Remember mates, forget medals

By MICHELE HEWITSON

When Bill Marsh went to war in 1943, only his parents were there to see him off.

On a Thursday night at the Bombay Rugby Club a few of the boys, about 40 of them, put on a little do to see Marsh off: for the second time.

Marsh is one of the 50 veterans who won a place in the Returned Services Association ballot to return to Cassino in Italy, 60 years after they fought there in a town which had become a pile of rubble.

Here they crawled through mud, ducked shells - if they were lucky - and saw friends die beside them. Marsh lost his good mate, Terry McIvor, in 1944. He can't quite recall where - it was probably on the advance to Florence. He named his first son Terry.

At the club, where he is a life member and former chairman, and where his picture hangs on the wall, Marsh stands in front of the bar and surveys the numbers of those gathered. He is a robust 82-year-old with a spring in his step and a mischievous way with words.

He recounts how going to war earned him a send-off of two. "Now," he says, shaking his head at the irony, "I'm going on a holiday ... " and look at the crowd.

They love him here, and let you know it - in their blokey way. "He's got a lot of respect," says Don Schuker, "as a sort of a man's man."

'Beatle' Broughan says: "Oh he's a really neat old bugger."

He's a tough old bugger, too. That's what they say about him, and that is high praise indeed down the club.

The three-day flight to Cassino, with stopovers in Penang and Bahrain, holds no fears for Marsh.

Not much bothers him. Of the war, and being scared, he says: "As long as you kept your nerve, you were all right." And did he? "Oh I hope so. I didn't pull out."

He was mentioned in dispatches for bravery. His wife Rose raises this; Marsh never would have said a word. Ask to see his medals and he says, "bugger the medals".

They have been married for 57 years and she says he's spoken about the war only a couple of times.

He says: "It's very, very hard to think about what I think about the war. It's very hard to talk about it."

Ray Cave, who was also at Cassino, is too frail to return but wouldn't have missed Marsh's farewell. He and Marsh have seldom mentioned their experiences. "It is," says Cave, "something best forgotten. Then again, it is never forgotten."

Marsh has forgotten where the picture of him in uniform, in a mess hall somewhere, was taken. He finds it hard to remember dates and places from such a long time ago.

But in this picture he's wearing the same grin he wears today.

He's doing a valiant job of pretending he's not excited about the Cassino trip. But his friends at the club aren't fooled. "He's excited all right," says one, "I haven't seen such a twinkle in his eye for five years."

He's not sure what to expect. He hopes to see a Cassino which is "much cleaner, and not so many buildings knocked down." He has a genius for understatement. He is a little worried about the food. "There's a lot of pasta around there. I'm not very fond of that stuff."

Anyway, he says: "I lived on bully beef in the war, so why worry about it, eh?"

His friend Ron Howard organised the rugby club do. He said in his speech that, "It's not a night for formal speeches. That's not Bill's style."

It's not his style to make a fuss, or to enjoy having a fuss made of him. He has certainly never made a fuss about the war. "You had no choice, did you?" he says about being conscripted. His father was a soldier in the World War I and wasn't keen to see his son repeat the experience.

But Marsh found he liked soldiering. The Army, like the rugby club, is his natural habitat: "Well, I'm a great joker for mixing around with men."

Howard said that after the speeches, and a few more beers, the boys would "start on the Bill Marsh stories."

There are plenty yet to be told.

* NEXT WEEK: The Herald tells the story of Bill Marsh's return journey to Cassino.