Читать книгу Whicker’s War and Journey of a Lifetime - Alan Whicker - Страница 15

After our peaceful, almost gentlemanly invasion of Réggio Calabria, the Eighth Army advanced 100 miles in five days. It was the only week in the whole Italian campaign that could be described as Easy. Afterwards the Germans, the terrain and the weather combined against us.

Hoping not to attract any more would-be prisoners, Talbot and I drove north up the big toe of Italy. Just past the coastal bunion at Vibo Valéntia, we took over a house in the small town of Nicastro – and there made a new friend.

He was a small brown mongrel with large appealing eyes who instantly grew accustomed to our faces, and our army rations. By the time we were ready to move on towards Cosenza, we had become inseparable and he was part of AFPU, keeping an eye on things. He rode between us in the jeep, bright and alert, answering to his new and natural name: Nic. Pleasant to have a dog about the place – makes you feel more like a family.

We three set out one bright clear morning, planning to go as far north as we could, until the Germans reacted. After an hour or so we picked a sunny spot for lunch, and lay around enjoying the calm and the scenery. Then suddenly across the valley behind us we saw a familiar threatening scene approaching, fast: a convoy of RASC trucks following our road to the front and throwing up the usual dense dust-clouds.

This was the torment of all unsurfaced country roads in summer. Find yourself off-tarmac and amid traffic and within minutes your jeep and you would be a living statue, thick-coated by a pea-souper of choking dust.

Panic! We had to get away before the convoy arrived or we should be eating their dust and driving slowly through their clouds for hours.

We slung the remains of our picnic into the back of the jeep, along with ration boxes and everything we had unloaded for the siesta. We got moving as the first truck rounded the nearby bend, trailing its white cloud and heading implacably towards us. I gunned the jeep and we sailed away, just in front of the choking clouds. Phew.

We easily out-ran the convoy and were alert also to the survival warning of the Army’s inescapable sign: Dust Brings Shells. It must have been an hour later when I was hunting through the disordered jeep for my maps when we suddenly remembered … Where’s Nic?

In the frenzy to get away through clear air, we had left the poor little chap finishing his lunch … and about to be engulfed in a maelstrom of trucks and noise and dust.

We waited for the convoy to pass, then for their dust to settle, then drove back to hunt around our picnic location, calling his name. No echo of that cheerful bark. No wagging tail, no excited recognition. Perhaps he had struck off across country towards Nicastro for the unexpired portion of his day’s rations? Perhaps he had been picked up by someone in that convoy? Stricken, we never risked our affections again. Goodbye Nic, young Italian charmer lost in action.

Heading on through the mountains, we paused to relieve an internment camp, full of civilians of various nationalities. You would think detainees who had been imprisoned for many months would have been delighted to see Allies in liberating-mode, riding to their rescue? Not a bit of it.

Their guards had run away, and now some 50 of Mussolini’s prisoners, having raided the camp kitchen, were enjoying a family picnic under the trees. They were a well-dressed group lazing around in a scene of contentment.

Then some of the younger male detainees took me aside and mentioned that by freeing them I was not doing them any favours: they’d had a cushy billet with regular meals and no worries, living a peaceful country life with other friendly families, many of whom had pretty young daughters. They were quite content to escape wartime worries outside the wire, with nothing to do all day except lie around in the long grass and be charming. Furthermore, their sex lives had never been so good.

Unamused, I offered to lock them up again and throw away the key. On reflection they reluctantly decided to accept the worrisome freedom I had thrust upon them. Their cheerful group did contrive to make my war seem rather pointless.

I left them to their bucolic pursuits and got back on the road north, chasing reality. This soon became all too apparent when on the west coast of Italy three Allied Divisions of the Fifth Army steamed in from Africa and attempted a landing near Salerno – to face the most savage resistance of the war, led by the 16th Panzer Division.

Another easy landing had been expected after the dismissal of Mussolini and Italy’s surrender, but this was no longer the musical-comedy bella figura battle – just going through the motions – that the Italians had undertaken without the equipment or the will to fight. These were fierce and determined counter-attacks by crack German divisions which had been expecting – even rehearsing for – our landing. The Fifth Army, exposed and vulnerable, seemed about to be destroyed before even gaining a toehold on Italy.

AFPU had four officers and eleven sergeant-cameramen covering this different sort of assault landing. As they sailed in, one landing craft was hit by 20 enemy shells. Others exploded as they struck mines or were strafed by the Luftwaffe squadrons which were out in strength. In the chaos some craft put in to wrong beaches. The precise invasion timetable disintegrated.

