'Stretcher-bearers': (15) To Randazzo

To Randazzo: August 9th-13th,1943

Shelling and mortaring were spasmodic during the night, but by morning had rumbled into the distance.
We awoke at the Main Dressing Station to find a full breakfast awaiting us.
This was followed by both lunch and tea which we had grown used to forgo in the line. Now at last we were ready for a good night's sleep, when we were informed that we were to go on night duty at 8 p.m.
We evacuated men shot in the lungs, feet, abdomen, men shocked and one crazed with nerves, starting and crying at every sound.. We took those shocked to a Field Surgical Unit some 100 yards across the road, where plasma was also being given.
We had finished loading about our sixth ambulance that night when I lay down for a rest at 3 a.m. and was next aroused at 6 a.m.
For another night we stayed at HQ., while our light section of stretcher bearers remained static at Bronte, and for the fourth time within three weeks we had a blanket each to sleep on when night duty became slack.
(Extract from "Algiers To Austria" pp 73-74: 'The nine miles or so from Bronte to Randazzo saw the most stubborn and most skilful German delaying action in the Division's experience of Sicily, save only for Centuripe itself - an action made all the easier for the Germans because they were now fighting on a very narrow front and because of the delays imposed by our own bombing and shelling of Bronte and its exits , which created a mass of craters and wreckage. The country was so difficult that there was no way to outflank the enemy, and the roads so mauled that we could use neither armour nor impetus to keep him moving.' )
The infantry were advancing again. Crockford, Clements, Taff and I were duly summoned to the Regimental Aid Post at Bronte and ordered to be ready to march forward at 8.p.m.
Finally we lined up on the road at 11.p.m. and set off in our usual position with the infantry.
We marched along a good main road without any hindrance or outside interference, but at about 2 a.m. word came back that the road was mined and that therefore transport which was coming up slowly behind us could not pass. The engineers advanced while we went back to the ambulance to take out stretchers and then continued forward with the infantry, because the whole idea of the advance was speed.
The infantry had to secure the right flank above the hills of Randazzo to cut off an enemy retreat in that direction, so we advanced in single file, marching in the centre of the road where anti vehicle mines are not usually laid. Instead these are planted in the expected tracks of vehicles and not on the crest of the road.
We soon outstripped the REs whose advance with electric mine detectors is necessarily slow. When we passed them they had already unearthed a number of yellow coloured anti-personnel "S" mines , nicknamed "mustard pots", and had stacked them up on a low wall by the roadside.
About a mile further on we were again halted and lay down in the middle of the road. Here the sappers (REs) caught up with us and unearthed a tellermine, so-called because it is shaped like a plate, German "teller", from within two feet of the stretcher squad behind us. Our party had already passed over it. Clements who was all but sitting on the mine had quite a shock. (The tellermine is spring-weight activated and does not explode until a sufficient weight of vehicles has passed over it.)
The infantry were not so lucky. Two of them were wounded and carried back down the line by another stretcher party.
Before long we left the road and entered a vineyard. Here, after considerable confusion, it was decided to rest,. the time being 4.20 a.m. I put on my gas cape, lay down and the next I knew was that it was 6 a.m. and we were on the move again.
The line of march was now over hilly country at the foot of Mt. Etna, and would have been very attractive if we had not been concentrating with clenched teeth upon keeping going. Eventually, even the apology for a mountain goat track disappeared and we found ourselves dragging stretchers over rocks of cooled lava .
"Wasn't them clinkers awful?" said the Crock afterwards.
About 11 a.m. we were surprised to find ourselves in full sight of Randazzo and only an occasional thud greeted our ears. I shared the belief that we were walking into a trap, but was too drained to bother about the future. Infantrymen and others were beginning to fall out exhausted.
We were now upon the outskirts of the town and marching raggedly along the one road when news came through that Randazzo had been abandoned and that Jerry was not retreating in our direction.
The local inhabitants lined the road with many "Vivas!".
During the halts they brought us apples, water and nuts and uttered blessings on our heads, we who had only recently shelled their town to the ground and sent them fleeing for life with their pathetic bundles.
At 12.15 we reached our destination at Randazzo. A cup of tea. Sleep.
We were told that our division had finished its part in the Sicilian campaign.
Slept that night where we had been halted. in a ditch.
The next day returned to the Main Dressing Station at Bronte for a rest.

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