Work in progress
Previous | Contents | Next As we drove through a pass we saw two shadowy green tanks on a groomed hillside, and then, on the other side of the road, a group of parked motorcycles decked out in military dun in front of a cemetery. We stopped out of curiosity. This was the Italian Military…
Previous | Contents | Next We wasted the morning rather disastrously. First we spent ages looking for the Commonwealth War Cemetery — and drove into a kerb while doing so, bending the wheel rim of our poor little car and damaging the plastic hub cap, which fell off. We got to the cemetery, where we…
Previous | Contents | Next In the Hotel bar at breakfast an elderly, vocal little man in jeans was sounding forth exuberantly to a group of Germans and gesturing to Monastery Hill, which we could see through the windows. It was probably his volubility that prompted another German, courtly but crippled — we’d seen him…
Previous | Contents | Next Next day we were all dressed up for the Commonwealth Service at the Cemetery we had visited previously. I had rung to confirm arrangements beforehand with the New Zealand contingent and we turned up in the maelstrom on time at 9.30. It was crowded with veterans and supporters from most of the Commonwealth participants,…
Previous | Contents | We’d managed to lock our keys in the car at the Cemetery. I decided the easiest way to deal with this was to let Avis worry, so we looked out the local office to explain. Two nice young guys were shutting up for lunch. How could you do that? they wanted to know. Eh,…
Previous | Contents | Next Next morning Dad and I woke weary, worn out before the day could lay a finger on us. Although Olympia had died, Dad still wanted to go and find the Russos’ old house at the foot of Trocchio, where he’d been billeted, and look up her husband Agostino. He’d told…
Well, it wasn’t the smallest car in Italy, which would be very small indeed, but it wasn’t large, and it was certainly bare of most creature comforts. It was also a little wider than it seemed from my (unaccustomed) side of the car, and twice I clipped another vehicle with the off-side mirror. The first…
Tell the kids also that Dad and I always had a combative relationship, but I’d never been closer to him than this. I can’t remember exactly when we stopped bickering with each other, but this trip was a rather graceless step on the way. Rather graceless on my part, I mean. I was, necessarily, in charge.…
Last Anzac Day my nephew Peter asked me if there was any way he could access his grandfather’s war stories to read to his kids. I had to disappoint him but said I was working at publishing them online. Well, it took the best part of a year but, finally, you can read them on…
There’s a scene near the end of Dr Zhivago (the movie) where the sick Zhivago sees Lara, his lost love, walking down the street as the tram he’s on passes her by. He struggles to get off and catch up with her but collapses and dies. She walks on. We’ve spent the entire movie, the…