Bomb Cottage
I COULDN’T be bothered dealing with the narrow Naples streets at night, especially as there didn’t seem to be any streetlights on anywhere, so I took some empty side roads and found the villa quite easily. It was a couple of miles up the Via Francesco Caracciolo north towards Posillipo, and it was large, stucco white, perched on a cliff, and sure enough did indeed overlook the beach. I grabbed my kit out the back of the jeep and went up the path. There was a hand-scrawled sign beside the door that announced ‘Bomb Cottage, Property of the Allied Fourth Estate,’ and beneath it ‘Abandon Hope all ye who enter Herein.’ Interesting sense of humor someone had I thought, as I checked the exterior, couldn’t see anything that would justify such an odd name for the place, and knocked on the door.
A man in his sixties answered wearing reading glasses perched at the end of his nose, a Victorian smoking jacket in a maroon Paisley pattern with a matching round hat and cord hanging down from its centre, and an Ascot round his neck. In one hand he was holding a well-filled brandy snifter and in the other a hand of cards. “Do come in, dear child,” he said with a grin in some sort of elegant British accent, “We’ve been waiting with baited breath for your arrival.”
“And you are?” I asked.
“Frederick Anstruther-Darlington of the Edinburgh Darlingtons, Chief Military Correspondent of the Times of London, at your service ma’am,” and without spilling a drop of his brandy or fumbling any of his cards, which he kept as they say very close to his chest, he gave me a flourishing bow in the finest Walter Raleigh fashion.
“I’m Patricia Hampton, Fifth Army Photographic Section.”
“Indeed you are, and one of Landers’ apple-polishers, so the jungle drums have it.”
“I’m not anyone’s apple-polisher, whatever that means, thank you very much. And for the record I report to General Clark.”
“As indeed do we all, my sweet.”
A woman’s voice that I recognized as Marie’s shouted out from somewhere inside, “Behave yourself, Freddie. The poor girl isn’t even in the door yet.”
“My mistake, I’m sure,” he responded in a fashion that was already making me reconsider any resolution to be nice to every new person I met round here. “Landers sent us an official communiqué informing us you’d be billeting here. Said you’d chosen our little bothy personally, seeing as how you heard we’re such thought-provoking company.”
“I’m afraid he’s not quite telling you the truth.”
“Of course he isn’t. But then, does he ever?”
“Freddie?” the woman’s voice repeated more urgently, “Don’t make me come out there?”
“Do come in will you. Getting oddly cold, don’t you think?” And Anstruther-Darlington opened the door fully with yet another flourish, checked the skies suspiciously, and followed me in.
It was a busy place their Villa was, even if only lit by kerosene lamps and candles. Karl Lucas was sitting at a baby grand piano playing a classical piece, Franz List’s Harmonies Poétiques et Religieuses it might have been, and playing it rather impressively too. In fact he was playing it very impressively and much to my annoyance considerably better than I could ever hope to. Except the moment he saw me he broke out in what I took to be a rather sarcastic rendition of God Bless America. Marie, a glass of wine in her hand, was leaning on the piano listening to him, and three other men were sitting at a card table ready to continue playing whenever Anstruther-Darlington saw fit to return from his door opening responsibilities. “You’ve already met Maestro Lucas and Madame Sorel, I believe,” he said as he limped ever so slightly on his way back in.
“Welcome to Bomb Cottage,” Karl responded.
“Permit me to introduce you to the rest of our current coven,” said Freddie pointing to the table with the three other card-players. “This is Bill Mauldin of your very own American Stars and Stripes newspaper. Next to him is Alan Whicker battle cameraman to the stars, and occasional Director of the British Army Film unit. And finally, but not in any way least, Norman L. of British Field Security who is watching over us till he finds permanent accommodation.”
“Watching over you?” I asked.
“I am required by Colonel Landers to fill in a daily schedule of everyone here’s time of departure and return and where they say they have been.”
