Post by Dave Homewood on May 23, 2020 16:14:19 GMT 12
This is a great article from the NZEF Correspondent at Faenza who really painted a picture of the scene on the banks of the Senio River in Italy in February 1945:
"QUIET" SECTOR
NEW ZEALAND FRONT
HARDSHIPS IN ITALY
(Official War Correspondent N.Z.E.F.)
(By Air Mall.) FAENZA, January 11.
"The New Zealand sector has been quiet for the last few days."
A patrol has edged its perilous way silently through German-held country and brought back a report on a hidden feature of the country. Another has failed in an attempt to surprise a German post and has carried three wounded back to its position. Others have crept silently through the darkness and located enemy positions. Planes have blasted the Germans out of a post pin-pointed by a patrol. A German section attempting to rush one of our casas has been driven off, leaving its leader dead. A man has been killed by a mortar bomb. A prisoner has been brought in by one patrol.
This is the trivia of war. All things are relative, and against the savage onslaught of battle with its earthshaking barrage followed by the advance of thousands of men, with its toll of hundreds of lives and its miles of land laid waste, this activity of several days is "quiet,"
BITTERLY COLD.
In the line it is bitterly, painfully cold. Men off duty gather round roaring fires and sizzling hot stoves in their casas, and rest. Outside, those manning the observation posts keep constant watch over the countryside, taking what shelter they can, stolidly enduring the cold and the strain, and counting the minutes as the time for their relief draws near. Inside, it is a very badly battered casa if it has defied New Zealand enterprise in converting it into some semblance of comfort.
Italian farmhouses were not built for comfort. Of stone or brick, unlined, with stone stairways and calsomined walls, they contain few facilities for heating. Possibly the big living-room has a huge, open fireplace. It seems that generally there is a door opening from this room into the cowshed, which is part of the house and which permeates the house with its own peculiar odour. The living-room presents a strange scene. Stretchers or short-legged cots have been packed into it so that as many men as possible may share the warmth of the fire. Some men are asleep, some are reading or writing, some are grouped round the fire chatting in low-pitched voices. They straighten up at the "clump" of shells landing nearby, relax again when the firing stops. At the table an officer goes methodically about the routine tasks of unit management, disposing of a mass of detail. Equipment, weapons, clothing are stacked around the room. The light of a grey day filtering through an inadequate window and the flickering of the fire gave an air of perpetual dusk.
In other rooms, heaters—oil drip-burners, wood-burners, kerosene burners, stoves issued, or salvaged, or improvised—replace the fire, but the general appearance is the same. Soldiers in battledress and various oddments of extra clothing—scarves, balaclavas, overcoats—are sitting or lying around. Maybe the light is better if there is a shell-hole which cannot be blocked in the wall; maybe there's a game of cards in progress; with variations it's the same picture of a group of "infanteers" unconcernedly making the best of rough and uncomfortable conditions.
"Don't go round the back of the house." says the officer. "It's unhealthy." Actually the whole place is "unhealthy," because the Germans occupy another casa just 250 yards away and the view is blocked only by what looks like an exceptionally sparse plantation of trees.
SEVERE STRAIN.
At night some of the men now sleeping will trek silently through those trees, alert for the first sound of an enemy patrol on similar work, intent on carrying out a task. It may be to shoot up the house 250 yards away. It may be a man-hunt, to capture a prisoner. It may be a standing patrol, worst job of all, which keeps men anchored at one spot in the bitter cold; still, silent and listening intently. It may be one of a dozen tasks. But whatever it is it imposes a strain which will keep every nerve tensed, every sense alert, until it is completed.
That is what war has meant for the New Zealanders in the line for the last few days. The Germans in some houses, our troops in others. Sudden sallies by patrols on either side. Sudden, short bursts of artillery or mortar fire. Sudden, brief chattering by a machine-gun, or a few scattered rifle shots. But for the most part a silence over the deserted fields and the battered casas.
On fine days there is the drone of our planes overhead, the "pop-pop-pop" and black bursts in the sky around them of German anti-aircraft fire, the dull, distant thud of bombs on German positions. Then silence again. Now the snow has come, wiping out cover and hampering movement, intensifying the cold, and the silence lies heavy over the great expanse of gleaming white.
