The three deserters talked at length, each spinning out how he had left the military and why. Croft had an easy assurance about him. He seemed worldly and clear-headed, and his take on life in Rome jibed with that of Williams, the C Ration Kid. Any long-term stay would only be possible if a steady—and sizeable—income could be ensured. Some deserters were “going Itie” and partnering up with Italians. Bill Croft told Pringle and C Ration that he had had a close look at the black market while stationed in Naples. There, contraband goods such as US-issue army blankets were sold openly on the streets. The Camorra was well entrenched, thanks to the group’s anti-Fascist efforts during the occupation. Organized crime had gathered intelligence for the Allied landings in Sicily and later in southern Italy, and had played a key role in sabotaging the Fascists and in organizing an armed rebellion in Naples during the autumn of 1943. Now that the Nazis were gone, the Camorra ruled with cruel efficiency and unofficial Allied approval—so long as its exploits did not harm the war effort. And the Camorra was popular. It showed more interest in working-class Italians than so-called legitimate politicians did, distributing food to the starving and protecting church property. When Moroccan troops raped Italian women in Campania, it was the Camorra, not the Allied military police, who rounded the soldiers up and executed them.1
But Rome, Croft noted, was not yet under Camorra control and was unlikely to be so. The Romans would never allow a southern Italian crime family to run their city. This created an environment that was ripe for freelancing. Already there was a deserter gang in operation. Known as the “Lane Gang,” this group was said to contain upwards of forty deserters from every army in the field: American, British, Canadian, Polish, South African, even German. The Lane Gang earned its profit by hijacking vehicles in Rome’s tiny streets and by waylaying both civilian and army trucks on the highways around the city. Rumour had it that they had even held up a train. The Lane Gang trafficked in drugs and ran prostitutes, and their exploits made them rich men. They lived luxuriously in spacious apartments and fuelled themselves on a steady diet of girls, vino and spaghetti. Croft’s logic was confirmed by official military reports. “Get a truck one day,” the Canadian officer in charge of black market investigation told The Maple Leaf, “and you’re rich the next, in this town.”2
Croft believed there was room for another gang, though on a much smaller scale. A few men doing the occasional job would not raise too much interest from the military police since the MPs were busy tracking down deserters and AWOL soldiers. Together, five or six men could live longer on less because the proverbial pie would be cut into fewer pieces. A small group of friends could sit out the war nicely, spending a little of their time relieving the city’s citizens of their possessions and most of it enjoying Rome’s charms. To ensure their survival, Croft concocted a twist: this gang would target black market vehicles. They would steal jeeps that had already been stolen. In this way, they would remain unknown to military authorities.
Croft’s plan won over Harold and the C Ration Kid. For starters, it was a plan, and that was more than they had going. Nothing concrete was yet established. “It was just sort of a talk,” Harold would later say. “And we all joined up.”3 The C Ration Kid brought in another American deserter, a soldier from New York named Walter Glaser, who, thanks to his rake-thin frame and his height—over six feet—went by the nickname “Slim.” He was regular army and, like C Ration, had fought at Anzio. After Rome opened up, Glaser became a habitual AWOL; he had been arrested so many times that he had lost count. Like Pringle, he had an Italian girlfriend on the Via Appia. Her name was Anna, and she lived on the Piazza Tuscola in a flat with her mother. Slim was in love with her; each time he escaped from detention, he went straight to her door.
