How I Won the War (16 page)

For three hours I squatted immobile and pensive under the mounting sun and I was beginning to wonder what life would be like as an Anglo-German pariah in Benghazi when I heard the voices of Aryan pedlars working round the outside of the wire.

“Cigarettes … Chocolate … Any watches or cameras.
Zigaretten
and
Schockoladen
für
Kameras
oder
Taschenuhrs.
Cigarettes … Chocolate …”

Apart from their super-cinema identification there was something familiar about the hawking voices, but they were away behind me and I hesitated to look round lest my black guard took impaling offence. From the corner of my eyes I could see that one of the more liberal-minded sentries was
allowing prisoners up to the wire to do business. Watches and the occasional camera sailed over the wire and the hucksters sent packets of cigarettes or bars of chocolate back in
return
.

“Cigarettes … Chocolates …
Zigaretten
…
Schocko
laden
…”

The three pedlars with their kitbags of stock came abreast of my bed of nails and I saw with delight that they were Corporal Dooley, Corporal Globe, and Private Clapper. Without moving a muscle of my face lest I collect a
mouthful
of stiletto, I threw my voice their way, cunning and stiff-lipped as a ventriloquist …

“Corporal Dooley … Corporal Dooley. Lieutenant
Good-body
here … Your platoon commander speaking. Rally on me!”

Dooley stopped in mid-barter of twenty Woodbines for a Leica, open-mouthed and petrified as a man hearing from a cloud the voice of his god.

“Corporal Dooley,” I yoo-hooed in my sing-sing sidelong. “Twelve Platoon rally on me!”

He dropped the camera and came up to my neck of the fence.

“God love us all!” he said. “It’s him! Sitting there with the Jerries like a brass-bound yogi.”

“P’raps he’s changed sides,” said Corporal Globe. “Gone over to persecute Hitler.”

“I have been wrongfully arrested,” I crooned. “They
believe
me a German. Find the officer in charge and tell him who I am.”

The two corporals conferred.

“Just our luck,” said Dooley. “Come back here with a load of prisoners and we have to find the governor.”

“And the boys are going to be dead pleased when we turn up with him again, ain’t they?”

“Overjoyed, Globey boy, bleeding overjoyed.”

“Well then,” I urged. “Get me out of here. The sooner you identify me the sooner can the men have me back in
command
.”

“He’s seen us,” said Dooley. “There’s nothing else we can do.”

“You’re right,” said Globe. “And Benghazi is a bit much, ain’t it…. Hold the sack, Clapper.”

They went off to the commandant’s office and Clapper leaned through the fence and placated my Nigerian with a handful of cigarettes.

“I hope you’ll excuse me, sir, now that the others have gone, if I just take the opportunity to have a private word with you. I got the domestic trouble again.”

I was sorely tempted to tell him that it was neither time nor place for welfare matters, but I realized the duty of an officer to be ready to help his men at all times and I curbed my tongue.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, shifting my buttocks through another five degrees so that the flints made
acupuncture
on new flesh.

“It’s not, I trust, Mrs. Clapper again?”

“I’m afraid so, sir. She’s getting laid again.”

“But I thought we’d circumvented the passionate butcher by converting herself and your mother to vegetarianism.”

“We did that butcher down, all right, don’t you worry, sir. He never got no more under at our house after they joined the lettuce-and-nuts brigade. It’s the Yanks this time, sir. A meat-hating mobile laundry top sergeant from Tacoma, Washington, met her at the vegetarian club. Comes round regular on his every half day, my mum says, with bunches of kohlrabi, endive, and other unusual vegetables, fills that poor little kid’s head with tales of his oil wells and orange
plantations
and lays her something rotten on her own bridal bed…. Now is that right, sir, that’s all I want to know, when a man’s away in a foreign country fighting for liberty, equality, and democracy, that American laundrymen should come over to England and keep having their hoggins off his wife?”

“Decidedly not, Clapper. Not only is such lubricity bad for your marriage, but it is also ultimately damaging to
Anglo-American
relations. Now tell me, on what day of the week does this man have his half day to visit your wife?”

