Megan Hutching (ed.) with Roberto Rabel, A Fair Sort of Battering: New Zealanders Remember the Italian Campaign , HarperCollins in association with the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, Auckland, 2004. 280 pp. $39.99. ISBN 1-86950-505-0.
Reviewed by Ray Grover.
This is not a book in which the rights and wrongs of the 1943-45 Italian campaign are discussed: whether or not it should have been fought at all; whether it was the Allies who held down the Germans or vice versa; whether the town of Cassino should have been destroyed, let alone the monastery. What you get here are accounts of the consequences of high-level decisions from the point of view of those who had to do the dirty work. Roberto Rabel’s introduction succinctly summarises the political and military background to the campaign, but in the space available he can do no more than that. Also necessarily limited is the number of interviewees. Within that restriction, however, they cover a remarkably wide range: infantrymen, tankies, a gunner, an engineer and a nurse as one would expect, but also a couple of sailors - one being of the flying variety - a padre, a ‘Tui’ who served tea and cakes for the boys and - who would have thought it - a dentist. By the time we get to the end we have been presented with a fascinating cross-section of memories.
Amongst the former members of the 2nd New Zealand Division respect for the Freybergs - Mrs as well as General - is evident. It is not often that you hear of a general’s wife who personally meets the women who have arrived to serve in a soldiers’ club and who then, when there is a rush on, joins them behind the counter, or mixes with the soldiers at their picnics to the extent of sharing - or at least appearing to - their definitely non-vintage vino. Neither does the General mind sharing his part of the beach with his soldiers, nor putting a brigadier in his place when he disputes the siting of a bridge by a much lower ranked engineer. What really endeared him to the Division was his insistence on commandeering prime hotels as leave centres. It is interesting, however, that there are no comments on his military expertise, one way or another, apart from his practice of not being hesitant about going well forward. This characteristic, and his concern for the men, seem to have produced the regard in which he was held as a soldier. Along with respect for the General, there also comes across a two-way respect between frontline officers and men, to the extent that one is left with a strong impression that an officer who did not perform as a capable leader would not have lasted long - one of the consequences of being an army of citizen-soldiers from a small country.
The irritations and discomforts of military life have not been forgotten: preferring to go into Cassino rather than take the consequences of staying in the rear after punching a sergeant-major; or, when heavily burdened and on the battlefield being ordered to follow an officer in a hurry who is unburdened; or the age-old story of turning up cold and hungry in the middle of the night at the post to which you have been ordered, only to find that, as no preparations had been made for you, your welcome is somewhat less than overwhelming.
Although we are reminded that there was bitter fighting at Orsogna, San Michele, Faenza , Senio, and elsewhere, the battle of Cassino looms almost as large in the book as Monte Cassino itself loomed over those who were unfortunate enough to be sent in to attempt a breakthrough. Shelled and bombed, the town became impassable for tanks and a graveyard for those buried under the rubble. Not surprisingly it ‘stunk’, ‘something I can still smell in my nostrils’, the Western Front over again, with well-fed rats as big as cats. Once you were in those ruins, you found yourself in circumstances that, so far as the New Zealand infantry was concerned, were appallingly unique.
Not that other horrors are overlooked: an officer recounting the circumstances under which he had to send a tank driver forward, knowing that two of his brothers had been killed and then soon afterwards learning that the driver too had been killed; or the sailor who, at the age of seventeen, having served in the magazine of a gun turret while his ship was being attacked by submarines, later has to retrieve the identity disks of bloated paratroopers who had been dropped into the sea; or the Maori battalion private who tells of occupying a farmhouse surrounded by dead and very ripe soldiers from a former attack, being unable to do anything about it because the farmhouse is under enemy observation, and then having to dig a grave inside the house to bury the dead in it so that he and his mate might sleep.
And then there is luck. It can cause you to lose money when, in the midst of a two-up school, a bomb drops; it can intervene so that you remain unhurt after being fired on by a nebelwerfer battery because the shells had been made in German-occupied Czechoslovakia; or, when you are an engineer and have to make a folding-boat bridge across a river during the night, things go wrong from the start, you are still working on it in daylight, and you are observed and the shells fall amongst your men. After learning about those and similar events one becomes very much aware that all the people in the book are amongst those whom luck smiled on. Oral history records, like other archives, are inclined to weigh on the side of those who survive.
Save when occupying Trieste or on leave, the Italy these participants experienced was well off the tourist track. There are few memories of sunny Italy and many of snow, rain, and mud up to the axles. Moreover it ‘was such a different war from Africa because there were houses, there were people, there were animals, all that sort of thing.’ For the first time the Division was fighting in a human environment and being confronted with the issues stemming from that. While there was a growing respect for the poor, hardworking and hospitable peasants, there was also the fact that a war was being fought and all that entailed: destruction and privation for the peasants; sympathy for them and generous sharing of food and other goodies; and looting - anything from potatoes to piano accordions - plus the trading of cigarettes and chocolates for sex. Even after 60 years these are not easy matters for decent people to come to terms with. That these are the consequences of wars and that there were other belligerents who behaved much worse are not much of a consolation.
But of course the human tendency to avoid presenting oneself in a negative light prevails - as any sensible reader of oral history knows. Fear is mentioned now and then, but not dwelt on. Like for the rest of us, it seems that the negative memories of the interviewees have tended to fade faster than positive ones. On the whole the war is remembered as a positive experience. Increase in personal confidence, greater social acceptance if you were a member of a minority, and a wider experience of the world than one would have otherwise have had before the days of cheap air travel are mentioned as benefits of the campaign. With two exceptions the interviewees also state they had no difficulties returning to civilian New Zealand . It is the padre and the infantryman who became a novelist who found themselves ‘unsettled’. Somehow, one is not surprised by this.
A Fair Sort of Battering is the third in a series that, with the personal encouragement of the Prime Minister, the History Group has published on the experiences of participants in the Second World War. Each of the three has been compiled and edited by Megan Hutching . In the first two, she carried out all the interviews. For this book she did seven of the thirteen, but I think it would be difficult to differentiate between hers and those done by Aaron Fox and Liz Catherall. As well as being a highly professional oral historian, Megan Hutching is a first-class editor. The reminiscences flow in a manner that makes for compelling reading. Then there are the photographs that so appositely complement the text, selected by Alison Parr. It must have been a pleasant task doing this because of the fine quality of the photographs by George Kaye. His eye produced work of value in its own right, much more than just a record. It seems he has yet to receive the recognition he deserves. There is a useful Further Reading list which might be enhanced by the addition of Guthrie Wilson’s Brave Company (1951), which is hard to beat when it comes to sharing the experience of the man in the firing line in that gruelling campaign.
In content and presentation, A Fair Sort of Battering vividly documents how people very much like us found themselves dealing with demands and circumstances far removed from the lives they had been brought up to expect. It is a tribute to them and to those who were with them.
[Related link: Italian Campaign exhibition on NZhistory.net.nz]
