Monte Cassino

by Sven Hassel

  On the way back, Porta and Tiny made another attempt to buy a helmet and halberd, but the Swiss just shook their heads.

  Then Porta produced his trump: he held out a fistful of opium cigarettes. But the guard was incorruptible. Tiny added three gold teeth and a box of snow. No normal person could resist that, but the Pope's soldiers would not sell. Porta and Tiny were dumbfounded. They would have sold each other for that amount. Then Tiny pointed to his boots. American airman's boots. The loveliest soft leather. The Swiss was not interested.

  When the trucks were unloaded, we sat down on the coping stones.

  A Nobel officer had come for Padre Emanuel and Leutnant Frick. A quarter of an hour later, the Old Man was sent for. The best part of an hour passed.

  "As long as they don't piddle on us," Porta growled. "Perhaps they're doing something to those three. If they don't turn up in an hour at the latest, we'll go and fetch them. All our irons are up in No. 5. We'll soon overrun the Guards."

  "You must have been bitten by a blind ape," Marlow protested. "Suppose there really is a God. He'd never forgive it!"

  "I'll take over command," Porta decided, "then you'll be out of it and can plead not guilty before God's court martial."

  Marlow shook his head.

  "If there is a God, he'll know I'm a feldwebel, and he'll know too that no normal feldwebel lets himself be ordered about by a rotten obergefreiter."

  "Then pretend you're not," Tiny suggested facetiously.

  "God won't go for that," Marlow shook his head. "When he sees all my metal, he'll give me short shrift. 'That won't do with us, Marlow,' he'll say, and I'll go tumbling into the Devil's lap. And I'm not keen on that. This has to be taken diplomatically. Let's send Tiny in to have a word with them."

  "Not on your life," Tiny protested, edging away. "I'll roll up any American trench you like alone, but they're dangerous in there,"

  Two hours passed, and we were jumpy and on edge. Most of us had already fetched our pistols from No. 5 and tucked them into our boots. Porta sat playing with an egg-shaped hand grenade.

  "Let's do a bunk," Heide suggested, squinting up at the big library building.

  "Shut up, you Nazi tough! Do you think we'd leave the Old Man here?"

  "To say nothing of the padre," Barcelona put in. He had a tremendous respect for everything Roman Catholic, which dated from his time in the Tercio during the Civil War. We never discovered what was the cause of it all. He always brushed our questions aside, saying: "One doesn't talk about this! And, anyway, you wouldn't understand."

  "Padre Emanuel can look after himself," Porta said. "He's in direct communication with the heavenly HQ group. But the outlook's not so good for the Old Man and Leutnant Frick."

  "Tu as raison, camarade," said the little Legionnaire nodding assent. "You have to stand alone before God's court martial and have no one to defend you. Your files lie open there. Allah knows everything including the reason for one's damned escapades. Hard, clean justice is the only thing that matters. It's not easy to get an acquittal there."

  "That's all a lot of shit," Tiny decided. "I'd never get an acquittal."

  "You never know," the Legionnaire replied convincingly. "With Allah the most remarkable things turn out to one's advantage. Are you really so great a bandit?"

  Tiny wagged his great head and shoved his cap onto the back of his head.

  "I don't really know. But they have given me a sock on the jaw once or twice. I'm not one of the best. Most of us sitting here do so of our own free will. They've looked after us well here. But anyone who says I have shot anyone except on orders, is a bloody liar. I haven't enough grey matter. That's why we have officers to think for us. Is there any obergefreiter in the Prussian army with so much tin on him as I?" He thumped his chest. "Who was it saved the whole regiment at Stalino? Who got the fuses out at Kiev? Yours truly! Do you remember counting the seconds that time at Kertz, when I crawled through the hole. You cheered when I blew the whole tractor factory up."

  Barcelona laughed scornfully. "You pale-arsed lot! Three days ago you used a roadside crucifix as a target. Now your blubber's trembling because you're in His Holiness's city."

  The Old Man returned. He was strangely quiet.

  "I've met the Pope."

  "Have you seen him?" Tiny whispered, awestruck. The Old Man nodded and lit his pipe.

  "Did you touch him?" Barcelona asked, looking at the Old Man with a new respect.

