Lloyd Oliver

And we went to Italy. We landed in Naples. Torpedoed in the Mediterranean [Sea], just off Philippeville [now Skikda, Algeria] and it was kind of exciting. There was a few planes shot down, a few boats sank and the like of that. On about Christmas day, in 1943, we took the Cape Breton Highlanders and the Irish Regiment [of Canada] and the Perth [Regiment of Canada] up to Ortona [Italy] where they were put in the front line, but they didn’t do too good, they were kind of green, the bullets flying around them. Then we took them out of there for a few days while they went for further training. We hauled ammunition and everything that you would want to haul. And then we went back troop carrying again. We took them into the line again and they did pretty good the next time. We stayed in Italy until, well, we moved out on the 25th of February, 1945. We went over to France. But in the meantime, on the Hitler Line, when we were there, we were hauling ammunition up to Rome, on the outskirts. While we were, we loaded up there one afternoon and ready to go, and we got out as far Frosinone, up the Liri Valley, and we had to quit going on the road because there was so much traffic. So we all went to bed and got up in the middle of the night and continued our journey up to Rome and then came back again, without any traffic on the road. But while we were in the Liri Valley there, around Cassino and we were waiting to go on the No. 6 Highway, we had to wait and we went to bed and got up early. But the boys picked up this little Italian boy and he was really bloated and bad shape, no clothes. The lady said, “Take him if you can because I haven’t got enough feed to feed my own kids.” So we took him and we had him there for, well, ten months. And we really got attached to him. And he was a good little fellow. Well, when they picked Gino up, like it was in the night and this lady, Regina, was sitting on a big shell hole, when the Americans bombed Cassino, they, they kind of missed a little and they ended up in Frosinone, which is north of Cassino and on No. 6 Highway, going to Rome. And the Americans had just liberated Rome, so we had to haul all this ammunition and stuff up there, way over 100 miles. And so we took Gino with us. Now, some other guys took Gino for the first while and then he got so like all kids, he was only five years old, he was getting a little dirty, so I took him and washed him all up. And yeah, he just used to sleep behind the seat of the truck and he was that small that one blanket would be in about four folds and would be on top of him, below him and everything. And he used to go along with us and no bother at all. But we had a workshop and if I had to go away for say a long trip, maybe a few days, I’d take him up to the workshop and my chum, he worked there as a mechanic, and they would look after him there because they didn’t move about like we did. He used to go lots of nights out with us when we were going delivering ammunition and stuff, and in the bombs and all that sort of stuff. And he got along good. But he used to go with the German soldiers, back and forth from Rome to Cassino. And he told us about riding with them all the way up to Rome and back and how the Germans, they used to make coffee out of wheat. And it was so strong, he couldn’t drink it. But he smoked like a trooper, for a five year old boy. No, no, he got along good. He just was in the truck until you went and, or go with somebody else and everybody got to know Gino and like him too, you know. When we left Gino, I left him with an American. But the thing is, he was just about finished in Italy and he was going back to the [United] States. So he took Gino and he gave him to a Fernetti in Venice. It was him and this Fernetti were just, he was just going to get married, so they took him as their first child. And they gave him a good education because he ended up working in the oil in Venezuela and Morocco and Saudi Arabia and all that, Kuwait. And he got along pretty good.