Light defies gravity; it floods resplendent, brilliant, dazzling, clear over blue bone and black blood. And it shone over the furious efforts of the partisan outpost at Montecino. Surrounded by the clean snap of pines, they had been on guard all night. Just after five, the remains of the landmined tedeschi appeared in the draw north of Sommocolonia. The partigiani had a Browning, some rifles and an ancient machine gun. They had their wits and their love of their land, which fed their blood and kept them light. They battered the sky towards Lama with fearsome fire, the smell of sweat and snow and gun oil thickening, the sting of hot metal cartridges hitting wide-eyed faces as young boys wrestled with old guns. Lieutenant Sommati from Livorno hunkered with his men as the dark mass of the enemy flowed in rivers down the mountain, as the missiles heralding them scudded in a son et lumière show, blanking then blackening light, and it made Sommati think of the jerky movements of actors in the movies, and how he wished that his twenty-three years had been filled with more joy, because there was nothing wrong with fun, and if he had the chance he was going to
He never had the chance. His men laid a blanket over his body and carried on. Tossing sandbags. Lining up grenades and fattening their beasts with ropes and ropes of bullets, toiling with bleeding fingers to keep the tedeschi from penetrating from the north. For a long time, they did. American mortars joined the efforts, along with small-arms fire from Casa Moscardini, at the foot of La Rocca where the Buffaloes had their command post. First light shone on them, steadfast in the ancient fortress. On Lieutenant Fox and his radioman, who were positioned in La Torre, the highest tower for miles. From there, the Buffalo observer and his men could direct the US artillery down in Loppia, urging them ever closer, as the German threat spread and spread.
First light gleamed on Vita, who was invincible, invisible, as she leapt from ledge to ledge to reach her little sister. The horror of poor Lenin; that could have been her, right next to him, but it was not, it was not, and her cousin was alive and her lover loved her. She sclaffed down to the Biondis’ by rock instead of road, in time to see clever, sullen Renata, who had Francesca by one hand and Rosa by the other, fleeing down the mule trail. A thread of refugees was taking to the lower slopes; they would make for Catagnana. Vita leaned over the parapet of the Biondis’ terrace, but did not call out. In this amphitheatre of guns, who would notice? If Cesca looked up, Vita would follow. Her sister kept going, and Vita was glad, indeed, she was alarmed by the adrenalin, sparking like rising smoke. She had no encumbrance; could return to the fray with her wet furs and the pistol that was Frank’s. Knowing he was here, somewhere, watching over her and watching the streams of flickering fire from on high and the guns pounding so hard that the earth vibrated through her belly, that they were fighting this together, terrified and quick and alive, being inside the splashes of watery green light and criss-cross red, white snow, grey sky, black burning trees, thrilled her.
It, this, was a test of faith.
‘Do your fucking worst!’ she yelled into the abyss. Throat raw, Vita hurled the words as far as Monte Forato. To the shepherd who was still asleep; he had been asleep for generations. Generations who’d held their beloveds while they watched the double sunset. Thousands of girls had got to do that.
‘Fuck you! Fuck you!’
Other partisans were coming up the mule track, towards the village. The one at the front looked so clean, so upright in his running. His beret was too stiff. How was that possible? That animal-look. It was the soldier from the chapel. The fascista who had checked her papers.
Air suddenly wheezing, sucking itself away. Instinctively, Vita ducked as the light went out, americani shells crumping into the Biondi house, sending great lumps of masonry piling down, choking grey dust, clagging, filling up her eyes and mouth. Day leaving.
Daylight has no side. It welcomed the proud and sneaky Mittenwald as they coughed through grey dust to penetrate Sommocolonia’s perimeter. Unleashed after spending Christmas hidden down in Pruno, a simple hamlet, where folk had heard their hobnailed boots in the night, but didn’t want to look. The Mittenwald eschewed Teutonic helmets. All a hard-headed jäger needed was an embroidered edelweiss and a jaunty beret – plus some fake partisans to ease their path. Once they got in at the foot of Sommocolonia, it was a simple matter of kicking in doors. If a black face appeared, you shot it, howling like the Krampus, who brings bad gifts to bad souls. A slug of warming schnapps might loosen the tongue and your trigger finger too, so it was entirely understandable if accidents occurred. Civilians should have locked themselves in their cellars. That was the rule, and this was war. So, when the Alpine soldiers broke into the house at Via della Bulitoia and blasted a husband while his wife and children cowered, when an exuberant Obergrenadier machine-gunned through a closed front door and killed little Giuliano in his mother’s arms, it was entirely understandable. The rolling daylight knew this; it was another passing hour.
