A Soldier of the Great War

by Mark Helprin

  "They're Italians," someone said of the men they were supposed to go against, but the morning wind carried away the thought.

  When the camp was raised, the west wind carried the smell of freshly baked bread and cake up over the ridge, like water flowing over a stone, where the semi-starved River Guard lay amid rocks and thorns, waiting until noon for six sips of water, a tiny bit of meat, five crackers, and a single piece of dried fruit.

  The lieutenants backed the men off the ridge into a forest of scrub where wild boar rested in their dens waiting for the night. Left on the ridge were three observers with binoculars and notebooks. They were spread far apart and instructed to keep low. Alessandro was one of them, a wiser choice than anyone knew, for he had grown up on the Gianicolo with a telescope in his room, periodically looting the city of Rome, the mountains beyond, and the high clouds, of the never-ending particulars and detail accessible only to a trained and patient eye.

  When the three thirsty and sunburned soldiers gave their reports that evening it was apparent that they had done some counting, but then Alessandro spoke.

  "At least two hundred and fifty men are in the camp," Alessandro began.

  "How can you tell?" one of the other soldiers challenged. "They were all moving around, inside and out."

  Alessandro looked disgusted. "I took a random sample of tents. I counted how many soldiers were in each one, and then I multiplied, allowing that the leaders would have tents for themselves."

  "They were going in and out all the time. We found it impossible to determine how many men were in each one."

  "I didn't."

  "Why not?"

  "I simply remembered who went in and who came out."

  "How could you distinguish them?" one of the lieutenants asked.

  "By dress, size, coloring, gait, and a thousand other signs."

  "And you were able to keep all these things in mind?"

  "Yes," Alessandro said. "There were only six men to a tent."

  "Go on."

  "Of the two hundred and fifty, two-thirds are former soldiers. A third has never been in the military."

  "How can you tell!" one of the other two observers burst out jealously.

  "For the last time, now," Alessandro said severely, "by the way someone carries himself, the way he sits or moves in a group, by dress, mannerisms, colors, textures, equipment relics, the making of a fire, the tying of a knot ... For example, when someone who has been in the army for a while is addressed, he becomes slightly stiff, as you are now. The others drop their heads a little. Hill bandits don't shine their boots, they don't stack things in rows.... Look," he said, "take it or leave it."

  "Go on Dottore," Lieutenant Valtorta urged.

  "All right. They're nervous, guilty. They may not be expecting us, but they're expecting someone. Their sentries overlook the road and are posted all around the camp. They're in the brush, halfway up the sides of the valley. One was below us about four hundred meters away. He was from Civitavecchia and he was singing La Cincindella.'"

  This was too much for the other two. "We saw him," one of them said, "but no one could hear what he was singing. And how could you know he was from Civitavecchia?"

  Alessandro glared at them. "I couldn't hear him, but I read his lips and watched him move his shoulders." Insulted, he turned abruptly and walked away.

  "Come back," the lieutenant ordered. "Don't pay attention to these idiots. What else?"

  Alessandro began again. "They're armed with Mannlichers, and they have plenty of ammunition, but neither mines nor wire. They're organized for the watch, that's all, they have no defensive plan. The half dozen women in the camp are prostitutes from Palermo. No children. The mules bray continually because of the wild boar moving in the brush. In the late evening and early morning hours the boar crash through the vegetation. No one will notice the sound of our approach unless we knock our rifles against the rocks."

  "Who's the leader?"

  "I don't know. He may be in a villa in Messina."

  "The numerical ratio is not in our favor, and the country is vast and intricate," the lieutenant stated.

  "I have one other thing to note, sir. They're short on timepieces, because the sentries don't trust their relief to keep the time—they don't want to sit on a rock singing 'La Cincindella' while their replacements are sleeping, or swimming in the stream, hours after they should be at their posts—so they take the watches with them. Each post is a separate system, and no one cooperates, which is, I assume, what happens when you draw entirely from a pool of disciplinary failures. They repeatedly pull the watches from their pockets and look at them toward the end of the shift. Because the relief doesn't know what time it is, the sentries leave their posts and come into camp to get them, which is very stupid, especially if we're waiting on the route back."