Over the month of September, Croft, the C Ration Kid and Harold Pringle travelled around Rome, investigating its neighbourhoods and the surrounding cities. The trio spent a night on a Liberty ship in the harbour at Civitavecchia, the port north of Rome, and there they encountered a face from Pringle’s days in England. Harold noticed John Norman McGillivary, otherwise known as “Lucky,” sleeping on a nearby cot. The two Canadians had been in prison together and had developed a casual friendship.4
Lucky and Harold had a lot in common. Both their fathers were veterans of the First World War. Both their mothers were named Mary. Both soldiers came from large families. Lucky had been born on March 22, 1922, in Cape Breton, the second eldest in a family of eight brothers and four sisters. He had an unremarkable scholastic career. His army report sarcastically stated that his one intellectual achievement was “truancy,” but Lucky had managed to reach the sixth grade. He was an avid athlete; he swam, boxed and played hockey (defenceman), basketball (guard) and soccer (fullback). Prior to the war, he worked at odd jobs, such as store clerk and farm labourer. Lucky had enlisted at Inverness, Nova Scotia, in March 1940 and joined the Cape Breton Highlanders. At enlistment he was 5 foot 7 inches tall, with black hair and what the army doctor described as “black eyes.” His vision was perfect and he had a dark complexion. In 1942, an army psychiatrist evaluated Lucky and described him as “neat and cheerful.” Lucky told the doctor that he had joined the army in search of “adventure and experience.”5 He found both, but not in the form he had expected.
Military discipline was not to Lucky’s liking. Almost from his first day in the army Lucky was running afoul of his sergeants and officers. His military record is stuffed with page after page of charges. He was punished for everything from failing to sweep under his bunk to possessing a rusty bayonet to breaking windows to going AWOL. In September 1941, he was charged with using “insubordinate language to an NCO when he was awakened after the reveille started.” In 1942, he was charged with “conduct to the prejudice of good order and discipline”; when told to sit down at the breakfast table, he had said to his sergeant, “Make up your fucking mind.” Lucky’s psychiatrist reported that “this man is impulsive and at times is not very keen on discipline. Started as a rifleman and is beginning to realize that he isn’t getting anywhere by losing his temper. Fundamentally sound but young and impulsive. Should make a good soldier with careful handling.”6
By 1943, however, the army had tired of Lucky’s rebellious temper and he was sentenced to one year’s detention in the Glass House. In January 1943, Lucky escaped but was picked up again. This time he was sentenced to twenty-two months and scheduled for a May 1944 release. The commandant of the Glass House reported that Lucky was “sorely in need of a stiff lesson” and that his time in prison would provide that education. Lucky’s conduct while in prison was poor; he was on report twelve times. Each month, a prison officer interviewed Lucky. Each month, Lucky had one constant refrain: “Says that he is very anxious to get into action with his unit.”7 He wanted to be on the front fighting. Pringle met Lucky in the fall of 1943 when McGillivary had already spent one year in the Glass House.
In December 1943, Lucky made good on his ambition. He broke out of prison, smashing in the prison staff sergeant’s teeth before making his escape. Lucky went to London on foot and then stowed away on the SS ‘H. T. Tegelberg’, a ship bound for Italy. Lucky was discovered on board, but he informed the crew that he was making his way to Italy to rejoin his unit. He arrived in Italy on March 3, 1944, and thanks to the shortage of reinforcements, he was not sent to prison, after all. There was no sense wasting a healthy boy who was so eager to fight that he busted out of jail and jumped a ship. Within days, Lucky was en route to the Canadian reinforcement depot in Avellino. A few weeks later he was with the Cape Breton Highlanders and in action. There was, however, a catch: thanks to pay stoppages, Lucky would not be eligible to draw his soldier’s salary until 1946. That did not bother Lucky, not to begin with—at least he was out of prison.
March 1944 found him battling his way up the Cassino Front in, no doubt, a state of ecstasy. The Cape Breton Highlanders were holding a line across from German positions. It was tense work. Barrages would drop down without notice. Once a group of Italian refugees ran through the Canadian lines; half an hour later the Germans threw up a bombardment, killing many of the Highlanders. Canadian intelligence determined that the civilians had returned to German lines and revealed the Canadian position. A week later, eight more refugees approached the Canadian line. The Highlanders yelled at them to stop and turn back, but the Italians kept coming, leaving the Canadians no choice—they opened up with their Bren Machine guns, killing all eight. After the killings, the Highlanders paused for a snack of bully beef. To no one in particular, Sergeant Fred Cederberg remarked, “We’ll have to get a burial party out here tonight to pick up those dead civvies. A couple of days under this sun and they’ll start to stink and it won’t smell nice around here.”
