[Owen]

Read this today and thought I'd share.
From ROME '44 by Raleigh Trevelyan.Pages 249 & 250.

There were said to be three hundred deserters , both British and American, at large on the Beachhead. At first nobody made out where they could hide themselves in such a small area. John Hope , the British Guards Officer at VI Corps, used sometimes to take time off bird-watching in deserted gardens to the east of Nettuno, making his way along a very deeply dug ditch.
'Once I saw some washing hanging out, which I thought was odd. Then I saw something shining beneath a lot of old sticks. I kicked at it and found a large cache of new tins.
I thought: "My God, those deserter bastards must be in the wood there." I turned a corner and was confronted by two unshaven GIs, one with a red beard, with rifles. I knew it was touch and go.
"What are you doing here?" one of them asked.
I showed him my British badges , and when I said I was bird-watching they burst out laughing. They pretended they were just back from the front.'

As soon as he got back, Hope reported the affair to the American Provost.
After some difficulty , it was agreed to send a jeep. Hope, to his alarm, was asked to sit on the bonnet.
'As we approached the ditch , Red Beard and his companion jumped up and ran like hell into a tabacco field; the men in the jeep belted off into the crops . God knows whether any were killed. No expedition was organised to go into the bushes to find out who was there. Men just couldn't be spared.'
Hope was delighted one day to see a pair of Bee-eaters , which appeared to be nesting in the German lines.
He also saw several Golden Orioles.
In the front line you might hear a cuckoo at dawn.
Nightingales sang by day and night, and people complained they were becoming bird-happy. The more the Nightingales were frightened by two inch mortars or volleys of grenades , the more they sang- and the more this so-called music of the moon seemed callous to those who crouched in shallow fox-holes and who saw their comrades die.