  That evening the River Guard ate the rest of their food, intending to fight for bread the next morning. The sentries would be captured, or struck in the back of the head with rifle butts, whichever would be quieter, after which the River Guard would enter the camp, cutting the tent stays with their bayonets. Most everyone would be inside, and most everyone would be trapped. As they crawled from the collapsed tents, one by one, their first act would be to look into a rifle barrel.

  No one thought the plan would work with so few River Guard and so many deserters. It would be hard to eliminate all of the sentries without noise, not everyone would be inside the tents, and, if even one man escaped, all Sicily would know of the operation.

  Guariglia suggested putting a block across the road and stationing men along the ridges, but the lieutenants had already detailed ten men for this, and said that once the prisoners were grouped together a hundred of the River Guard would sweep the valley to flush out stragglers.

  During the night they positioned themselves near the sentry posts in a riot of noise that did not betray them, for the boar, much disturbed, ran close to the sentries and even through the camp. The valley came alive with rifle fire. Bullets whined, cutting leaves off at the stem and shattering rocks.

  By the end of this, the River Guard had taken position, with fifty of them poised to eliminate the sentries and eighty more ready to rush the camp if anyone managed to sound an alert. During the shooting, shouting, and abandonment of posts as pigs were dragged through the brush by groups of unarmed men, everyone wanted to start the attack, and everyone knew that everyone else wanted to as well, but because they were spread out they had no way to confirm it, and though darkness favored assault it did not favor either taking or holding prisoners, so they waited until dawn, bayonets fixed in case they were charged by the pigs.

  "It doesn't matter," the puppet soldier said to Guariglia and Alessandro as they fixed bayonets. "If a boar charges, I'll shoot him. Then I'll scream, 'I killed a pig! I killed a pig!' That's all." Even so, he fixed his bayonet—for the little pigs, who, though not as fearsome as their elders, were very aggressive and somewhat quicker.

  Lying in fragrant herbs, they listened to the birds announce the sunrise, and their hearts began to beat fast. At six o'clock it was light, the sun shone hot against the mountains, and the valley was in shadow. The sentries began to walk in. One of them, his rifle slung, stumbled upon a group of ten River Guard, who thrust their bayonets close to his face. He put up his hands, closed his eyes, and held his breath.

  The other sentries returned to camp, and long before their replacements stirred, the River Guard had taken up position and were waiting. Everyone was sweating, most were tense, some were terrified. They were used to trenches, wire, mine fields, and artillery. They expected whistles and flares as the signal for an attack. Though war in the line was much more dangerous than what they were doing now, they had become accustomed to it.

  Newly aroused sentinels straggled out lazily, unevenly, carelessly. The minutes of their walk to their posts seemed very long, and when most were halfway there, they suddenly stopped. An instant later the River Guard looked up, and everyone cocked his head t
o listen. The sound of engines came roaring through the valley, echoing off its walls.

  The plan collapsed as sentries ran back, unshouldering their weapons, and others came running from the tents. Two bi-planes appeared from beyond the ridge and flew right over Guariglia, who had been trying to wave them back with his hat. Then they cut across the valley, firing their machine guns at the tents.

  When they banked to the east and disappeared, they left the camp in complete chaos. Wounded men, panicked sentries, and nude women clutching their clothes fled barefooted, hopping along the thorny ground until they had to sit down. Everyone was screaming. As the planes came back up the valley, guns firing, the River Guard stood up and shook their fists.

  The bullets cut into the dirt, knocked down and shredded the tents, and slaughtered the hobbled, braying mules. The deep roar of the engines seemed to reset all the clocks and registers of the world.

