"They fell off the back of a lorry"
All supplies for the troops who had landed on the Anzio beachead in January
of 1944 had to be brought from Naples by supply ship, and being too large to
dock in the port of Anzio anchored in the bay.
A convoy of DUKWs(amphibian 6-wheeler trucks) would drive down the beach and out to the ships to be loaded by rope slings with all the food,ammo,fuel and all the other items that were necessary to keep an army in action supplied. This meant a constant stream of these trucks coming out of the sea, up the beach and through the town of Anzio to their dumps.
A German 208mm railway mounted gun and
called "Leopold" but nicknamed "Anzio
Annie" was at a railway tunnel in a town
about 35 miles away called Ciampino and
started firing in early February and everyone was in range of this formidable
weapon but the town of Anzio took the brunt of the attacks.
To keep the streets free for easy passage of the DUKW convoys anyone not engaged in the front line would be called upon to do rubble clearance. The hazards of this task was made more hazardous by the driving of the black American drivers who would swing around the corners at breakneck speeds. This led to part of their loads becoming 'detached' and falling off.
On one occasion, being an Anti-tank gun
tower driver, I had delivered my 6pdr
gun to its designated site and was then
instructed to return to F Echelon and
upon arrival there was then to make up a
party of "Rubble Clearers" in Anzio. The shelling from Annie had been rather heavy and the town, on this occasion was
in a pretty bad state and the convoys had a lot of trouble getting through.
Our party of clearers worked hard and made a path through for the trucks who then got their loads to the dumps. One
DUKW came hurtling around a corner and
lost three or four cases of his load.
Although there was no indicationas to the contents of the cases I could tell
that one of them contained bottles. Our party picked these caes and on return to camp at F Echelon proceeded to open
the cases. My case contained 12 bottles
of Black Label Johnny Walker whisky and another four 7lb tins of fruit cocktail.The other two cases were tinned Canadian bacon.
We decided to share our good fortune with the rest of the battalion as far as we could and so three bottles were given to the Officer's mess and three
to the sergeants, the rest was lobbed
out around HQ Coy. The bacon went to our cooks and the fruit was very soon demolished. After this I was to become known as "Whisky Heaney" but my excuse was, "They fell off the back of a lorry"
Brian Heaney, Ex Anti-tank platoon.
2nd. Bn The Sherwood Foresters | 