“I must warn you at the outset, that though we have few rules around here, you must never ever ask Norman his surname, on account of the dreadfully sensitive nature of his other more important responsibilities here,” Freddie continued, “Indeed of he ever whispered a word of them he would be obliged to shoot himself immediately. You being already vouched for by Madame Sorel as a good egg, I can tell you however that those responsibilities have something to do with ladies of the Neapolitan night. Although round here it doesn’t take anywhere near as long as a night to transact one’s business with them. Much to the relief of both parties, I’d say.”
“Nice to meet you all gentlemen,” I responded to the table in general as they each made some sort of gesture of acknowledgement which in Norman L’s case involved eyeing me up and down and muttering, “Most pleasing,” in Bill’s occasioned an, “Indeed as cute as advertised,” and in Whicker’s brought forth a, “Striking, quite striking.” Appropriate courtesy having been done me, they all then turned their attention back to what was apparently the far more important matter of their card game, which I recognized as seven card draw, that also having been Shady-L’s diversion of choice after lights-out every evening.
“So why’d you call it Bomb Cottage?” I asked no-one in particular. It was an innocent enough question I thought, though for some reason it made the four men at the card table all look at each other askance, as if each preferred that someone other than himself respond. But none of them did, and when I looked at Karl to see if he would tell me, he broke into something that sounded very much like Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries. “Hopefully you’ll not get to find out,’” Freddie allowed. I looked to Marie for further information but got only a shrug.
And that for the moment was apparently all that was going to be said on that matter, other than that Karl looked at my helmet attached to my musette bag, then pointed to a rack where there were a whole bunch of other assorted helmets. “But just in case, it would be smarter to hang that up there with the rest.”
“Come on. Let me,” and Marie took my helmet and hung it up for me.
As she did I looked around the room. The walls were covered in dozens of charcoal drawings of generals, officers and soldiers. There was even one of Landers and what looked very much like General Clark, both sitting at a desk with a pile of Purple Heart medals on one end, a stack of aspirin bottles at the other, and a string of war-weary American G.I’s lined up in front of them. As Landers offered a Purple Heart to a bedraggled, unshaven one with a bandage round his head, the soldier responded disinterestedly, ‘You’ve got me enough of those already, general. Tell the Colonel I’d as soon settle for the aspirin this time.’ And there was another cartoon with three unshaven G.I’s having a smoke break while their sergeant explained to them, ‘I need a couple of guys who don’t owe me no money for a little routine patrol we’ve been sent on.’
The tables meanwhile were covered with typewriters and spare paper, there was a portable movie camera in the corner, and there were empty wine bottles and ashtrays filled with half-smoked cigarettes all over the place. As a final touch of home, the windows nearest the sea all had heavy black-out blankets draped over them. All in all I’d seen tidier looking sorority houses, and in spite of what their inmates’ parents’ were led to believe on their short ritual visits of inspection, they were usually a mess too.
“Well we all know why we’ve been sent here, question is why have you, my sweet?” Anstruther-Darlington enquired as he tentatively motioned to Whicker the dealer, now adorned in an elegant dealer’s eyeshade, for three cards.
“I’m not sure what you mean?” I asked.
“Bomb Cottage is Landers’ Neapolitan answer to the Bastille. No offence intended Marie,” said Whicker.
“None taken, Allen.”
“A thinly disguised stockade for persons with a history of offending him, and whom he wishes therefore to keep under close supervision.”
“And how did you manage to offend him in the first place?”
Bill Mauldin who was thin-faced and didn’t look a day over fifteen said, “I keep on publishing cartoons that suggest life in Fifth Army is not quite the idyllic scout-camp he wants the folk back home to believe.”
“I had the temerity to liken our troops at Salerno to a beleaguered garrison,” said Whicker, a rather dashing-looking English type with a moustache that was far more in keeping with the RAF pilot style, “And that was a description to which he did not at all take.”
“I said the whole Salerno fiasco reminded me a bit of Dunkirk,” said Anstruther-Darlington.
“You were actually there, at Dunkirk?
“Freddie was everywhere, weren’t you Freddie?” Whicker added as he handed Freddie some cards.
