Air Strike

by Richard Townsend Bickers

  *

  They looked dashing and romantic in their sky-blue uniforms, the contessa thought. Especially the shy one they called Toby. Their Commanding Officer had a dazzling command of the language, and when she had made an aside in French to one of the other girls he had capped it at once; and in a far better French accent than her own. It was a long time since the house had rung with such laughter or their guests been so openly appreciative of hospitality. The enormous buffet in the dining room had elicited an admiration she found touching. The five-piece orchestra playing in the ballroom had been kept hard at work and these young men certainly danced with extraordinary vigour. She had managed to have three dances with the charming young Flying Officer Yule and was pleased to note the look of approval on her husband’s face.

  It seemed odd that they had brought their sergeant pilots with them, but Stefano said that was their way and it was lucky they had not insisted on bringing all their other sergeants as well. But only the pilot sergeants were here, because they had a special status.

  O’Neill had been surprised by the sight of a familiar face when he walked into the mansion. “Hello, Pete, I didn’t expect to see you here.”

  “I told you, it’s a small country: we’ll never be out of touch.”

  “How are things up there at the sharp end?”

  “O.K., I guess.”

  “Are you alone? You didn’t bring any of your officers with you?”

  “No. I came with my uncle I was telling you about, Dr. Bottai. He’s related to Stefano, and so am I, vaguely, from ’way back.”

  “It all sounds very interbred,” said Vincent, who had been standing by. “It’s a wonder you haven’t all got cleft palates.”

  “Coming from a bog Irishman,” O’Neill told him, “that’s a bit much. Would you like to show him your webbed feet?” Vincent, for once speechless, drifted away.

  “I’d like you to meet my uncle.” Corrado moved towards where a man with his back turned was talking to the contessa and Toby Yule. Yule was facing them and O’Neill could see that he looked embarrassed and was keeping his eyes resolutely fixed on the humpback’s face, as though to avert them would cause offence. When the hunchback turned, he understood why.

  “Dottore Raffaele Bottai, Squadron Leader O’Neill,” said Corrado.

  Fiver controlled himself. His face betrayed nothing of the shock he felt. But in his confusion, forgetting that it was Tustin who had given him the information, obtained through confidential Police files, he said hurriedly, for the sake of some conversational point, “I believe you own that magnificent place Le Siepi which we often fly over.”

  A fleeting frown appeared on Bottai’s face and he glanced at Corrado, then returned his look to O’Neill. “That is right. How did you know that? Excuse me, I do not speak English very well.” He had spoken slowly, manifestly searching for his words and with a strong Italian accent.

  “In that case let’s speak Italian.” A smile broke on Bottai’s face as he heard his own language on the lips of this tough-looking foreigner. “I am interested to know how your estate got its name, The Hedgerows, when there is not a hedge in sight.” From the corner of his eye he saw the contessa leaning intimately towards Yule and translating for him.

  Dr. Bottai explained: “It is very simple. The place has been in my family for over 200 years. Originally it had no name apart from ‘Palazzo Bottai’. In the early nineteenth century one of my forebears who was particularly interested in breeding and riding horses spent much time in England and was fascinated by your sports of point-to-points and steeple chasing. So he decided to construct a racecourse on the estate, and had the jumps specially built. As you know, the word ‘siepe’ also means a hurdle... hence ‘corsa di siepi’ for steeplechase. Every year he used to invite some British equestrian friends to come and stay with him, and he organised a series of steeplechases, hoping the Italians would also become enthusiastic. Sad to say, it never caught on and when he became too old to continue the sport died out. But the name remains and so do some of the old fences. It was he who re-named the place, of course.”

  “Fascinating story,” said O’Neill.

  Even more fascinating is how he knows it belongs to me, Bottai was thinking. He said, “You must all come and visit me. I cannot allow Stefano to monopolise you.”

  “We’d be delighted to.”

