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A Field Regiment R.A. consisted of three Batteries of eight guns and each battery was divided into two troops of four guns. The 53rd was part of the 8th Indian Division and supported one of the three brigades of Indian Army infantry. At the time we joined, the Division was deployed just short of Casino and was to take part in the final, and ultimately successful, assault on the Gustav Line and the capture of the town and the monastery.

The army had been bogged down at Casino for some time because the Gustav Line was heavily defended as the final bastion on the approach to Rome. There had been several bitter engagements in the preceding months and the battle of May 1944 was no less bloody.

Our infantry had to cross two rivers, the Rapido and the Garigliano, in the Liri valley and we fired a barrage all night before the advance, following up with a creeping barrage, just ahead of our infantry as they went forward. Very noisy!

The breakthrough came after, I think, three days of heavy fighting and when we ourselves followed through it was to see the town of Casino totally demolished. There was barely a brick standing on a brick and it was said at the time that the town could never be rebuilt because the sewers were smashed, but that it would have to be built as a new town further down the road. Whether or not this eventualised I do not know as I have never been back.

On the right flank of our Division a Polish tank division took on a German Panzer Division in the foothills of the Apennines and what a dreadful battle that must have been. As we advanced we could see what it must have been like because I never again saw as many destroyed tanks, of both sides, on a single battlefield.

On our left flank there was an extraordinary military formation of Free French origin. They were known as the BIMPS, which as far as I can remember stood for something like 鈥楤ataillon Infanterie du Marine et du Pacifique鈥�, and they had joined up with the 8th Army in Tunisia after making a remarkable crossing of the Sahara desert from Lake Chad on the northern borders of Nigeria and Chad.

They were an entirely self sufficient unit, including their own camp followers, and very much a law unto themselves. I had to go to Brigade HQ to get orders one evening and arrived at the same time as an officer from the BIMPS who was there to report his unit鈥檚 position. The Brigade Intelligence Officer nearly fell off his chair when having twice checked the map references that the Frenchman had given him he found that they were so far forward as to be off his map!

Once the infantry and armour had broken through, the advance to Rome, and also to the relief of the poor devils in the ill fated Anzio beach head, was pretty swift. Rome had been declared an 鈥榦pen city鈥� and as such escaped air and artillery bombardment from either side and was eventually 鈥榣iberated鈥� by the Americans on 4 June 1944 just two days before the landings on the Normandy beaches.

It might just as easily have fallen to British troops because it was said that one of our Recce Regiments of armoured cars was on the outskirts of the city for a couple of days but was not allowed to go in because it was politically required that the Americans should have that 鈥榟onour鈥�.

During the remaining part of the summer of 1944 the Army made steady progress northwards until at last the advance ground to a halt in the Apennines north of River Arno, short of the Po valley and the great plain of Lombardy. The halt came about more as a result of the weather than the enemy and a cold wet winter it would prove to be.

As the Army fought its way up Italy it was not uncommon for units to be joined by British escaped prisoners of war who had been living in the mountains being succoured by the Italian peasants. I particularly recall one amusing occasion when one of these chaps appeared in our camp and when asked what unit he was looking to return to he replied 鈥淥h I鈥檓 not looking for any Regiment. I鈥檓 going back up there to get married. I only came down for a pair of new boots.鈥� Sadly for him, and his prospective bride the quick retort was, 鈥淥h no you鈥檙e not. You鈥檙e back in the army now mate.鈥�

That summer of 1944 the 53rd Field continued to support the 8th Indian Division during the advance through Umbria and Tuscany. It was a glorious summer and one of my happier memories is of lying under a cherry tree laden with fat black fruit and practically waiting for them to fall off into my mouth.

A memory that was less than happy was when we had passed one of the several battered villages along the route, and this one had been almost obliterated; when we stopped at the top of the hill overlooking the village we saw coming towards us the residents of the village making their way home having abandoned the village during the fighting. They didn鈥檛 know what they were returning to and the look on their faces when they saw the extent of the shambles is something that I will always remember.

Places en route that come to mind are, Assissi, where we used the sharp vertical of the western wall of the famous monastery to line up our guns, Perugia a delightful university town, Sienna, famous for its annual horse race, and Poggibonsi, of little fame but memorable to us because the enemy had laid anti-personnel mines round the well and a tomato field and there we lost a comrade whose lower leg was blown away before we discovered the mines.