“One has tried to get around,” Freddie continued as he grunted disapprovingly at them.
As you can appreciate I was very positively pre-disposed to Dunkirk, Mr. Miniver himself having gone there, and equally predisposed to anyone who participated in it. So as a gesture of attempted respect I motioned at Anstruther-Darlington’s leg which he had now stretched over a convenient unused chair. “And is Dunkirk where you received that… wound?”
“Actually he got that at the member-guest at Sunningdale in ‘36. Fell in a bunker on the fourteenth, as I recall,” giggled Whicker. And from the hurt expression on Anstruther-Darlington’s face it appeared that was indeed the case.
“And you, Marie? I wouldn’t have thought you’d been here long enough to cross anyone?”
“Back in North Africa I took a photo of General Clark from his right and forgot we were only allowed to take them of his left.”
“But that’s only a little foible of his. Surely no-one round here knows about that?”
“I’m afraid the whole Allied Press corps now knows about that,” said Mauldin.
“Same as it knows that the U.S. Chief of Staff Bedell Smith is having an affair with his nurse, that Montgomery is a condescending sexist, and that Patton is a closet anti-Semite,” said Anstruther-Darlington.
“And has a girlfriend too,” added Whicker.
“God help him if his wife Beatrice ever finds out,” muttered Mauldin.
“He refers to her as his god-daughter, Patton does you know, his girlfriend, I mean. Now who’d ever believe that kind of cover,” said Anstruther-Darlington with a meaningful grin in my direction that I wasn’t at all sure I quite cared for.
“Who indeed?” I responded. “And you Mr. L? What did you do to get put in here?”
“Norman here came by choice,” laughed Whicker.
“It’s nicer than the Field Security barracks and far better cover for my real job,” said Norman.
“But you can’t say what that real job really is?”
“Only that it takes place at night,” said Whicker.
“But never mind about us, Patricia dear, the question du jour is what brings you to our idyllic little bower,” asked Anstruther-Darlington with another knowing smile.
“Landers says the Allied Press has so far failed to grasp the finer points of Fifth Army’s strategy here. So I should come over and help you better understand it.”
“Problem is Fifth Army doesn’t have a strategy here,” he responded, “Not one that’ll work anyway.”
“Would you still feel that way if a Brit was in charge?”
“I’d feel that way if Alexander the Great was in charge.”
“Didn’t I tell you to behave yourself, Freddie?” said Marie.
“So why exactly don’t you think our strategy will work, Mr. Anstruther-Darlington?”
“Do call me Freddie, won’t you?”
“Okay Freddie. So why won’t it?”
“Because Italy’s too narrow, mountainous and criss-crossed with rivers to permit any fast advance anytime soon,” answered Freddie. And of course there’s Jerry, let’s not forget about him, this General Senger und Etterlin Clark’s now directly up against.”
“The man seems to have written the book on effective tactical retreat,” Karl threw in.
“I’m sure the General will find a way to handle him.”
“He sure hasn’t so far,” said Freddie.
“No?”
“If you ask me this whole campaign’s getting suspiciously reminiscent of the Somme.”
“You were there too, in 1916?”
“I certainly was,” said Freddie.
“And why do you think it’s becoming that bad?”
“Because Clark and Montgomery won’t co-ordinate their attacks,” added Karl.
“Why not?”
“Right now neither of them will risk helping the other look good.”
Whicker got up from the table and went over to a picture of General Montgomery on the wall, a rather silly one of him if you’d asked me. He was leaning out of another of those duck things, shaking hands down with my godfather who was standing below him on the beach. “In your general’s eyes Monty did not make sufficient speed to run the Germans off at Salerno. And when he did get round to dropping by, he had the gall to do it in a duck, like he was out for an afternoon’s boating on the Thames, and was even worse behaved than his usually patronizing self. So General Clark concluded that his obvious glee at Clark’s problems meant they were henceforth in a competition.”
“For what?”
“Command of the land forces in the invasion of France maybe.”
“And who do you think will win it?”
“Clark has the contacts, but Montgomery has the experience.”
“What experience?”
