Time at War

by Nicholas Mosley

  My toothache had gone, but I had acquired a festering raw patch on the sole of my foot which I took to be psychosomatic. Perhaps I would get gangrene and would not need to go to a prison camp after all.

  A bunch of letters had caught up with me from my sister. In them she told me of the furore surrounding my father’s release from prison. There were graffiti everywhere demanding ‘Put Mosley back in gaol’. This must have been hard for my sister doing war work in her small-arms factory. But she was full of plans for getting the family back together again. She said that our father had gone to stay at a secret address to escape from demonstrators and the press. In order that I could write to him she would tell me where he was in code, which she hoped I would be as clever at deciphering as she had been about ‘the home of Scarlett O’Hara’. He had gone to stay with ‘a woman’ – ‘Woman’ being the Mitford nickname for one of Diana’s sisters. My sister also told of the night bombing of London that had started up again (‘all hell is let loose when the barrage starts up’); and of a violent quarrel between our two aunts, Irene and Baba, who were now totally not on speaking terms and looked like being so for ever. ‘The GREAT ROW twixt aunts goes drearily on, despite my gigantic efforts to achieve understanding. It is all so petty and futile, but neither will retract or climb down.’ She told how she had taken one of her factory workmates to have coffee with my Aunt Irene (‘Nina’) who was now staying at the Dorchester Hotel, her house in Regent’s Park having been bombed. The meeting went well – ‘Auntie was superb, and Joyce came away saying “any aunt of yours would have to be a sport after all”.’

  I went with my would-be London Irish friend into Bari, which I said was like ‘a dirty edition of Bournemouth’. But we found there a concert performance of Tosca, and I rhapsodised – ‘You sang as I have never heard anyone sing before. It was not your voice, not the great mastery of technique: just the throbbing rise and fall of the waves, and the beat of your burning tears.’ Shortly before this I had written in my diary – ‘I would like to know how well I can write.’ Also – ‘I would like to know how original and imaginative I am compared to the very brilliant.’ Well, I was only twenty.

  One of our last resting places before we reached the London Irish Rifles was at Termoli, where I sat with my back against a medieval tower, and looked at the ‘pale frail metallic misty hardness of the sea’ and read T. S. Eliot. I wrote, ‘I find him so infinitely more satisfying than the old Zephir-Lethe boys. He has a wonderful ability to make the reader’s mind dance to his song, to become part of it, to think in its terms, to lose itself in his eternity of a serene and yet imminent unreality – unreality of atmosphere, while describing the very real – an artistic achievement of the very highest.’ Well, I was trying.

  And then: ‘In even the most intelligent people I meet, or whose books I read, there is a complete lack of unity in behaviour and thought, in faith and reason.’ Indeed, true enough.

  So far we had travelled up through Italy by train, which I described to my sister as ‘unutterable confusion – enormous pregnant Italian matrons clambering into cattle-trucks and being ejected by outraged British sergeant-majors; tiny children picking the pockets of half-witted Americans chewing gum; showers of rotten oranges hurled at any Italian soldier daring to appear in uniform. And in the middle of it all me – with an Italian girl aged 12 with tremendous breasts and false teeth on one side, and on the other an Indian who – oh God! – has begun to dribble.’

  So I and my friend decided to hitch-hike the rest of the way to the front. At the last transit camp at which we stopped before reaching the London Irish Rifles, on the adjutant’s desk as I clocked in there was a copy of the Eighth Army News with the headlines (even here!) on the continuing protests about the release from prison of my father. When I gave my name to the adjutant he said without looking up – ‘Not any relation to that bastard?’ I said, Tes, actually.’ He said quickly, ‘My dear fellow, I’m so frightfully sorry!’ I thought – Well after all there’s not much wrong with Englishmen.

  But what about the London Irish?

