Guns At Cassino

by Leo Kessler

  `Look, man,' he screamed in German, 'I'm shot – badly shot. You can't shoot me – my father came from Mannheim! Kurt Desch from Mannheim, Heidelberger Street thirty-six – everybody knew him in Mannheim. You can't - '

  The words ended in a scream, as the Creeper smashed the iron butt of his Schmeisser in his face. As he went down, the Creeper kicked him in the side of the head. His neck clicked back, spine broken. He was dead before he hit the floor.

  Now they ran from tent to tent. The Creeper pelted into a tent, filled with lung cases.

  `By the great whore of Buxtehude,' one of his panting men gasped, 'what a hell of a stench!'

  `It's their lungs - they always stink like that when they've been hit in the pumps,' someone explained.

  `We're doin 'em a favour then - to get them out of this shitty smell!' the first men yelled gleefully and reaching up, pulled down a long tube leading into one of the wounded Amis.

  `What the tarnation is going on here?' a high-pitched female voice asked in English.

  The Creeper swung round. A fat woman stood there, dressed in an olive-drab dress, the golden star of a major gleaming on the shoulder, her double chin trembling in righteous indignation.

  ‘Will you look at that, you currant-crappers,' a soldier exclaimed in wonder, 'an Ami wench, right up here in the line. Do you think she does it for the soldiers.'

  He grinned and thrust his thumb between his two fingers in the obscene gesture used by the troops.

  `No,' someone else jeered. `Ami wenches don't have one. You know what they say about 'em - whores in the kitchen and cooks in the bed!'

  The others laughed uproariously. The American military nurse lunged at the man who had spoken. Before she reached him another man knocked off her gold-rimmed glasses. They fell to the floor and shattered. A laughing trooper pushed her. She fell over the metal side of a cot and sat down suddenly, her skirt riding up to reveal black pubic hair.

  `Wow,' the laughing trooper who had pushed her over, breathed in mock wonder. 'Look at that! She's got one after all.' He made a play of fumbling with his flies with his free hand, looking at the Creeper. 'Shall I slip her a link, Lieutenant? A little fly one - something for her to remember us by!'

  The Creeper's pudgy face flushed unpleasantly:

  `No, we have no time for that kind of piggery. Let her stay alive. We need a witness to tell them what happened to her. But strip her. They tell me that the Amis are very moral in such things.'

  Half a dozen laughing troopers dragged the woman up from the bed. She fought and scratched crazily as she sensed what they were going to do, but she was helpless in their hands. In an instant she was naked: narrow shoulders, great dangling breasts hanging over a pale scarred belly, her body shivering with cold and terror.

  But the Creeper had no eyes for the naked American nurse. His mind was full of his scheme to ensure that the Führer’s brilliant plan succeeded.

  `You - and you,' he bellowed at the two men next to him. `Take those bottles,' he indicated the ether bottles in the cabinet at the end of the tented room.

  While they carried out his order, he himself slung extra blankets on each bed, spreading them over the unconscious Americans.

  `Now splash plenty of it over the blankets,' he yelled.

  The two soldiers ran from bed to bed throwing the liquid everywhere. As the tent filled with the heavy suffocating fumes, an Ami, who was awake and had tried to scream, heaved and twisted, attempting vainly to free his body from the stifling horror of the blankets.

  `All right, outside everybody!' the Creeper cried, reaching in his pocket for his lighter.

  `Oh my God!' the nurse screamed, her hands flying from a pathetic attempt to hide her sex, to cover her face in terror. `You can't - you can't be that cruel!'

  A young soldier punched her in the face. The nose shattered and blood shot everywhere. They kicked her outside, their muddy boots leaving dirty marks on her pale flesh.

  The Creeper waited till they were clear. On the bed, the Ami tossed and turned, desperately trying to free himself, a strange bubbling sound escaping from his lips all the while. The Creeper backed to the flap and tossed the burning lighter onto the nearest ether-soaked blanket.

  As he backed out, there was a muffled explosion. Flames ran up the sides of the tent, greedily eating up the canvas. The troopers scattered hastily, pushing the naked, sobbing nurse in front of them. The flames leapt higher and higher. Suddenly the man who had tried to escape appeared at the door of the tent. Tubes hung from him everywhere as he stood there blinded, the flames licking at his lower body.