  "I didn't touch him, but I was so close to him that I could have."

  "What uniform was he wearing?" Porta asked, unwilling to capitulate. "Did he have the knight's cross?"

  "He was magnificent," the Old Man muttered still under the influence of his tremendous experience.

  "What did he say?" Heide asked.

  "That I was to salute you. He blessed me."

  "Did he, by Jove?" Heide exclaimed. "Blessed you, did he?"

  "Did you see a real cardinal?" Rudolph Kleber asked. "In a red hat?"

  Questions rained over the Old Man.

  "Had he been told about me?" Tiny asked.

  "Not specially about you or any of us individually, but he had been told about No. 2 Squadron as a whole. He gave me a ring." The Old Man raised his hand out for us to see.

  "Is the ring for the Squadron?" Barcelona asked.

  "Yes, he gave it to me, as a general is given the knight's cross. I wear it for the squadron."

  "Can I try it?" Heide asked, a strange look in his eye that ought to have warned the Old Man, but he had not yet fully returned to our brutal reality. Trustingly he gave Heide the ring.

  Heide held his finger out for us to admire the ring. When Tiny tried to touch it, he got a smack on his finger from Heide's bayonet.

  The Old Man held out his hand:

  "Give it back."

  "To you?" Heide smiled slyly. "Why should you have it?"

  The Old Man was so astounded he just opened and shut his mouth.

  "It's my ring. I was given it. The Pope gave it to me."

  "Gave you it? He gave it to the Squadron. The ring belongs to No. 2 Squadron, like the American boots Tiny's wearing for the time being. You aren't the squadron, any more than Tiny is. I, Sven, Porta, our pistols, our 8.8s, the No. 5 and all the rest of it, that's the squadron."

  Heide rubbed the ring on his sleeve, breathed on it, rubbed it again, held it up to his eyes and regarded it proudly.

  "Now that I've seen this gift from His Holiness Pius the Twelfth, I'm not sure I don't believe in God."

  "Give me that ring," the Old Man said, his voice quivering with indignation, and took a step towards Heide.

  "Keep your paws away," Heide snarled, "or you'll get one on the skull. I shall wear it for the squadron. But if I kick the bucket, you can be ring-wearer instead of me. We can draw up a document as we did over Tiny's boots."

  "Not on your life," Porta cried. "When you get your deserts, it will be my turn to wear it. The Old Man's seen the Pope. That must do him. He isn't entitled to any more."

  Barcelona pulled his close-combat knife from his boot and began cleaning his nails with it. It was not because his dirty nails worried him, but more as emphasis to what he now said:

  "Take care, Julius, that you don't die young."

  Heide scowled and stuck the hand with the ring into his pocket.

  "Who do you think you are, you ersatz Spaniard?"

  The Old Man was puce in the face with anger. He tried to threaten Heide into giving the ring back, but Heide paid no attention to him. He was not handing it over.

  He went into the Swiss guards and proudly showed them the ring. It was while he was there the first attack came. A halberd blade swished past his head only an inch away. No one saw where it came from, but Tiny was under strong suspicion.

  Heide dashed to the truck and thrust two pistols, safety catches undone, into his belt. The holy ring had caused bad blood between us. It was dangerous to have it, yet everyone wanted it.

  The second attack came twenty m
inutes later. Heide was lying out in the middle of the yard with two paratroopers admiring the ring. Something made him turn his head, the next moment a 20-ton truck rolled across the exact spot where he and the two paratroopers had been lying, and pulled up with a bump against a tree. Muffled laughter sounded from the corner of Via Pio and Via di Belvedere, where the rest of the squadron sat dicing.

  "Queer, how a truck can drive off on its own like that," Porta said thoughtfully.

  Heide mopped his brow and shoved his cap onto the back of his head. With both hands deep in his pockets, he sauntered across to us.

  "Band of murderers," he said. "But you're not getting the ring. I'm not so easy to kill."

  "That remains to be seen," Barcelona said and, smiling, threw the dice.

  We lost three trucks and seven men on the way back along Via Appia. Marlow was badly wounded, and we put him in an ambulance on its way back to Rome. His skin was already like parchment; his lips blue and his teeth showed. He whispered a protest, when Barcelona drew his Nagan and his holster off his belt.