  4

  The 2nd Battalion of the London Irish Rifles was part of the Irish Brigade, along with the 1st Royal Irish Fusiliers and the 6th Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers. The Brigade had come into being in January 1942 on the orders of Winston Churchill, who wanted to create a force in which men from all over Ireland could serve. The idea had come up against opposition from the government of Northern Ireland, who pointed out that there had been an Irish Brigade who had fought for the French against the English in the seventeenth century; also that the name would cause trouble now with the Irish Republic, Eire, which was neutral in the present war. Churchill insisted and the Brigade was formed.

  The London Irish Rifles had been a territorial regiment before the war and at the time of the Munich crisis of 1938 the 2nd Battalion had been added to the 1st. By 1943 the 2nd LIR consisted of Irish from the North and volunteers from the South; also others from anywhere that it had picked up on the way. As part of the Irish Brigade the 2nd LIR had landed at Algiers in November 1942 and had been involved in the heavy fighting in the mountains that winter until the German surrender at Tunis in May 1943. They were then part of the army that invaded and cleared Sicily in July. They sailed for Italy in September 1943, landing first at Taranto and then moving on by sea up the eastern coast to Termoli, which I was to find such a haven of peace a few weeks later. In October Termoli was being heavily defended at the eastern end of the German Winter Gustav Line. The 2nd London Irish joined in the fighting and Termoli was taken. From there they moved by land up the coast, overcoming strong opposition at the Trigno and the Sangro rivers. But with the success of all this the Irish Brigade as part of the Eighth Army in the east was finding itself dangerously ahead of the Allied Fifth Army on their western flank. The 2nd LIR were moved to what was supposed to be a more stable position in the central mountains. But there Allied troops were very thin on the ground and no one knew much about what the Germans were up to; though it was evident they were not simply retreating. Also it had begun to snow, was very cold, and the London Irish were equipped with no winter clothing.

  I finally reached the rear echelons of the battalion on Christmas Eve 1943 in a mountain village called Pietro Montecorvino. I, aged twenty, and with no war experience, was due to take charge of a platoon of men mostly considerably older than myself who had been fighting for a year through North Africa, Sicily, and a third of the way up Italy, and were exhausted. The Rifle Brigade friend I had been travelling with was posted to a company in another village. So for the first time I was away from anyone I had been friends with.

  The first thing that happened to me as I reported for duty at the adjutant’s office was that my kitbag with all my own warm clothing in it was stolen; I had left it propped against an outside wall. I felt this was a calamity worse than my toothache; more desperate than my closeness to the front line. I was told that anything left lying about was pinched in a flash by the impoverished villagers. I could understand this, but could also understand for a moment the urge that must have come upon some Germans, for instance, in occupied countries to take hostages and say – ‘Give us back our property or we will shoot you one by one.’ It was no consolation to tell myself that at least now, with no winter clothing, I would be in the same situation as my men.

  What might have been a consolation was the next day’s Christmas dinner which consisted, I wrote in my diary, of ‘turkey, pork, tinned plum pudding and whisky, on which everyone got drunk except me.’ I was still appallingly priggish in my diary: I seemed to disapprove of anyone who was not of the type of my precious coteries from Ranby or Eton. I took refuge in admiring the beauty of the landscape; and on Boxing Day I recorded that I read the whole of Chrome Yellow.

  (In old age I find it difficult to acknowledge the awfulness of much of my diary at this time. However, insofar as it seems to have taken the war to knock some of this out of me, this is part of the story.)

  After Christmas
I went to join one of the forward companies of the battalion, E Company, who were based in a village called Carpinone just behind the very sparsely held front line. Here again I found solace in the landscape – ‘Three thousand feet up, we ourselves are infinitely little beneath the snow-lined mountains which arise fairy-like out of the grey-green scrub twelve miles away: we understand each other, these wrinkled pyramids and I.’ Well, possibly. But also there I met my company commander, Mervyn Davies, who was to play such a large part in my war, and perhaps in easing some of the pretentious stuffing out of me.