  `Help ... help me!' he bubbled.

  Behind the Creeper the nurse screamed and fell into the mud, as the wounded man staggered forward, his burning arms held upright in the shape of a cross. He didn't get far. He stumbled blindly over a crate and fell full length, a blazing torch for an instant, his head a blue flickering puddle of fire. The next moment he disappeared as the remaining bottles of ether inside the tent exploded. When the explosion had died away, he and the tent had vanished.

  `My holy Christ, Kriecher!' von Dodenburg thundered, pushing back the crowd of SS men staring at the woman sobbing in the mud, her breasts smeared in blood, 'what's been going on here?'

  The Creeper turned and faced him insolently. He waved a pudgy hand at the bullet-holed tents. 'It's obvious, isn't it, Major. Now the Führer has got his incident!'

  Beside himself with rage, von Dodenburg laid Kriecher flat in the mud and brought up his Schmeisser.

  `My God, Kriecher,' he cried thickly, 'they were wounded men!'

  But just as von Dodenburg's forefinger started to squeeze the trigger, there was the faint but definite squeaky rattle of rusty tank tracks to the south. Von Dodenburg hesitated. He cocked his ear to the wind. They were definitely tracked vehicles; and there were no German tanks on this side of the River Rapido. He let the gun drop.

  `You're a lucky swine, Kriecher.' He nodded to Schulze: `Get the miserable bastard up out of the mud, will you?'

  Schulze hurried forward and put his arms round the Lieutenant. As he did so, his fingers slipped into Kriecher's top left hand pocket.

  `There you are sir,' he said dutifully, as he extracted the Creeper's notebook and slipped it inside his sleeve.

  Von Dodenburg slipped off his long camouflage cape and drew it over the naked nurse sobbing brokenly in the mud.

  `Here, place this on,' he whispered in his awkward English. Then he turned to the others:

  `All right,' he said wearily, 'move it, men. Let's get our arses back across the river before the Ami armour gets here.'

  He took one last glance at the ruined camp, full of slaughtered men, silent now save for the persistent sobbing of the nurse and the dying crackle of flames.

  `I guess we've done what we came here to do.'

  `You ain't shitting, sir!' Schulze said glumly, staring at the charred corpse still smoking at their feet 'You ain't shitting ...’

  As the sun came up behind Cassino an angry blood-red, and the first enraged Ami barrage started to slam into the position at the top of Peak 555, the Wotan volunteers slipped across the Rapido again and commenced their weary progress up into the hills. The die was cast.

  Fourteen

  But nothing happened. Despite the massacre of the US clearing station, the Americans were apparently not prepared to retaliate. Indeed after a couple of days, the infuriated Ami bombardment of the Wotan positions on the peak died down completely; and the front settled into a strange brooding stalemate, with the fighting limited to sporadic patrol activity during the night.

  At his headquarters in Rome, Kesselring questioned his staff every morning, half expecting that the Monastery had been attacked, half hoping it hadn't.

  And morning after morning the same reply came back:

  `Nothing new on the Cassino front, Field Marshal.'

  The great Monastery, founded by St Benedict himself, had been saved for another day.

  But if the Field Marshal, d
evout Catholic that he was, experienced a certain relief every time he learned that the Monastery was still intact, his master grew increasingly angry. Twice in the first week of February, 1944, he was called urgently to the telephone to hear that well-known voice demand:

  `In heaven's name, Kesselring - how much longer must I wait?'

  And all that an embarrassed Kesselring could reply was: `Soon, my Führer, I promise you ... Soon!'

  On the Peak the officers of Wotan, who knew what had happened at the American hospital, were also puzzled. They spent hours searching the valley with their binoculars for some clue to the Ami intention, but they could discover nothing. As the Vulture remarked more than once:

  `It almost looks, gentlemen, as if our American friends have packed their suitcases and returned to the land of unlimited possibilities, what?'

