Rickie's War: North Africa

F.N.G

British Encampment, near the Rapido River

1st Battalion, Brighton and Hove Volunteers

Attached to 4 New Zealand Corps

Lance Corporal Rickie Avraams

The day was a calm one. It was March and spring had just set in properly in Italy. The flowers were blooming all around the camp. Trees were turning from dead wood into a rich green and the wind was fair and comfortable. I saw at the current state of natural affairs and thought it was a perfect day to walk down the park. Then I remembered Pris back home and how we liked to walk down the avenues on the afternoon, laughing and having fun like bestfriends, yet we loved each other like couples. We liked to sit under this particular tree just outside Brighton and talk about things. I’ve seen a lot through this war; dead men, dead women, dead children, dead animals. Everything touched me in a way, but not like how I saw dead and destroyed trees. It always brought me back to my time with Pris. I always imagined her sitting down under that tree, praying that I return safely to her. I wonder where she was now. I hadn’t heard from her for some time now… maybe there was a problem at home? Maybe it didn’t pass the censor? Maybe a German U-boat took the letter ship down? Who knew. I missed her more than anything now. Her warm hugs and warm kisses and cute giggles… Every moment I thought about her, it made my heart sink deep into my chest. I missed her so much it felt like a breeze of ice went through me every time I attempted to put an image of her inside my mind. I felt lonely sometimes, despite having the best of friends here.

It has been a difficult two years.

I didn’t sit alone under the tree. I had four of my buddies with me. First, there was Albie Fontaine. We liked to call him Doc since he was the medical man in our platoon. He had Belgian parents who settled in England, so he was just as English as any of us but we liked to pick on his Belgian-ness. Other than his ‘foreign’-ness, he was probably the best looking man in the company. Every time we went into a town to liberate it, he always had the most ladies; Italian ladies, of course, who understood little to no English. They knew something about playing in the bed, though. Every time I passed through his temporary room I always heard women in passionate moans, and him in grunts of pleasure. It seems that they really got to him. I laughed at the thought as he cleaned his rifle, a string of black hair going down onto his forehead.

Next to him sat Joe Sugg, a small man from London with a great sense of humor. He grew up in Brighton, his home just by the shore. He used to work as a freelance photographer and journalist before the war. When the Blitz came, his London flat was blown to pieces by a German bomb. With nowhere to go, he volunteered at the same time I did. We even were at the same office and training camp. We served together through North Africa and Sicily, having gone through a bit too plenty than we should for our age.

Another man was tall Jimmy Chapman. He was our section leader as he outranked us all. Like Joe, he worked in the media, in this case as a cameraman in the film industry. He was slightly older than us, being twenty eight. Before the war he was in the Territorial Army for six months; when it came in 1939, every military unit was activated throughout Britain and its Dominions. He had been with us ever since.

The last man in the group was none other than Private Bryan Ross, our section’s machinegunner. Bry fired the Vickers machinegun with an assistant to carry the ammunition. Sadly, his last assistant was killed during a German air attack on the way to Monte Cassino. It was an unlucky death in my opinion, since German air attacks rarely ever happened this late into the war, unlike back during the Blitz when German planes ruled the skies. Among all the men in our group, Bry probably had the highest kill count; we all owed our lives to him and his machinegun. Unlike Joe, Jimmy, and myself, Bry had been with us since Sicily, and not North Africa. His main characteristic were his round and big eyes; probably explains his extended line of sight.