I Am Canada: Sniper Fire

by Jonathan Webb

  Loon looks around for a moment, then says, “It’s creepy.”

  I laugh. “You’re worried about what’s creepy? How many people have you killed in the past two days?”

  “That’s different.”

  “Maybe,” I tell him, then, “You should think more about the risks you take.”

  “Aw,” he says. “I knew I could do it. They were shooting over us, they weren’t looking down.”

  “The Jerries, you mean?”

  “I knew what I was doing.”

  “It was lucky for you that Strong John started shooting when he did. He distracted them.”

  Loon says nothing.

  “They only had to drop a hand grenade and the three of us would be dead.”

  Loon sighs. “That’s what the Gaffer said.”

  He turns and climbs back up the stairs. He stumbles in the darkness. I’m not sure if he’s more anxious to get away from the crypt or from me.

  Chapter 7

  Via Cespa

  Wednesday, December 22, 1943

  We know more about the town’s layout now. There are two big squares — piazzas — Vittoria and Municipale, connected by the main street, Corso Vittorio Emanuele. The cathedral the Germans blew up, leaving only a shattered half-tower, is situated beyond Municipale, on Piazza San Tomasso, and beyond that, overlooking the sea, there’s a ruined castle. There are other, smaller squares off to the side of the Corso, and smaller streets in between them, where the houses are huddled together and it would be easy to get lost.

  Corso Vittorio Emanuele is our main axis of attack. The Seaforths are to clear the buildings on the right, or seaward flank, while the Eddies, led by D Company, will push hard down Corso Emanuele. Our company, A Company, is slated to clear the streets on the left.

  This is our plan, not the enemy’s plan. I guess theirs is different.

  Major Stone’s D Company, backed up by Three Rivers Tanks, starts the day with a bang — a lot of bangs — by charging down the Corso. It’s like a real, old-fashioned cavalry charge, only with tanks instead of horses. The men set off at the double. The Shermans are beside them with their sirens sounding and guns blazing. We’ve got a ringside seat in Piazza della Vittoria to see the action start. The Germans have to be shocked, with Stone’s company charging at them like that, first thing in the morning. And it seems like it’s working too. Within minutes our guys are a good 50 yards up the main street. They’re running. They’re shooting. It seems like nothing can stop them.

  And then they stop.

  I look at Doug. Doug looks at me. The Gaffer takes off his helmet, scratches his head, and says nothing.

  “Why’d they stop?” asks Loon.

  We find out soon enough as men who are closer to the action send back word. Seems the boys in the tanks lost their nerve at a critical moment. One minute the lead tank is rolling along spouting noise, fury and destruction. The next minute it’s a mute and motionless pile of metal.

  Major Stone’s furious. He runs up to the tank and pounds on its sides. The troop commander’s head pops up from the top hatch. Stone yells, “What the hell?” The troop commander says there’s got to be mines up ahead, which is true enough. You can see his point. But Stone doesn’t see it that way. His boys figure he’s going to strangle the tank commander with his bare hands, he’s so mad. But the tank doesn’t budge and then the Germans wake up and start shooting. It turns out they have a lot of firepower trained along the Corso. So much for the surprise. D Company has no choice but to stop and take cover.

  Meanwhile, another troop of tanks sets off along another wide street, Via Pantaleone Rapino. As they come to each cross street, the ones running parallel to the Corso, they let loose a few volleys. They’re shooting blind. They can’t see the enemy, but they figure the Germans are down there somewhere. The fireworks are for our benefit. We’re going in behind the tanks.

  We set off in a loose formation. We follow, huffing a bit, our breath making clouds in the crisp air, as far as Via Cespa. We’re about to turn down it when we run into trouble.

  Loon and Specs are up front with the Gaffer. Strong John, Jimmy and Doug are right behind them. The O’Connors are next. Derrick is still muttering about premonitions. Paddy’s egging him on, telling him what an inviting target his butt is.