“Mons, the Somme, Arras and Passchendaele in the First World War, and so far France, North Africa and Sicily in this one. Meanwhile nobody’s quite sure whether Clark’s actually seen any action anywhere before here,” said Freddie.
“There is an unconfirmed report he successfully captured northern Idaho in a 1938 U.S. Army war game,” guffawed Whicker, eliciting yet another schoolmarm glare from Marie.
“And Montgomery is the only commander to ever defeat Erwin Rommel,” said Freddie as Karl broke out in a few bars of ‘Land of Hope and Glory’.
“Who’s Erwin Rommel?”
“Only the finest exponent of mechanized land warfare produced by any country in this war,” Freddie elucidated.
“Or any other war for that matter,” added Whicker as he drew my attention back to the picture of Montgomery shaking hands down with Mark Clark on Salerno Beach. “By the way don’t under any circumstances ever try to remove this picture from the wall.”
“A venerated antique is it?”
“Just don’t, okay?”
“Okay.”
“No. If anyone round here had any brains, they’d have long since realized that Jerry is probably quite happy to see us commit large forces here. So they can jam them up and prevent them being employed anywhere more useful,” said Freddie.
“But I thought invading Italy was your own Prime Minister’s idea?”
Freddie sighed. “Winston Churchill may be the greatest man of our time. Indeed the greatest man of all time. But nobody has ever seriously suggested he understands fact one about military theory.”
“But we’re not here in furtherance of any military theory, we’re here on a crusade, to free the Italiansation from fascism.”
“A crusade, eh?”
“Yes.”
“None of my business, Patricia dear,” said Freddie, “But while it may not be all that unhealthy to talk in clichés, I hope to God you haven’t actually started thinking in them.”
“Freddie? I’ll take your brandy snifter away if you don’t start being polite… and the bottle with it.”
“So tell me then. If you don’t like the way we’re going about this campaign, what better idea do you have?” I asked.
“Be patient. Dig in. Hibernate and don’t try any more mad attacks till spring.”
“Then what?”
“Then get behind the German Army, and cut off their withdrawal in a pincer movement. Like Napoleon did to the Austrians at Űlm in 1806?”
“You were there too?”
“She’s being disrespectful to me, Marie.”
“You deserve it.”
“And I know all about Űlm thank you very much anyway,” I added with ill-disguised pleasure.
“You do?” Freddie countered.
Didn’t Clausewitz consider it the textbook example of forcing an enemy surrender without firing a shot? Though Austerlitz came pretty close too just a few weeks later.”
“How’d she know that?” Freddie asked Marie.
“I don’t know Freddie. Why not ask her.”
“She’s read Clausewitz, Marie. Nobody reads Clausewitz, especially not Americans.”
“Why not Americans?” I asked.
“You’re attention span’s too short.”
“How’s about I let that remark pass… Freddie.”
“I’d be grateful,” responded Freddie, getting more bad looks from Marie, who had now picked up his brandy snifter and looked unlikely to ever let him have it back.
“Problem is though, Freddie, word has it your British Army can’t advance fast enough to help complete any pincer movement anyway,” I said.
“Why not?” Freddie asked indignantly.
“Word is you lack push.”
Karl smiled at Freddie, “You’re really going to have to work on that, you know.”
“General Clark’ll get the job done one way or the other. You’ll see, I smiled triumphantly. “And when he does I hope every one of you is man enough to admit you were wrong about him, and give him the positive ink he deserves.”
“Ink? Did you say ink?”
“And if I did?”
“Sounds like Landers has gotten to her already, Marie.”
Whicker eyed me thoughtfully, then eyed the picture of Montgomery and my godfather yet again. “I’d be careful about ink, Patricia. People like Landers may one day get a lot more of it then even they continually ask for.” And everyone at the card table gave everyone else a knowing look about something.
