Diary of Writing Italy’s Sorrow

Wimborne, Dorset, July 19, 2006
A very hot day.  Went to see Colonel Pat Ive in Wimborne, who served in a Reconnaissance Battalion in Italy.  He was very jovial and spry and seemed to have enjoyed a long and successful career in the Army – and, I got the impression – didn’t have too bad a time of it in Italy.  He also admitted he had had very little to do with the Italians.  I do think that for the majority of combatants, the trials and tribulations of the ordinary Italians caught up in the middle of it all, barely registered on their radars.  And why should it?  They had enough to worry about.