  Life on the peak settled down into the dreary routine of garrison duty, with inspections, regulation pre-dawn stand-tos and incessant weapon cleaning. For von Dodenburg the lack of activity was a boon. It gave him time to think things out, steeled his resolve to do what he knew he had to do. But he realized now that there was more to do than just getting rid of the Vulture. He must ensure that the Wotan Battle Group did not fall into the wrong hands. There must be no more Geiers. in charge of the Third Reich's elite formation. When the Vulture was dead, Wotan had to be his. There was no other alternative. But how was he to do it? How was he to kill the Vulture and still retain control of the Battle Group?

  It was a problem that he had still not solved when the great clouds of dust, that seemed to spring up from nowhere on the white roads leading into the Liri, indicated that trouble was definitely brewing. The Vulture, alarmed by the outposts, lowered his binoculars and commented:

  `Well, gentlemen, it looks as if we are receiving new guests. If I am not mistaken, our friends from that Empire upon which the sun never sets, are arriving down there. I suggest we set about ensuring that they receive a warm welcome. Gentlemen, the Tommies are here!'

  But Colonel Geier was not altogether right. The troops who were flooding the valley below, relieving the beaten Americans of the US Second Corps, were not entirely British; they were General Freyberg's New Zealanders, and the tough New Zealander who had won the Victoria Cross in the First War, was not too happy with the situation. He kept glancing at the grim stone block which dominated the whole valley and his big tough jaw jutted out angrily as if he would ram it at the damned place at any minute.

  Just before they parted that morning, General Gruenther (1) said a little wanly:

  ‘Well, Freyberg, what do you think the chances are?'

  The New Zealander hesitated a moment. He had never worked with the Yanks before; he did not know how they would take his legendary blunt honesty. He decided to risk it. `Not more than fifty-fifty, General,' he growled. 'It's that damn monastery up there. Gives me the creeps. It's him having someone watching you all the time even when you think you're in the privacy of your own thunderbox!'

  Gruenther knew what the New Zealander meant. The place dominated the whole front. Perhaps the failure of the 36th on the Rapido was due to that too. Now, with the massacre of their rear elements by the Krauts, the survivors were in open rebellion. That very morning, the CIC had reported that a secret meeting of the 36th's junior officers had decided that they had been squandered unreasonably on the Rapido and they were proposing to raise the matter before Congress after the war. Morale was low enough in the Fifth Army without these new arrivals adding their own doubts to it.

  `Oh, it isn't as bad as that, General,' he said. 'Our Intelligence, reports that the Krauts are not using the place for observation purposes.'

  `Bugger Intelligence!' Freyberg answered crudely. 'I want the place taken out by air.'

  Gruenther looked at him aghast.

  `But you can't mean that, General?'

  `I can and do. The place was converted into a fortress in the nineteenth century. The walls are a hundred and fifty feet high, of solid masonry and at least ten feet thick at the base. To cut a long story short, Monte Cassino is as powerful as any modern fortress and we've got to take it out by modern means'

  `But General - ' Gruenther spluttered.

  `No buts, General,' Freyberg interrupted brusquely. `Whether the damn place is occupied by the Jerries or not at the moment is immaterial to me. They'll use it in the end, believe you me. Now General Gruenther,' he lowered his voice confidentially, 'this is what we're going to do.'

  `Hot shit, Gruenther!' Clark cursed, 'that dam limey must be out of his mind! Do you realize what he wants me to authorize – our planes dropping blockbuster bombs on the goddam place! Can't you just hear the papers screaming in Boston? Goddamit Gruenther, those Catholics'd have the hide off me. And you can just imagine what the Pope's reaction would be.' He sighed wearily. 'Why is it everybody tries to sabotage me? What have I done to deserve generals like this? I try my goddam best, and all I get is lousy goldbrickers.' Gruenther remained silent. He knew Clark, his moods of self-pity did not last long. Clark raised his head.

  `What do you think, Gruenther?' he asked finally.

  `Well, sir, the Second Corps has had the heart knocked out of it on the Cassino front. As you know, every time they formed up for an attack, the Krauts knew they were coming. ‘Why?' He shrugged slightly. 'Because the Kraut observers in that damned monastery could see them coming. Okay, so now the limeys are going to have a crack and again the Monastery'll be signalling they're coming. In essence, sir, if you take it out, you'll have the Pope on your back; if you don't, you'll have Winnie Churchill breathing fire down on you. And I know which one of them is the worse.'