But any enquiry as to the exact nature of their knowing looks was cut short, as we all heard the sound of what seemed to me like distant gunfire. I went over to the window with Freddie and Marie to see what it was. “It’s our ack-ack down at Naples harbor,” said Freddie, opening the blankets a little to reveal tracer shells flying up in the sky down south. “It’s Photo Fritz they’re taking pot-shots at.” He looked up at the sky, “Hoped he might stay away this evening given the clouds that seem to be coming over.”
“Who’s Photo Fritz?” I asked.
“He flies down every so often to see if there’s enough shipping moored down there to justify a full scale German raid,” said Karl.
“And if there is?”
“Then right now he’ll be on his little radio whistling up a squadron of their bombers to pay us a proper visit.”
“When?”
“Usually within the hour,” said Karl.
“But we’re safe enough here surely? We’re quite a distance from Naples Harbor?”
“But slap bang on the flight path the Germans take to and from Rome.”
“So?”
“So if our fighters frighten them off before they’ve unloaded all their bombs they usually drop them on the beach below here, rather than risk the danger of landing with them still aboard.”
“But then again if we put out a sign on the roof that announces you’re now staying here with us, like as not they’ll drop them somewhere else,” laughed Whicker as he walked over.
“They will?” I asked.
“The Germans would never willfully hurt anyone who can understand Clausewitz. They’ve been waiting for years for someone to explain him to them too.”
I had the good grace to laugh and then looked at Marie, “So where do I bunk?”
“We’re on dry land now, so here you just room. And this time you even get your own one,” and Marie pointed to a door along the corridor. “Perhaps Karl, you could be a gentleman for a change and help Patricia with her bags?” Karl shrugged and helped me in, mumbled something about hoping I’d enjoy my stay, and went back out.
Left to myself I pulled out my framed photo of Uncle Mark standing in front of Monte Cassino Abbey that sad day in 1940. Okay it was the one he asked that I took with him facing to his right, but that was surely only a foible. I considered putting it by my bedside, thought better of that as someone else might notice it and draw some wrong conclusions, so I put it back in my barracks bag. But as I did I found myself wondering about the Abbey. Surely even the Germans wouldn’t fortify it? And even if they did, we’d never shell it would we, not the way we shelled Capaccio?
“Fancy a drink?” Marie asked as I came back out.
“I don’t thank you.”
“A cigarette then?”
“Don’t smoke either.”
“We’ll see how long any of that lasts,” Karl laughed.
But his laugh ended as we all heard a distant whine. “Inbound German bomb,” said Marie and went and pulled all the helmets off their pegs and brought them back to the table.
“Inbound French twaddle, madame. That’s nowhere near us,” laughed Freddie. And sure enough there were a few moments of silence then we all heard a distant explosive thud. “See?” And Marie’s hand stretched out and handed over a dollar to Freddie and the card game resumed.
But then we heard another louder whine. “Nearer, definitely nearer,” said Marie.
“You calling it or not?” asked Freddie.
“Yes,” and Marie put another dollar on the table.
Then there was another distant explosion. “Still not near enough to bother about,” said Freddie taking that buck too.
“Sounds like they’re dropping everything they have on the docks tonight,” said Whicker.
But just then there was a louder, higher pitched whine, “Maybe not,” said Freddie. “That one may have our name on it.”
“Who’s name on it?”
“No it hasn’t,” said Marie confidently, and threw another buck on the table.
But soon the whine got shriller and shriller, then there was a mad rush for helmets, and mine got stuck on my head whether I liked it or not. “Attend Marie, Karl,” Freddie said as he pulled his helmet on, then grabbed me and pulled me down to the floor, while Karl grabbed Marie by the scruff of the neck and pulled her down too.
Soon enough, nearby on the beach below there was a terrific explosion and the force resounded through the Villa bringing bits of plaster to the floor. And as we all got back up on our feet Marie gave Freddie another buck.
“Your deal I believe, Norman,” Freddie said making quite sure his brandy snifter had survived the onslaught.
***
Later that night, as I sat in bed looking at my photo of the seven female war correspondents sitting on that wall in London, Marie knocked on the door and came in. “Don’t let them upset you, the boys, I mean. They’ve seen so much suffering in this war it makes them all kind of cynical. It’s their survival mechanism, and god knows we all need one of those.”
