part of a relatively small and specific target, and a helpless, unprotected one at that, even the heathen resorts to the last line of defence – prayers – and so I did. As always in a crisis, some praiseworthy human qualities emerged. For me, the most lasting memory of that night was the work of a man I had barely been aware of before. Ray Fishwick, our seconded medical orderly, had hitherto been a mere name to me. My admiration for his dedication, knowledge and skill bordered on hero worship after that night, as he recruited us and bossed us around as assistants in tending the wounded. Out of it came the discovery of a mutual rapport, and consequently a close friendship, not at all diminished by his hometown being the other side of the Mersey – Wallasey.
Daylight – as it always does – eased our worst fears. Barely a house had escaped some damage but only three or four had disappeared after direct hits. Wisely, most of the occupants had deserted the village when the first bombs exploded, so that although most of the casualties were found on the hillside, their dispersal had prevented the toll which would have resulted from direct hits on overcrowded houses. But it was bad enough. Three RSR men had been killed, as had three Commandos and four Partisans. I have no record of the number wounded but I know that Ray was away for days whilst he helped at the hastily improvised operating theatre in a house near Komiza, which had been converted into a hospital. It is an extraordinary truth that, until the air raid, I had not given a thought to the significant absence of an RSR medical officer. Had I done so, I would firstly have dwelt on how or why he should have been with us when some of the Regiment had already been dropped into Greece to help the guerrillas there, some were still in the Middle East and some at Bari in Italy. Secondly, I would have asked whether we were attached to the 43rd Royal Marine Commando for medical services. I never knew. After the raid I cared not: Sergeant Ray Fishwick was good enough for me. Without being aware of any particular leanings of Ray’s politics, I found myself infuriated at the social system that excluded such a natural doctor from actually being able to be one because his general educational qualifications were deemed inadequate.
If the raid found for me a good friend, it also produced a bitter enemy – or rather, it confirmed one. A diminutive, mouthy Welshman, whom I shall call Thomas, had crossed my path in near conflict since our days at Ramat David. There was never anything that I remembered which justified violence – just a taunting aggression in which he saw fisticuffs as the only solution to any contrived disagreement. Only the certain knowledge that I was being provoked had postponed the bout, but my inner rage at the lout simmered at the mere sight of him. I often think that I would have done mankind a service by killing him that night, as I could easily have done without question amidst the turmoil of the raid; and I came very close to it.
Ray was treating a Partisan girl who lay on the hillside in some terrible distress, with a piece of shrapnel lodged high in her inner thigh. Two male Partisans were at her head comforting her. In response to Ray’s call, I held the leg and the torch whilst he cut the trouser leg away, baring in the process the private parts of the girl’s body. I couldn’t watch; I would like to say wholly on the grounds of decency but I knew too from Ray’s gasp that the wound was not a pleasant sight, and my squeamishness might have rendered me useless. At this point Thomas arrived on the scene and his opportunistic voyeurism produced remarks which would have been disgusting at any time or place. There and then, they were vulgar, inhuman and the antithesis of therapy to the poor girl, whose ignorance of English was no barrier to an embarrassed understanding of the leering tone of the words. I got rid of him, exchanging language that has no place in a narrative intended for my grandchildren, but I knew from the hate in my heart that the showdown was not far away. By then I was looking forward to it.
Two nights later I think I willed it to happen. There had to be a physical resolution: I knew too well that to use my rank to charge him with insolence or insubordination would have solved nothing. He’d had his usual skinful of vino and was being as objectionable as ever in the billet, whilst most of us tried to lapse into the precious sleep which was at such a premium on Vis. Resigned to the conclusion that the time had come, I did not mince words in telling him to ‘shut up’. Darkness could not obscure his instant, belligerent sparring stance at the foot of my palliasse on the floor, as with a sneering taunt he enquired about who was going to shut him up. That apt distortion of Shakespeare’s Henry VI came to mind as a maxim of self-preservation:
“Thrice armed is he who hath his quarrel just – But four times he who gets his blow in fust.”
At the same time as I announced that I was taking on the job (of shutting his mouth) I leaped from my sleeping bag, grabbed him by the ankles, yanked him off his unstable feet and pounced on him. I realised with some relish that here was my first chance to use the lessons of my ‘Tough Tactics’ course a year earlier. I had my arm crooked around his neck in an instant and as I forced his face to the floor I could feel the rest of his frame squirm upwards as his legs frantically crabbed around to bring his body to face the same direction as his head – front down – to avoid having his neck broken. In that position I then levered my body against the floor to apply all the strength of my shoulders in tightening the screw of my right arm, by then reinforced with my left, around his neck. In such a position he was helpless, and I knew I could have killed him in just a few seconds. So did he. Everyone else in the room realised it too and had yanked me away from Thomas before more damage could be done. He was suitably cowed and feigned bewildered drunkenness in submitting to his bed whilst I remember feeling strangely cheated, having decided to embark on the showdown – a rare flash of temper for me – and a callousness to be emulated only once.
There has to be one thing said in Thomas’ favour: he could have reported me and had me busted to the ranks. I sometimes wonder if that might not have been better than his future attitude towards me. His arm-on-shoulder, gesture of friendship was bad enough but his frequently quoted, nauseous “We understand each other, don’t we, Wal?” emphasised the accidental truism of the statement. Fortunately, his belonging to another gun-crew meant that, with irregular guard duties on our respective guns, our only proximity was confined to rarely coinciding nights in the billet. Small mercies.
The air raid proved the inadequacy of our protection in the gun pits. Digging-in was not going to be easy in the rocky hillside so someone suggested requisitioning explosives, which to everyone’s surprise miraculously materialised without delay. Plastic too! The stuff we had trained with in Palestine. The opportunity for putting our demolition training into practice added excitement to necessity, although the juvenile amateurism of our early attempts at blasting out the rock causes me to wince even now. We progressed from ignorance to reasonably deft skills, and then to reckless flippancy as each gun crew gradually reduced its fuse time before evacuating the site prior to the explosion. All the recognised safety rules were broken in a childish frolic which we thought at the time constituted fun. Not only was there inter-gun competition for minimal, last minute, ‘chicken-style’ vacation of one’s own site, but the game gradually extended to suppressing warning of a lit fuse to adjacent crews in anticipation of the fun at seeing them ‘scarper’ in response to one’s frantic five or six second shouted alarm – from a safe distance, of course. Ah! The ignorance – or innocence – or stupidity – of youth!
March 1944 ended on a high note – well, several notes really. The Army Post Office boys seemed to have found us at last. The receipt of seven letters from Anne bridging a couple or three weeks’ correspondence affirmed that letters must have been accumulating. Seven! Seventh heaven, again! Those letters, and others from my parents, brother (Bert), Big Mac, Wally Robinson and George Green, each conveyed concern at the absence of news from me, which tended to neutralise the joy engendered by the receipt of such gems. Circumstances had reduced my normal output but I was bitter to think of the anxiety created through all of my letters having been held up for so long. I regret not having recorded something of the contents of their letters, beyond “he seems to be doing ok” in reference to Mac’s, but I suppose seven passionate letters to a starry-eyed, love-denied young man of 24 did have the unforgivable effect of dumping other news that day into the pit of ordinariness. Nevertheless that day’s mail, coinciding as it did with a short period of stability after months of mobility or imminent mobility, was the spur I needed
