CHAPTER 5

NO TOUCH OF COLOR FOUND ITS WAY THROUGH THE PAINT mist that wrapped the city as we walked the half-mile back to the hotel just after daybreak. A few unkempt figures hurried through the streets, stumbling over the debris that littered them: ghouls . . . trying to get back before cockcrow. In the shadowless light Catania showed its awful wound mercilessly.

We had a good breakfast at the mess—the last for some weeks, then the car arrived and we rumbled and bumped our way over the battered roads back to the airport where a C-47 was waiting to take us to Bari.

The one man priorities board was functioning normally at its improvised desk. The Captain looked about the same as he had the night before. Undoubtedly, there had been a time during the night when he was off duty, but a powerful illusion persisted that he was still there, still juggling loading schedules, and that there had been no break in the continuity of his efforts. I stopped to shake hands and thank him before we went out to the waiting aircraft and noticed that he had had a shave. So he had been off duty after all!

We had the aircraft all to ourselves, that day. There were no other passengers. A mountain of freight was lashed to the

floor in the center of the cabin and the four of us gathered in a huddle at the forward end, sitting comfortably on our baggage.

After a little while we roared out across the Straits of Messina and cruised up the coast of the Italian mainland, an awe-inspiring accretion of mountains; then we turned east again on a course that would take us to Taranto, the first stop.

One of the first things to do on reaching the east coast, Radic suggested, was to call on the Admiral at Taranto to report the results of the journey to Algiers and inquire about the supplies that had been promised a few days before. He thought time would be saved if he and I got out and attended to these matters while Faulkner and Mladineo went on to Bari with our gear and equipment. We would get to Taranto before noon. The others would reach Bari about two o'clock.

I gave Tim a safe sum of money and told him to buy or requisition two cars, and to get us a billet. He could arrange all that by going to the town mayor and obtaining the necessary papers. We would be along in time for dinner. Presently, we landed in the sunshine on a rough field among the olive groves. Radic and I said good-bye and hailed a half-ton truck waiting there for the mail. The plane left and we climbed in to bounce and rattle about in the back for forty minutes on our way to town.

Radic knew the way—knew the very building we had to get to—and the obliging truck driver took us to the door. We stopped before a great edifice overlooking the port of Taranto where a variety of small naval vessels lay at anchor, each destroyer surrounded by a neat square of floats from which the anti-torpedo nets were suspended. The building itself was pretentious with huge fascist symbols worked into its stone facade.

Our luck was still in. Everything seems to have fitted together in an amazing way in those October days. We never lost a moment waiting for anyone. The gods were with us and the timing was always perfect.

The Admiral himself was out when we reached his office so we were received—and very gallantly—by his chief of staff, Captain Orr Ewing. He remembered Radic and said the Admiral would be eager to see us. He would be back soon. Brigadier General Maxwell B. Taylor, the American representative on the Allied Military Mission, was with him and they had gone off somewhere together.

We had been wondering whether it would be necessary to stop at Brindisi on our way up that night to contact him or Mason Mack, so his presence in Taranto was most opportune.

We chatted with the Captain until the Admiral returned, then we were at once shown in. His face was strong and gay with sharp blue eyes and weather-beaten skin. He looked like a man who had spent all his days at sea. His personality had so strong a nautical flavor I almost expected to feel the decks heave and roll under my feet as I walked across the room to shake hands.

Radic introduced me as an officer from Middle East who happened to be in Algiers in connection with the same business that had taken him and Mladineo there—"a great piece of luck for us," he said.

"Have you got anything to do with the establishment of these Middle East bases on the Adriatic?" the Admiral inquired at once.

"Yes, sir, I have."

"Well, what sort of tonnage are you going to move through our ports?" he asked. "We are terribly overtaxed, even without vou."

The question was one I had been asking myself for days. The truth was I had no idea. Two hundred tons a month, two thousand tons . . . one guess was as good as another at that juncture. I did my best to explain.

"We can fit you in almost anywhere as long as your operations are limited to a few thousand tons a month," the genial old sailor said, looking relieved, "but we'd have a hell of a time if you started handling a really big tonnage. Where do you want to work?"

That was another of the questions I had been asking myself. I answered that we would have to look around before we could say; that there was some question of Monopoli. . . .

"You'll probably want to stay in Bari," he interrupted. "I fancy that will probably suit you best, whether we like it or not," and, turning to Radic, he added, "that's where you've got your little steamer tied up, isn't it?"

Radic confirmed that it was.

"Have you managed to draw stores for your crew?" the Admiral asked him. "Have you got plenty of coal aboard? Have you had any trouble getting yourself watered?"

Ivo Radic could answer none of these questions.

"Have the supplies we promised you arrived?" the Admiral wanted to know. We didn't know. "Under what flag and what papers are you going to clear the . . . what's her name? . . . Bog s Noma out of the port?"

We had no idea. The Admiral threw his head back and laughed merrily. I felt very grateful to him, not only for his good humor but because it was helpful to meet someone who at least knew the questions we would have to answer.