Most notable, of course, was Firenze (Florence to us) which lies like a jewel across the Arno and was, like Rome, declared an open city thus avoiding bombardment but not the destruction, by the retreating enemy of all its graceful bridges, with one exception, the Ponte Vecchio. This, as its name implies, was so old and narrow that it proved of no use to an advancing army.

I remember particularly the gunsite we occupied just south of the city because I had to draw in a hatched area on my artillery board, to indicate the boundary of the city, into which we were not allowed to fire. The Arno was not, however, strongly defended and it was not long before we had bypassed Florence and found ourselves on the road to Bologna which lies to the north of the mountains. It was here that we got stuck, almost literally in the mud, at the highest point of the Apennines and about halfway between the two cities.

Even with our very mobile guns it took us all day to get the gunsite prepared and ready for action. We were aided that day by a bulldozer driven by a Canadian soldier and he it was that spent the entire day scraping level platforms out of the mountain side. At dusk we had to lift him off the machine; he was so very, very cold. There was only one building to be seen in that barren landscape, a small farm that we made the very best use of for shelter and the Troop Sergeant Major when he had got everyone some sort of accommodation was heard to open the last outside door and respond to an ensuing 鈥淢ooo鈥︹�� by 鈥淢ove over鈥�!

I, myself, found shelter under the table of the farmhouse kitchen and I sometimes retired to my bed-roll at night to the accompaniment of the Italian voices of the farmer and his wife and daughter, who spent much of their time on winter evenings sitting by the kitchen fire, stripping back the leaves of maize and tying the cobs into bundles to hang from the rafters. These, when milled, became the main ingredient of the following year鈥檚 pasta, the staple diet of the Italian peasant.

Indeed I don鈥檛 recall them eating much else than bread, pasta with a tomato sauce and, in the summer, lettuce with olive oil. Presumably it was because of the war but there appeared to be very little meat. In our journey up Italy we soon found out how reliant the country folk were on their olive trees because the troops also discovered that the wood burnt very well and unwittingly caused real deprivation when they started to chop down the trees.

The army authorities soon put a stop to this by instituting a fine of five pounds; a lot of money to a soldier in those days, to anyone caught desecrating an olive tree.

Fighting that winter was mainly sporadic with each side sending out fighting patrols to keep the other on its toes and with us, the artillery, providing harassing fire. The only excitement was when the Brigade that we were attached to was pulled out of the line with us in support and dispatched to a salient at Lucca, just north of Pisa, to bolster up a unit of the American 5th Army which had suffered a rather more than usually fierce attack by the enemy.

We weren鈥檛 in the line all the time and it was from here that I had the opportunity to visit Livorno (Leghorn) and Pisa to see the leaning tower and I also had a leave to the Sorrento peninsula.

I think it must have been in February of 1945 because as we travelled along the coast road to our hotel at Ravello, right above Amalfi, the women were picking the lemons from the terraces on the hillside. It was also during that winter that I went on a long signals course to a place called Nola some twenty five miles west of Naples and about twelve miles north of Mount Vesuvius. Whilst I was there the volcano erupted and we witnessed the most dramatic pyrotechnic display we were ever likely to see.

Overnight the top of the mountain changed its shape and later I visited an American airfield nearer to Vesuvius which was littered with broken aircraft the result of falling debris. Even at Nola we were sprinkled with volcanic dust.

The 53rd Field was a Territorial Army unit raised in Bolton, Lancashire and in 1939 the whole of the very prestigious football team, The Bolton Wanderers joined the Regiment.

The personnel of most military units became diluted from the original as the war progressed but when I joined the Regiment in 1943 the whole football team was virtually intact. Clearly someone who mattered made sure that these 鈥榮tars鈥� were never posted! Consequently when we were out of the line and resting our football team would take on the rest of the 8th Army or the Desert Air force and trounce them by a considerable margin...

Came the Spring of 1945 and the 8th Indian Division was switched to the east preparatory to mounting an attack, with the 2nd New Zealand Division, on the German defences at the River Senio. This was effectively the last battle of the Italian campaign and whilst we were expecting tough resistance at the crossing of the mighty river Po, in the event it was one of the least defended obstacles and we were soon streaming north towards Venice. Our Division was in fact due to 鈥榣iberate鈥� that wonderful city but were beaten to it by the New Zealanders who proudly announced that on the day they entered the city they got a Jeep and a horse into St Marks square! On 2nd May 1945 the German Commander in Chief surrendered. The 8th Army had fought its last battle.

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