  “Whatever you do,” he tells Derrick, “don’t turn your back on the Jerries. You know they’re just waiting for a chance.” He’s about to say something more, but before he can speak, a gun barks out from the other end of Via Cespa. We’re in a line, bent over but exposed, strung out across the intersection. A chunk of the house on the corner explodes above us. The gun barks again. It’s raining stones. We dive for cover. There’s a muffled yell.

  It’s Loon. He’s on the ground. There’s a boulder on his back.

  Specs, surprisingly, is the first to reach his side. He scuttles over, keeping low. Bees are buzzing overhead. Specs shakes Loon’s shoulder. Loon’s moving and cursing, so he isn’t dead. Specs pushes the bigger stones off of him.

  “Keep down!” yells the Gaffer.

  “Bloody hell!” Everyone is shouting and swearing at once. Finally Specs grabs Loon’s arm and drags him to the corner.

  “What the …?” Loon tries to shake Specs off.

  “Get your head down!” shouts the Gaffer.

  A minute later, we’re all huddled alongside a building on Via Rapino. Loon isn’t hurt, not badly. He’s bruised, cut and disoriented. The Gaffer offers to send him back to the aid post in the square.

  Loon dusts himself off angrily. “I’ll be okay,” he says.

  We hunker down together. Across Via Rapino, the lieutenant and Tank Docherty’s section are doing the same. Doug and I end up parked against a wall of rubble.

  He says, “We’ve got our work cut out for us.”

  In the next few minutes, Lieutenant Gold and the Gaffer put their heads together. They peer cautiously around the corner and take a good hard look down the street. It’s no more than 12 feet wide, 15 at its widest. The houses, made of brick, stone or stucco, are crowded together, shoulder to shoulder. Most have a common wall with their next-door neighbour, leaving no gaps for shelter. There is nowhere to hide. The houses are no more than two or three storeys high. Many have iron balconies and all have wooden shutters on their windows. At least, that’s what the buildings look like that are standing.

  German demolition teams have been busy. They’ve blown up houses at intervals all down the street. That means there are great big heaps of stone and broken beams lying around, which the enemy has used to build barricades. It’s a safe bet there are guns hidden behind some or all of them. It also means that any tank that turns down the street — which would be crazy, anyway, because there’s no room for a tank to manoeuvre — has to climb over the piles of rubble. If a tank does try to climb the piles, there will be a moment when its cannon is pointed uselessly at the sky and its underside is exposed to the enemy. It won’t stand a chance.

  “We need a plan,” says the lieutenant.

  For once the Gaffer doesn’t crack a smile.

  “It’s like a game of tic-tac-toe,” says the lieutenant. “They take a house, we take a house.”

  “I never liked the game,” says Specs. “The guy who makes the first move always wins. And the Jerries got here first.”

  “Maybe it’s not like tic-tac-toe,” says the lieutenant.

  He has been in touch with Captain Trehan. They agree that neither tanks nor artillery are of any use to us until we secure at least part of the street. So much for coordinated manoeuvres. This is a pure infantry battle.

  “Remember your training,” says the lieutenant.

  “We were never trained in street fighting,” says Paddy.

  This is true.

  “Well,” says the lieutenant. “Draw on what you know.”

  After the conference, we’re still huddled in the shelter of a house on Via Rapino while the enemy bangs away in our direction. The dust is settling on our tunics. Grav
el sometimes bounces off our helmets. The Gaffer reckons they have either an 88-mm anti-tank gun or a PAK-40 anti-aircraft gun half-buried at the other end of Via Cespa.

  A Bren carrier comes up with supplies, including hand grenades. Someone is thinking about us. We load up with both 36s, anti-personnel, and 77s, smoke grenades.

  “We’ll work with Docherty’s section,” says the Gaffer. “Lieutenant Gold will be with him. They’ll take one side, we’ll take the other.”

  “It’s not really much of a plan, is it?” says Doug quietly.

  “Plans are overrated,” I say.

  * * *

  Someone has to take the first step into Via Cespa. We can lay down smoke, but smoke just tells the Germans when to start spraying the street with machine-gun fire. The street isn’t wide and they’re shooting from both sides. Every inch of the street is covered. No one wants to take that first step.

