had provided some justification for those criticisms yet, appropriately prejudiced as I was, my first association with Italian people at Monopoli in February 1944 was an enlightening, pleasurable experience oddly inconsistent with my posture of belligerence and disgust towards a bitterly scorned enemy of five months earlier. Alerted to all their wiles, I still discovered a charm in the Italians with whom I came into contact at Monopoli which remains inexplicable. The sceptics would, no doubt, point out that we were at Monopoli for only twelve days. In that short time we discovered hairdressers, tailors, embroiderers (who copied and reproduced our ‘wings’ and cap-badges with amazingly deft artistry), photographers, restaurateurs, and, of course, vino barmen who created our first and lasting taste for the pleasures of vermouth. And, believe it or not, there was already in Monopoli an established YMCA where ‘chars-and-wads’ (teas and cakes) could supplement the mainly unsatisfied appetites remaining after our army meals.
We bonded. We polarised. We had fights among our tense selves and we had near-mutinies in frightening bouts of ill-discipline and insubordination. We played football matches and had cross-country runs. We learnt new vulgar songs, one of which was to become our notorious signature tune. It was a remarkable twelve day episode.
“We were heading to the assistance of the Yugoslav Partisans, whose leader was a mysterious character called Tito.”
Chapter V
Yugoslavia
I have not recorded, nor can I remember when or how I became possessed of the information that enemy occupied Yugoslavia was to be our destination. On 18 February all the fun and high-jinks were interrupted, and we were rather hurriedly taken by road to Bari to unload a ship laden with our guns and supplies. The writing, if not in manuscript, was on the wall. We worked with an enthusiasm that day which equalled for impact the startling effect of our first glimpse of an Italian city.7
Two days later, we set off by sea on board LCI (Lancing Craft Infantry) No. 260. LCI 260 had sailed from Monopoli’s slightly ruffled harbour on Sunday morning 20 February 1944 into a turbulent Adriatic, bound (we had actually been told!) for a destination in ‘enemy waters’, but the Navy crew soon had misgivings about the storm which had developed at sea. The result was that our progress to the north was cut short and the haven of Bari’s docks was soon sought, to the intense satisfaction of the many who were suffering from seasickness. The anti-climax might have been distressing had not our superiors, with commendable appreciation of the situation, allowed us ashore in Bari for the day under threats of unimaginably dire penalties for any blabbing of our projected enterprise – a laughable precaution, since none of us knew of our destination nor of our role. So the day, which started with cloak and dagger potentialities, culminated in an enjoyable appreciation of most of what city life could offer.
Topper and I saw two films that day: Ball of Fire and Air Force, neither of which made any lasting impression on my memory. However, by contrast, we did make the pleasing discovery of Spumanti – a poor-man’s and then-ignorant-of-any-other-man’s champagne – and enjoyed excellent food at one of the several forces’ canteens, already well established in a city teeming with British and American troops. The true extent of what a fortuitous bonus that day in Bari had been became clearer the next day when, after we had slept in bunks in cramped conditions on the boat, it sailed into frighteningly stormy waters of at least equal ferocity to that of the previous day. We were under orders that apparently forbade any further delay in meeting the timetabled arrangements for reception at the other end.
Chapter VI
Vis
During the course of the day long voyage, the information was revealed that the ‘other end’ was a Yugoslav island off the coast of Dalmatia called Vis8, which was occupied by a small garrison of Tito’s Partisans.9 It was the only island – perhaps the only populated part of Yugoslavia – not already held by the Germans.10 During the latter part of 1943 the enemy had extended its total mainland occupation of Yugoslavia, invading and taking possession of the other islands in the Dalmatian group, strengthening control of the Adriatic supply seaways and denying the Allies the use of the islands as platforms for any optimistic mainland invasion aspirations of their own.
As the briefing unfolded that day, my zest for adventure began to be overtaken with qualms of repeating recent Mediterranean military history. If, as seemed likely, the enemy could have taken Vis as easily as he had occupied Brac, Korcula, Solta, Hvar, Mljet and the other Dalmatian islands, was he not waiting for the Allies to repeat the folly of Crete, Kos and Leros before swamping the island with his superior military might, in order to collect prizes from the garrison of a poorly supplied Yugoslav brigade of resistance fighters, reinforced with British troops and their valuable equipment? The Germans could actually see Vis from their other island bases and had mainland airfields a mere ten minutes flight away: our logistical links were half a days sailing away in Italy, through seaways where the relative strength of naval power was finely balanced.
The remnants of No. 2 Commando, licking their wounds after a mauling at Anzio, were the first integral British Army unit to arrive on the island, among a plethora of advance parties from Commando and anti-aircraft units, with a mission to defend the islands at all costs. ‘C’ Battery’s hurried presence in its anti-aircraft role reinforced my niggling misgivings. Our knowledge of the significance of the operation was scant, but it would be unfair to attach blame or shame to any party for that. It had taken several courageous, diligent, undercover British military missions, parachuted and then secreted deep into mainland occupied Yugoslavia from 1941 to 1944, for the Army to be sufficiently convinced of the situation to enable them to report to the Prime Minister. We were heading to the assistance of the Yugoslav Partisans, whose leader was a mysterious character called Tito. Partisans to us then meant any resistance fighters – guerrillas in fact. But in Yugoslavia the name ‘Partisans’ served to distinguish Tito’s devoutly Communist band of fanatical fighters from those other Slav opponents of German occupation who were imbued with strong Royalist leanings. Their leader, an ex-regular army officer of the pre-war Yugoslav monarchy, General Draze Mihajlovic, had chosen the name ‘Chetniks’ for his band of followers.
It is probably overly simplistic to state that both factions, whilst seeming to operate from the start with a single common objective, were violently opposed to each other. The British military missions, paradoxically not wholly manned by true military types but liberally sprinkled with men of the Special Operations Executive, had revealed that Partisan/Chetnik differences were not limited to ideology. Both factions were jockeying for position after the war by destroying each other in the second battle (their civil war) before the first battle (for freedom) had been won by the ejection of Nazi occupiers. Pledged to support Yugoslavia, Britain initially infiltrated token material consignments of arms and supplies by nocturnal air and sea-drops to the royalist Chetniks. It was doubts about the effectiveness of their use against the common enemy that had prompted the formation of several British military missions. The missions’ reports justified Churchill’s anxiety. Mihajlovic represented no effective resistance to the German occupiers with whom he shared a mutual antipathy towards Communism. Indeed, frequent instances of collaboration with the enemy were revealed as the Chetniks craftily conserved their resources for the ultimate internal fight for power.
Another dormant, simmering and opportunistic faction of Yugoslavian politics had seized upon Hitler’s invasion as a heaven-sent opportunity towards furtherance of its claims for the separation of Croatia from the state of the South Slavs. As fascist as Hitler or Mussolini, their leader Ante Pavelic had enjoyed for years the protection and patronage of Mussolini within Italy’s frontier, awaiting stroke of good fortune such as Hitler’s invasion had presented. Always reluctant members of the collection of South Slav states which constituted Yugoslavia after the First World War, these radical Croats known as the Ustasi lost no time in pledging support to the invaders, and in currying favour by perpetrating atrocities and injustices against Serbians, in particular, to a degree which made Hitler’s men seem almost angelic.
We knew nothing of all