Sergeant R.P. Lambert, our smallest photographer, was in an LCI heading for the beach, standing behind a tall infantryman of the Queen’s Regiment. The tense silence was broken when a soldier leaned down and whispered, ‘If that guy steps into the sea and disappears, Sarge, you ain’t half gonna get wet.’

Such a cheery routine exactly followed those morale-boosting war movies. From officers came similar flip Ealing comedy throwaways about seeing Naples and dying. These soon proved to be very bad jokes indeed.

Harry Rignold, my opposite number, had landed from an LCI and was moving across the beach when a shell burst in the sand in front of his jeep. His right hand was blown off. Sergeant Penman and their driver were also injured.

Harry walked calmly to the sea wall, carrying his camera in his remaining hand. Putting it down carefully he said, ‘I’m going to the RAP to get my arm fixed.’

He was lying on a stretcher at the regimental aid post awaiting evacuation by ship when another shell fell amid the wounded and killed that gentle and excellent man. He died without knowing he had been awarded the Military Cross.

The Italians’ coastal defence guns (made in Britain) could have done our invasion great damage – had they been manned by grown-ups …

General Montgomery landed in Reggio in an amphibious DUKW instead of his usual Humber, to be greeted by pipers of the 51^st Highland Division.

When he saw a camera Monty would always point at something, in a most commanding way.

I went with him for his first meeting with General Mark Clark, whose Fifth Army had landed behind enemy lines. The beleaguered Clark welcomes Monty to his Beachhead.

Monty goes to explain to Clark and his Chief-of-Staff Major General Gruenther how the Eighth Army will help the Fifth. (His Officer-in-Attendance is the regulation two paces behind).

The Americans did not receive the usual Liberation-welcome in Naples, where the population was still stunned by bombing and German destruction.

My opposite number in AFPU, the brave and gentle Captain Harry Rignold, was killed during the landing on Salerno beach.

For months the German positions holding up our advance around Monte Cassino resisted all Allied attacks …

… despite powerful support by artillery, from 4.2” mortars, and up…

… and by Sherman Tanks …

… so finally 239 Flying Fortresses flew in to destroy the Benedictine Monastery which had stood amid the wild peaks of the Abruzzi for 1,400 years.

Some of the 453½ tons of bombs that fell on Cassino in the first aerial attack.

The ancient citadel of art and learning, after the bombing.

After our triumphant assault landing at Anzio, this was as close to Rome as we got for almost five months: the Flyover. Later, when the Germans launched three major attacks to throw us back into the sea, this was as far as they got.

Infantrymen under attack in the wadis. Even a small ditch seemed secure and reassuring.

A German view of the battle, as they occupied their side of the Flyover.

An enemy 15cm armoured Infantry Howitzer in firing position amid the ruins of Carroceto.

Captured American troops are marched through Rome, under armed guard.

Other German soldiers are less dominant. Held at gunpoint after capture by New Zealand troops during the Battle of Cassino.

On the road to Rome an Italian cyclist voices his opinion of the German Army – by then safely disarmed and marching to the stockade.

Taking pictures in a POW camp, one face seemed to me to symbolize the end of Teutonic dreams of conquest. I called this portrait ‘The Master Race’. Next to that tragic figure, a young German POW appreciated that, for him at least, the war was over.

Along the beach Sergeant J. Huggett had also just got ashore. Ahead of him some Commandos were holding a small promontory against heavy German counter-attacks. Huggett, tall and game, set off up the hill to get pictures of the action. Near the top an angry voice ordered, ‘This way! This way!’ It was the Commando officer.

‘You took your bloody time, Sergeant,’ he shouted. ‘Where the hell are your men?’ Huggett admitted that he had come alone, to get pictures. ‘What?’ cried the officer, after an emotional silence, ‘I called for reinforcements, not a fucking photographer.’

One understands exactly how he felt; there are times when you just don’t want your picture taken – even though it may well be your last…

The Luftwaffe flew in close-support for Kesselring’s 15 divisions; for the first time we were outnumbered and clinging-on desperately. After two days the landing was going so badly that the Allied Commander, the American General Mark Clark, prepared plans for re-embarkation. He seemed ready to pack up and go home. His Army had only one escape route – by sea. It was unnerving to learn that our own Commander had even considered running back to the ships and sailing away.