  "That's mine. Leave it with me."

  "You'll get it when you come back," the Old Man promised.

  "Give me my Nagan. I can look after it. They won't steal it."

  But we knew better. We knew the significance of that yellow skin. We knew when the man with the scythe had put his stamp on one and that an orderly would steal that Nagan even before Marlow was dead. Why should an orderly have it, when it would do us good service?

  Tough Marlow wept. Then Tiny did a clumsy thing. Just before the ambulance drove off, he took Marlow's greatcoat, which lay rolled up beside him. It was one of the good waterproof kind paratroopers had issued to them. They were in great demand and Tiny and Marlow were roughly of a size. Marlow tried to get out of the ambulance. He shouted curses at us, as the ambulance men shoved him back and slammed the doors shut, swearing. As we stood on the roadway watching the ambulance drive off, we heard Marlow shouting:

  "Let me stay with you. I don't want to die. Bring me my Nagan!"

  "He'll be dead before they reach hospital," the Old Man said quietly.

  We nodded, knowing that he was right. And Marlow knew it too. Twenty minutes before he had been with us laughing over Tiny and his helmet.

  As Porta speeded up, he muttered almost to himself.

  "A good thing, he won those last few throws."

  The Legionnaire was examining the Nagan, which he had already swapped with Barcelona. Then he slammed the magazine into place and thrust the heavy pistol into its splendid yellow leather holster that had been Marlow's most cherished possession. He stood up in the cab, patted the holster and said:

  "It sits well."

  We could see how he revelled in the weight of it. It would give him a sense of security, as it had Marlow.

  It is most important for a front line soldier to be aware of his pistol. It should feel like a friend's protecting hand, and that's how a Nagan always felt. We thought a lot of them. All the ones we possessed, we had got from the Russians at the risk of our lives. We had five in No. 2 Squadron and took good care not to lose one. We always took a dying man's pistol. Once dead, others were entitled to his possessions; but, as long as he was alive, he and all his possessions belonged to No. 2 Squadron. The unpleasant thing was that the dying man almost always knew that we had taken it. His pistol was his assurance of life and when it went, life's flame flickered frantically. But we couldn't afford to be sloppy, where a Nagan was concerned.

  The next morning we left the monastery. Just before we were to go, we were all taken into the basilica. There, Archbishop Diamare appeared. He raised his hands and chanted:

  Gloria deus in excelsio!

  Then, for the next ten minutes, he conducted a service so gripping that even we heathens in the front rank were spellbound. Then the monks, nuns and children from the children's home sang a choral that rang out between those venerable walls most magnificently.

  Silent and somewhat awed, we marched out and drove away.

  Barcelona and I looked at each other. We had a secret that we could not tell to the others. They would have laughed at us. We had been on guard together. Just before daybreak, we were down at the end of the line of vehicles. The clouds were scurrying across the heavens and the moon shining through every now and again. We leaned against the wall, our machine pistols under our greatcoats to protect them from the frost, looking in silence down the slope of the mountain and enjoying the secure feeling that really good comrades give each other. I don't know which of us saw it first. It appeared down below behind some trees, a figure enveloped in an enormous cloak and looking rather like a shadow. A bent, hurrying figure.

  "One of the monks?" Barcelona queried.

  All at once, the figure halted in the open space, where later they buried the Polish Division. It brandished its fist at the monastery. Then, for a second or so, the moon came out through a hole in the scudding clouds, and we saw the figure distinctly. Our hearts stopped beating, as the wind took hold of the cloak and blew it out and back. That figure was Death with a scythe on his shoulder!

  The blood froze in our veins. Then we heard a laugh, a long, triumphant laugh. Then the figure was swallowed up by a roll of mist.

  We stumbled over each other's feet as we ran for the guard hut. The Old Man, Porta and the others were asleep inside it. Our teeth were chattering, and I had dropped my pistol.

  "You must go and get it," Barcelona said. I refused. Instead, I stole one from a sleeping paratrooper. When it was light, Barcelona and I went to look for mine, but we never found it.

