridge case. Here and there were small craters made by shell or mortar. We soon made contact with the natives as we came across a Sicilian farmhouse. After a cautious approach a woman came out looking like a gypsy of uncertain age. She could have been 60; then again, she could have been 40, as her sun-wrinkled skin gave nothing away. She beckoned us and, speaking in Italian, she took us into the house.

It was a lowly structure, with rough wooden furniture. Some of us sat down where we could. The woman turned away and called again. From behind what looked like a bedroom door, a girl of about sixteen appeared. The woman spoke and the girl left to come back with a large green glass container of red wine, placing large glasses and mugs on the table. The girl poured the wine and we drank. The rough, vinegary wine seemed remarkably refreshing and the coolness of the humble interior was welcome after the heat of outside. With gestures and a few halting words of English, we managed to conduct what seemed a precarious conversation. We didn’t want to upset these people.

After a while, the woman of the house showed us an oldish man. He looked to have a strange pallor and he seemed weak. It didn’t take long for her to explain to us that he was a victim of malaria, a disease I had never seen before, not even in my African service. The poor old guy looked rough. We were asked if we could provide medical help. We gave him a couple of Mepacrin tablets. The sick man took them grudgingly. We promised him more, if we could get ashore again.

Then the woman offered us possession of the girl in return for tobacco, cigarettes, matches, tea or coffee. Under the dirt the girl was attractive and I remember thinking that a good bath and a clean dress might produce a butterfly from the black cocoon she wore. Although as young men we were frustrated at the lack of female company, I doubt that we would have taken her offer up even if we had brought the items she asked for. No one would have dared, for fear of antagonising the more decent-minded lads. Some would have had kids of their own. War can bring out some strange behaviour; a rough, tough guy can become the gentlest of men, whereas a seemingly kind, inoffensive type can become just the opposite.

The woman sent us out to a lemon grove and left us to gather the unripe fruit. More of us gathered grapes and we managed some vegetable marrows. We didn’t have much of a selection but we were happy with what we had got and the ‘vino’ had started working. It had become more of a frolic now. We came across an area where the fighting must have been particularly heavy —spent cartridge cases and small craters pointed to the fact. I saw no crosses and surmised any dead must have been gathered up for internment in an official area. We began finding small-unexploded shells and even handled some which really was a stupid thing to do.

The potency of the vino could have proved tragic. It had driven commonsense away. I remember carrying a shell I intended to keep as a souvenir. It had a couple of wires dangling from a little round object on the nose. The P.O. saw it and ordered me to dump it immediately, ‘some of you silly bastards are going to get us all blown up’ he said. With a mixture of laughter and grumbles, we re-embarked and the launch out-putted its way back with the Carley Raft, see-sawing slightly from side to side giving us a welcome shower from the slap of the wash, created by the boat.

The skipper watched our approach through his glasses, probably wondering on the luck his crew had had. As he watched we drew alongside the gangway. The three sacks were passed up. Juice from the weight of grapes had stained through the sides of a couple of the bags. “What no chickens?” he said. The loot was piled on the deck and sorted out for issue to mess decks and wardroom, it didn’t really amount to much but it would prove a valuable change, a supplement to our diet! The skipper got permission for hands over the side to bathe, now that enemy air activity had fallen off, a concession very welcome.

The hot sun beat down and the hour’s swimming gave us a chance of cooling off and exercising lungs and limbs but I and a pal of mine, Geordie Pringle did a foolish thing, it cost us four days stoppage of bathing. Quite a distance down the anchorage and looking small, were two Italian seaplanes. Geordie and I decided we would attempt to swim to the planes and try to get aboard to see if we could get some sort of souvenirs. We reckoned we could do it easily in an hour by swimming them floating on our backs for a while and so on till we got to them.

The next time we heard the pipe ‘hands to bathe over the side’, away we went. It worked perfectly and easily. As we got nearer to our objectives, we saw they were getting larger and larger and it soon became obvious we had no way of getting to the cockpits. We carried on and eventually managed to clamber aboard a float. We decided to rest and then make our way back again, for no way could we get into the cockpit. There we sat resting in the hot Sicilian sun, pondering the long swim back and squinting at its glare as we gazed across the sparkling water to where the ship rode at anchor. As we looked we saw a figure clad only in a bath towel round him and as his arms rose up, we realised it was the skipper and he was training his binoculars on us.

We realised we were for it and we slipped back into the water and struck out. On our way back, the ship’s motor launch left the boom where she had been tied up and made her way at her best speed towards us. They were not long in easing alongside and giving us a lift aboard. “Who do you think you are, f****** Captain Webb or what? Old Jenks is doing his nut. You’ve got it to come, you silly b*******.” I felt a feeling of apprehension as we drew back alongside. The regulating C.P.O. stood with a half smile on his face as the captain, looking stern glowered at us.

As we came to attention before him I felt like a little kid, but instead of shorts, we were clad in swimming trunks. “Hands to bathe doesn’t mean hands to b**** off and swim to bloody China. It means hands to stay in the near vicinity of the ship where you can quickly clear the water. Air attack is still possible although unlikely and you two silly b****** have to take advantage of this privilege. In future use your heads and don’t abuse this privilege.” Turning to the Chief P.O., he said four days’ stoppage of swimming and with a final glower at us, he turned on his heel — while we made our way to the mess deck feeling very lucky we had got off so easily.

This captain of ours never failed to arouse a great feeling of respect in us. As we had stood before him, I’d studied his features from his ginger hair and his broad bluff face with the eyebrows tending to bushiness, and his slightly florid face, looking much like the face on a jug I’d seen and I’m certain I had caught a glint of a smile as he had turned away. This big figure and broad shoulders carried more responsibility than we youngsters realised, a good man albeit a stern one.

