A Doctor of Sorts by V.J. Downie

Author:V.J. Downie
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473811508
Publisher: Pen & Sword Books

Operation Avalanche

Was none who would be foremost

To lead such dire attack:

But those behind cried ‘Forward!’

And those before cried ‘Back!’

Lord Macaulay, commemorating an obstacle on the road to Rome.

Winston Churchill, speaking in the Mansion House on 10 November, 1942, after the battle of El Alamein had been fought and won, made a prophetic comment: ‘This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end, but it is perhaps the end of the beginning.’

For me there was a specific moment when I knew beyond any doubt that ultimate victory would be ours. It was on 12 May, 1943, and a quarter of a million of the enemy had surrendered unconditionally in Tunisia. I was standing on a road not far from Tunis and watching the scene around me. In a field to my left, hundreds of German soldiers were queueing up for food at one of their mobile field kitchens. Most of them had discarded their shirts and they were in excellent spirits, laughing and joking. In front of me a British corporal was cadging a lift from a German general in an open staff car, and in the distance neat files of steel-helmeted British infantry were marching into the hills to round up enemy stragglers.

The myth of German invincibility had been finally destroyed. Many battles, some bloodier than those already fought, were still to come: Salerno, Anzio, Cassino, Normandy, Arnhem. I knew nothing of that, but I knew that it was now only a matter of time. The mantle of invincibility had passed to us, and we waited impatiently for the time when we would return to the mainland of Europe.

As we waited, and as the months passed with little to do under the blistering North African sun, we entertained ourselves as best we could. I painted a portrait of Thea in watercolour. I copied her face from the photograph I carried in my wallet, and my friend Stanley Hickling modelled her shoulders. Stanley was an extremely muscular young man and some artistic licence was needed in the interpretation. The folds of the dress over her bosom were simulated by a couple of Tunisian oranges slung in a khaki handkerchief from the back of a folding camp chair. Some years later Thea was kind enough to frame the picture, and I have it in my study.

Stanley and I visited Tunis, of which I can remember very little; but I do remember vividly a bizarre scene on a nearby beach. We wanted to swim, but as neither of us had any bathing trunks we retired to the shelter of some rocks and swam lazily and blissfully in the nude. When we had dressed and smoked a cigarette or two we clambered back over the rocks, and there in the middle of the beach was a beefy young Caucasian making very active love to his girlfriend. The amorous pair were completely naked, and this was the odd thing: they were surrounded by a circle of admiring and incredulous Arabs who were squatting in the sand, laughing, smoking their pipes and gesticulating.

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