February 26, 2004
Today I drove up to Northamptonshire to see Sir Stephen Hastings. Earl Jellicoe, when I interviewed him about North Africa, told me I should talk to his old friend, as Sir Stephen had not only served with the SAS in the Western Desert but had later won an MC working for SOE behind enemy lines in Italy.
His house was absolutely stunning. Rather grandly, he has a valet and a secretary, but he himself was incredibly affable and down-to-earth. He’s well over eighty but acted, sounded, and behaved a lot younger, and rather like the Poles yesterday, seemed to have a perpetual twinkle in his eye. We chatted for ages, then had lunch, then chatted some more. Although much of the conversation was about North Africa, it’s clear he has a special fondness for the Partisans he helped organise in the mountains south of Piacenza. Before I left, he told me he was thinking of going back there to see some of his old Partisans chums and suggested I might like to come along too. Well, I said,, as it happens, I’m intending to be out in Italy in May. ‘Hm – that might work rather well,’ said Sir Stephen. ‘Let’s try and work towards that then.’ I really hope that comes off.

Polish Centre, Hammersmith, February 23, 2004
A few months ago, I wrote a review of Matthew Parker’s book, ‘Monte Cassino’ for the Daily Telegraph, but failed to mention the efforts of the Poles.  Not long after I received a letter from Teresa Rubnikowicz rightly admonishing me for the fact.  I wrote back telling her that I was writing a book about the Italian campaign myself and that I certainly intended to give the Poles full credit for the part they played – which is true, as it happens.  Anyway, with this in mind, today I met up with three former Polish veterans of the Italian campaign:  Col. Stanislaw Berkieta, Wladek Rubnikowicz, and Prof. Tomas Piesakowski, at the Polish Centre in Hammersmith.  Wladek Rubnikowicz smiled at me and said, ‘You have had some correspondence with me wife,’ and then showed me the letter I had sent her.  It caught me rather off guard as by that time I’d forgotten all about it.

They were fascinating, though.  I hadn’t fully appreciated just how terrible their experiences were.  All three had been captured not by the Germans at the beginning of the war, but by the Russians.  By the time of Barbarossa, they were all in Gulags north of the Arctic Circle.  Liberated some months after the German invasion, they made their way some 3,000 miles to Kazhakstan, where the Polish Army was mustering.  Emaciated and wracked with disease, they travelled through Persia and into Iraq, where they gradually built up strength and began training.  This continued through 1943 in Palestine until in early 1944 they were considered ready for battle and sent to Cassino.  Their first combat action was the fourth battle of Cassino, where they took the monastery, a feat that no-one else had managed in six months of fighting.  And then having continued battling their way up Italy, they were completely shafted by Roosevelt and Stalin at Yalta in February 1945.  Incredible.  And all three were so good humoured and fun.

London, February 5, 2004
Matthew Parker has finished his epic work on Monte Cassino and very generously gave me his folder on German veterans.   Amongst the notes and emails was a message from Wolf von Kumberg, a Canadian whose German father had served in the Fallschirmjager at Cassino and subsequently through much of the remainder of the Italian campaign.  So I sent Wolf an email and it turns out he’s working in London and is keen to help out.  He’s fascinated by his father’s war experiences and has done a lot of work to piece together where and when precisely his father served.  Anyway, I met him today at his London office and he couldn’t have been more charming.  His dad is coming over from Canada for the 60th Anniversary of the Battle for Monte Cassino, and he suggested I come out too and perhaps interview him there.  I readily agreed; I’m conscious that getting hold of German veterans is going to be a lot harder than British or American vets.