  “Then let us arrange it very soon.” Two days had passed since his threatening conversation with Corrado. He looked at him now and wondered how much courage and determination lay in that sleek head. For, as he had proved, it was the mind, not the body, that conquered obstacles. It was not enough that a man could shoot another in cold blood and under orders: that could be done in many furtive ways; in the back, down a dark alley, or when the victim lay asleep or drunk. But Corrado had won a good medal in Sicily. Yet again that meant nothing, for a man would often perform bravely in the company of his fellows when he could not alone. What he wanted of Corrado called for a different and more difficult kind of courage and he was waiting for some sign that it lay within him. He looked again at O’Neill, who was chatting now to the contessa: there was a hard man. He knew what O’Neill would have said to a threat of vengeance wrought with stiletto and red-hot poker in the hands of the Camorra. His lips twitched with amusement at the thought. He must encourage Corrado in this friendship.

  Everyone thought the evening had been a success. The pilots enjoyed meeting the lady guests. The contessa was enchanted by Toby Yule and determined to set about educating him in the arts of being a cicisbeo. O’Neill considered that he had found two potential benefactors of the airmen who were so much his concern. The count was satisfied that he had started on the right road to his political rehabilitation. Dr. Bottai believed that, with a little thought, this British squadron could be taken advantage of to serve his schemes. Corrado believed that he was well on the way to shedding some of the problems he carried, on to the shoulders of the squadron. When he had learned from Bottai the place where the art treasures were hidden he realised fully, for the first time, just how much he needed help.

  The count had been thinking along the same lines, for in a quiet moment he took Corrado apart and said, “There’s only one way to get at that stuff, you know: it’s got to be blasted out; and only bombs are going to do it.”

  *

  Heavy rain turned the airstrip and the domestic site into a morass. Three major airfields around Naples were crowded with British and American squadrons of all kinds. Day fighters, night fighters, fighter-bombers, bombers, reconnaissance and transport aircraft jostled one another for space, on Capodichino, Pomigliano and Marcianise. Yet another main airfield was made operational after Allied bombing, at Sant’Agata, and Fiver’s lot were ordered to move there.

  “Plumb in the middle of the Zona di Camorra,” Vincent remarked.

  “And it looks as though we’ll be stuck here for a long time,” said Warren. The advance beyond Naples and Termoli had become a dour slog. In the fight from Salerno to Naples the British had lost 7,000 men and the Americans 5,000. Now it looked as though these casualties would appear light in retrospect. The weather was to blame for the hold-up. The squadron moved to Sant’Agata a week after the party given by Count di Rossoni. There were permanent buildings, but not enough to house everyone. Nissen huts, Quanset huts and blister hangars were erected. P.S.P. was laid to supplement the concrete and tarmac aprons and taxi tracks. There were six squadrons operating from the field: the four constituting the wing to which O’Neill’s belonged, and two others.

  On the evening after they had moved to their new base, Yule was in town with Vincent, Warren and Sampson. They had eaten in a small out-of-bounds restaurant and paid black market prices for the indulgence: but the currency was cigarettes. Afterwards, walking through the blackout of the Via Roma, they turned into the Galleria on their way to the Swiss Bar. From the doorway of a cafe a rotund figure appeared, wearing a long, padded-shouldered black overcoat and a wide-brimmed black fedora. A voice em
erged from it: ’Ello, tosh... ’ow are yer, Toby? Don’t you know yer old mates then, chum?”

  The four of them stopped and Yule exclaimed, “Ferugino! You’ve gone up in the world: I thought you were doing odd jobs around the 975th.”

  From behind Ferugino a thinner form appeared, also discernibly grinning, and arrayed in an almost ankle-length grey coat tailored from an R.A.F. blanket, and a snap-brimmed grey trilby. He greeted Toby with, “’Ullo, Mister-a Yule, ’ow are-a you?” Thus exhausting his entire English vocabulary.

  “You too, Sarti? What villainy are you both up to?”

  “Come along with us and we’ll give you a good time,” Ferugino invited.

  “Where?” Asked Vincent.

  “My place. Come on, you’ll like it.” He spoke with pride.

  Sgt. Sampson, with Geordie good sense, said, “He’ll lead us down some dark alley where ten goons with guns will try to pinch everything we’ve got; including our socks.”

  “No, no, I promise you... good time you’ll see...”

  A fair measure of vermouth, Lachrima Christi and grappa had eroded the young men’s judgment. Vincent sniggered, “It’s bound to be sordid; but interesting. Let’s go.”