  The others saw that something had happened, but we did not dare tell them about it. We thought for a moment of going to the Padre, but then agreed that it would be best to keep quiet about it altogether. As Barcelona rightly said: "You don't have to tell everything you see."

  We ended by acting to each other, as if we had forgotten all about it. But Death had visited the holy mountain to view the scene of his approaching harvest, and by chance Barcelona and I had seen him and heard his jubilant laugh.

  VIII

  Joseph Grapa was a Jew. We met him one evening, when we paid a visit to a group of deserters in the attic of a house behind Termini. You got up to it through a camouflaged trapdoor. One of Ida's girls who had had to go underground, was there.

  Heide got the hell of a surprise, when he found himself standing face to face with Grapa.

  "Ground not getting too hot under your paws, Schmaus?" he said provocatively. "I could get a fine price for you. What would you say to a single ticket to Via Tasso?"

  Porta started cleaning his nails with his close-combat dagger and Tiny rattled his steel sling. That checked Heide and from then on he and the Jew just slung accusations at each other.

  "All my family, all my friends have been dragged off to Poland," Grapa said quietly.

  "Don't squeal, Schmaus," Heide grinned. "Those of you Jews who survive will get your revenge. You'll be sacred cows, and preserved. I shouldn't be surprised if it was forbidden to call you Jews. Adolf's really doing you a good turn. You'll get your revenge on the Catholics, whom you hate as much as Heydrich and Himmler do. I can see that you are going to accuse the Pope of gassing the Jews."

  "No honest Jew would do that," Grapa protested.

  "There are no honest Jews," Heide said and laughed. He pointed an accusing finger at Grapa. "There are lots of documents that can be used against the Pope. The Vatican is a louse between two fingernails. Don't misunderstand me. I have no love for the Pope's black crows. Do them in tomorrow and I'll gladly help." He rubbed his hands at the very thought.

  "Why doesn't the Vatican protest?" Grapa cried. "The deportations would stop, if it did. They wouldn't dare go on with them."

  Heide guffawed.

  "Not dare! You are blue-eyed! Do you think we're afraid of a few dirty saints? If only the crows would protest! Then you'd see something. Perhaps Hitler and Stalin would find each other. You know who should have protested? The preside
nt of the U.S.A., the king of England and all the others with armies at their beck and call. But they didn't so much as let out a fart, when they heard we had begun slaughtering you. The whole world knew what we were doing in '35, to say nothing of '38. But they just put plugs in their ears."

  "Do you think all that would have prevented the killings?" Grapa asked.

  "One protest, no," Heide said. "But an economic boycott as late as '38 would have done it, but no Pope or umbrella carrying prime minister will frighten Adolf. And, anyway, who says our opponents don't like us gassing you? They would not even ransom you with a few trucks and lorries. Stalin in Moscow certainly won't miss you. I don't know what the Pope has to say, but I should think he's the only one who would stand up for you, if he had a strong enough army behind him. But for him to protest now will do as little good as a white dove standing up in front of the Doge's palace and making a fuss. You Jews are bust and you always will be. You can be up for a short time, but then some idiot among you will throw his weight about too much, and then you'll be dropped again. You should have your own state. That would be best."

  Porta spat contemptuously onto the floor.

  "Man is the stupidest of all animals."

  OPERATION DOG-COLLAR

  The rumours of what we had been doing at Monte Cassino reached Berlin. In fact, a stream of reports flooded in to Prins Albrecht Strasse 8, with the result that one sunny morning a Heinkel bomber landed at Aeroporto dell' Ube outside Rome. Out of the 'plane stepped General Wilhelm Burgdorf, chief of the army personnel section, a slim black document case under his arm. He brushed some imaginary specks of dust from his blood red general's tabs and smiled his usual kindly smile. The General was a man who regarded the whole world as a gigantic joke, who promoted a colonel to general with the same smile with which he handed a field marshal a cyanide pill. He nodded pleasantly to the open-mouthed commander of the airport and enquired about his health, with the immediate result that the major in question went deathly pale. General Burgdorf grinned.

  "Get me a car, Herr Major, with a driver who can drive. I don't care whether he's a convict or a field marshal, as long as he can drive. I am in a hurry to get to the Army Commander South."