Memories Of A Rainy Day

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 126, 30 May 1942, Page 9

Memories Of A Rainy Day

AS I write this it is raining. A Dart curtain obscures the part of the harbour which I can ing™gainstTh ndoW ' fat tops fl atten- , the pane - and rolling slugsiTl -Sh™ omUl cally down to the know" , b ha r t St s oSnd maChineglm flre ' 1

(By FRANK BRUNO) ti3 here as rain of Mt. Olympus [nc I Vt or »h ing Tr s i ),i u rain and soa) <- erlen through the evert>reen ot the bush, spanglinEr earh ipwpf T S f°K U k twinkling silver J wels. It beat the mud of our gunPits to a grey-yellow froth, and made he path upwards through the bush iu,,mT,? r, ; ar section a soggy slide. Muffled to the eyes in soakine greatcoats, we sat on a pile of ammunition belts and cursed. Half an hour before there had been a brisk little a flair on the road we were covering. Even now through the solid blanket of rain-mist that obscured nearly everything there rose through the trees a thick black plume of oily smoke, and an intermittent wink of flame through it from the burning tank in the fork of the road.

I he mist obscured the tank itself and the dead cyclists with mud on their faces; obscured the tilted lorry, riddled through and through, and the silent field-grey heaps in it. From somewhere in the valley below a German field gun barked, a momentary orange flash. * and a whine, a whistle, a whoosh, and an earsplitting burst that rolled around the snow valleys in tumbling echoes. Ever since the sharp little action of half an hour before the gun had been searching for the machine-gun nests, and the mortar crew. It searched up and down the side of the mountain; a solitary voice in the great quietness. We did not fire, for reasons which any soldier will understand. Gun flashes are a dead

(literally) give-away for machinegunners. Among the small trees and the dripping bush of the mountain lay clumps of the Adolf Hitler Division who had been caught in the cross lire sometime earlier. . . . And it rained and rained, and rained. Over my ankles in mud and water, a constant rapid fire of drips pattered from the rim of my tin hat. The gleaming brass of the spent cartridge cases dulled with the little pools forming about them. Bill Gibsom a cartoonist, from Wellington, huddled in the corner of the tiny gun-pit and slept solidly. There was very little to worry Bill at any time. His head was pillowed on a case of "pineapples" (Mills , grenades), and his tilted "battle bowler" spilled a tiny c6nstant stream into his respirator. Then frorrt the heart of the mist below us spanged a devil's chatter of Tommy guns, and the harking bark of a "potato masher." A brief flare of justifiable homicide which died away as suddenly as it had started; one of these little affairs which seem to have no beginning and no end, just incidents, of importance only to those immediately concerned in them. As is this rather pointless paragraphing. The rain on the window has sent my thoughts trudging back through the mud thousands of miles away.