ABSTRACT
Naples was Leeds with knobs on, much surer of its own right to wilfulness and bad behaviour, aggressively ungenteel, scornful of Rome and even more of Florence, a world away from Milan and Turin. Naples was also, for all its squalor, a place of magnificence, once the seat of a kingdom, with a fine musical tradition, some considerable scholars and a great archaeological museum. There were enough troops at any time in Naples, stuck there for a while in transit or, soon, on rest periods, for them to make a few different sets of rabbit-tracks. Most of the Americans in and around Naples seemed, to the very prejudiced British eyes, just bigger, louder and better paid. The remnants of the regiment were to be sent back to the States to re-form. Before they went the general would have a march past, somewhere between Cassino and Naples.
