To get here, I drove up and across country from Naples. I’d almost forgotten that I’d been in Italy before. The main road goes quite near Monte Cassino, and the air still reeks of corpses. Finally made it to Florence, but all the museums are empty: looted, possibly. People are starving, ragged children begging in the streets, prostitutes with the eyes, and the patience, of the dead. I had to leave. I kept driving until I got to the Adriatic. In the Upper Tiber valley there are fresh graves everywhere beside the roads. In some places the landscape is quite haunted. In others it’s glorious, just like I’d imagined it from the paintings. Funny: tangles of wrecked machinery are so ubiquitous here that they seem part of nature. It wouldn’t surprise me to find a burnt-out Tiger tank in the background of a Leonardo next time I look at one. When I got to the coast I walked down to the sea and stared east, but then a flight of American bombers took off from an airfield behind me, these great silver shapes roaring just above my head. They flew out to sea and then wheeled sharply to the north, as if they’d run into an invisible wall. I sat down and drew the exhaust trails. Some New Zealand gunners came by and invited me to their mess, otherwise I think I would have sat there all night.

21st September

We are in Rimini. The Greeks – 3rd Mountain Brigade – came in early this morning. I’ve just done a quick portrait of their commander, a General Tsakalotos. When I told him it would belong to the Crown, he practically salivated at the word. I don’t understand these royalists at all. It’s like being back in the 17th century. But while I was sketching he told me that the Allies will be going into Greece as early as next month. My old brigade is supposedly going to be the spearhead. The general seems to think the work ahead will be in securing the country from what he called ‘subversive elements’. I thought he meant collaborators, but he actually meant EAM. I don’t think he has a very high opinion of the provisional government. He isn’t involved in any planning, though, as he told me, rather bitterly. It’s amazing what people tell you when you’re doing their portrait. When I’d finished, I slipped off and wrote a letter to the WAAC, begging them to send me to Greece. I gave it to the postal service chap and my hand, dearest Zoë, was shaking like a leaf.