“Every Saturday afternoon. He’s out mobile-laundering all the rest of the week.”

“Then we must persuade your wife to find some
employment
in which attendance at work on Saturday afternoons is
obligatory. Now let me see … what about working on the turnstile at football matches?”

“What about the summer? The war could go on a long time.”

“Or a bus conductress?”

“They get every third Saturday off.”

“She could work on a post office counter.”

“Never no head for figures, sir. Not my little girl.”

The Nigerian threw away his cigarette and spoke for the first time in our acquaintance.

“’Ow abaht,” he said in purest Cockney, “the old
swimming
barf attendant?”

Before Clapper and I had time to pass judgment on this suggestion, Dooley and Globe came out of the office with the key to the compound, closely followed by a provost marshal who was beating my expostulating military police corporal about the shoulders with the flat of his cap.

T
OTAL WAR IN ITALY
was a slow grind up the narrow trunk and the breakout from Anzio was about the only time that anybody had a chance to attack across the grain. The thrust of the beachhead force aimed across country to cut the road back from Cassino to Rome at Valmontone. From fifty miles south the German Tenth Army was in flight before the Fifth and Eighth Armies coming up the warp after breaking
Cassino
and the Adolf Hitler Line. Just as the beachhead force, coming across the weft, was in striking distance of
Valmontone
and the trap was about to close, they were suddenly ordered to change the direction of their main thrust, turn
with the grain and head, in advance of the southern armies, straight for Rome.

The minds of historians and the consciences of generals have since been greatly exercised by controversy about the cause, wisdom, lunacy, credit, or debit of this strange
decision
which exchanged the destruction of the Tenth Army for the glamorous liberation of Rome. But it raised no polemics at the time among the troops actually involved. They were unconcerned whether the theoretical objective of their
chinagraph
puppet masters was Rome, Valmontone, or
Timbuctoo
. They were ever prepared, in the broad interests of peace, to advance in the general direction of the enemy, but their precise objectives were defined by that private
inter-Allied
battle which waged the length of Italy … the Battle of the Booze.

If it so happened that the routes of advance dreamed up by the Higher Command coincided with those required for Alcoholic Warfare, then so much the better for everyone concerned; if they did not, then too bad for the generals.

The main supply route from the rear was the Benevento Pipeline. No matter how far north the front line went, this vital liquor link was maintained by a continued chain of fifteen-hundredweight trucks running on illegal journeys southwards, a hundred miles and more, back almost to where the invasion began. This British pilgrimage flowed
unceasingly
because in Benevento they made gin. They may not have been the best ginmakers in Europe but, by God, they were the fastest.

Much against my principles, I was often sent back by Colonel Plaster down the Benevento Pipeline. I find I share many of my military views with Lord Montgomery and I am again one with him on the question of drink. If he is to think logically and act decisively, an officer must keep a clear head at all times. I therefore confined my wartime drinking to that minimum made obligatory by state occasions.

“Sorry to keep sending you off to Benevento, Goodbody,” the colonel would say, “but you’re the only chap in the mess I can trust not to drink half the cargo on the way back.”

When I took down the order for Captain Tablet’s birthday
I was instructed to call on a recommended distiller named Caesario who had his warehouse on the riverside.

“I want,” I read from my list, “twenty litres of gin, twelve litres of whisky, and eight bottles of brandy.”

“O. K. chief. You wanta all this stuff today.”

“Yes. I’ve got to start straight back.”

“Very sorry, chief. I giva you the gin, the whisky, pronto, right away. But I can give you no brandy till tomorrow.”

“Why not?”

He wiggled his humpback apologetically.

“Gin, whisky … I maka right away. But it taka me twenty-four hours to maka brandy.”

I asked to see his instant distillery and he took me into his shed. As far as I could see, his total equipment was a hundred-gallon drum of industrial alcohol, a bottle of oil of juniper, a jar of burnt sugar, a packet of ground ginger and a witches-cruet of sundry herbs. He held up the juniper
bottle
.