A private said, “I don’t think I like this war any more.”
“Nobody likes it,” replied another, while opening a tin of beef. “It’s just a temporary way of life.”8
After the breakthrough at the Hitler Line, the Highlanders went on to attack the Germans along the Melfa River. As always, the fighting was prolonged, bitter and worse than expected. Lucky’s comrades, those who knew him from Cape Breton, noticed a change in the boy. John Norman McGillivary had always been hot-tempered, but prison had turned him into a brooding fellow who clung to past wrongs the way a child clings to a blanket. In the Glass House, he had begun keeping a little black book. In it, he would record every slight or offence committed against him. Next to these transgressions he would inscribe a suitable retribution, to be administered physically by Lucky McGillivary. Lucky called it his “ledger.” He claimed it had great value as it gave him a glimpse into the future. In June 1944, Lucky decided he was finished with the army and took off, looking for a different shape of adventure.
At Civitavecchia in August, before drifting off to sleep, Lucky showed Harold his ledger, pointing out that Harold’s name was not in there. The following morning, Harold and Croft returned to Rome. Lucky went on his way.
During September, Bill Croft spent much of his time out on the Via Appia looking for soldiers who might fit in with his family of deserters. The deserters stopped on the Via Appia because it was the last neighbourhood before Rome’s ancient city walls, and it was outside the military checkpoints situated on the roads leading into the city. The Via Appia was checkered with bits of suburban countryside. There were beautiful pine and walnut trees in the round park at Re di Roma. Soldiers on the loose could spend warm, cloudless afternoons occupying a bench and drinking in the local sights, far from the gaze of the military police. As the absentee population grew, the Via Appia became known for its strange colony of burnt-out Allied soldiers.
Bill would sit for hours sipping coffee or wine, perusing the stragglers as they strolled up and down the street. Croft had a good eye, and there were plenty of possible candidates. To him, deserters were not too hard to spot. They were generally thin and nervous, with a dullness to their eyes. Soldiers just off the front displayed a scattered confusion when confronted by civilian life. Watching women buy vegetables or children running amok in the streets disturbed them. They grimaced, as if they were trying to figure out which world they were in. And, of course, there was the noise factor. The deserters, most of them from combat units, came from a world of incessant shelling, a world where men hid in holes while rabbits roamed freely. Slam a door around one of those fellows and he was likely to crawl under a bed.
Sometime in mid-September, Croft was set up in his favourite restaurant, Bar Trieste on the Via Appia, when he spied a soldier drinking crème de menthe, alone, at a table near the back. The soldier was filthy, as if he’d just come off the line, and the sunken rings around his eyes showed that he had not slept for days. He had a round face and brown hair. He spoke Italian but with a British accent. Croft approached him carefully. When he engaged a prospective candidate in casual conversation, Croft listened for slight discrepancies in the stranger’s story. The soldier looked up, not knowing whether he was about to be arrested. Croft, in a circumspect manner, introduced himself. Perhaps the dirty soldier sipping crème de menthe had been a bit overenthusiastic about his leave. Perhaps he was not too keen to see its conclusion. Perhaps he needed a friend.
What he needed most urgently, it turned out, was a meal—he had not eaten for two days. Croft said to come along. He had a place not far away where he could wash up and have something to eat. The soldier introduced himself: “Charlie Honess.”
Croft thought for a moment. “That may be a bit hard for the signorinasy,” he said. “I think we’ll call you.…”
“I’ll be Carlo,” Charlie said, smiling for the first time.