There was evidently some bond between the Admiral and Radic, something in the latter's personality that pleased His Majesty's officer. They chatted together for a while about

shipping and I learned that Radic was not only a lawyer-he was a director of several Adriatic steamship companies, an old shipowner who had traded in many of the great ports of the world. The Admiral's secretary arrived to announce that General Taylor was in the waiting room.

"Show him in," the Admiral shouted.

His voice carried well beyond the secretary in the doorway and a slim young officer in American uniform, the badge of the airborne divisions on his tunic and a silver star on his shoulder, pushed past into the office. He greeted us very kindly and inquired about our plans.

"We have just finished confessing to the Admiral that we have none," I explained. "However, we're going up to Bari tonight and it won't take us long to make some once we get there."

"Well, just call on me or on General Mason-MacFarland for any help we can give you," he offered.

"I shall also be glad to do anything I can for you," the Admiral said at once. "Go and see NOIC—(pronounced as it is written, the letters being a contraction for Naval Officer in Charge)—at the port and if there's anything you need that you can't get from him—and there will be plenty—just call through to me on his telephone. I'll fix it up for you."

We thanked him warmly and before leaving I asked: "What information have you here about the situation on the Jugoslav coast, sir?"

"Damned little," he answered. "The destroyers beat up from Dubrovnik as far as the Peljesac Peninsula and sink anything they find on the way; you might stop by and see the Flag Officer, down the hall. He can tell you anything we know. And call on Captain Dee (the captain in charge of a destroyer flotilla in the Royal Navy) as soon as you get to

Bari. He may be able to help you . . . and don't forget! call on me if you get fouled anywhere."

We left him then and so did the General, who inquired as we walked down the hall whether we had any transport to take us on to Bari. We said we hoped to rent a car and he invited us to ride to Brindisi with him. From there he would send us on in a military vehicle. We accepted at once and agreed to meet him in an hour, for we still had to call on the Flag Officer and Radic thought we should check on the movement of the supplies the admiral had promised.

The Flag Officer's staff had little information of the sort we needed, but the supply situation proved worth investigating. Nothing had been done about that requisition. Indeed, the whole matter had apparently been forgotten. We were obliged to call on a British brigadier in charge of stores at the Taranto base and remind him of the transaction. He remembered and apologised for the delay. What, specifically, did we want? A lieutenant-colonel in his department was summoned. He knew, apparently to the ounce, just what supplies were on hand, and for twenty minutes he and Radic worked over the list. Finally it was complete. Twenty carloads—two hundred tons—of medical supplies and food! The train would be on the pier at Bari in forty-eight hours.

Our work in Taranto was done, for the moment, and we set out for Brindisi with the amiable young General in his staff car on a road that winds through miles of olive groves, all of which appeared to be in perfect condition. There had been no fighting in this region and it was restful to feast one's eyes on the bucolic landscape after the harsh scenes in Sicily. It was hot in the afternoon sun and Radic soon fell asleep, leaving the General and me deep in discussion of parachute-dropping techniques.

We got on well and the time passed pleasantly.

At Brindisi he found a car for us and posted us on to our destination in the care of a mad but wonderfully skillful little Italian driver in sailor's uniform. We arrived at the Hotel Imperial a little before seven o'clock.

Tim and Mladineo were waiting there, standing at the registration desk, looking hot and tired and frustrated, our baggage piled nearby at the foot of a pillar. The clerks behind the desk were doing their best to pretend unawareness of their presence. Tim was obviously relieved and happy to see us, but anger smouldered in him.

"What's wrong?" I asked, after reporting that all had gone well in Taranto.

"Everything," he answered. "Everything! . . . this son of a bitch"—with a wave at the desk clerk—"who can't understand my French and who doesn't speak English and whose Italian is incomprehensible to me has nevertheless managed to understand that this requisition"—he waved a scrap of paper—"from the town mayor's office entitles us to some rooms and has made me understand that he doesn't have any to give us. What do you think of that:1"

The requisition was categorical. It was an order on the hotel to give us two double rooms, and I knew the town mayor would not issue the order unless he knew there were rooms available.

"Are there any civilians in the hotel?" I asked the clerk, through Mladineo.

This inquiry resulted in a voluble outburst and much gesticulation from behind the desk. No interpreter was needed to communicate the sense of it; there were plenty of civilians but they could not be put out like that, on a moment's notice, etc., etc.

"Tell him we'll settle for one big room for tonight—one instead of two—and that two of us will sleep on the floor; but the room must have a bath and we shall occupy it in ten minutes," I told Mladineo.

He translated faithfully. The gesticulation and the outcry behind the desk redoubled.

". . . and tell him that if the room is not ready in ten minutes we'll go up and pick it out for ourselves," I added. Mladineo passed that on too, and the storm subsided instantly. Two porters appeared after a moment, picked up our luggage and beckoned us to the elevator. Five minutes later we were setded comfortably in a big room overlooking the sea which was to be home to us all through the eventful weeks of October.