He was eventually discouraged by tougher minds among senior American and British officers like Rear Admiral Tom Troubridge who could see that an attempted re-embarkation on beaches dominated by German artillery in the overlooking hills would be a massacre. They bullied and finally persuaded him against the possibility of retreat, but for indecisive days the Allies faced their first major defeat.

The crisis on the beaches followed a flawed invasion plan drawn up by inexperienced officers in which two of our three assault divisions had been given defensive missions. The third, the 46th Division, carried the lone offensive role – but was landed too far from Salerno for its execution. The result was a desperate battle to establish the beachhead by three separate and un-cooperating forces. There was also a seven-mile gap between our X Corps and the US VI Corps. No wonder General Clark despaired.

Back at AFHQ Eisenhower had heard that his friend was planning re-embarkation, and worried that he might have lost his nerve. He told his USN ADC that Clark should show the spirit of a naval Captain and if necessary, go down with his ship. This seemed unlikely.

One echo of the desperation on the beaches survives in Salerno today: in a tidy but little-visited monumental garden in town stands a very small memorial. You need to crouch down to read its inscription. Few passers-by would notice its anguished cry – the thoughts and reactions of the men of the American 45th Infantry Division which put ashore two regimental combat teams under Major General Troy Middleton. Their scorn and bitterness is conveyed by two quotations inscribed on this stone, this memory of desperation.

General Mark Clark US Fifth Army Commander: ‘Prepare to evacuate the beach.’ Underneath, the words of his subordinate, Major General Middleton: ‘Leave the water and the ammo on the beach. The 45th Division is here to stay.’

It is rare indeed for a division to castigate publicly its Army Commander for considering sailing away from the battle. Rarer still, President Roosevelt later awarded Clark the Distinguished Service Cross for gallantry at Salerno.

Lieutenant General Mark W. Clark – Wayne to his friends – graduated from West Point in 1917, 109th in a class of 135, and was afterwards a Captain for 16 years. His career took-off with the war and the friendship of General Eisenhower, with whom he shared an apartment in London. At 46 he became the youngest Lieutenant General the US Army had ever known, with a passion for publicity already well established. As Fifth Army Commander in Italy he refused to stay in the Royal Palace in Naples, explaining humbly to the Press that he felt lost in a big city. He had been raised in Chicago.

Caserta, 30 miles to the north, was the Allied forces headquarters during the war. This enormous mid-18th century palace had been built by the Bourbon King Charles IV to outdo Versailles, but General Clark still found no suitable accommodation within its 1200 rooms, so set up a trailer, a converted truck, in the formal gardens behind the Palace – which as he explained in resultant publicity, was no place for an American cowboy.

The fate of the Salerno landing hung in the balance for some two weeks. A major factor in the outcome was the supporting firepower of the big naval cruisers offshore, and the dropping into the Beachhead on two successive nights of two regimental combat teams from the tough US 82nd Airborne Division. This operation, though sadly delayed, was probably the most successful airborne operation of the war, and swung the battle.

At a time when most things were going wrong, the British army faced that most unusual and wretched event: a mutiny, in which British NCOs were sentenced to death.

Some 700 reinforcement troops had arrived by LST from Naples. They sat down on the beach and refused to report to their new units. All were desert veterans of the 50th Northumbrian and 51st Highland Division who had learned they were going straight back into the line to fight – and not with old comrades and officers they respected, but with new divisions. Worse, some Scots were going to non-Scottish regiments. They all believed they had been promised home rotation with their original units.

It was not until the Commander of X Corps, the popular Lieutenant General Richard McCreery, went to the beach that the majority were persuaded to obey orders, though 192 still refused and were later court-martialled. The NCOs who led the rebellion were sentenced to death, but were soon given the chance to redeem themselves by returning to duty in Italy, with suspended sentences. They did not suffer the ultimate penalty. However, the Salerno mutiny remained a permanent stain on the honour of the Army, and is not mentioned in the Official War History.

All this time I was with the Eighth Army as it moved up the Calabrian toe of Italy. There were two coastal roads, both so narrow there was little room for the two divisions in action – the 5th up the west coast, the 1st Canadian to the east. Only one brigade at a time – sometimes one battalion – could get into the front line of the toe, to fight. It was a geographical gift for German demolition experts; one blown bridge could hold up an army for as long as its ruins could be defended.