Charlie was, in fact, Cecil Henry Frederick Honess, a twenty-two-year-old from the east end of London who, though having only reached the sixth grade, spoke both French and Italian. He was a sapper in the Royal Engineers and been in Italy since 1943. Honess had spent time clearing minefields in North Africa, had invaded Sicily and had spent four months at Cassino, with all that that entailed—smoke, rotting shit-smeared corpses, screams, rain, men weeping, shelling, German soldiers stacked by the side of the road, a tiny hand peeking out beneath a pile of bricks that had once been a house, a cat as calm as anything staring at them while they ran for cover, lying on your back in a slit trench staring up at the sky and wishing you were a bird, building bridges under machine-gun fire, hammering nails while bullets buzzed by like so many bees. The action at the Gothic Line finished Charlie Honess off. In August, he went absent.
In a staccato voice, he spun out his story for Croft:
I was loose about nine days then I walked down to Vine Street and gave myself up. I was sent to the Court Martial Holding Centre at Perugia and then it was moved to Mascerata and I went with them. Then I escaped out of Mascerata with some other fellows. Then I was picked up down at Anzio about two days later. I was brought back up to the Rome Guardroom again and at twelve o’clock that night I was moved out with some other fellows. I was sent away on a truck and on the way I escaped with another fellow. Then I came down to Rome with him and left him outside Rome.9
Bill Croft brought Honess back to the apartment he shared with Maria at 28 Via Pistoia. It was a small, two-storey building that reminded Croft of an English country house. It had a tall pine tree in its front garden, which had been hit by an Allied shell prior to Rome’s being made an Open City. The shell had blown a wall down and left a pile of rubble in front of the house. Croft introduced Honess to Maria, who by this time was six months pregnant, and to the landlady and her daughter, who cooked and cleaned for Croft. Honess ate a simple meal of pasta and spinach, and Croft gave him an American GI uniform and ten dollars. Honess thanked him, promising to repay him at the soonest opportunity. Croft assured him that that was unnecessary. Honess said his good-byes. Croft said he would see Honess around the Via Appia. Maria and the other women said, “Buona sera, Carlo.”
Three weeks later, Honess met Croft again. By this time, a new addition had been made to what was now known as “The Sailor Gang.” Lucky McGillivary had turned up in Rome, little black book and all, and it had not been too hard to convince him to join. He took up residence in the first-floor bedroom at Via Pistoia. In early October, Honess met Bill Croft on the Via Appia. The Sailor was in a jeep with two soldiers in American uniforms whom he introduced as Joe and the C Ration Kid. Bill suggested that Honess come for a ride. After a night spent on the roads outside Rome, the men returned and found Lucky “in one of his moods.” A fight broke out, and Croft and Lucky stripped off their shirts and raised their fists. Honess would later learn this was a regular occurrence and an accepted means of resolving a dispute. After the fight, Lucky and Croft shook hands and the men settled down to drinking—everyone, that is, except Joe, who was not fond of alcohol. The following morning, Lucky took Honess for a ride in one of the gang’s two jeeps and suggested that Honess move into the basement room at Via Pistoia. Honess, who was living with a woman on the Via Appia, agreed. As the first week in October passed, the gang firmed up: two Americans, the C Ration Kid and Slim; two Canadians, Lucky and Joe; and two Brits, Charlie and Bill the Sailor.
The Sailor Gang became a bridge between the army and the black market. Thanks to a series of shady deals, Bill Croft and his men consorted freely with the regular army. Croft befriended an American supply sergeant from Indiana who was stationed at the Airborne Training Center just outside Rome. Bill allowed the sergeant to bring his girlfriend to the house on Via Pistoia and use one of the rooms. In exchange, the sergeant gave Croft bunches of blank US army three-day passes, about forty-eight at a time. These passes, which were superior to the counterfeit ones printed on the black market, were critical to the gang’s survival: if a deserter was stopped by an MP and had no pass, he would be picked up. Croft distributed these passes among the Sailor Gang. He would fill in the particulars with false names, ranks, units and serial numbers, leaving the date blank. That way if one of the gang needed a pass quickly, all he had to do was scribble in the details.
