UNDER FIRE

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 230, 28 September 1943, Page 3

UNDER FIRE

English Woman Takes Food To Italians GRAIN FOR "HER VILLAGERS" SALERNO, Sept. 26. Mrs. Margaret Scaramella, the English wife of a wealthy Italian, drove in a jeep across a bridge and back again while it was under fire from German mortars and machineguns to get food for Italian villagers along the coast of Sorrento Peninsula. Mrs. Scaramella, who was Miss Margaret Picton, of Pwllehi, Wales, before her marriage, is a relation of Lord Queenborough. Her parents were killed in the bombing of London. "I was the only damned fool there," she told me, when I asked her why she did it. The bridge is just outside Salemo, and carries the coastal road across the Vietri Valley. It is known now

as the "gauntlet bridge," because for more than a week now Germans on the heights farther up the valley have been machine-gunning every vehicle trying to cross it, and at the same time shelling it in an attempt to destroy it altogether. When the Germans were driven out of Maiori, Amalfi, and other parts of the peninsula by the Americans, taking most of the food with them, Italian civilians were in a serious plight. Mrs. Scaramella decided to do something about it for "her villagers." She sent one of her husband's boats with an Italian crew from Amalfi, where she has lived since the bombing of Naples began, to get a cargo of grain from her husband's flour mills in Salerno. The crew found the mills had been bombed and shelled into ruins, and while they were digging in the hope of salvaging some grain they were arrested as looters. Mrs. Scaramella heard about it. A British officer agreed to drive her to Salerno and across the bridge. They were across the bridge, the approaches to which are screened on both sides by slopes of hills, before the German machine-gunners had a chance to shoot. As soon as she had explained the facts to the Allied authorities in Salerno they released the crew and allowed them to load 30 tons of grain and other food and distribute it to villages along the Sorrento coast as far as Amalfi. Another British officer took Mrs. Scaramella home next morning. This time she wore a steel helmet, but again the burst of machine-gun bullets came too late to hit the jeep or its occupants. IN SOUTH ITALY KING VICTOR AND BADOGLIO Rec. 11 a.m. LONDON, Sept. 27. King Victor Emmanuel and Crown Prince Umberto, together with Marshal Badoglio and the members of his Government, are in a South Italian town, which in effect is the provisional capital, states the correspondent of the Associated Press. Italian soldiers in the town are > armed and sentries guard all vital' points. i "A British officer in this town," the correspondent states, "told me: 'We are getting practically everything we ask. About 70 per cent of Italian officers are co-operating with us." PREFER PRISON JAPANESE IN URUGUAY NEW YORK, Sept. 26. The Montevideo (Uruguay) correspondent of the newspaper P.M. says Japanese on board the exchange ship Gripsholm asked to be imprisoned in Uruguay rather than be returned to Japan. The authorities concerned refused the request. The Gripsholm left U.S.A. on September 2 for Portuguese India, carrying 1330 Japanese civilians to exchange for Americans from Japanese territory.