After facing the 16th Panzer Division north of Termoli, the Eighth captured the vital Foggia airfield complex, which opened-up southern Europe to Allied bombers and allowed close air support within minutes. At the River Sangro, General Montgomery issued another of his calls to action which always sounded to me like an invitation to cricket: ‘We will now deal the enemy a colossal whack…’ It was his last battle before he returned to England to prepare for the Second Front.

Some Russian officers under General Vasiliev were visiting the Front and, surprisingly, were familiar with Monty’s terminology, but old Eighth Army hands were unprepared for Major General Solodovnic. He had last been seen in Africa in the more casual uniform of a War Correspondent reporting for the TASS news agency. He was not bemused by Monty’s sporting appeals – indeed had a habit of putting haughty Brigade Majors on the defensive: ‘I suppose you’re one of the Upper Classes?’

On September 8 ’43, the day before the Salerno landing, Italy had capitulated and become a co-belligerent, ostensibly on our side. The conquest of Sicily had knocked Mussolini off his perch, and Italy out of the war. Having as a neutral enjoyed the flattering attentions of both sides, the Duce had delayed his declaration of war too long to claim any significant share of Hitler’s blitzkrieg spoils. The Germans overran France so quickly, the Italians contributed so little – and Mussolini had waited 280 days, until June 10 ’40, before declaring war. He could make few appeals at the armistice table. His demand for Nice, Tunis and Corsica received little sympathy from Hitler, who had once complained bitterly: ‘The Italians never lose a war. No matter what happens, they always end up on the winning side.’ He was right again – but the chastened Mussolini saw it another way: ‘Nobody likes a neutral.’

After the surrender of Sicily the Italian King and Government had been anxious to get rid of their Duce. He was eager to show it was not his fault that Fascism and much of Sicily were in ruins, with more to come. In an attempt to avoid the war spreading north through Italy, the diminutive King Victor Emmanuel III – who had brought Mussolini to power in 1922 – belatedly demanded his resignation and replaced him by Marshal Badoglio. After that bloodless coup the Duce, more confused than angry, accepted his dismissal, and they parted amicably.

A few months later he was rescued from house arrest at Gran Sasso on the highest peak of the Apennines by glider-borne paratroops led by Hitler’s personal commando, Colonel Otto Skorzeny. Mussolini was then reinstated by the Führer for a brief spell in the twilight zone of doomed Dictators.

Negotiating a change of sides for Italy during the war had been trickier than surrendering. A secret armistice negotiated by the captured British General Carton de Wiart had been signed, but the Italian Field Command was not informed. It did not know what to do so ended up, in the Italian way, by doing nothing.

Unfortunately at that moment Allied command was also indecisive and at Salerno, almost overwhelmed. Instead of ordering the Italian Army to turn and fight the Germans as planned and dropping a division of paratroops on Rome Airport, the Allies threw up their hands, ignored the new situation, cancelled the airdrop – and continued slogging up Italy as though nothing had happened.

For weeks the Germans had been expecting their ally to defect, so with their usual fast reaction seized Rome and rounded up the 600,000 obedient Italian soldiers who had remained in their camps and not gone home and changed into civvies. Instead, they went into cattle trucks and off to German labour camps.

Curiously, Whitehall now reacted in an Italianate way. When their prison camp guards packed up and went home most British POWs had planned to scatter and take to the mountains, but a War Office Brigadier, a Deputy Director of Military Intelligence, ordered them not to break-out of their camps. So within 48 hours half the British POWs in Italy also found themselves under German guard and on their way to prison camps in Germany.

The only decisive action in the whole theatre was taken by Vesuvius, which erupted for the first time in 38 years and then grumbled on for weeks under giant incandescent candles and angry plumes of fire and rock. The naval Commander-in-Chief issued an admiring statement: ‘The Naples group of ports is now discharging at a rate of 12 million tons a year. Vesuvius is estimated to be doing 30 million tons a day. We cannot but admire this gesture of the Gods.’

Suddenly I received a gesture from a military god: I was ordered to drive urgently through the mountains to the west coast and go to a small beach south of Salerno. Purpose and location: top secret. There I boarded a waiting torpedo boat, rakish and sinister. It was there to carry General Montgomery to his first meeting with the beleaguered General Mark Clark, behind enemy lines and on the other side of the Salerno beachhead. It was just the two of us, at sea with a Royal Navy crew from Malta.

We set off flat-out, engines roaring, in a big arc around the enemy-held coast, watching for German E-boats which I was told we could probably out-run. I was comforted by my belief that nobody was going to risk the life of Britain’s only victorious General, without a very good reason.