The fake passes also allowed the Sailor Gang to move easily in and out of military compounds. In mid-October, for example, Lucky came down with venereal disease. Bill Croft filled out a pass listing Lucky as a Sergeant Frazer of the American 5th Army, and the Sailor Gang dropped him off at the 73rd General American Hospital. Lucky told the doctors that he had come up from Naples on a three-day pass when the disease had broken out on him. The American treatment for VD was eight shots of penicillin given over a thirty-six-hour period, which was just enough time to be treated before the three-day pass expired. Lucky was back in no time, little black book and all.
The sergeant from Indiana was not the only regular army soldier to fraternize with the gang. Lucky had many friends in the American army with whom he would socialize when they went on leave in Rome. None of the soldiers worried too much about the Sailor Gang’s illegal activities. Everybody was trying to have a little fun and survive the war, and no one liked the military police; in fact, as far as the average soldier was concerned, an MP was a maggot. They were vultures who got to trot around behind the lines beating up on the guys who were doing the actual fighting, and they were corrupt buggers. In Execution, Colin McDougall noted that if a prison guard were returned to his combat unit, his former prisoners “would undoubtedly try to murder him.” Everyone knew an MP who was on the take and who was trading a little on the black market. Thus there was an unwritten code that any soldier would shield almost any other soldier against an MP, provided the offence wasn’t too great. And so the Sailor Gang spent many evenings drinking at official military messes, even in clubs reserved for senior ranks. Lucky and Honess, who were becoming good friends, were regulars at the South African and New Zealand officers clubs.
In October 1944, Rome was opening up for Joe Pringle, who kept track of the war news by reading the Maple Leaf. On October 2, the paper announced that the United States was dropping three tons of bombs on Japan and Germany every minute. A survey conducted by a scientist in Stockholm found that in the previous two months, fifty thousand Germans had committed suicide. Meanwhile, in Portsmouth, Esmee continued her letter-writing campaign. She sent one letter to Canadian Military Headquarters in London every two weeks demanding the return of her twenty-one pounds. As far as the army was concerned, Harold Pringle was still fighting with his unit. They informed Esmee that locating him and retrieving her money was not possible.10
On most nights Harold went out in American army uniform, but during the day he preferred to venture forth in civilian clothes. Pringle made frequent visits to the Coliseum and the Forum. Rome was glowing in sunshine, and the female company he enjoyed so much was his. Even the way Romans dressed meshed with Harold’s personality. This was a culture in which presentation mattered, and despite their poverty, Romans made great efforts to dress elegantly. Harold Pringle, the dapper envy of his regiment, was now just one in a well-dressed crowd. His Italian improved thanks to his girlfriend’s tutelage, and his feelings for her seem to have grown serious. Betti Michael recalled that he wrote home saying that he “had met a person and that he hoped his mother would forgive him if he’d chosen someone and wanted to get married.”11 The women at Via Pistoia laughed when they heard him speak and told him that “Le lezioni notturne sono le migliori”—“Night lessons are the best lessons.”
The black market Italians were friendly, and like Harold, they were constantly smiling. Italians in general were like that. You didn’t work your way up to a smile the way you did in Canada—you came right out with it. When you ordered a cappuccino you grinned from ear to ear. Frowning you could do later. The Italian black marketeers spoke some English and kept their conversation focused on life in Rome: “The Italian woman, la donna italiana, is good, yes. Molto friendly.” Or, “You like the Italian way of coffee?” They explained their underworld activities with a shrug and a self-pitying admonishment that “everybody must live. E vero?” The Italians said they preferred dealing with the Allies to the Germans. The Germans were too rigid. They did not understand that life in Rome was meant to be fluid and adaptable. That is why they were gone and the Allies were here now. The Allies understood life. They understood business.