  Ferugino and Sarti led them briskly out of the Galleria, by the entrance opposite the San Carlo, turned left, made a few more rapid twists and fetched up outside the usual big double doors of a block of flats. Ferugino opened one with a large key, pressed a bell-push and then led his party up to the first floor. No lifts worked in Naples at that time.

  He again signalled on a bell-button beside the front door to one of the flats, then let himself in.

  The hall was bright with evergreen shrubs and artificial flowers. Ornate, seedy chairs and a sofa were ranged around the walls. The air was stale and laden with a variety of perfumes emanating from talcum powder, hair oil, scent, soap and garlic. A gramophone was playing a sentimental Neapolitan tune in one of the rooms. Girls were giggling somewhere and there was the sound of men’s voices.

  “Come in the salottino and have a drink.” Ferugino ushered them into a small drawing room with more faded gilt and aquamarine velvet furniture, an ornate table in the centre and bottles of Scotch whisky, bourbon and gin on a sideboard.

  “Been raiding the N.A.A.F.I. and the P.X.?” asked Vincent.

  “Not raiding: I buy; some I sell, some I keep for my friends to drink.” Ferugino smiled happily. “What you like?”

  The door opened and Ferugino paused in the act of pouring whisky. A full-blown female figure appeared, displaying a generous amount of torso through a low-cut, close-fitting jumper. Her skirts were very short and the heels of the shoes very high. She minced into the room, gave a squeal of delight and rushed forward with arms outstretched. “Toby!”

  When Yule had torn himself free from Anna in the cave he had had a premonition that he had not seen the last of her.

  He leaped from his chair, and with his friends laughing their heads off, ducked under Anna’s arms, side-stepped around her splendid hips and sprinted out of the front door, closely followed by all except Vincent; who, having reached the door last, stopped, turned, had second thoughts and yelled after their backs, “See you at the club in half an hour.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  The glutinous, ubiquitous mud that was to become notorious as a feature of the two winters of the Italian campaign; the mud that every soldier and airman who fought in it would remember more than the blue summer sky, the limpid sea, the flower-scented spring, the glories of Naples, Rome, Venice and Bologna; the accursed mud, spoilt everyone’s plans. It spoilt Hitler’s and General Montgomery’s, General Alexander’s and General Mark Clark’s. Churchill’s and Eisenhower’s. Dr. Bottai’s, Conte di Rossoni’s and Major Corrado’s.

  From the first week of October 1943 it rained. How it rained. It rained enough to have made Noah reach for his ark-building tools again.

  The Trigno river was only ten miles north of Termoli, but it took until 22nd October to establish a footing on it, until the 27th to create a proper bridgehead, and until 3rd November to cross it. The 8th Army had to fight for every inch of ground.

  On the western side of Italy the struggle was just as bloody, muddy and slow. The 5th Army’s American 6th Corps crashed over the Volturno river on the 12th October, upstream from Capua. The British 10th Corps managed to cross the river at Capua itself, while two British divisions were able to force a crossing at two points between Capua and the coast. And there they all stayed until the 16th, when Field-Marshall Kesselring pulled the German forces back to the next river, the Garigliano.

  On both east and west the Allies had a succession of rivers to cross, a morass of mud in which to flounder. By mid-November 5th Army had lost 22,000 men, some 10,000 British and the rest American.

  Air fighting was no soft touch either. Messerschmitt 109s and Focke Wulf 190s were swarming about in large numbers again. The fighter-bombers could look after themselves better than most, but even they had need of high cover by escorting conventional fighters.

  With the crossing of the Trigno came two developments: one admittedly more significant and far-reaching than the other, but both immediately influential on the unfolding of developments in which Fiver’s Lot and their new acquaintances were involved.

