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IMPRESSIONS OF MY DADS WAR IN ITALY WITH THE 6th SOUTH AFRICAN ARMOURED DIVISION

BY

JAMES BOURHILL

My father has been dead for a couple of years now and how easy it would be let his war stories be forgotten. Who would have thought that we, the next generation, would know so little about what our fathers did in the war. How surprised our fathers would be to know how their memoirs, no matter how minor, could one day become little nuggets of historical value.

My dad was Gunner Stephen Fraser Bourhill. I suppose that my first question to him was “how many Germans did you kill in the war daddy?” His answer to a bloodthirsty kid was invariably, “I really don’t know if I killed anyone because I was in the field artillery, and I never saw where my shells were landing”. From more recent conversations and much reading, I have since realized that he probably brought about the demise of many, many Germans in the Italian campaign. It was a campaign where artillery and mortar fire did the killing while the “poor bloody infantry”, the PBI were the ones being killed.

Of course he did see the handiwork of his 25 pounder gun. He used to say that the exploding shells did not leave a crater, it looked like where a guineafowl had been scratching in the dirt. Very often the target was enemy gun positions and vehicle convoys which presented a grisly picture when the advancing allied army came upon the burned out remnants. One sight that left an indelible impression on my father and on the me, the eager audience, was the carnage which they found at the crossing of the river Po, where defeated Germans had been caught in a gridlock by artillery fire. My father was struck by the handsome features of a young soldier in the drivers seat of a truck, hands welded to the steering wheel. It had been many months earlier and further to the South that he first felt the sickening shock of seeing dead South Africans with the red shoulder tabs of the 6th Armoured Division.

The 1/6th Field Artillery Regiment first saw action at the fourth battle of Monte Cassino in May 1944. They took part in the famous artillery barrage on the 11th May when the Polish forces finally managed to drive the enemy out of the monastery on the top of Monte Cassino. The lowly gunners did not at the time appreciate the significance of helping to win what is considered to be one of the hardest fought battles of the second world war.

The newspapers told of artillery duels. “What duels”, he said, “it was just a question of us shelling the hell out of Jerry.” In one of our heart to heart talks, he confessed to me that he had a wonderful war, he really was happy. There were bad times of course, and there were casualties. The self effacing term “D-Day dodgers” was coined by the men themselves, but I think it bothered my dad. When the South Africans moved North from Cassino, they saw signs of the Anzio battles. There was one vehicle park which was full of damaged and destroyed equipment which bespoke terrible fighting. It was here that he got hold of a Harley Davidson motorcycle and rode it around till it ran out of fuel.

A town named Bagnoregio (just North of Rome) and the date 11th June 1944 held special significance. Uncommonly, the 25 pounders had advanced through their infantry and faced enemy machine gun fire. For the first time they were firing over open sights (gun barrels flat, not pointing skyward). Dad described how the Guards Brigade advanced through a wheat field towards the enemy with their officer standing straight up all the while saying to his troops “keep down chaps”. In the same action, the 1/6th were subjected to their worst enemy bombardment. Bottom quivering, lying in a shallow trench, this was his most frightening moment in the war. Feeling a thud on his thigh and a wet patch, he thought he had been hit. It turned out to be a ripe peach which had fallen off the tree above him. Lieutenant Harry Barker was not so lucky. A small piece of shrapnel passed through his body leaving almost no mark and as he died, “his bristly mustache folded like a sea urchin”.

Ironically, Dad’s closest call was the result of a prematurely exploding shell from one of their own guns. He had been lying on his bedroll reading a book in front of the guns. One of the guns was doing some range-finding, quite routine. The shell burst overhead and obliterated the bedroll and book. Fortunately dad had gone off to have lunch a few minutes before. The shell came from Mac Cormack’s gun. He was a boffin at trigonometry and always had the job of range-finding. He also happened to marry my dad’s sister after the war and only admitted to the causing the accident 50 years later.

Obviously, Mac Cormack being part of our family, featured in many of the stories. He and my dad always greeted each other in Italian and when the vino started to flow, so would their use (or abuse) of the Italian language. Mack was conspicuous by his crooked nose, a wartime souvenir acquired when their truck hit a land mine on a winding mountain road. Apparently everyone was OK except Mack who leaped off the truck into the dark. They were in view of the enemy and had to crawl into a culvert before dad could light a match and inspect the damage. He always spoke with a nasal twang after that and apparently his thing was to say the word “why” whenever they came across the ruins of a village or farmhouse.

Dad never hated the Germans, he respected them. After the war being part of Round Table, he hosted Dieter Bherwald, a former German soldier and the two became lifelong friends. I even gleaned a few war stories off Dieter. Although he never said so, he held a grudge against the Americans all his life. It may have been a due to general friction between the various nationalities in the American 5th Army of which they were a part. It might have been personal interaction with American soldiers like the one who came looking for the 1/6th gun battery and blamed them for a “friendly fire” incident. He also never forgave the Australians for calling the South Africans “Spring-backs” because they didn’t half spring back from Tobruk.

