The heat of an Italian morning touched our faces as we climbed off the coach and walked slowly down onto the open beach. The waters of the Mediterranean sparkled like a diamond, and children ran up and down along the sand, pulling a kite behind them. Old men with skin like leather sat on the sea wall and supped cold beer, which looked like a regular breakfast routine for them.
Jack paused as we reached the shoreline. He looked up towards the town and mumbled ‘Salerno’, like it was a word from an ancient language, not just the name of where we were or the place where the first major Allied landings on the European mainland had taken place in September 1943.
Jack had been one of those who was there. It wasn’t like Normandy, he had said, although his knowledge of that was from books as was mine. What he meant was there was no Atlantic Wall here. Not even that many mines or barbed wire, certainly not on the beach. The real battle had been inland, as they pushed to expand their bridgehead and the German forces threw everything they had at them, from artillery and mortars, to Nebelwerfers, infantry and Assault Guns.
Here began the ‘Second Front’, what Churchill had called the “soft underbelly of the Third Reich”. An easy push up through Italy, onwards to Austria and then enter the spiritual heart of Nazi Germany in Bavaria. “Yes,” said Jack “so bloody easy... but we soon learned.”
The Italian Campaign saw nineteen months of tough fighting until the final battles in April 1945. These men like Jack fought in some of the most difficult terrain experienced by Allied soldiers in the west: rocky outcrops like “Bare Arsed Ridge”, in small stone-walled defences called Sangars opposite the Monastery at Monte Cassino, and in soup-like mud on the Sangro. Men froze on the mountains, drowned in the many rivers they had to cross, and time and again faced a determined, well disciplined and trained enemy that was never easy to overcome.
The Italian Campaign cost nearly 70,000 Allied lives, and by the end of the war more than twenty nationalities formed 15 Army Group, including the many religions represented by the Indian Army, men from France’s North African colonies, Polish forces and even a Brazilian Expeditionary Force which contributed greatly to the final Victory. It was truly an International force that defeated fascist tyranny in Italy.
After the beach, Jack walked with me along the rows of graves in Salerno War Cemetery. He was surprised at how beautiful and immaculate it was - an English garden like an oasis amongst what had been to him the Hell of Italy. He saw surnames on graves he recognised, and across his eyes I saw reflections of his past flicker as he secretly remembered faces and conversations from what must have felt like another world.
“I tried to forget all this, but I could never forget them.”, his boney finger pointed to the marble headstones reflecting the noonday sun.
“And now it’s down to you, lad. We won’t last forever, you know.”
And of course he was right: all the Jacks I ever knew have now marched away into eternity. That generation is almost gone now, but as we pass the eightieth anniversary of the start of this campaign and the approach to the next phase of the Second Front - Normandy - the time to remember, the need to remember grows stronger. The voices of Jack and his generation diminish, but the lessons they have to teach us, and the legacy we inherit from them only grows stronger, lit by the sun of an Italian landscape, bathed in the sacrifice of thousands of graves across the trail of what became the “Tough Old Gut”, that bloody and brutal war which Jack and his mates gave their all to bring to an end eight decades ago.
The 6 th Duke of Wellington is in the cemetery . He was killed leading a bayonet attack with No2 Commando . My old commando friend Bob Bishop knew him well. Told me me many stories and what a great chap he was
Very good, you don't hear much about the fighting in Italy, My Uncle was in the Royal Signals 7th armoured division and landed at Salerno , had his eardrum blown out by a mortar shell, that's all he said about it, my dad was in Italy after the war with the 2nd Essex, looking for deserters up in the mountains ,some had froze to death some had ended up working on farms . A lovely gentle old boy called Jim who lived next to my Mum and Dad was at Cassino with the Essex Regiment, never said a word about it. Another lovely bloke I use to work with ,Don, was in Italy and he use to tell me about how the Ghurkas use to go out in the night and bring back souvenirs from the the German lines ,watches usually complete with lower arm. We must never forget what these ordinary lads did in their early twentys it was horrific but had to be done . Les we forget.