When a deal was made, contact was brief. Bill Croft would let it be known on the Via Appia that the gang had something to sell, and that message would work its way through the underground economy. Then, at night, a man, generally wearing a black trench coat and hat, would turn up with cash. There would be smiles and handshakes in Rome’s darkened back alleys, which twisted and spiralled like a drug fiend’s nightmare. The goods would be transferred and the loot divided up. “Vivono tutti.” Profit margins were big. Four tires pulled off an Allied jeep would fetch seven hundred dollars. Across town, the Lane Gang continued its operations. Jeeps and trucks were held up and stolen. An officer at Allied Headquarters in Rome estimated that almost all black market olive oil and grain was now being carried on Allied vehicles.12 The Canadian Intelligence Corps conducted field research and determined that there were one thousand Canadian army vehicles missing and presumed in Italian hands—this when the Canadian army in Italy was trying to requisition seven hundred vehicles.13 In September, outside Avellino, Canadian soldiers stopped a US army truck laden with olive oil. In it were four Italians and three men dressed in American army uniforms. One of the men claimed to be sick and was slow getting out of the truck. His friends seized the opportunity and opened fire on the Canadians, wounding one in the shoulder. The men ran off into a wheat field, escaping.
In mid-October, the Sailor Gang made a night trip at around nine in the evening. Lucky was driving the gang’s jeep, with Bill Croft riding beside him, while Charlie Honess and Harold were in the back. Lucky and Harold were carrying guns, Lucky a .38 revolver and Harold a Beretta. The gang drove out toward the Tiber River, and as they approached, the jeep drove up a narrow bridge and Lucky spied a civilian car coming toward them. It was a large black four-door saloon car with the letters “ACC” on its front.
Lucky said, “Let’s stop that car, its coming the wrong way.” He told Honess to get out and tell the driver to follow them. Honess did so. He returned to the jeep and the civilian car drove behind them, back to the roundabout where Route 2 entered Rome. Honess supposed that they were going to “fine” the driver a few dollars. A few weeks before on the same bridge, Lucky had robbed an Italian of thirty dollars. But this time Lucky had other ideas.
“Let’s take the car,” he said.
At the roundabout, all four men left the car and approached the driver. He was an Italian, and he claimed to be the chauffeur of an Allied officer, but the driver was dressed as a civilian and no one believed his story. None of the gang, it appears, knew that “ACC” stood for “Allied Central Command.” Honess told the Italian they were going to take him to a prison camp. Harold and Bill got into the civilian car and they followed Lucky and Honess in the jeep. They drove for five kilometres and turned off to the right down a small side road. Lucky stopped the jeep and told Honess to get into the civilian car with Joe. Bill brought the Italian to the jeep. Honess and Joe drove the civilian car back to Via Pistoia and then hid it in the garage on Via Rimini where the gang kept its jeeps. Later, Honess asked Croft and Lucky what had happened to the Italian.
“We took him off the road a ways, kicked him out of the jeep and fired a couple of shots at him to scare him,” Bill told him. Honess checked the gun. There were two bullets missing. Four days later an Italian came around to Via Pistoia and bought the civilian car from Croft for seven hundred dollars American.
NOT ALL OF THE SAILOR GANG’S activities were so lucrative, or so harsh. A week before hijacking the saloon car, Lucky and Honess made a trip up to Tivoli, a small city outside Rome. They met a couple of girls, took them driving and stopped in a small village for some wine and food. On the way back to Tivoli, Lucky decided that he wanted some chickens and, leaving the girls to wait by the side of the road, Lucky and Honess approached a farmhouse. Lucky asked for two chickens and wrote the Italians a bogus military receipt. They drove the girls home and returned to Rome.
After they stole the saloon car, Lucky, Honess, Bill and Harold drove out to Tivoli again. They returned to the farm and as Honess grabbed a turkey, some Italian women came running out from the fields, yelling at the soldiers to leave the birds alone. “Never mind her,” Lucky said. “Get on and get those chickens.” Lucky, who was wearing Bill Croft’s sailor hat, pulled his revolver out and fired a shot in the air. Bill and Harold went to the front of the farmhouse, while Honess entered the cold shed and gathered up an armful of onions. When Honess came out of the shed, he saw Lucky standing behind the jeep and an Italian man walking down the farmhouse steps, frantically trying to load a rifle. Lucky rushed the man, but the Italian managed to get off one shot. Honess grabbed the rifle, but as he did another Italian rushed him with an iron bar, striking him across the arm. Honess looked around and saw the other three pulling out in the jeep. He ran after it and jumped in. The Sailor Gang sped off, leaving Bill’s sailor hat lying in the dust.