  Mervyn was a Welshman, some five years older than me, who came from Carmarthen and had been to school in Swansea. He had been commissioned into the Welsh Regiment and then, when he had landed in North Africa, had found himself assigned to the London Irish Rifles through much the same chain of circumstances as me. He had fought with them in Sicily and at Termoli and at the battle of the Trigno river; he chose to stay with them, as I was to do later. When I met him in the cold stone-lined room that was the officers’ quarters in Carpinone, he was tall and quiet and watchful: I thought – Rather like Gary Cooper. How does one recognise someone who is going to play an important part in one’s life? By some such instinct as that by which I had claimed to recognise my ‘wrinkled pyramids’? He was unlike any of the friends I had had in the army or from school. My first reference to Mervyn in my diary was, ‘He has actually read The Mill on the Floss!’

  We established a friendship through talking about books. He hoped, as I did, that the war would not totally disrupt required reading – required, that is, to try to understand what on earth humans were up to. We applied ourselves dutifully to army life, but hoped to gain a vision of what should make life valuable beyond it. In later life Mervyn became a barrister and then a High Court judge. I used to say that he was the first good man I had known.

  The two battalions of the 2nd London Irish and the 1st Royal Irish Fusiliers were given the test of holding a line in the mountains some twelve miles long with platoons dotted here and there on isolated slopes. The Germans would be able to overlook most of these from a higher ridge beyond. The Allied left flank had been halted just short of Monte Cassino. It was in the centre that the line had become seriously undermanned.

  In the mountains blizzards often made visibility almost impossible. When this happened E Company remained based in the village, but even then we had to go out on patrol each day supposedly to see what the enemy were up to. We would blunder through thick snow for two or three hours and then sit huddled under the lee of a snowdrift seeing nothing, until it was time to totter back to our room in the village where, with luck, wood had been collected for a fire. In my diary I would record anything unusual that had happened in the snow: ‘Big moment when given baptism of fire by a few desultory shells and mortar bombs, none closer than 300 yards but horrible whine as they drop overhead.’ Then back in the comfort of the village, Mervyn and I would hazard opinions about books. I recorded, ‘Mervyn began to quote T. S. Eliot’s “Footsteps echo in the memory …” and with what delight did I carry on with “… towards the door we never opened into the rose garden”.’

  We had little contact with the local villagers, some of whom remained grimly huddled in their cellars. However to my sister I wrote that once I had ‘ferreted out a famous Italian tenor who lives in the village, and we had the most glittering evening with him bellowing all the great arias too beautifully, accompanied by his brother-in-law on a watery piano.’

  Then the weather cleared and the time came for the LIR to go into semi-permanent positions in the hills. It was still very cold; none of us yet had suitable clothing; some of the men were getting frostbite. I had seen comparatively little of my platoon when we were in the village; they lived and ate and slept in a different part of our building, and perhaps I was shy of them because I felt they must see me as an ignorant intruder. And when we were on patrol the snow and the wind were such that it was difficult to speak, let alone to get to know anyone. Yet had I not glimpsed at Ranby that the functioning of a good platoon depended on the nurturing of trust and affection?

  Our position in the hills was on a mountain called Montenero – a wooded slope rising to higher ground on the left and falling away to a valley in front. Across the valley, on a higher ridge, was what we understood to be a stretch of the German Winter Line. But we had not yet seen any Germans; and all we knew of them was from the occasional mortar and artillery shells that came whining and whooshing as if from nowhere.

  The snow was too thick and the ground was too hard to make proper trenches; the men of the three sections of my platoon – 7 Platoon – made shelters in the snow as deep as they could; and in these they had to stay during the day and while on sentry duty at night. Each section consisted of a corporal and nominally ten men but often less owing to frostbite and sickness. Two men in each section were responsible for carrying and working a Bren machine-gun, and the rest were equipped with Lee-Enfield rifles not much developed since the First World War. At platoon headquarters there were myself and the sergeant and a runner, two men with a 2-inch mortar, and an operator for the radio, which often did not work. Headquarters was in a tent with snow piled up outside it like an igloo, and inside a brazier which emitted smoke that should not be allowed to escape or it might betray our position. Here men from the sections who were not on sentry duty came to join us and try to sleep at night; the choice seemed to be between freezing and asphyxiation. Two or three times a night I would visit the sentries with a rum ration; and either my sergeant or I would try to sleep, wearing the earphones of the wireless, which was our connection to company headquarters further down the slope on the right. During the day the men in my platoon would slither down the slope two or three at a time to the company cookhouse to eat stew out of a tin with a spoon; I might manage to have a brief chat with Mervyn. Each morning the section commanders assembled in my tent to receive their daily orders. E Company was scheduled to stay in these positions for periods of three days at a time.