  Hundreds of half-dressed armed men had spread into the brush. "Who sent those planes? Who sent those planes!" Lieutenant Valtorta screamed over and over until he was hoarse, and then he started to shout, "Form ranks! Form ranks!" but this was impossible, because everyone was spread out in a circle. As they ap proached for the third time, the planes released their bombs, which ripped down the tents before they detonated, and then made four enormous explosions.

  Throughout the battle, the birds sang at a high pitch. If they had done so in ignoring the fighting, it was remarkable, and if they had done so because of the fighting, it was also remarkable. The combat took place in small groups or man to man, as the deserters fought like panicked horses. At first the River Guard were restrained, perhaps because they found it difficult to kill Italians. Only when their natural courtesy had cost some of them their lives did they begin to fight like men who had fought Austrians and Germans with bayonet and mace. They shot their enemy, gutted him alive, and swung the butts of their rifles to smash open his face.

  When it ended, the sun was hot and the survivors thought they would die if they could not reach the stream. In many instances, they were right.

  THOUGH WHEN he sat on a campaign chair his legs didn't reach the floor, Colonel Pietro Insana was a man of great decisiveness. As soon as the River Guard returned with their wounded and the prisoners, he changed everything.

  He raised the flag, put sentries at the gates, and sent men into town for provisions. So many had escaped from the cul de sac that everyone in Sicily now knew of the River Guard, who, rather than be poisoned, stopped buying food almost as soon as they had started, and relied upon their stores and the fish they caught. Now they patrolled the roads and hills, descending in long columns as far as Trapani, going east almost to Palermo, just to show that they were there.

  The River Guard had been so secret that hardly anyone knew of their existence, much less that they were in Sicily. The bi-planes had been sent by another branch, in a fatal coincidence, and had returned to the Veneto almost immediately. Their appearance exactly at the moment of attack caused word to spread that the Italian army was going to pacify Sicily with airplanes, machine guns, and artillery. Though no slaughter had been intended, the death of more than a hundred men sent a potent message. In Alpine trenches far to the north, where in the middle of July Italian soldiers still braced their rifles on banks of snow, the mishap in the cul de sac had come to be known as the Monte Sparagio Raid. Everyone who had taken part, it was generally asserted, was doomed, but that was not so. No one knew who was in the force headquartered at Capo San Vito, and no lists were kept anywhere, not even in the Ministry of War in Rome, where the lists had been destroyed.

  A warship came to pick up the prisoners. Manacled and in chains, they were ferried in motor launches out to a camouflaged destroyer that lingered offshore, its stacks smoking.

  By August the River Guard missed the north with a passion unique to those who have been confined in a stone fortress in Sicily for most of the summer, with long and strenuous hill patrols their prime diversion, and only half a dozen moments of unexpected excitement. In June a bomb had been thrown over the wall. It made a big noise and killed some chickens. Two blonde women appeared inexplicably at the beach behind the north wall and bathed in the nude. Suspecting a trap, the colonel ordered his men off the ramparts, but not before serious injuries had resulted from fights for possession of an insufficient number of binoculars. The women were Scandinavian academics who thought that Italians were sexually repressed, and who thought they were alone. In the confusion of 150 men in thrall to two nude women in the surf, no one noticed at first a tiny voice from below the rampart. A soldier they called Smungere was screaming out his customary sermon. "Think of all the trouble and impurity in your life, the sin, the suffering, the filth that can be laid at the door of the minor hose and its as sociated appendages that swing from us, pushing the devilish parts of our nature toward the impulsive and the disgusting. Thank God," he whined in a high-pitched voice, "for the miracles of modern surgery. A simple, painless, almost danger-free procedure can lead us to a purer life. Tension vanishes. A certain restlessness disappears," he squeaked, "in favor of irreversible serenity." No one even turned around. Whoever had converted him must have been a genius, and now he fished for converts in an empty sea. Soon after the Swedish nudes, another bomb was tossed over the wall. It put some metal in the foot of a boy, who screamed, but then quickly recovered. The bomb-thrower was shot dead as he ran, and left unburied. In morbid compulsion, the River Guard observed the steady decomposition of his body—from a distance. They could smell it at night. They were used to such smells, and it was so hot and the birds were so efficient that within a week the only things left where the body had come to rest were shoe leather, bleached bones, and a black stain. In the middle of July, the French fleet passed far offshore. It looked both fancy and powerful. Alessandro told them that Napoleon was a native speaker of Italian and had never mastered French, and this pleased them tremendously, because they had heard of Napoleon and were eager to claim him. Shortly after the passage of the fleet they caught three enormous tuna that they brushed with oil and roasted on fires of herbs and vines. The beginning of August saw a great meteor shower. At night the River Guard lay on their backs, on the ramparts, and watched the sky disintegrate in tracer-like shots of silver and white. The light was silent and the tracks of the stars were as flirtatious as girls in spring. They shined, they smiled, and they disappeared.

