miles of the voyage, through black Adriatic waters to moor at the sheltered jetty of Komiza – the western port of Vis island – at 23:00 on 21 February 1944. Neither did we know that within 12 hours, Winston Churchill would announce to Parliament that future assistance by the Allies to Yugoslavia would be directed wholly to Tito’s Partisans. It was a purely military decision: to hell with the post-war political implications. If the Partisans were killing Germans, they were the ones worthy of support. To have been otherwise influenced by fears of post-war communism would have made a mockery and a nonsense of Western reliance on, encouragement for and support to the Soviet Union.
My first glimpse of the Partisans, in the minimal amount of artificial light necessarily risked to facilitate unloading the LCI, made me glad they were on our side, and even more glad that they seemed to know that we were on theirs. For a start, they all appeared to be huge, bulkily framed individuals who strangely belied the deprivations of three years of occupation. Their peculiar assortment of uniforms (mostly acquired from captured or killed Italians and Germans), their purposeful demeanour and conspicuous, bristling armoury of pistols, grenades, knives and ammunition, presented a fearsome aspect reminiscent of Hollywood’s version of banditry in the Mexican mountains. But there was a major difference: they were not all male. In our low lit surroundings, only voices distinguished male from female. A surprising revelation!
Only the briefest of nodded instructions were possible as British Navy officers nervously indicated that a rapid discharge of our cargo of armaments and supplies would help their chances of sailing clear of enemy patrolled waters, before daylight’s dawning exposed them in their dash back to the relative safety of the eastern Italian coastline. There was no doubt about our being welcome, however. The Partisans radiated a ready friendship and respect, which required no knowledge of each other’s language for its communication. They set about unloading the ship with a frenzy and energy which was breathtaking, and which soon had the LCI’s crew smiling again and the rest of us wondering and worrying about how we would have managed without Partisan help. In a fraction of the time allowed for the off-loading operation, the jetty was littered with our gear and the vessel was quietly chugging its relieved way into the darkness, leaving us with a strange feeling of being abandoned. Our silent, valedictory waves to the crew and their reciprocation seemed to imply a mutual recognition – though I suspect an exaggeration – of each other’s danger.
Our officers, having been briefed by advance-party colleagues and a Partisan interpreter, had been able to tell us that we were to spend the rest of the night in a schoolroom in Komiza. Morning, we learned, would signal our move over the nearby mountain range onto the island’s central plains which we were to defend. Each man loaded up with as much equipment as he could possibly carry – in addition to his own not inconsiderable personal kit and small arms – and set off in a silent, single-column stagger to follow the Partisan guide, who incidentally carried more than any of us with apparent ease. Our instructions were to maintain silent, visual contact with the man ahead of us so as to avoid losing our way in the veritable maze of haphazard housing. This was a positive discouragement to dallying so that, loaded as we were, not even the cold February night air could neutralise the clinging, sticky sweat of our heavily burdened hike.
The reason for silence escapes me now as much as it did then, because I remember experiencing one of those out-of-place giggling fits born of musical comedy male voice choruses (typical of The Pirates of Penzance or Maid of the Mountains) as fitting the occasion more appropriately. After a few minutes of what seemed like mountaineering, there was no mistaking a bustling, whispering hubbub coming from the rear of the column. I was glad when it caught up with me: even more so at being softly told by one of our officers to halt and rest my load. He passed me and continued up the hill into the night accompanied by a voluble, agitated but unintelligible Partisan who disappeared with him into the alien darkness. After what could only have been a couple of minutes they returned – leading the column down the hill. “Some bloody fool took the wrong turning and was leading us out of town,” came the explanation. Actually, the ‘bloody fool’ was Topper Brown. With his head down he had followed on the heels of a crossing Partisan who was obviously going about his own business and had thus innocently diverted us away from the schoolroom, where puzzled waiting Partisans could only ponder at how a supposedly efficient troop of elite British military forces could find itself childishly lost so soon after its arrival on their tiny outpost of an uncomplicated island. Topper was never quite allowed to live it down.
It was 02:00 before we simmered down, snugly enveloped in our lush sleeping bags on the congested classroom floor, but slumber did not come easily. Poster pictures of Tito and Stalin glared down from every wall, heightening the sense of adventure and stimulating conversation about the unusual nature of our mission. Morning could not come soon enough. Curiosity could only be satisfied with daylight’s revelations. We washed, shaved and breakfasted (on ‘compo’ rations) under the intense gaze of admiring Partisans who jabbered with unintelligible but obvious approval at our arms and equipment and, I suspect, at our mere presence among them. I wondered if they had slept at all. We, in turn, wanted to see their island and, barely able to contain our curiosity, we hastened out individually into the alleyways of Komiza.
There was to be no hanging around for us. I cannot remember how our weaponry and stores were transported to our destination, four or five miles away over the hills and onto the island’s central plain, but we marched on the road. The island’s roads were then little more than dusty tracks, which for the first mile of steep ascent out of Komiza were mere ledges cut out of the rocky hillsides in a series of blind bends devoid of any edge marking or safety barriers. In most places it proved difficult for jeeps to pass in safety. The heavier vehicles, which were to arrive later on the island, created more fear from the likelihood of a precipice-dive ending than the threats of a German invasion. Tracks, which had been good enough for peaceful islanders for hundreds of years, had immediately become dangerously inadequate – or certainly were to do so within a few weeks of the Allied garrison’s consolidation.
It was an exhausting climb, justifying the abandoning of any pretence at orderly marching until the seemingly scooped-out and levelled plateau of cultivated vines had been reached. Even then, our officers had problems in restoring discipline among the moaners, who seemed to imagine that troop-carrying vehicles should have been miraculously produced for our transportation. Aware of our village destination, our leaders were soon able to encourage us to renewed effort by identifying it from their maps. Once it was within sight, the village of Podselje became an easily attainable goal to surprisingly revived, swinging, singing marchers.
With the flash of the magic wand, which in wartime always seemed to arrange these things, billets were found for the near forty of us. Where the displaced occupants of the dwellings had been moved to I never knew. The contours of the hillside arranged our house of three levels to have its entrance on the middle floor, directly from the lane that gave access to the village. The lower floor was a storage place that housed everything necessary for the making and storing of wine. Its double-door garage-type access (which I never saw unlocked) would have opened onto the next lower lane. Ours was the last house of the village on the western side, a fact which contrived to help the Partisans decide that the levelled area just outside the house’s entrance door would be our common meeting place for evening vino-drinking, singing and dancing sessions.
But on that first day of such accord we also had to be reminded why we were there. Gun sites were decided upon, resited and changed again, so that most of the day was spent abortively in roughly levelling areas for our Browning machinegun, its pedestal and ammunition in readiness for the imminent action. News of German aircraft, shipping and troops assembling on the mainland had given every indication of an early attack on Vis. Sited at staggered levels on the hillside, our six guns enjoyed uninterrupted coverage of the whole central plain of the island, most of which was within effective range of the weapons. It meant that from that moment on, each gun would never be unmanned. This presented little difficulty, inconvenience or acrimony during daylight hours, but for the twelve-hour night shift two men had to forsake the relative comfort of their billets and occupy the gun-site in wakeful alertness on a two-hours-on, two-hours-off basis.
There