  No one except Loon. The kid won’t quit. He was just knocked down by debris from a damaged building and yet he’s raring to go. The Gaffer shakes his head. Paddy steps up, saying he’ll go first, but Loon is adamant.

  “I’ll do it,” he says.

  Docherty’s section is on the left side of Cespa. We’re on the right. We’re to take one house, then wait for the other section to take another on the other side. It is sort of like tic-tac-toe.

  Loon tosses out the first smoke grenade. The Gaffer has a hand on his shoulder, holding him back until the smoke fills the intersection. Paddy reaches for another grenade. Loon disappears into the smoke. He’s been told to run to the first doorway and bust his way inside. We can hear the thud the butt of his rifle makes against the door. He pounds it once, twice, three times.

  Doug says, “He can’t get in. It’s locked. It’s solid.”

  Paddy rolls out the second grenade. The enemy keeps up a steady stream of fire. We’re not shooting back. There’s nothing but smoke for us to shoot at.

  The thudding stops. I hold my breath. Paddy rolls out a third grenade. As it bursts I catch sight of Loon as he climbs onto a second-floor balcony.

  “How the …?” mutters Doug.

  “The drainpipe,” I say, following Doug’s gaze. “He’s climbing up the drainpipe.”

  The Germans see him too, just as he scrambles from the balcony into the house. Their bullets tear chunks out of the masonry. An endless minute later, we hear a crash and Loon lets out a yell, “I’m in! The door’s open!”

  We pile into the house and find ourselves face to face with Loon. The Gaffer takes two steps to the left and holds up his hand. A narrow passage goes the length of the house. Three doors open off it. The first door’s shut.

  “There’s got to be a booby trap,” says the Gaffer. “There’s got to be. They didn’t blow off the front of the house, so there has to be something.”

  He starts cautiously down the passage.

  “Don’t touch that first door,” he calls out. “Stay behind me.”

  The second door is partly open. The Gaffer reaches out for the handle and pushes it gently while peering through the gap, checking for wire. The door swings open easily. We follow him into the kitchen.

  “Don’t touch anything!”

  There’s a full wine bottle on the counter. A chair has been knocked over. It would have been easy to grab the bottle or pull up the chair, but suddenly everything looks lethal. The Gaffer steps through the door between the kitchen and the front room, the rest of us behind him. A couch, armchairs and side tables make movement difficult. Doug edges around to the front window, stands off to the side and pulls back the curtain. I take up a position across from him, my rifle at the ready.

  The Gaffer is examining the first closed door, the one nearest the front entrance, feeling with his fingers around its edges.

  “Aha!” he says.

  Along the top, he finds what he’s been looking for: a tack and a wire tied around it.

  Doug flips up the latch on the window and lifts the sash. He peers cautiously into the street.

  “Strong John,” says the Gaffer. “Go back through the kitchen and into the hall and check the other side of this door. Look up. There should be a charge there.”

  We had missed it. We weren’t looking at the ceiling when we came in. We walked under a grenade fixed in place above the door. If we had pushed that first door open, it would have yanked the pin from the detonator and we would have been blown to smithereens.

  “They’re devils,” says the Gaffer after Strong John disarms the bomb.

  Doug makes a sudden move, jerking back from the window. I see a shadow, a face, an arm on the other side. No time to lift the rifle to my shoulder, so I shoot from the hip. The German makes a sound like a snarl. The potato masher slides from his grasp.

  I yell, “Get down!”

  The explosion shatters the glass in the window. The noise is deafening. The shock wave shakes the room. I hit the floor, stunned. I’m down on my knees. Shards of broken glass fall from my back as I scramble to my feet.

  “Jeezus!”

  “What the …”

  Everyone’s cursing, even Specs.

  There’s blood spattered everywhere. It takes us a minute to work out that it’s the German’s and not ours. The bomb fell under him. Loon was standing back from the window, in a straight line from the explosion. He’s covered in gore.

  Strong John and Jimmy take the Bren upstairs. The Gaffer checks out the basement. He comes back with the bottle from the kitchen — it wasn’t booby-trapped, apparently. He opens it and passes it around.

