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audible; the Luftwaffe, punctual as ever, was more brazen in its attacks, and some young Texans had formed a circle to pray in loud voices.
    Moving onto the offensive, two American columns set out to ford the Sele River, possibly in the hope of blocking any enemy advance down the river valley to the coast. The attempt was frustrated by the 16th Panzer Division, and the attackers withdrew in disorder. Thus, whenever the Germans decided the time was ripe to push down to the sea, there was little but the fire of the gathering battleships to stop them.
    In view of the failure of our mission and in the hope of securing our release from what had become an absurd predicament, four members of our section set out on their motorbikes for Salerno, using a track along the edge of the beach, and faced with the certainty that sooner or later they would have to pass through the German lines. While the rest of us remained in reverent occupation of the farmhouse, we decided as a matter of prudency, as the sounds of combat between the antitank unit and German Panzers advancing from the north came closer, to dig a slit trench between the house and the sea. Should the worst happen, our intention was to take to the water and swim along the coast until we reached an area where it looked safe to come ashore.
    This crisis apart, this was a pleasant place and the time was passed chatting to displaced persons and Italian soldiers who had hastily demobilised themselves and were on their way home, and to the crew of a British 3.7 anti-aircraft gun, who had been due to land at Salerno but found themselves put ashore at Paestum. The sergeant was bewildered but phlegmatic. ‘We’re supposed to defend a gap,’ he said. ‘Is this it?’
    ‘Yes,’ I told him, ‘but there’s not much you can do. It’s ten miles wide.’
    ‘I see,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t make sense. So what am I supposed to fire at?’
    ‘Tanks,’ I told him, ‘coming down the river.’
    ‘This gun is designed to fire upwards,’ he said. ‘If it has to fire at tanks, we have to work on it to drop the angle. Feel like giving a hand?’ This we did and after an hour or two the gun pointed straight ahead. ‘You don’t seem to be too worried about this?’ I asked him. ‘I’m not,’ he said. ‘I was at Dunkirk. After Dunkirk nothing worries you.’
    While this conversation had been going on three lost American infantrymen had wandered into sight. Somewhere in the Sele Corridor they had surrendered to a German tank. There was no room to take them aboard, so the tank had run over their weapons and let them go. That evening, in the last of the line-ups for chow before this procedure was abandoned, I was told by Americans of the same 45th Division to which these strays belonged that their orders were to take no prisoners, but to use the butts of their rifles to beat to death those who tried to surrender. At the time I rejected this as an exceedingly twisted form of boasting, but later, when I was in the field hospital with malaria, this story was repeated by several of the wounded and there was no option other than to accept it as a possible, if shocking, truth.
    Day Four was one of assorted adventures and alarms. From dawn on, enemy planes were constantly overhead, weaving and twisting through the grey bruises left by the naval ack-ack shell bursts in the lemon sky. The artillery fire, previously no more than a soft thunderous rumble through the hills, was now recognisable as such with faintly audible blasts and concussions. Strain showed in the wary expressions of those who listened. The soldiers’ small-talk had dried up and their faces were thin, perhaps as a result of the absence of cooked food, which had now been replaced by packet K-rations containing ham, cheese, biscuits and sweets, all but the last being frequently thrown away.
    The removal of the Fifth Army’s headquarters from the Ancona to the Villa Rossa was now complete, with most of the furniture and the