Tonight I am still in the old disused paper mill at Foggia. Since I wrote last I have been out into the town twice once to walk round the town last Sunday and the other night I went to the ENSA cinema at the opera house. I was amazed at the amount of damage to buildings. It reminded me of the terrible night I saw at Battipaglia where every building had been damaged.
Mount Vesuvius was in eruption last week and I must describe the events as it was described to me by Wilf Tilliton who had the good luck to get within a few feet from the lava when he visited Naples last week. Looking at the volcano from Naples it’s like five great plumes of fire and volcanic dust shooting up into the sky making it a red glow for miles around. Incidentally black volcanic dust fell as far away as Bari 150 miles away. It appears that looking at the bubbling seething slimy molten lava from close quarters was a really awe inspiring sight. The the height of the lava at its crest was about 30 feet and the noise it made as it moved down the mountain at 30 yards an hour was terrific. Nothing held up its advance for more than a few minutes , the houses just crumpled up under the pressure and vanished without trace.
It is awful to think of people losing their homes and everything within a few minutes without a sign of where they originally stood. Acres and acres of fruit farms and pasture land have been destroyed leaving just a bare land without a living thing on it. Such was the eruption of Vesuvius March 1944.
The weather here he is now quite warm, the rain seems to have had gone for good until autumn and very soon the weather will be hot enough for us to wear KD [14] again.
My S. Africa project has dropped off a little and it now looks as if I shall have to wait until after the war before I can do anything definite. In reply to my letter to them the John Hilton Advice Bureau say that the government will be doing all they can for potential emigrants after the war, so that is that.
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