I have a bundle of letters which my father wrote home to his mother in Smits Road, Dunkeld, Johannesburg, but the writing is all frivolous banter. Anything major would have been censored anyway. The few glimpses into what life was really like include the moaning about digging slit trenches and the weather, gathering around the gramophone listening to Tommy Dorseys latest records and a passing comment about having been in action recently. All his life he loved walking in the hills and war or no war, he regularly walked in the Appenine mountains, alert to the danger of booby traps. Even twenty years later, he would think “booby trap” before climbing through a fence.

The cold and wet affected everyone. In the “Winter Line”, also known as the “Gothic Line” - the 6th division lived through months of misery. One day, dad was chopping down a telephone pole for fire wood and an old Italian woman tried to pick up a few pieces. Dad chased her off angrily and then immediately regretted it, seeing himself no better than one of the Nazis he was fighting. Dad visited Italy after the war and even found his gun position just North of Florence. However he was never willing to experience another European winter.

During the muddy winter in the front line, the gunners were issued with ill-fitting gumboots, and they wore an assortment of clothing. Not very smart but looking every inch the grizzled veterans, he was once sent to the rear to fetch or deliver something. There he bumped into a chap from school, a year or so younger than himself and still a “rookie” in the Army. My father believed that he could see admiration on the faces of these young rear echelon types - which made him feel good.

Another time that he met a friend from school was before the attack on one of the many high points in the Appenines, possibly Monte Stanco. The infantry were filing past their gun positions to get to their start line for the assault. The boy’s name was Karl Wickee and had been at school a year behind dad. They exchanged a few words. If I am not mistaken, he said that he knew he was going to be killed. Apparently he looked pale and scared. Dad felt sorry for him and the rest of the PBI. A few days later, when the division was on the move again, there was fresh grave with Karl Wickee’s name on the wooden cross.

The biggest personal loss to dad in the war was the loss of his friend Royce Fuller. Royce was from the Eastern Transvaal and was in dad’s class at school. Royce joined the Special Service Battalion (SSB) which was a tank regiment. Apparently, their distinctive black boots and beret attracted many recruits. Royce was wounded with severe burns very late in the war. Dad visited him in hospital once and on he next visit, the bed was empty. There was no explanation from the staff. Royce is buried in the Naples cemetery.

As the war was coming to an end, nobody was prepared to take unnecessary chances. Dad notes a complete lack of motivation on his behalf - and those around him. However, an Italian family cornered some South African soldiers on the street, saying that there was an unexploded shell in front of their door. Apparently it had been blown off an exploding barge on the river. Dad was a good shot and on this occasion, being a left-handed shot also helped. He put a hole right through the object but on closer inspection, he found it was a beautiful pair of German binoculars. On another occasion when called upon to flush out some German soldiers from a building in the town - he declined.

VE day was a quiet affair, a bit of an anti-climax. Everyone just sat around in a bit of a daze. Pretty soon the South Africans were worring about being sent to fight in the Pacific theatre or in the jungles of Burma and the rumours were rife. The next big concern was “what to do when we get home?” As it happened, dad lived through the best period of his life in Northern Italy waiting to be repatriated. There was a surplus of women in Italy who were prepared to do anything for small luxuaries. The 1/6th Field regiment set up a rest centre at Rapallo on the Italian Riviera. Dad remembered swimming across the bay and there was a girl named Julia from Genoa who called him “Stefano” and wanted to marry him.

Repatriation was done on a first in - first out basis and dad was one of the last to get home. Like many before him, he hitch-hiked part of the way home. He got a ride sitting on a wooden plank in the rear gun turret of a Flying Fortress bomber as far as Helwan in Egypt. Helwan was a re-supply and staging post and was not a pleasant place. The unit had spent some time there in training before shipping out to Italy. They did spend time in the desert but never saw action there. Apparently, it was not done to talk about the desert war when associating with the Johnny-come-lately’s who went straight to Italy. The expression was “get the sand out of your hair”.

The troops were entertained in an open air movie theatre where they saw Errol Flynn winning the war single handedly. A sentimental type of movie could easily bring on the tears. There were only two times in my dad’s adult life where he really cried. The first was when the troop ship was pulling away from Durban harbour and the “Lady in White” sang “We’ll meet again” and at a stage show of the same name in Johannesburg 50 years later. The firing of the guns made my dad completely deaf in one ear and he received a small disability pension.

In recent years I have travelled to Monte Cassino and the South African cemetery at Castigilone. This year I will be in Rapallo and Portofino where dad spent his happiest days of the war. I only wish that I could tell him about my trip and maybe hear some more of his stories.

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