The battlefront had moved ahead now and our operations consisted of patrolling and shelling the enemy lines of communication ahead of the Eighth Army. The enemy were making a fighting retread, in some places putting up a bitter resistance using the Sicilian terrain to good advantage, with its orange and lemon groves, sub-tropical vegetation and hilly areas, with Mount Etna a big obstacle.

One day my attention was drawn to the notice board. It announced the death in action of Captain Verity on the Plain of Catania, a great cricketer and if my memory serves me well a Yorkie too. So, I wasn’t too upset when one day we picked up two German airmen. It was a sunny day with a moderate sea running, and I felt the ship losing way as it drew as near as possible to the men in the sea. A boat was swiftly lowered, and was swiftly recovered. You didn’t dally long in such waters. I saw one, a blonde youth, smiling and quite cocky, a lad of about twenty. His ‘oppo’ lay dead on the steel plating of the deck and looked about thirty or more. They were dressed in a kind of dark blue overall with plenty of zips on them with their wings over the swastika; the dead one was swarthy looking. It transpired a Beaufighter of the R.A.F. had shot them down into the sea as they had tried to hug the water in their effort to escape.

Now I took part in an impromptu and swift burial service. The skipper sent for the man who doubled as sail maker to bring a hammock cover and his thread and needle, one man was sent for a dummy shell, the dead man was searched for any belongings that might give us some information on him and his operational role, then he was sewn into the hammock cover. The dummy shell was placed and secured at his feet; the guardrail was opened with the body facing outboard feet first. The skipper then fished a bible out from somewhere, a quick little extract from it, then, “May God have mercy on his soul, ditch him.”

The body fell with a muted splash leaving only a trail of small bubbles as it disappeared into the blue depths, so long ago, yet so vivid. I wonder how many men, so young, stand on the seabed with a weight on their feet. I never knew what had happened to the skipper in the war before I knew him, but I seemed to sense a profound hatred of the Germans. Maybe it could have had something to do with the bombing of London. The skipper’s father was the Lord Mayor and a good man too. He tried his best to keep our families informed within the censor’s limits. I still have the treasured telegrams he sent my wife on those far off days.

The advance proceeded; our patrolling drew nearer and nearer each day to Messina. The flotilla penetrated up the eastern seaboard on night patrols, off the Italian mainland, nights filled with the strange aromatic smell of the land. I remember the stars overhead, the dark figures talking in whispers as they stood by the guns, tin hats and anti-flash gear at hand. They talked as if the enemy was in a position to hear them, but besides the binoculars of the lookouts, ears also had to be tuned for the throb of engines. ‘E’ boats were always a possibility or even a submarine on the surface, or a scouting plane.

These quieter moments arouse strange thoughts. I used to think of home, and my wife and what it would be like to be on a peaceful cruise with a millionaire’s bank account. How wonderful the peacetime cruises must have been, no watches to keep, no hands to part of ship, or action stations. Then the sudden staccato of the alarm rattlers to drive all sentiment away, booted feet clattering up steel steps to action stations, gun crews closing up, the clatter of tin hats as they were hurriedly snatched up to be perched on the white ghostly masks of anti-flash gear, the voices of gun crews numbering off and reporting to the bridge. ‘A gun closed up sir’, ‘B gun closed up sir’, ‘Y gun closed up sir’, and soon reports flowing into the bridge from damage control and fire parties, all parts of ship closed up in the space of a few minutes, speed the essential element, speed could save the ship and life. Then the message to stand down and resume third degree of readiness, the muttered profanity of muffled oaths, “Another f****** exercise, doesn’t the old bastard think of nothing else?” Yet the old bastard was really respected by all, just a naval word of endearment. We all know it was to keep us on our toes.

The Eighth Army was pushing on, sometimes against bitter opposition and soon the Germans evacuated Sicily and crossed the Straits of Messina. One night I saw what someone said was the Eighth Army barrage, on the Messina side. It just looked as if a rippling wave of white fireflies were hovering and a dull thunder, like a far off storm, drifted on the breeze. Red blotches on the Italian side of the Strait showed where the shellfire was falling. I wondered how many were dying out there and hoping all the civilians were out of the way.

Daylight dawned on an amazing scene. The sun shone on what looked like a gigantic washday. As we cruised warily offshore the houses across the Strait of Messina on the Italian mainland looked as if every housewife had hung all her whites out to dry. We quickly realised they were there as a sign of surrender. The Germans appeared to have retreated north but they must have left a rear guard, for I remember a gun had been casing some annoyance. It must have been a self-propelled gun. It would trundle from around a bath of hills fire and retreat again. Our flotilla was sent in to circle and try to draw his fire, while a Lysander spotter plane marked his position, he must have been very brave or very foolish, for he must have seen the battleship lying off shore out his range.

The ship was either the Rodney or Nelson mounting nine 16 inch guns, and as she received the co-ordinates from the plane, we saw the great guns move onto the bearing and elevate, then a great billow of thick yellowish orange smoke and a brilliant orange flash, the surface of the sea ruffled as if by a big wind and the noise was of tearing canvas as the shells rushed to their mark. That particular gun must have been blown to oblivion along with much of the terrain he’d been sheltering in. The invasion actually took place on the 3rd September 1943 under cover of the artillery and naval bombardment. The odd looking Monitors Abercrombie and Lord Roberts used their 15-inch batteries in the softening up process.

Pr-BR

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