1021 Docks op Coy R.E. A.P.O. 5145
Dearest Heart :
This is my first letter since the invasion, the first chance I’ve had. I’ve sent an airgraph & tomorrow I hope, by influence with the adjutant, to get a cable off.
How to begin. My love first, for busy though I have been, happily absorbed in this very precious and exhilarating experience always at the back of my mind has been the vision, the presence, the existence of you. I have been on top of my form all the while, striving exultantly through incidents & events, master of myself, & all by, & by through & because of you. And I am amazingly happy & gay & somehow competent, clear headed & sprightly of spirit. I have not been dolorous, it would be false to say I was. Yet always it is you or I have with me, you to whom I want to exclaim at that wonder of the British & Canadian soldier, at the future and that has smiled on us all.
As you will have guessed I’m in Sicily. We had the privilege of taking part in the initial assault on July 10, with the 1st Canadian division. I can’t give you the account I’d like to give, but it was quite unexpectedly easy, & the organisation was marvellous. Fireworks were decorative rather than alarming and everyone was inspired. Then followed a period of sheer slogging discharge of ships, & after three days I was fetched ashore by the O/C to form a camp and take over admin. So I am a camp commandant, adjutant, paymaster, quartermaster & everything. All the officers live on the ships they are discharging, & the O/C & I sit and sleep in a sort of market stall, of a not very successful pair of fruiterers. We even have a tray of melons, Grapes, & tomatoes on the floor! Its the hood of a lorry set on bricks on the sand. It is lashed. Over that it is a tarpaulin giving an erection looking like a cross between a market stall, an arabs tent & a circus after the manager has bolted with the funds. Inside we have ten petrol tins full of Chianti, a table of planks on boxes, four camp chairs, & I have my beloved system, bulldog clips on nails, a few files, ink, a Useful Box, a bottle opener, maps of Sicily etc. Also a lovely set off rubber stamps:-
With these I can win any war! So I sit here & write minutes & memos & keep charts & graphs & lists & make returns & get returns & money & devise standing orders & have a fine old time! I don’t expect this will last long because directly the Colonel arrives, which will be when the battle is over, he’ll not stand for a subaltern doing 2i/c’s work. However, Clifford wants me & that’s his affair. He’ll work it out, I do as I am told. Oh, & I censor letters by the ten thousand, & airgraphs.
We are some 200 yards inland from the beach. In a few days we’ll pack up our tents, have our men ashore, & proceeded to a port where we’ll docks operate in a normal way, & live in houses. A nice Italian Count’s palazzo for me please.
I’m smoking a pipe. Cigarettes are free & therefore not worth it!!! We are all brown. Its a splendid climate, though the men think its hot. Its not tropical, torrid & often the there is a sweet westerly breeze. When the breeze drops at noon its certainly quite hot, shorts & shirt are the order, & my peaked hat. In the evening longs & sleeves down because of Malaria. I’ve seen no mosquitoes though. But there are many bitey insects. The men sleep in little bivouacs, under groundsheets in holes in the ground. We have our camp kits in one wing of our stall. The men in the other wing, on a cargo board on boxes. We have fighters taking off from nearby to then battle constantly & coming from Malta & Pantelleria. Squadron after squadron. Jerry’s bombing he is very harassed, nervous & erratic. The Ack Ack is beautiful, very colourful. You’d love it, even though you dislike air raids. These are flights, not raids. None at all for three nights.
By the sea is glorious, as clear as new bath water and jewelled green when you look down into it, & jewel blue when viewed in its entirety. We bath morning & evening, when I have time that is. It’s warm & fresh & invigorating. We bath au naturel. The men are brown & bleached & in their khaki shorts they look like a lot of lanky boys who have been at the seaside for a month. Everyone is fit & except for minor casualties & accidents all are sound. I have never felt more fit or more efficient.
One of my men has been put forward for a mention, Sgt Matthews, Daddy of the section. He put up a wonderful show.
Yesterday I had occasion to go into the nearest town, where H/Q is established. But bumpy drive in the lorry along dreadful roads in a fog of red dust, – we can’t blame them, they are only mule tracks & all our MT & tanks & guns are playing hell with them & after this drive, with ten casualties in the back for the base hospital, we arrived. David came with me, that charming & gallant RN sub who travelled out with me. He had called for lunch. I called at H/Q, in a charming house of a Sicilian Count, marble floors, wrought iron balconies, grand stairs & exquisite mantelpieces & domed ceilings. A delicious house Romeo could have lived there. Then David & I explored the town, revolvers, loaded, on belts, & trying hard not to look like “swaggering officers”. The Sicilians are charming & make the Churchill V sign & spit at Mussolini’s name. The troops are dears, courteous, no looting, no swank. They give the natives bully beef, cigarettes, grin, wave & seem like long lost brothers rather than invading troops. Some of the younger ones have been silly & done some sniping. But they don’t last long. The wall is the answer. The children love the Tommies & prance about and salute very smartly and grin from ear to ear. Our guns, vehicles, aircraft, ships & uniforms amaze the Sicilians. At the moment the Jerry Div is being stubborn but after that goes it’ll be over. Monty said so the other evening on the beach here. Its rather a responsibility being in the VIII army! But so far we’ve done very well and 1021 is getting strawberries from Brigade. Later even Div and Corps might recognise us. Still, here we are, VIII army & no other.
Barrett, our only batmen here, the rest are on the ships, has just brought me a cup & a bottle of special Chianti: Very nice too. Wine all day, suits me. A little at 11o/c, a cup with my lunch, & one after supper is fine.