One hour rolled into another, and for some the seconds were hours. By eight, nine in the morning, the waves of Axis troops, one hundred, two hundred, incoming, had driven most of the Buffaloes, and the partigiani, deep into the village. They were surrounded. Again and again, Lieutenant Jenkins radioed for help. Again and again, they said: It’s coming. The Buffaloes set up two 81mm mortars in Via della Piazzola. Comanche and Bear urged their men on, Frank leaping to one side as a partisan was hurled from a window in San Rocco. Jesus, man, the Germans were that close, they were inside the goddam houses.
Three hundred enemy troops, fighting house to house, you would just dive and shoot and roll, dive and shoot and roll; if you kept up a forward movement, you could pretend it was momentum, could force your trembling exhausted limbs to lock, reload, your legs to run, although you never knew what you were running from or to, except once, stopping, kneeling to hold the hand of a dying girl. Feeling so sad she’d lost part of her fingers, ’cos she was beautiful, this woman who’d dressed like a man. And the searching, the constant frantic head-swivel searching for your own woman, whom you’d left because you were a soldier. A bullet struck a metal helmet – not his, thank God. Frank pulled a machine gun from its unattended wagon, firing into the house behind. Snipers remained unseen, magnifying the fear, compromising anyplace that might be safe. Freezing fingers. Smoke bombs and incendiaries. He turned to Comanche. ‘You got any grenades?’
Comanche was lying across a wooden rafter. Helmet spinning. Blood pumped from one ear. Frank held two fingers across his friend’s neck, but there was no pulse. Gently, he raised his shoulders, slipped one dog tag from the chain. Placed it between his friend’s teeth before rigor set in. Bullets spraying from top-floor windows. Soft flesh ripping red, Comanche’s torso bucking. Very calm as the guns spat and men screamed, ‘Feuer.’ A friendly howitzer blew a hole through the house: Frank could hear the snipers inside dying. He tried to breathe in steady measures, the air more dust than oxygen. One deep heave, and he dragged Comanche’s body behind a hill of rubble. Stroked his thumb across the eyelids. Closing them on Sommocolonia.
Another shell came in slow motion. Like being submerged, when an explosion falls near you. Sounds are muffled, you move in yawns. Daylight insisted on intruding, then, when all you wanted was to burrow down and cry, it got you to your feet, past Claude who was saying prayers, past the shock on his face at the waste, the waste. God bless you, Luiz. Frank put Comanche’s feather in his own cap. Carried on.
Cold daylight struck the nineteen houses at the foot of the church, razed to the ground. It lit the way for US howitzers to hit the German mule trains coming down from Lama with more supplies, and for German machine guns to cut through the relief platoon the Buffs finally sent from Barga. Scything and scything till they gave up the ghost, and retreated. Lieutenant Jenkins watched them go.
By half-past ten, the sun was not quite in the centre of the sky, and washed in grey, which meant the glare from the snow was never blinding. It was in a calm, yellow light that the partisans at Montecino were shot in the back, still faci
ng Lama and the oncoming tide. But La Rocca down below had fallen to the Mittenwald, who, efficient and neat, turned Allied canons into Axis canons. Italo and Riccardo, Giacomo and Albano: they never stood a chance. Pine-fresh daylight passed over where they lay, shone onto the Germans sweeping in to seize Montecino, where they joined with their Brüder, aiming Allied weapons onto Amerikanische targets.
The minutes ticked on. Light flowed and stuttered. Under palls of heavy smoke, Frank made it to La Rocca – where he thought his command post was – just as the Germans were swarming in. He threw himself into a redbrick building opposite. Found two other Buffs crouched inside.
‘Hey, Chap.’
It was Ivan, holding a bleeding 366er.
‘The Krauts have occupied the fortress, man. It’s over.’
Scores and scores of the fuckers, roaming like bugs on a corpse. Frank laid his forehead against his rifle tip. A couple more rounds, then it would be fix-bayonets.