After four hours pounding through a calm sea without sighting another craft we came in to shore, transferred to a waiting DUKW – and there on the beach was Mark Clark, tall and gaunt, with Major General Gruenther and his staff. ‘Mighty pleased to see you, General,’ he told Monty – and as Fifth Army seemed about to be thrown back into the sea, we could believe he meant it.

His headquarter tents were alongside a rough airstrip hacked out of the scrub where fighters continually took-off and landed. Signs by the road said: ‘Aircraft Have Right Of Way.’

After his discussion with General Clark for a couple of hours, General Montgomery and I returned to our torpedo boat to race south for another four hours, hoping the E-boats had not yet been alerted.

Helping the Fifth Army to get established on shore and out of trouble, was to be General Montgomery’s Italian swansong before he left to prepare for the Second Front in Normandy.

I sat with him as we bounced through the Tyrrhenian Sea, hoping we were unheard and invisible. In fact this ultimate torpedo boat had a resonant roar that filled the dark sky, and a churning wash that fell back, pounding, towards the horizon. It seemed determined to advertise its presence.

As we ate ‘the unexpired portion of the day’s ration’ I began to appreciate how American senior officers with little or no battle experience found Monty impossible. He always knew he was right – and indeed he usually was, though diplomacy and tact were virtues with which he was unfamiliar. He did not work with people, he told them what to do. He was fond of his boss Field Marshal Alexander, but found him a limited and weak Commander: ‘The higher art of war is beyond him. I’m under no delusions whatsoever as to his ability to conduct large-scale operations in the field. He knows nothing about it. He’s not a strong Commander and is incapable of giving firm and clear decisions as to what he wants. In fact no one ever knows what he does want, least of all his staff. He doesn’t know himself. The whole truth of the matter is that Alexander has got a definitely limited brain, and doesn’t understand the business.’

A less straightforward observer would not have been as honest about his ‘very great friend’ and Commanding Officer.

I remembered that in Sicily General Patton’s Seventh Army was fighting alongside our Eighth as we landed, but during the campaign the Generals never met – which might explain why each ran his own private war. This Alexander accepted. The Eighth was struggling up the east coast against newly-arrived German divisions while Patton’s army ushered the Germans into a happy escape around Etna. Both Commanders were prima donnas – though after that it was hard to detect any similarity in thought or action.

In the Mediterranean and later in France, even the affable Supreme Commander General Eisenhower – who had never commanded men in battle – usually found Monty’s infallibility hard to take.

As shipmates running the E-boat gauntlet for eight hours, Monty and I got along happily. This I believe was mainly because I told him what he wanted to hear. My thoughtful contribution was usually ‘Yes, Sir.’ That always went down well.

Although he was not chatty, and too correct to go into details, it was apparent Monty, like Alexander, was not much impressed by his new allies. The confusion on the Salerno beaches, the near-shambles when plans began to go wrong, the lack of aggressive spirit shown by Headquarters staff … few recent experiences had escaped the cold eye of the British perfectionist.

After sandwich, bun and apple, he went aft to stare at the waves whipping by – and doubtless to plan future battles; I went for’ard to watch out for the black silhouettes of hungry E-boats intent upon the war’s biggest prize.

We arrived at the quiet beach we had left twelve hours earlier; the whole hazardous operation had been completed by the RN without a shot or a torpedo being fired, and Monty + 1 were both safe. After that adventure, our careers diverged. He went on to liberate western Europe, to be created a Viscount and a Field Marshal with a chestful of honours. I went on to capture the HQ of the German SS and get Mentioned in Despatches; small beer – but at least we both lived through it all…

Stimulated by the concern of Generals, the advance guard of the Eighth Army fought its way some 200 miles north in 13 days to relieve the hard-pressed Fifth, allowing them to push-on towards Naples – which General Clark was anxious to be seen liberating. Against weakening German resistance, commandos and paratroops stormed the mountains to the northwest of Vietri which commanded the defile through to Naples. The enemy withdrew, the beaches were saved, the bridgehead secure – so far.

The fact that some of our best Generals were being taken away from the theatre and returned to England in preparation for Overlord, the invasion of Normandy, may have had something to do with our apparent lack of direction. Generals Eisenhower, Montgomery, Bradley and Air Chief Marshal Tedder left for London, along with several veteran British and American formations.