But back to have this little town. The first thing I saw was Via Buonarotti Michelangelo, that way around! The town has a central square with almonds trees in blossom & seats, a fine church, lovely with a sundial on the wall, the rather superb houses, an exchange & a theatre, -all closed. Then the streets are all straight & at right angles. Narrow with very narrow pavements. Every house has its balcony & is flush with the pavement. No gardens, only court-yards. Often they have flat roofs. Vines are the fruit and quite usual. Donkeys and mules are common, dogs quite common & I saw one very Italian tabby cat, a very thin cat, too. Now to mount the guard.
The atmosphere of the town is such that you can stand in the square & people it with Renaissance colour & fashion. I found exquisite examples of iron work, carving & sculpture. The RAF has not treated this town too roughly. Tomorrow I go in again, for the men’s pay, & I’ll explore again. The smaller houses have no hall, just two rooms down & two up, with arches, with curtains between them. Large houses have courtyards. White stone & thick walls & very small or no lower windows. The town is only half alive, except for British & Canadian troops & officers, but refugees are coming back. They fled in fear, but return all smiles & friendliness. Fascism is more talk & bombast than I realized. The people, especially old men & children are very friendly. Women just don’t understand & dislike the disturbance anyhow.
The roads hhere are partly hedged with gigantic obscene cactus, vast and of this kind, grotesque shapes. Vineyards & orchards run in terraces to the Med, & little carts with donkeys abound.
The prisoners, of whom we have thousands, work on the beach, & are happy and grateful for the wonderful food they get. They’re poor undersized men, cheap uniforms, horrible cardboard boots & no spirit. They are like children & the guards help them with the heavier cases & give them cigarettes.
I’ve mounted the guard & the camp is bedding down. Dusk is brief, its 9.15 & dark. My Dan R has just come in to show me a bite, he feared a mosquito, but it isn’t. Its quite harmless. I give them quinine every other evening. But this part of the islands not malarial. I gave so many malaria lectures that they’re all malaria conscious.
The villages are non existent. The people live in little towns & tramp or donkey ride to work. There are occasional cottages, hovels of one room donkey has one half, family the other. In the town the young men, or youths rather wear Marks& Spencer-ish clothes, the girls Marks& Spencer frocks.
You’d love it here & how I’d love to have you here. You won’t think that because I’m happy & busy & absorbed in my job that I’m not aware of this separation, will you? It’s natural that I should be taken up with my job, it’s all so important to me. And its so very much easier for me than for you, you at home with me gone. All men have enough of the boy in them to like campaigning. The crusaders must have felt the same, once they were away. But I do have always the radiant vision of our reunion & of a life work, peaceful & constructive, shared in all ways with you.
And this Dickie Anne. This is the week wherein it might happen, this miracle. I should get a cable quite quickly now. The one ear cocked for messages, telegraphic or telepathic, from you. My first prayer is that you will weather the storm all right. The next that the child will be as you want it, the third the selfish one of glowing fatherhood.
That money side of this job is that I get the same pay as before, plus 1/- a day which was deducted last year for repaying the initial advance, plus 2/-a day field allowance, plus 1/9 a day colonial pay, Sicily being technically a British colony now. Four pounds a month, that’s the allowance etc, should cover it for me. So you ought to have enough. I’d do hope you do.
I had a birthday treat. We had a large mailbag sealed & sent to be opened on July 1st! So I opened it. It was the full operational plan, maps, dictionaries & all the details of the assault. “Just what I wanted”. We told the men the whole plan as we waded through the instructions & they were so very pleased.
This week’s memory.
Back, on our honeymoon, & the nice policeman who let us off over the licence, & my swim, & lying by a breakwater on the beach all warm & sunny, & making love. And the lunch we had. And the sleep. And the cigarette & sand in the hair, & dressing together, man & wife.
This is a lovely evening. I have a special shielded torch in the tent. Over the lines are Naval Commandos, resting after the assault. They are sitting in their burrows & singing very carefully & appreciatively led by a man with a splendid voice. Stars are plentiful & no aircraft.
Next morning- no after lunch. A busy morning telling people what to do & writing a report for the O/C. Now I’m off to the little town to get some money for the troops. A bumpy dusty road not without interest, if you look for it.
I think so much of you these days, its the expected week. I’ll have to patient, & to worry would be silly. You’re so fit & sane a person, & so very lovely. You’ll be getting the tweed made up soon & the new shoes. Spend money on clothes so that you are suitably adorned. If loving and thinking can help I’ll be helping you. But it will all be stale news by the time you get this. And Dickie Anne will be a real living entity. It may squeak even, & look. What a fortunate child to have you to look at, and Candy! Two very lovely people. I mentioned Candy in my cable as you’ll notice. Hope that gets through, its 8/6 for 25 words, quite dear but worth it for the pleasure it will give you. Wish I could telephone this evening.
A hot midday, little breeze, but much sun & dust. A ten-year old Sicilian, very thin as they all are, has just passed with a basket covered with a cloth. I suspect Bully beef inside it & rations. Very illegal to give army rations to the civilians. But soldiers are very soft hearted. Our sick parade goes to the field dressing station through a vineyard! They pick & eat as they go hobbling & limping.
I have to get off in the lorry to the post office, Field Cashier & the H/Q. So fare well for now. I hope there were let me air mail this. I have visions & memories & many visions of the future, visions wherein you & your entirely.
Bye Bye dearest. All is well, I’m happy, Be you happy too.
God bless you.
Ever your own
David