Naples '44 Read Free

driven suggested panic. One stopped nearby, and the crew clambered out and fell into one another’s arms, weeping. Shortly afterwards there were cries of ‘gas’, and we saw frantic figures wearing gas masks running in all directions.
    Chaos and confusion broke out on all sides. The story was that there had been a breakthrough by the 16th Panzer Grenadier Division, which struck suddenly in our direction down the Battipaglia road, with the clear intention of reaching the sea at Paestum, wiping out the Fifth Army HQ, and cutting the beachhead in half.
    Rumours began to come in thick and fast, the most damaging one being that General Mark Clark was proposing to abandon the beachhead and had asked the Navy for the Fifth Army to be re-embarked. No one we spoke to believed that this operation was feasible, the feeling being that at the first signs of a withdrawal the Germans would simply roll forward and drive us into the sea.
    In view of the general confusion, and the absence of precise information of any kind, Sergeant-Major Dashwood decided to send four members of the Section on their motor cycles to Salerno tomorrow, using a narrow track running along the shore. The hope was that the Field Security Officer might have arrived there by now, and be able to issue the order releasing us from this absurd predicament. It sounded a hazardous adventure for the people concerned, as no one was even quite certain whether or not the Germans had reached the sea at any point between us and the city. They are certainly in solid possession of the main road running parallel with the track.
    This afternoon distraught American ack-ack gunners brought down their third Spitfire. This had just flown in from Sicily and, taking off in pursuit of FW 190s, was immediately shot down, while flying at about three hundred feet.
September 14
    We are in an olive grove two miles south of Albanella Station. The battle for the beachhead has been going on for twenty hours – all through the day and night. Throughout the afternoon the noise of the bombardment strengthened and drowned the happy chorus of the Italians trudging by incessantly down the railway track on their way home. By nightfall the din was tremendous. German tanks coming down the tongue of land between the Sele and Calore rivers and making for Albanella had reached a point just out of sight of our hastily-dug slit trench, possibly a mile and a half away, where they were taking a pasting from the heavy guns of several battleships anchored just offshore. Every time these opened up with salvoes of fifteen-inch shells our uniforms fluttered in the eddies of blast. To the north a great semicircle of nightscape had taken on a softly pulsating halo spread by a kind of ragged fireworks display, and occasionally a massive explosion opened up like a pink sea-anemone with wavering feelers of fire. At about eleven o’clock an excited American officer dashed up in a jeep. He was distributing light carbines, and we got one apiece with the warning that the failure to return them next day would be treated as a serious military crime. With these weapons, and our 38 Webley pistols we were ordered to assist in the defence of Army Headquarters against the Mark IV and Tiger tanks that were now rolling towards us. What this officer did not tell us was that he and the rest of the officers were quietly pulling out and abandoning their men.
    Outright panic now started and spread among the American troops left behind. In the belief that our position had been infiltrated by German infantry they began to shoot each other, and there were blood-chilling screams from men hit by the bullets.
    We crouched in our slit trench under the pink, fluttering leaves of the olives, and watched the fires come closer, and the night slowly passed.Then at four o’clock we learned that the Headquarters was to be evacuated after all, and that we were not to be sacrificed. We started up our motor bikes, kept as close as we