The wounded 366er was balancing his gun on the broken window-ledge. ‘Lieutenant Fox is still inside. His driver and RO too. We gotta try and give him cover.’
‘Shit. Where?’
‘They’ve barricaded themselves in the tower. He told us to get out.’
Smoky daylight, as the bombs dropped close. Too close, too accurate.
‘Fuck, man,’ said Ivan. ‘Why they firing so crazy? They gotta be ours. Jerry don’t be firing on his own.’
Frank realised then that they had to move. ‘Ivan. Put your arm round this soldier. Now. We got to get out.’
Thirty seconds. Twenty seconds. Running and scraping the 366er’s toecaps in the dust. Churning like tiny mice on a wheel, clockwise, is that the way the world spins? Ten seconds, and brave daylight was shining in the window of the mediaeval tower, where Lieutenant John Fox was holding the phone attached by wire to the black box his RO carried everywhere. He repeated his coordinates. Thought of his wife and nodded at his men.
Fire it! Put everything you got on my OP. There’s more of them than there are of us.
When dawn came round the next day, they found his body in the ruins of the collapsed tower, a hundred dead Germans surrounding him.
But this day was only half done. For now, it glared on the American artillery blasting friend and foe. It glared on Frank stumbling from under the bodies of his colleagues, on the walls come tumbling down. So many walls. In all the hours of combat, both sides fought to destroy Sommocolonia. None of them meant it. It was war. By the ruins of the Biondi house, Sergeant Bear McClung packed his wounds tight and manned a machine gun. For two hours, he covered the withdrawal of his men. Despite the blood in his eyes, he stood his ground, firing until his position was overrun. The sun had moved a little further on by then; it was after eleven when the two hundred German soldiers swept down the sheltered gullies between Scarpello and Bebbio, led by their Italian guides.
Only then did Bear retreat. Removing the gun from its tripod, he went firing from the hip, lugging the belt across his shoulder until his ammunition was done. The partisans who saw him fall did not understand his final shout.
Ain’t none of you bastards got a light?
The troops flooded into Sommocolonia, Viva l’Italia roaring on both sides. Monterosa mixed with Mittenwald, Italian soldiers of the Republic, come to free their homeland from black devils and bloody Communists. In Piazza San Rocco, Joe slipped on a body as he fled. Cracking his skull on the cobbles. Dazed. Hearing bootsteps scrape. Smelling dark stone and burning meat. On his back, high noon, and the grubby sun looked him straight in the eye. A smudged face. Joe blinking at lapels that bore the green flame of the Monterosa. Head swelling in pain. He let his eyelids fall shut again.
‘Hey, Gelato? Santa Maria – get up.’
Forcing them open. Daylight and the shadow of a thin, sharp nose.
‘It’s me. Pietro! Get up. Quick. Fucking run.’
Pietro from Albiano, who wanted to grow sunflowers. Before Joe could speak, there was movement on the sloping ramp, a Buffalo dropping to raise his gun. ‘No!’ he shouted as Pietro fell away, and the Buffalo snatched Joe up. More Monterosa piling down the street, the Buffalo hauling at Joe’s collar, dragging him on, down the steps to the outer walls, to a heap of stone where the Biondis used to live. Ugly daylight lingered on the fleshy trails of the soldier sprawled there. It lingered on the tears in the dust down the Buffalo’s face, down Joe’s face. On the splashes on Joe’s shotgun, which was stolen from a dead man. The gun was spent and heavy. Heavy enough to swing and smash into the face of the crying Buffalo, it would be easy; the soldier was bent, whispering over the dead americano, holding him in his lap. Joe’s knuckles rippled, independent of his brain. You didn’t need to think to kill.
Sometimes it is the smallest thing. The way the Buffalo cradled his friend, with the same care he’d cradled Vita. Joe knew fine which Buffalo this was.
‘He wasn’t going to kill me.’
‘What?’ The Buffalo looked vaguely at him. Eyes swollen.
‘The soldier you just murdered. Pietro. He was from here.’
Noon found its pinnacle, tumbled forward down the other side, to the south-west ridge where the Germans were sealing off the last escape routes. As casualties mounted and ammunition ran out, the remnants of the Buffaloes were finally ordered to withdraw. Relieved light bleached a path for the scattered remains. Seventeen Buffaloes made it out. Daylight covered First Lieutenant Jenkins, who refused to leave his wounded men. Half the platoon could no longer walk. When the enemy closed over his position in the winter glow of afternoon, he was comforting another soldier.
