91热爆

A REMINDER OF HOME

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War website by John Hughes on behalf of his father in law, Ken Derrick, MM, and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

We were moving up through Sicily towards the Northern coast for the crossing to the Italian mainland. We came to a valley which was crossed by what we knew as the Plimsoll Bridge. In the 18th century, Samuel Plimsoll introduced the internationally adopted line painted on the hulls of all ships to ensure that they were not overloaded. He was a famous native of Bristol, where I was born and bred and where most of my comrades in the 44th Battalion of the Royal Tank Regiment came from. Many of use were Territorials, who joined the Regular Army at the outset of the War. Not all of us survived to be demobbed at the end of it.

The bridge was intact but impassable because a large calibre railway gun near Mount Etna had its range and was accurately and regularly firing what we thought must be 12鈥� shells at the area. The explosions were very powerful. Any attempt to cross was too dangerous and would guarantee the destruction of the bridge. The Green Howards, who had got there before us and had captured the bridge, had suffered many casualties. The advance was being held up.

An officer from the Royal Artillery came down and asked us to synchronise our watches and, that night, to take careful note of three timings; the flash of the gun鈥檚 firing, the moment of impact of the shell and the sound of its firing. We reported these and next night, at about 7 o鈥檆lock, our artillery fired tracer shells at the railway gun鈥檚 location. These contained phosphorous, whose glow enabled you to follow the shell in its flight. Dozens of high explosive shells followed for about 20 minutes, passing over our heads like express trains. Then there was silence and another concentrated barrage of high explosives for about 10 minutes. This pattern of firing long and short barrages separated by a lull went on until 9 o鈥檆lock, with no return fire from the railway gun and complete silence from then on.

At dawn next day, we tanks and the infantry nervously made preparations to cross over the bridge. We passed the dead of the Green Howards, and continued without being fired on. Eventually we could see where the cause of our troubles had been. Our artillery fire had been accurate and devastating. It had brought down thousands of tons of the mountainside on top of the gun site, burying everything and everyone, forever, it seemed.

That night, the Colonel hosted a small celebratory party to include the Royal Artillery. I was invited but felt unwell and didn鈥檛 go. It turned out that I had contracted malaria and was flown to Malta for two weeks to recover. Well, you never fully recover from malaria and even now, over 60 years after, I still suffer bouts of weakness and heavy sweating as it recurs every now and then. But then, on the point of discharge from hospital, I went down with sand fly fever and had to spend another fortnight in hospital before being discharged with ten shillings (50p) and orders to find my own way back to my unit, the 44th Battalion, Royal Tank Regiment.

Instead, back in Sicily, I was put in a holding regiment but I was determined to rejoin my old friends and comrades in the 44th. I met a friend who was in the Royal Army Service Corps (RASC), who was delivering supplies and would have given me a lift back. But there were Military Police, or Redcaps, everywhere and I would have been regarded as absent without leave from the holding regiment. By a stroke of luck, I then saw Harry Taylor from the 44th, who was collecting mail. I joined him in picking up and moving sacks of post as though we had been sent out together and he played along and took me with him back to my 鈥淎鈥� Squadron. The tanks had moved up to Northern Sicily in readiness for the invasion of the Italian mainland.

I was glad to be home in 鈥淎鈥� Squadron, and the Major was pleased to see me back. However, rules are rules and, with the greatest regret, he had to go by the book and order me back to the holding regiment. If I had gone, I might have ended up anywhere and I did not want to be parted from fellow Bristolians and others with whom I had gone through so much in the years before. In addition, I had skills and specialised training that were particularly useful in tanks and I could find them wasted in a completely different branch of the Army. In the face of my protests, he agreed to speak to the Colonel. After an anxious time for me, he came back, clapped his hand on my shoulder and said 鈥淵ou鈥檙e back on my tank, Derrick鈥�.

And then it was off to Italy.

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