Raiding Support Regiment. Dr. G. H. Bennet

rest of his frame squirm upwards as his legs frantically crabbed around to bring his body to face the same direction as his head – front down – to avoid having his neck broken. In that position I then levered my body against the floor to apply all the strength of my shoulders in tightening the screw of my right arm, by then reinforced with my left, around his neck. In such a position he was helpless, and I knew I could have killed him in just a few seconds. So did he. Everyone else in the room realised it too and had yanked me away from Thomas before more damage could be done. He was suitably cowed and feigned bewildered drunkenness in submitting to his bed whilst I remember feeling strangely cheated, having decided to embark on the showdown – a rare flash of temper for me – and a callousness to be emulated only once.

      There has to be one thing said in Thomas’ favour: he could have reported me and had me busted to the ranks. I sometimes wonder if that might not have been better than his future attitude towards me. His arm-on-shoulder, gesture of friendship was bad enough but his frequently quoted, nauseous “We understand each other, don’t we, Wal?” emphasised the accidental truism of the statement. Fortunately, his belonging to another gun-crew meant that, with irregular guard duties on our respective guns, our only proximity was confined to rarely coinciding nights in the billet. Small mercies.

      The air raid proved the inadequacy of our protection in the gun pits. Digging-in was not going to be easy in the rocky hillside so someone suggested requisitioning explosives, which to everyone’s surprise miraculously materialised without delay. Plastic too! The stuff we had trained with in Palestine. The opportunity for putting our demolition training into practice added excitement to necessity, although the juvenile amateurism of our early attempts at blasting out the rock causes me to wince even now. We progressed from ignorance to reasonably deft skills, and then to reckless flippancy as each gun crew gradually reduced its fuse time before evacuating the site prior to the explosion. All the recognised safety rules were broken in a childish frolic which we thought at the time constituted fun. Not only was there inter-gun competition for minimal, last minute, ‘chicken-style’ vacation of one’s own site, but the game gradually extended to suppressing warning of a lit fuse to adjacent crews in anticipation of the fun at seeing them ‘scarper’ in response to one’s frantic five or six second shouted alarm – from a safe distance, of course. Ah! The ignorance – or innocence – or stupidity – of youth!

      March 1944 ended on a high note – well, several notes really. The Army Post Office boys seemed to have found us at last. The receipt of seven letters from Anne bridging a couple or three weeks’ correspondence affirmed that letters must have been accumulating. Seven! Seventh heaven, again! Those letters, and others from my parents, brother (Bert), Big Mac, Wally Robinson and George Green, each conveyed concern at the absence of news from me, which tended to neutralise the joy engendered by the receipt of such gems. Circumstances had reduced my normal output but I was bitter to think of the anxiety created through all of my letters having been held up for so long. I regret not having recorded something of the contents of their letters, beyond “he seems to be doing ok” in reference to Mac’s, but I suppose seven passionate letters to a starry-eyed, love-denied young man of 24 did have the unforgivable effect of dumping other news that day into the pit of ordinariness. Nevertheless that day’s mail, coinciding as it did with a short period of stability after months of mobility or imminent mobility, was the spur I needed to motivate the pen again. Without the courage to take on the censor even by hint, however, inspiration was tiresomely dulled by being limited to small talk. Archie, it seemed, had had more success in managing to drop sufficient innocuous clues for an uncle of his to collate and cleverly deduce from them where we were.

      Life with the Partisans soon returned to pre-air raid amity. Close friendships began to develop. Kirky, the rascally Scot, became a popular favourite with them for reasons which we never found apparent, unless it was his readiness to have a go at the Serbo-Croat language. Sirjon helped him, but how they communicated in English I shall never know, being consistently unable to understand his Glaswegian dialect myself. Probably due to his diminutive stature the girls almost adopted him, so that in the evening song and dance sessions he was usually supported by one on either side of him in circle-style dances where gender played no part in one’s position in the ring. To those tough, buxom girls that was no problem. I recall one evening when vino had laid him to bed early, news of which would not deter the girls. Unselfconsciously they entered the house, dragged a half-revived Kirky out of bed, clad in only his shirt, and danced around him as usual. The dances that night seemed to have acquired a necessity for more supported leaps in the air than normal, guaranteeing that Kirky’s body landed much sooner than his lighter, and otherwise concealing, shirt. Whoops of enjoyment ensured that no one in the area missed the spectacle.

      My particular friend among the Partisans in Podselje turned out to be their storekeeper, Roko. A man about my own age, Roko was the rare instance in the Brigade of being a native of Vis. Indeed, he had lived in Podselje with his aged mother and stunningly beautiful teenaged sister, Milka, until requisitioning of their home had necessitated both mother and sister finding residence in Vis town. Slight of stature, though undoubtedly physically fit, Roko never managed to exude the gladiatorial aggression of most of his colleagues. A possible explanation might be the fact that the enemy had not occupied Vis. Passion for conflict is fed on vengeance. Would not Roko – would not we – have been more hostile protagonists had we lived in enemy-occupied territory, where bestial atrocities committed against our families and friends were the order of the day? Perhaps it was this kindred spirit, this shared understanding which attracted Roko to us, although the reason why my gun-crew was found the most compatible I cannot explain. He tried valiantly to pick up and use as much English as possible, while he probed deeply into our personal circumstances, our way of life at home and ambitions for the future. He seemed to be the only one interested in such matters: that there was any other place in the world beside Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union seemed not to have dawned on the others. I am not sure whether he was particularly good at his job.

      On our first visit into Vis town, a couple of miles walk along the twisting downhill road (the alternative was a mile of clambering down the rocky hillside), our prime commitment was to meet Roko’s mother and sister. Language difficulties delayed our discovery of the tiny house, accessed by an alleyway. Conditions were not conducive to prolonged social conversation either, but the sad looking, black-clad old lady greeted Tony and me as a mother would. Caring, concerned and almost alarmist, she managed to convey that the war was still far from won and that we must take care of ourselves for the sake of our loved ones at home, for whom she prayed.