A BISHOPSTEIGNTON war veteran is spending this week in Italy as part of the commemoration ceremonies for the 60th anniversary of the invasion of the Italian mainland during the second world war.

Philip Gourd, 83, of Radway Gardens, was a young guardsman in the 3rd battalion of the Coldstream Guards when, in the early hours of September 9, 1943, he landed as part of a small intelligence patrol on a beach near Salerno, south of Naples.

Mr Gourd was one of 15,000 soldiers who made up the British arm of the Anglo-American 5th Army that, under the overall command of US General Mark Clark, made the first large-scale opposed landings on the European mainland.

Operation Avalanche was a precursor of the D-Day landings in Normandy nine months later, and it turned into one of the fiercest and bloodiest actions of the war.

The Italian leader Marshall Badoglio, Mussolini's successor, had signed an armistice with the Allies a few days previously. But Hitler reinforced the German forces in the peninsula, and under Field Marshal Kesselring they put up stiff resistance.

For nine days the battle raged around the Salerno beachhead, and the 5th Army only narrowly escaped being thrown back into the sea. But it broke out and went on to fight its way up through Italy.

Mr Gourd is proud of his regiment and its role in the conflict, but he still has painful memories of the human cost.

'The Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery at Salerno is very large, you know,' he said. 'We lost a hell of a lot of officers and men. I was near the 5th Duke of Wellington when he was killed, and the Hampshires on our left suffered greatly. To this day there is a lane near the beach called Viale Hampshire.

'Our lads were fantastic and showed such a lot of guts and gumption. They were unflinching.'

The Royal British Legion and the Italy Star Association have sent parties this week to Salerno. The former warring nations have all sent official representatives, including the British ambassador and military attaché in Rome.

Mr Gourd flew out on Sunday with former comrades Reginald Turner, from Derbyshire, and Alan Beardsall, from Norfolk. Mr Gourd, who speaks Italian, will address former Italian partisans, who helped them in the fighting.

'It really was a bloody awful war, but somehow we kept our sanity through humour,' he said.