  On the first morning of our second period, when my sergeant and section commanders were all in the tent getting their orders, an artillery shell or mortar bomb landed next to us or almost on top of us, wounding two or three and leaving us all dazed. I thought that I was wounded because I was spattered with blood; but this turned out to be from one of my corporals or my sergeant. I shouted the order to ‘Stand to’ – which meant that the people in the trenches would be ready to open fire. I looked out from the torn tent and saw ghostly figures coming down through the trees; they were dressed in white smocks and were making noises like wolves. I shouted an order as I had been taught – ‘Enemy on the left, a hundred yards, coming through the trees, open fire!’ No one fired. I did not know what to do about this: it was not a situation we had been taught how to deal with during training. The section leaders who had not been wounded were crawling back from the tent towards their trenches; my sergeant and I had a small slit trench outside the tent which was where we were to go in an emergency. My wounded sergeant had slithered to this and was lying at the bottom so that there was no room for me to get under cover except by kneeling on top of him. I shouted my order again; why had no one told us what to do if orders to fire were not obeyed? Such an event was not thought possible. My sergeant said – ‘Don’t tell them to shoot, sir, or we’ll all be killed!’ I thought this was probably true, but was not that what we were here for? However if we didn’t fire, yes, we might all be taken prisoner. And wasn’t this what at times I had imagined I was here for? Then I decided – or it was somehow decided for me? – no, that is not what I am here for. And my view of the world seemed abruptly to change at that moment.

  As an officer used to obeying regulations, I was armed only with a pistol; officers were supposed to give orders for rifles and Bren guns to be fired, not themselves to be equipped seriously to shoot. The Germans coming down through the trees were now almost upon us: still there was no one firing. I thought I should clamber out of my useless trench a
nd crawl to one of the forward section positions where I could myself get a Bren gun working. I had got some way when more grenades started landing; I threw myself – or was propelled – into a snowdrift. I lay there immovable for a few seconds until there was someone jerking at the lanyard of the pistol round my neck; it was a German with a sub-machine gun. I made it possible for him to remove the lanyard and pistol from round my neck; but how in God’s name had I got into such a situation – and one which I had even thought desirable? The experience was unbearable. I had to get away.

  My platoon were being rounded up and put in a line ready, presumably, to be marched down into the valley as prisoners and across the German lines on the further ridge. I thought I would hang back, perhaps helping one of the wounded – there were the two or three who had been in the tent – and then at the end of the line I might find a chance to dodge away. The rest of E Company should by that time have realised what was happening and Mervyn would be coming up with the reserve platoon to counterattack. If there was firing, I could pretend to be hit by a stray bullet and then roll over down the slope. It seemed unimaginable that I had ever thought I might like to be taken prisoner! I felt deep shame. I had been mad. I should be mad no longer.

  There was a wounded man who needed to be helped. I murmured to him that we should try to get away. We were at the end of the line being chivvied by a German with a rifle and bayonet bringing up the rear. There began to be bullets flying about both from the Germans on the further ridge and from some of our E Company behind. I clutched my chest and fell. The German who had been following us came and prodded me with his bayonet. I got up quickly. But I was feeling that the whole of my life hung on these moments; if I did not get away now I would never get away from being a dishonourable fraud – someone who had just wanted to get into the war for the sake of propriety and then be taken prisoner. And would it not also look as if I were under the influence of my father? There were now more mortar bombs landing and I determined to do another and more spectacular death scene, rolling over and over down the slope like a snowball or a Shakespearean actor. This I proceeded to do. I rolled on and on till it seemed I might be overdoing it; I came to rest with my head against a rock. There I thought I should stay, no matter who came after me or what happened.