  One evening early in September the colonel called them out of their beds and made them stand in formation. "No cheering, no oohs, and no aahs," he said. "Were going back north. I don't know what's planned for us after we return. They wouldn't tell me."

  A soldier who generally was silent asked for permission to ask a question. "How do you know these things? No messengers come or go."

  "I have a little dog," the colonel replied. "His name is Mala-testa. He can speak, he can swim, and he can fly. He is my only link with the outside world, but through him I can know everything and I can make everything known."

  Alessandro could not restrain himself. "Sir?" he asked.

  "Yes?"

  "Have you ever heard of the blessed sap that flows from the cloak of the exalted one, on the eucalyptus throne, in the deep shadow of the whitened airless valley of the moon?"

  The colonel ignored his question. "We're leaving tonight," he said. "The cattle boat will be here in an hour. You remember the cattle boat. On our way north we're going on a raid. We'll hit the eastern part of the island, to let them know that we can strike anywhere and at any time. Several bands of deserters are near Catania."

  "Are they army?" someone asked.

  "Yes. They're not well organized, but they're so strong they collect taxes in Randazzo and Adrano. No one has gone after them, because they operate in the rugged country on and around the volcano, but we'll arrive from nowhere—no planes this time—and break up into small endurance groups. Then we'll track them. They're mountain soldiers, a lot better than you are, but we have the initiative."

  "Do we
get to go to Catania?"

  "Oh yes, you will, but you shouldn't want to. When the operation is finished we'll run the prisoners through the streets. Rome insists that we do so even though we may be shot from the windows."

  "Not even time to stop for a sweet?" Fabio asked.

  The cattle boat had cut its engines and was floating silently to shore on the steady current that lapped the cape. Though they hadn't seen it, it was moving deftly toward them.

  ONCE AGAIN they passed the whitened coasts of Tunisia and drifted so far south that they were cut off from almost everything in the world. As if they were in orbit around the sun of Sicily they fell in a curve through the hot empty spaces, and then ceased their relaxed floating to steam north. The prow of the cattle boat cut through the sea and rolled it into chattering foam that said the same thing over and over before it fell asleep in the waves.

  They skirted the islands and drifted onto a deserted beach on the south coast a few hours after dark. They waded ashore, this time taking neither heavy equipment nor supplies but only rifles and packs. Far to the left, a single bonfire burned on a hill blue with darkness.

  The lieutenant and the colonel studied a map. They had been landed a kilometer distant from the target, and they would have to ford a river, but it was almost certainly dry at this time of year. After the cattle boat had begun to drift away they crossed the dunes into an immense citrus grove through which they walked in the dark for miles. They had time to eat oranges and to stand in the open spaces between the trees, listening to the birds upwind that had not yet been silenced either by the approach of the River Guard or by the night. It was a pleasant walk, though the rows were not exactly straight and in the dark the soldiers sometimes bumped head-on into tree trunks.