“Maka gin, pronto.” Then he displayed the sugar and ginger. “Maka whisky, pronto…. Buta the brandy, not so easy. The brandy I hava to boil all night.”

Feeling faint for the linings of my comrades’ stomachs, I cancelled the brandy and took on whisky in its place.
Grateful
for my gift of abstinence I watched in fascination as Captain Tablet’s good-wishers downed every last drop of Caesario’s lightning liquors. And wondrously enough, it didn’t seem to affect them unduly at all. If anything, they broke slightly less furniture than usual.

The Benevento Pipeline only supplied the basic, spirituous rations of the forward troops. For their finer drinking they lived off the country, for their share of Italian ambrosia they fought the Battle of the Booze. There were two sets of operational maps; one marked obediently with the
boundaries
, axes, and objectives of the generals; the other noted with the location of every vineyard, château, bodega,
palazzo
, castello, hotel, tavern, or sawdust bar within striking distance. In this secret battle every man’s hand was against every man. Americans, British, Poles, Canadians, New Zealanders, and Frenchmen, all schemed and maneuvered one against the other to capture the citadels of Bacchus. No
holds were barred, no boundaries recognized and the only limit on the length of poaching was the brazenry of a commander’s neck.

Colonel Plaster was a keen connoisseur of anything
alcoholic
and he carried a copy of
The
Wine-Lover’s
Guide
to
Italy
to ensure that nothing drinkable slipped his notice. He was bred to believe that niggers began at Calais and the only time he ever spoke to an Italian was to ask him if there were any good caches of vino in the vicinity. I plumbed the depths of his dedication to the Battle soon after the fall of the Hitler Line when the Musketeers were pushing on north of Arce. C Company was leading with Twelve Platoon out on the right flank charged with reconnoitering the village of Dolmino, and occupying it if it were abandoned by the retreating enemy. I kept the chaps going at good speed and when we arrived in the late afternoon we found Dolmino completely deserted.

“Lovely grub,” said Sergeant Transom. “Made our bound by tea time. Jerry’ll be away up the road and blowing the bridge at Pasto. We can get a decent meal going and have a night’s kip under cover for a change.”

I did not attempt to conceal my disappointment at his attitude.

“We must advance at once and reestablish contact with the enemy. Remember the colonel’s closing words at every order group…. ‘When in doubt, the Boche seek out!’”

“But if we push on too fast we’ll leave the right flank exposed.”

I smiled acidly and pointed to the dust clouds rising a mile or so to our right.

“The New Zealanders are already ahead of us.”

We pushed on another two miles to the river Caroni and dug in for the night on the mud bank commanding the stumps of the blown bridge. It may not have been
comfortable
but our tactical siting was superb. I was happy to receive a message next morning requiring me to meet the colonel at company headquarters.

I saluted smartly, confident of his congratulations.

“Goodbody reporting, sir. Twelve Platoon is established on the line of the Caroni and commands a bridging site for the sappers.”

“Why the hell aren’t you back at Dolmino?”

“We took it early yesterday, sir, and pushed on…. You know, sir … ‘When in doubt, the Boche seek out.’”

“Don’t speak bloody poetry at me. I told you to occupy Dolmino, not win the blasted war. D’you know what’s
happened
back there while you’ve been swanning up the road?”

“No, sir.”

“The Musketeers have lost Dolmino.”

“Good Lord, sir! I am sorry. When did the Boche
counterattack
?”

“Not the Boche, you bonehead. It’s those damned Kiwis. They’ve come across the boundary and occupied Dolmino. They’ve got my vermouth factory! I’ll never live it down!”

“Your vermouth factory, sir?”

“Yes. Why the hell d’you think I sent you to occupy the place?” He slapped the
Wine-Lover’s
Guide
on the table in emphasis. “Because it contains the biggest and best damned vermouth factory this side of Rome. You’ve handed it lock, stock, and barrel to the Kiwis.”

“I’m very sorry, sir …”

“I don’t want your sorrow. I want my vermouth. So you take your chaps back to Dolmino with a water cart and fill it up before the Kiwis make off with the lot.”