Remaining in Italy, General Alexander then had seven Eighth Army divisions and thirteen Fifth Army divisions: five American, five British, two French and one Polish. Kesselring had 18 divisions.

The Italian surrender brought total confusion to Government offices from Rome to Brindisi – the temporary capital. Calls to the Italian War Office from military headquarters all over the country asked whether they should fight the Germans or not? They were answered by junior staff: ‘Sorry – there’s no one here.’

Very soon there was someone there: the German army. Within a week it had disarmed 56 Italian divisions, partially disarmed 29 others, and captured those 600,000 soldiers.

A supporting army fighting behind the lines would have made an enormous difference to the balance of the war but the Italians, never anxious for battle, received no orders or encouragement from us.

Their Navy, always professional, swiftly sailed away from Italy to escape the Germans, as agreed in the armistice terms. Four battleships and six cruisers surrendered in Malta and were greeted with full military honours by the Royal Navy. The Luftwaffe expressed its fury by bombing and sinking the Admiral’s flagship, the cruiser Roma, with the loss of 1400 men.

On July 19 the US Air Force had hit the Rome railway marshalling yards. The decision to drop 1,000 bombs on the outskirts of the Eternal City was taken by the combined Chiefs of Staff because the two vast yards were the hub of all rail movement between north and south Italy. This Allied attack spread considerable public panic. The USAAF bombed Rome again on August 13, and next day the Italian Government declared Rome an Open City. Three weeks later Italy surrendered, and two days after that the German Army occupied Rome – Open or Closed.

King Emmanuel’s Government was transferred to Salerno. In Feb ’44 the Allies returned authority for the whole of southern Italy to the Italian administration. There were then three Italys: Southern Italy, occupied by the Allies; Central Italy, which remained under German rule until the summer of ’44; and Northern Italy which until April ’45 was the theatre of the struggle by Allies and partisans against the Fascists of the Salò Republic, and the Germans.

The role of Italians in this confused struggle for liberation is usually dismissed. In fact from September 9 until the end of the war, 72,500 military and civilians were killed and 40,000 wounded. There were believed to be some 360,000 partisans and patriots fighting with little direction, but most of them on our side.

Definitely on our side, thank goodness, were the Goumiers – a little-known group with considerable impact. Our armies were well-equipped in almost every way, with one surprising omission: apart from the Gurkhas of the Indian divisions, we had no troops trained in mountain warfare – unlike the Germans, who had an LI Mountain Corps.

An odd exclusion this, as we were fighting our way up a chain of 800 miles of Apennines, from the Straits of Messina to the Alps, by way of everywhere. This great mass of mountains bisecting the centre of Italy always seemed to cut through the heart of our battle lines of fighting soldiers – some of whom had probably never seen a mountain until they faced a towering range soaring up to 9,000 feet. Putting townsfolk to fight through such majestic scenery must have slowed our advance – certainly it made supplying troops dug into the skyline a task sometimes even beyond mules.

General Alphonse Juin, commanding the Corps Expéditionnaire Français in the international Fifth Army, trumped everyone by introducing the Goumiers – 12,000 formidable fighters recruited from the Berber tribes of North Africa’s Atlas mountains, with French officers and NCOs. He launched them across the trackless peaks and savage hills west from Ausonia. Preferring mules to jeeps, knives to rifles, and used to far more serious mountains, they saw the Apennines as foothills through which they moved as to the manner born.

I remember standing in front of vast wall maps at VI Corps headquarters in the catacombs of Nettuno, checking to see if there was any movement on the Front around Cassino. On a long horizontal map of Italy’s boot, sideways, there was a vertical line across Italy showing exactly how far the Fifth and Eighth had got in their struggle to advance. The Intelligence officer briefing me then turned and walked a few paces to one lone dot on the map miles ahead of the static front line. ‘That’s the Goums’ he said.

They were fighting alone, having left every other unit standing. These skilled and fearless tribesmen had one considerable disadvantage to outsiders – sometimes even to their own officers: an instinctive and barely controlled savagery. Goums would descend upon a friendly or an enemy village and rape everyone in sight: women, men, children, animals … Often they formed queues.

All this was standard – but not as we knew it. Italian peasants in villages through which they fought said they suffered far more in 24 hours of Goumier occupation than during eight months under the Germans.

They were a military success – though not if you were living in their path. Neighbouring units much preferred the old-style steady plod through the mountains; they admired the Goums’ natural skills, but few were at ease with them. Even on our side, they were not easy to like.