It has to be said that Italy hasn’t quite – yet – lived up to my expectations. It’s been pouring with rain and I’ve been spending most of my time in various holes in the ground. I have a nasty (sneeze!) cold. We landed at Taranto, behind the heel of the Italian boot and now we’re inching up the leg – not, admittedly, much higher than the ankle at this point. Before that, I was in Sicily. Quite an exciting time it was too – ‘exciting’ in the unpleasant sense, unfortunately. But there were a few moments that were less exciting and more enjoyable, such as when I almost literally ran into an acquaintance of mine, an old teacher in fact, riding a bicycle (unbelievable but true) down the main street of a little mountain village, a couple of bottles of wine in the basket in front of him. Edward Ardizzone is a lovely, portly chap who looks distinctly comical in uniform, but he turns out to be quite fearless. Apparently he captured another village almost single-handedly – by accident, he assured me – which isn’t bad going for an illustrator of children’s books. We sat in an abandoned chapel and drank some of the wine, and he told me he was there as that most extraordinary of beasts, an official war artist. I should write that with capitals: Official War Artist. The army pays him to draw pictures. I showed him some of mine, of course – I’m still carrying my old case around with me everywhere – and he was nice enough to say that I should ask the Commission for a job myself. Funnily enough, that had never occurred to me before. I know a couple of chaps who have gone down that path. In fact one of them, a man I knew and admired very much was killed when his plane went down near Iceland. But I don’t think I’d get the job. The army needs artillery officers more than it needs artists. If it were the other way around, I don’t suppose we’d have as many wars, would we?

I was in an abandoned school yesterday – we’ve been using them as field hospitals and I went to get some aspirin for my cold – and I found an atlas. With a piece of string – highly scientific – I was able to work out that you are only 495 miles away from me! That’s walking distance, my darling. And a bit of sea, although that looks swimmable. So near. I can’t help thinking that the fact that we’re here now means we’ll be there sooner rather than later.

More soon.

All my love,

Tom

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Devon, 20th March 1944

My darling Zoë,