  Three hours later the order went out from Clark's Fifth Army Headquarters to the United States Army Air Corps in Italy. It was brutally simple: Destroy the Abbey of Monte Cassino.

  The gleaming silver planes came in at fifteen thousand feet, their white vapour trails sketching straight lines on the harsh winter-blue wash of the sky. They came on in perfect formation. Here and there a black puffball exploded about them. Down below in the Abbey, on this February morning, the Abbot knelt in front of the little Madonna of De Matteis and began to croak the words, 'Beseech Christ on our behalf', as the first bomb came thundering down. The great walls shuddered visibly. The dust of centuries was dislodged from the cracks. Another bomb fell and another, their thunder reverberating along the vast stone passages of the ancient pile so that they seemed no longer a series of individual explosions but one huge cataclysmic roar.

  The monks, who had spent their lives hidden from the world in this mountain-top oasis of tranquillity, huddled together in terror. The wrinkled old Abbot commenced giving them absolution. Through the narrow windows the frightened monks, huddled in the corner, could see the blinding yellow flashes as treasure after treasure was destroyed, while the thunder of the explosions rolled back and forth down the vaulted corridors.

  A servant stumbled in, his face contorted with shock. He was gesticulating wildly, but uttering no sound. His hands moved back and forth in a language none of the ashen-faced monks could understand. He was trying to tell them that the cathedral had just gone.

  The four-engined Flying Forts had gone now. They had pounded the ancient monastery for four hours. Its roof was beginning to look jagged and uneven and here and there a window seemed unnaturally enlarged. But the place was still standing. Now it was the turn of the mediums; two-engined Mitchell bombers.

  They came in at three hundred miles an hour - twelve of them in a tight aggressive formation. Watching them on Peak 555, von Dodenburg saw how their leader dipped his wings suddenly. It was the signal to attack. They roared in, the thin winter sun sparkling on their silver wings. Here and there the flak attempted to ward them off. But their speed was too great and they were too low for the 88s. Zooming through the cottony smoke, they came in for the kill.

  Von Dodenburg started. Bright red flame spurted up at a dozen points as though a giant were striking matches against the mountainside. Almost
instantly it was followed by a huge pillar of thick black smoke which rose straight upwards into the windstill blue sky until it was well over two hundred metres high.

  `Oh, my aching arse,' Schulze breathed in awe, 'those blacks (2) are certainly getting a belting this day!'

  Slowly the smoke started to clear, moving gradually so that what lay behind it appeared to shift and sway in sinister arabesques. At last the Monastery became visible again. Von Dodenburg whistled softly. Its whole outline had changed. The west wall had gone completely. The rest was in ruins. The Führer had his 'incident'.

  Schulze got to his feet and stared at the ruin for a moment or two. A solitary green flare soared into the sky at the base of the Peak. For one long moment it hung there, bathing the slope in a sickly light. Then it fell. As it did so, the slow heavy chatter of a Tommy bren began. Out of the rocks little brown figures in pudding-bowl helmets started to move forward cautiously, rifles held across their chests as they picked their way through the boulders.

  `An attack!' young Bauer gasped and reached for his whistle to sound the alarm.

  Even as he did so, the first Spandau hissed into action. Men pelted crazily to their foxholes. Von Dodenburg looked at Schulze grimly, his pale-face set.

  `Well, you rogue, this is it.' He reached out his hand. 'Happy landings, Schulze!'

  Schulze took his with genuine affection.

  `And to you, sir! Mind you don't put your turnip up when you should be putting it down.'

  Von Dodenburg swung round, crouched low and doubled madly for the sandbagged command post. Just as he reached it the full weight of the Tommy's creeping barrage hit the top of the mountain. The second battle for Cassino had commenced.

  Fifteen

  The whole Liri Valley quaked with the roar. From end to end the angry red lights blinked like enormous blast furnaces. The whole weight of the New Zealanders' artillery smacked into action. With a hoarse scream, four hundred shells ripped through the sky over the advancing Indians' heads and crashed into the side of Peak 555. In an instant it had disappeared in a choking grey-yellow fog of acrid smoke and dust.