“I’ll get used to it. Same way you seem to have.” I showed her the photo. “By the way, I know now where it is I saw you before. It was in this.”
Marie took the photo and smiled, “I remember it. We were all ready to go out on our first assignments. All young and idealistic like...”
“I am now?”
“There’s nothing wrong with idealism. You just have to pick the right things to idealize.”
“You sound like my sister.”
She ran her finger over the other faces in the photo. “I remember that day it was taken. We’d gotten our uniforms made at Huntsman’s the week before.”
“The tailor’s I went into said he recognized their handiwork.”
“Well I hope you didn’t make the same mistake as us when you did. We were insistent our hats had the initials ‘W.C.’ for ‘Women Correspondents’ in large very legible letters”
“What was wrong with that?”
“When we left the tailor’s dressed in them every Londoner in the street kept on asking if we were over there to swab their old ones or build them new ones.”
“Build them new whats?”
“In London the initials W.C. stand for public lavatories.”
“Of course they do. I hadn’t thought.”
“So bye-bye W and that’s why they just say plain old C.”
“Freddie said everyone in Bomb Cottage has managed to cross Landers in some way. What did Karl do?”
“Tried to publish a piece that called General Clark the most destructive invading commander Italy had seen since Attila the Hun.”
“He’s not though. I know him. He reads his bible every day.”
“Just because someone reads it doesn’t mean they pay attention to it. I of all people should know that.”
“I met him today.”
“Landers?”
“I showed him the developed photographs I took from the Cleveland.”
“And?”
“He took them from me and my negatives too, and said there wasn’t any way they were ever going to publish stuff like that.”
“Where’d you develop them?”
“Air Force Intelligence.”
“Did you keep a set of contact prints?”
“There wasn’t any reason to, so I printed them directly from the negative.”
“We don’t get to develop our prints. We have to send the undeveloped film directly to the censors in London. But if you have access to a dark room, you can start making contact prints. Then even if Landers does take your negatives you can still re-develop copies of the photos from them.
“But why, if he’s never going to let me publish them anyway?”
“This war isn’t going to last forever. One day people like him won’t be running our lives, and you can publish them then.”
“And where would I hide them till then?”
“Somewhere no-one would ever think of looking, or better still somewhere where no-one can even look.”
As she was opening the door to leave I said, “Thank you.”
“For advising you to play fast and loose with the rules round here?”
“For being a friend.”
“When I started out in this business there were people who went out of their way to be my friend. Some of them are in that photo of yours. So this is a kind of way of paying them back.” And she smiled again and went out.
***
It took me a long time to get to sleep that night, and before I ever could I thought about a lot of things, particularly the people I’d met. And for the record I knew right away that whatever kind of pansy Landers thought Anstruther-Darlington was, he for sure wasn’t of any English sort, because he was Scots. I’d met enough of them in Rome to know you had to be on your guard with them. There was a bunch studying for the priesthood in the Scots’ College there, and my father used to have them round every month for a good meal and some theological discourse. What my father never realized, and I didn’t have the heart to tell him, was that they ate very well at the College thank-you very much, as they had a whole slew of Italian nuns standing around at their beck and call. And there’s no nuns in the world can cook quite as well as Italian ones. No, they came round to our place so they could smoke and drink, both of which were apparently time-honored Scottish pastimes regardless of one’s chosen calling. They did enjoy debating though, and it soon became pretty clear to me, who did a lot of that debating with them, that no-one ever confused an earnest Scot who had a heartfelt point to prove, with a ray of sunshine. So I was pretty used to them, and wasn’t going to let any Anstruther-Darlington even if he was one of the Edinburgh Darlingtons, whoever the hell they were, get the upper hand on me.
And for that matter, nor was I going to let Karl Lucas. How dare he suggest I wasn’t prepared for seeing dead bodies lying around the battle grounds of Italy. Of course I was, a few of them anyway, if maybe not anyone’s whose name I actually knew, and with whom I’d first… well you know enough about that already, don’t you.