That is what is meant by the report: "The New Zealand sector has been quiet for the last few days."
EVENING POST, 17 FEBRUARY 1945
"QUIET" SECTOR
NEW ZEALAND FRONT
HARDSHIPS IN ITALY
(Official War Correspondent N.Z.E.F.)
(By Air Mall.) FAENZA, January 11.
"The New Zealand sector has been quiet for the last few days."
A patrol has edged its perilous way silently through German-held country and brought back a report on a hidden feature of the country. Another has failed in an attempt to surprise a German post and has carried three wounded back to its position. Others have crept silently through the darkness and located enemy positions. Planes have blasted the Germans out of a post pin-pointed by a patrol. A German section attempting to rush one of our casas has been driven off, leaving its leader dead. A man has been killed by a mortar bomb. A prisoner has been brought in by one patrol.
This is the trivia of war. All things are relative, and against the savage onslaught of battle with its earthshaking barrage followed by the advance of thousands of men, with its toll of hundreds of lives and its miles of land laid waste, this activity of several days is "quiet,"
BITTERLY COLD.
In the line it is bitterly, painfully cold. Men off duty gather round roaring fires and sizzling hot stoves in their casas, and rest. Outside, those manning the observation posts keep constant watch over the countryside, taking what shelter they can, stolidly enduring the cold and the strain, and counting the minutes as the time for their relief draws near. Inside, it is a very badly battered casa if it has defied New Zealand enterprise in converting it into some semblance of comfort.
Italian farmhouses were not built for comfort. Of stone or brick, unlined, with stone stairways and calsomined walls, they contain few facilities for heating. Possibly the big living-room has a huge, open fireplace. It seems that generally there is a door opening from this room into the cowshed, which is part of the house and which permeates the house with its own peculiar odour. The living-room presents a strange scene. Stretchers or short-legged cots have been packed into it so that as many men as possible may share the warmth of the fire. Some men are asleep, some are reading or writing, some are grouped round the fire chatting in low-pitched voices. They straighten up at the "clump" of shells landing nearby, relax again when the firing stops. At the table an officer goes methodically about the routine tasks of unit management, disposing of a mass of detail. Equipment, weapons, clothing are stacked around the room. The light of a grey day filtering through an inadequate window and the flickering of the fire gave an air of perpetual dusk.
In other rooms, heaters—oil drip-burners, wood-burners, kerosene burners, stoves issued, or salvaged, or improvised—replace the fire, but the general appearance is the same. Soldiers in battledress and various oddments of extra clothing—scarves, balaclavas, overcoats—are sitting or lying around. Maybe the light is better if there is a shell-hole which cannot be blocked in the wall; maybe there's a game of cards in progress; with variations it's the same picture of a group of "infanteers" unconcernedly making the best of rough and uncomfortable conditions.
"Don't go round the back of the house." says the officer. "It's unhealthy." Actually the whole place is "unhealthy," because the Germans occupy another casa just 250 yards away and the view is blocked only by what looks like an exceptionally sparse plantation of trees.
SEVERE STRAIN.
At night some of the men now sleeping will trek silently through those trees, alert for the first sound of an enemy patrol on similar work, intent on carrying out a task. It may be to shoot up the house 250 yards away. It may be a man-hunt, to capture a prisoner. It may be a standing patrol, worst job of all, which keeps men anchored at one spot in the bitter cold; still, silent and listening intently. It may be one of a dozen tasks. But whatever it is it imposes a strain which will keep every nerve tensed, every sense alert, until it is completed.
That is what war has meant for the New Zealanders in the line for the last few days. The Germans in some houses, our troops in others. Sudden sallies by patrols on either side. Sudden, short bursts of artillery or mortar fire. Sudden, brief chattering by a machine-gun, or a few scattered rifle shots. But for the most part a silence over the deserted fields and the battered casas.
On fine days there is the drone of our planes overhead, the "pop-pop-pop" and black bursts in the sky around them of German anti-aircraft fire, the dull, distant thud of bombs on German positions. Then silence again. Now the snow has come, wiping out cover and hampering movement, intensifying the cold, and the silence lies heavy over the great expanse of gleaming white.
That is what is meant by the report: "The New Zealand sector has been quiet for the last few days."
EVENING POST, 17 FEBRUARY 1945