On October 22, Bill Croft was in Bar Trieste, passing time, when he saw a British soldier who was looking the worse for wear. His uniform was dirty and he had obviously not eaten for some time. After the usual introductions, Croft invited the soldier back to Via Pistoia.
His name was Bill Holton, and he was with the Hampshire Regiment. Holton had enlisted in 1940, and was heading for Italy in 1943 when he contracted pneumonia. After a few months in hospital, Holton finally arrived in Italy in March 1944 and spent time fighting at the Gothic Line. At twenty-one, he was one year older than Bill Croft. Holton was a handsome kid, like Harold. He had blond hair and blue eyes and fine English features. Holton had gone on leave on October 1, but once his time ran out, he had decided that he was not interested in going back. He had worked as a batman (a valet for officers) and had saved twelve thousand lire. He went to Rome, just looking to have a good time. He tried not to attract attention and to live quietly off his savings. The money lasted two weeks.
Croft gave Holton a pair of trousers, a pair of socks and a tie. Holton had his own shirt and shoes. This time, Croft was less circumspect in his offer. Holton had two choices: throw in with the Sailor Gang or get picked up. Holton followed Croft’s logic. Bill Holton became the final member of the Sailor Gang.
Harold liked Holton and offered him a place in his apartment at 40 Via Cesena. Holton took up with Harold’s girlfriend’s friend and the two deserters lived together, away from the crowd at Via Pistoia. Harold was less and less enamoured with the Sailor Gang. The boys at Via Pistoia were always drinking, and he did not approve of such carelessness. Still, they were the only friends Harold had.
Meanwhile, on October 14, Harold’s old friends, the Hasty Ps, had been thrown into a fray at the village of Bulgaria near the Fiumicino River in Ravenna. The regiment had lost thirty men but had gained the town and fifty-five prisoners with it. The Allies pressed on, but by late October they were stuck. The Canadians would spend another winter in Italy, with no reinforcements, no equipment and very little of anything else.
As October progressed, Croft began to realize that the Sailor Gang was gathering a momentum he could no longer control. In the thrillers he read, the criminals operated with cool efficiency, but his gang was becoming bolder. Lucky’s little black book was filling with more and more names, and he was growing dangerously reckless. One night Lucky had returned to Via Pistoia with a gold watch and a load of maize. He told Bill that he had been speeding down a road when he saw an Italian driving a horse and cart. Lucky got out, shot the horse and took the man’s watch. Thanks to their nocturnal revels, all the members of the Sailor Gang were becoming well known on the Via Appia. Like the gangsters in Bill Croft’s thrillers, they were magnanimous when drunk, and they befriended soldiers who were on leave. They continued to socialize with officers and other soldiers.
Life at Via Pistoia became more and more unruly and it was worrying Maria, who was now seven months pregnant. Lucky and Honess were almost constantly drinking, and with drinking came fighting. Harold, who disliked the boozing, came over to the house only when business required it. The C Ration Kid was growing more and more aggressive. When he was over at Via Pistoia, he would offer Maria one hundred dollars if she would sleep with him. Maria turned down the offers. Croft just laughed it off, but beneath his calm, resentment was beginning to simmer. The fellows he had helped out of the war were now thinking that they had gotten themselves out of it under their own steam. Sooner or later something was going to give. The Sailor began to think of a way to relocate.
Then, in late October, Slim was picked up again by the military police. Bill Croft went to his girlfriend Anna, who was short of money, and offered to move into her house and pay rent. She agreed. Croft made plans to move on November 2 but did not tell the rest of the gang.