Joe and Frank. They sensed the call for retreat, hunched as they were alongside Bear’s body. Sensed the helplessness descending. Joe retched from taking too many breaths. He could hear the cries of soldiers waiting to die. The Buffalo, Frank, offered him a canteen of foul-tasting water.
‘What do we do now?’
‘Guess we keep fighting.’
‘I havny anything left.’
Frank rubbed his eye with the back of his hand. ‘OK. Help me shift Bear.’
‘What for?’
‘Might be a clip of ammo on him somewhere. Failing that, a cigar.’
Light is clear and cruel. Light is casual. Light is light. It birled; it let them birl the sergeant over and find a revolver, concealed in the rubble of Casa Biondi. It let them see the slim, unopened hand beside the revolver, the sleeve of fur. Steady light to help scrabble and heave out rock, to brace an olive-drab spine against a ton of distended wall while a Paisley buddy dug for his cousin, and guns tore up the street above. They found Vita breathing, protected by a wooden beam that had landed diagonally, wedged between her and the worst of the toppled masonry. Her lover and her cousin pulled her free, not knowing that moving her would make the bleeding start again. Joe let the black man take her; she wasn’t his. She never had been.
‘Vita, baby. Hey, girl. I got you. I’m here. I’m always here.’
The Buffalo held her and nursed her alive. He kissed Vita, breathing on her lips, her nose, her eyelids, enough for her to wake. Francesco mio. Joe couldn’t bear to watch: her, smiling up, trying to reach out, and the soldier begging her to stay with him. Then he saw the stickiness of the fur, the spreading patch of blood.
‘Frank. Frank. Look. We’ve got to move her.’
The Buffalo tore his shirt in strips, binding the wound in her side. Light was flickering, fading. Shouts of Raus and grown men crying. The enemy were winding their way through the village. Systematically. Efficiently.
‘You go,’ said Frank. ‘Get her over your shoulder and fucking run.’
‘What?’
‘Take off your armband. And this.’ Frank snatched Joe’s beret from his head. ‘You can climb down there, yeah?’ He waved over the terrace wall. ‘Man, come on. They’re fucking coming.’
‘Aye.’ Joe stared at the drop. It was steep, but passable. If he could make it down a hundred yards of rock, he could reach the first of the smouldering tre
es. From there, the forest and Catagnana.
‘Jump and I’ll pass her down.’
‘What about you?’
‘Fuck me. They see you and her, just gab lots of Italian. No English – or Scottish. You’re sfollati, right? Now go.’
Raus!
Vita’s breath was shallow; it was a rattling bone of breath.
‘Jesus, move it, man! They’ll be watching me, not you. I promise.’
A machine gun drilled methodically. Joe vaulted the wall, dreeping down the other side till his feet hung above earth. He let go, landing on his knees.
‘Right.’ Joe stood. Held up his arms, wedging his feet against a fallen stone.
‘I love you, baby.’ Frank hung his own dog tags around Vita’s neck. ‘Always.’ One last kiss, and then he returned her to Joe. Slow lowering. Joe on tiptoe. Vita moaning. When Joe hoisted her over his shoulder, she whimpered, the dead weight of her forcing him backwards, rocking on the cliff edge and clawing for balance. Steady, steady. Face against the wall. The brisk clink of tedeschi boots. The casual chatter of the victors, clipping down the broken steps to call on Casa Biondi.
‘Joe.’ Frank’s hand dropped down from the parapet, but he could no longer reach them. ‘I wanna stay here. You got that?’
‘Aye.’
‘OK.’
Whispered seconds, thick with love. Bright and terrible, the shadows coming on the Buffalo’s brow. His stare locked on to where they were, as if it could not loosen its grip. Then he lifted the empty shotgun, took the pistol in the other hand and turned away. Unwavering day lit the flock of birds that were really mortars pounding in. It lit the bare-chested Buffalo on fire. Joe thought he heard a sigh of wind as Frank charged, yelling, towards the splintered staircase and the oncoming boots.
Autumn 1945
The Sound of the Hours Page 36