  The first of these was the evolution of a new technique for ground attack air strikes. The second was the separation once again of O’Neill’s squadron from its parent wing and its return to almost autonomous operations. The 8th Army comprised British, Commonwealth, Indian and Polish Divisions. The 5th Army was essentially American, with a British component which, though strong, was much in the minority. The bulk of air support by British and Commonwealth (almost entirely South African) squadrons was therefore shifted to the east, for the benefit of 8th Army. The United States Air Corps presence in Italy was strong and virtually all of it was devoted to 5th Army. In deference to its British element the latter was also supported by some R.A.F. squadrons, of which O’Neill’s remained as one. Although the whole wing to which it belonged continued to operate from Sant’Agata, the other three squadrons henceforth covered the eastern flank of the battle line.

  The new method of close support which was introduced after the Trigno crossing was called the Rover Patrol or Cab Rank. It turned out to be a very intelligent and successful tactic. (It became standard procedure, was used in France and Germany after the June 1944 invasion, and continued to be practised in peacetime exercises for many years.)

  The system was simple in concept and operation. A glimpse of the obvious, Vincent called it. Warren said any fool could have thought of it, and that being so it was a wonder that Vincent hadn’t.

  Essentially it entailed keeping a small formation of fighter-bombers, known as a cab rank, airborne, circling a fixed point, ready to attack targets as they were selected: they were, in fact, on call to meet emergencies.

  Rover Patrols were originated by a wing commander at Desert Air Forces H.Q. named David Heysham. The ground control call sign used by the Rover controller on the first occasion was therefore “Rover David” and this practice continued for all Rover patrol operations for some time, until the Rover controllers began to use their own Christian names. These controllers were not the usual professional fighter controllers, but pilots from the squadrons concerned, operating from a mobile Forward Control Unit.

  The latter comprised an Army Liaison Officer (usually a major), an R.A.F. officer and twenty-six Other Ranks, who, with their total of seven R/T sets, which included one spare, travelled in seven vehicles, of which one was an armoured car and two were scout cars.

  A new procedure was adopted for assessing requests from forward Army units, agreeing which ones were to be granted, passing the information to the F.C.U., and briefing the pilots, all in the shortest possible time. To facilitate this, the pilots carried specially gridded maps which greatly simplified the description and identification of targets. The only concessions made to any considerations other than speed were in t
he interests of security and accuracy. To eliminate risk of enemy intervention and the passing of bogus orders, call signs had to be given on each transmission. To ensure that the right objective was recognised, instructions were repeated.

  Rover maps were on the 1:100,000 scale and divided into rectangles of 500 x 400 metres, which were numbered from south to north and lettered from west to east. Each block of 26 X 26 rectangles formed a large rectangle again identified by a letter; the pilots had to have several of the large-scale maps to hand because they could be called on for an air strike anywhere within a large area.

  The first time that the squadron was used on a Rover strike was much looked forward to for its novelty and the chance to display superior skill. Six aircraft were the standard number in a cab rank. O’Neill led the formation, with one of the Flight Commanders, Yule, Warren, Vincent and Sgt. Sampson.

  Yule’s thoughts these days were much occupied by Marisa. Above all whenever he flew over the di Rossoni domain. He was becoming increasingly attached to the beautiful and gentle Marisa. Both officers and men were receiving constant hospitality at the house. One of the barns, a huge stone-built construction, had been converted to a recreation centre for Other Ranks — exclusive to the squadron — and there they could always relax by a log fire, drink local wine at give-away prices, eat a modest amount of farm-produced food and dance with the daughters and sisters of the local peasantry.

  The officers almost treated the big house as a squadron club. Marisa assiduously conducted Yule’s instruction in the arts of being her official admirer and companion; her cicisbeo. She flirted with him demurely in front of her husband and his own comrades, and had thrice rewarded him with kisses in a quiet corner. Her kisses were, the young man found, heady stuff. Warm and lingering, with every sort of promise; but, as he was beginning to understand, not intended to lead any further. That was the accepted forfeit when one was chosen to play the role of confidant: the cicisbeo was at his lady’s side whenever possible, her escort and squire; never, alas, in her bed. Not, that is, if the game were played according to the rules. Yule had already discerned that Marisa obeyed the rules. In any event he liked the count and would have been more than a little alarmed if the contessa had invited him into her boudoir and on to her chaise longue. As it was, he felt a bit of a rotter when he kissed her: but it was she who made the running each time, and he had become so excited and enjoyed the warm softness of her lips so much that he had quickly set his conscience to rights.