The vermouth factory had a vast, stone storage vat as big as a church. There was already a queue of water tankers when I got there and I had to pay the New Zealand sergeant major in charge two thousand lire for a two hundred and fifty gallon fill. It took our topers about three weeks to finish the lot; and my teetotal principles were further fortified by the report that when the vat was finally drained, they found a dead German smiling seraphically at the bottom.

My third pip had clearly receded at Dolmino and it wasn’t till the vermouth was running low that I got a chance to redeem my reputation. We were by then within forty miles of Rome and operating in the foothills of the Leprini
Mountains
, hoping to link up some time with the advance out of Anzio. C Company was in reserve when our commander called on us.

“I’ve got a job for you, Goodbody,” he said, “and if I had
another teetotaller in the Regiment, I’d not be using you…. I want you to take a flying column to Castello Montepico. It’s about fifteen miles away … there on the map…. As you can see, the Yanks are approaching it from the west, the New Zealanders are coming up from the south, and we’ve almost got it outflanked to the east. The Boche will obviously be pulling out in the next twenty-four hours or so. Now I don’t want you to attack the place…. Just get up as near as you safely can and race in the minute the Boche is gone. It is imperative that the Musketeers are first into Montepico…. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir. And what vehicles will I have in my column?”

“Two half-tracks. They should take a couple of sections … and … ahem … a water cart.”

I studied the map.

“But isn’t the place in the New Zealanders’ area, sir? It’s a good ten miles wide of our boundary.”

The fronds of his moustache rustled and his eyes glistened redly.

“Castello Montepico, my boy, knows no boundaries. It belongs to all the wine-lovers of the world. Since time
immemorial
, ever since the grape has grown, the finest Frascati in all Italy has been made there. Every vintage is a monarch but the emperor of them all is Montepico ’92. It is still in cask at the castello and you’ll recognize it by the date and three interlaced crowns branded into the wood … like this …”

And thus it became my mission to seek the top trophy of the Battle of the Booze, to seize the last of the Montepico ’92 for the honour and intemperance of the Fourth
Musketeers
.

I hinted at the platoon order group that success in our assignment would enhance my prospects of promotion and my N. C. O.’s responded most loyally.

“If you got a third pip up, sir,” said Sergeant Transom, “they’d have to make you second-in-command of a company and we’d lose you from Twelve Platoon, wouldn’t we?”

“I’m afraid so, Sergeant. But,
c
’
est
la
guerre
.”

“In that case, sir, you can rely on everybody in the platoon doing their level best to get that booze.”

“And I second that on behalf of the corporals,” said Dooley. ‘Three bags full.”

“Thank you,” I said simply. “No matter where the ladder of promotion may lead me, I will never forget you chaps in good old Twelve Platoon.”

When we set off at dawn next day the back of my command half-tracks was stacked out with notice boards and paint pots.

“What are all the signs for, Sergeant?”

“We’re breaking new ground, ain’t we, sir? Never know what signs you may need to help them that come after. The boys been up half the night doing that lot.”

It was a good point; a primary duty of the advance guard is to mark up safe routes for following formations.

We ground along the twisting lanes into no-man’s-land, driving slowly to keep down the tell-tale plume of dust. It was fine to be carried after the weeks of foot-slogging, but I felt in my stomach the infantryman’s unease at being too far from a ditch and was grateful for the head-high armour of the half-track. After an hour of cautious bounding from ridge to ridge we came up at a crossroads with a patrol of three armoured cars. A Kiwi lieutenant climbed down from his turret.

“You had the fear o’ Gawd up me for a minute, mate,” he said. “I thought them tracks of yourn was Jerry tanks…. Comber’s the name … Musketeers, eh? What you doing out here in our territory?”

“I’m Goodbody,” I said. “Just pushing on. Getting stuck into the old Boche, you know.”

He had a broken nose and was husky enough for a
full-back
.

“You ain’t belting for Rome, are you? First in for the Musketeers, like? Because you mustn’t do that. You know we all got to hold off and let the Yanks be first into Rome. If they ain’t allowed to liberate Rome, they’re going to take their bat and ball home.”