  “Good work,” he says to me. “You got him just in time.”

  “That was close,” says Loon.

  He says it softly. He’s still dazed. I take him into the kitchen. I find a rag, dunk it in water and wipe him down. The blood of the enemy … We’ve all been through this, or something like it. Shooting at a distance, at long range, is one thing. But we saw the German’s face in the instant before he died. Loon had the best view of all. It was only for a second, but in that instant when their eyes locked, he understood what it meant to take a life.

  I ask him, “Can you do this?”

  He nods his head. “Yes.”

  * * *

  The lieutenant and Tank Docherty’s section lay down smoke and, with covering fire from Strong John and Jimmy upstairs, occupy the house opposite us. The street is so narrow and the houses are so close together that it’s easy to track their progress. When Lieutenant Gold gives us the thumbs-up, it’s our turn to move again.

  The house next to us isn’t there: it’s been blown up by the enemy. Paddy loads up with hand grenades. He will attempt what the grim-faced Para tried to do when he appeared at our window. The Para that died.

  Docherty’s crew has set up their Bren, so we have supporting lines of fire criss-crossing the street. Both our Bren gunners are searching out their opposition. The Gaffer creeps cautiously to the open front door and tosses out the first smoke canister. Paddy, crouching beside him, waits until the smoke is head-high and then steps into it. Derrick, poised to follow him, tenses up. The Gaffer touches his shoulder, signalling him to go, but Derrick doesn’t move. I’m next in line behind him. I step out on the Gaffer’s signal. Loon’s in position to come after me, then Doug and the others.

  Enemy fire is playing a violent tattoo on the cobblestones. Shrapnel ricochets off the walls. Splinters of metal and wood skitter past me. It’s as if a gale-force wind is driving a storm of destruction in my direction. I want to hurl myself onto the ground, to make myself as small as possible. I keep my eyes focused on the row of houses beside me. I catch a glimpse of Paddy in the smoke ahead of me as he dekes into the next undamaged doorway. For a moment I’m alone in the desolate space between buildings. On my right, where once there was a house, there’s the remnants of a wall, no more than a foot or two high, bordering the sidewalk, a scorched staircase behind it that climbs into space. The second floor is gone.

  I keep going. Something pings off my helmet. I bump up against the
wall of the next house and leap into the doorway. A fine grit and the stink of cordite fill the house like mist in a cemetery. The corpse of a German lies twisted on the floor. I stumble over it and almost fall into the room. It’s a ruin. I hear the sound of more shooting — the crack of Paddy’s rifle — upstairs. And then shouting.

  “Derrick! Up here!”

  It’s Paddy. He thinks his brother is following behind him instead of me.

  I run up the stairs. Loon is behind me now. There’s another body on the landing, another dead German. Paddy’s in the front room, kneeling at the window, firing into the house across the way. Loon and I check the room at the back — there’s no one there — and then I return to the ground floor to cover the others.

  Doug, Specs and Jimmy charge through the open doorway. Finally Derrick hurls himself onto the floor. His face is pale.

  “Made it,” he mutters.

  Our smoke is getting thinner and bullets are slamming into the wood and plaster in the front hall. From somewhere outside, I hear shouting. I can’t make out the words. I edge carefully towards the doorway. Lieutenant Gold, in the window of the place across the street, is pointing at the house next door. Jimmy crawls up beside me.

  “What’s happening?”

  “Not sure,” I answer.

  “Where’s Strong John?”

  “Hey, Strong John!” I yell. “Sergeant! Gaffer!”

  I put everything I have into it, trying to make myself heard.

  “Are you there?” I yell again.

  Strong John calls back in a deep, hoarse voice, “Yeah, Paul, I’m here.”

  “This is bad,” says Jimmy. “He’s trapped.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He was right behind me.”

  “He was in the street, then?”

  “He must have stumbled and taken cover in the ruined house.”

  Now it’s Jimmy’s turn to yell. “Strong John! Are you hurt?”

  “I’m okay,” he answers.

  This isn’t supposed to happen. We’re meant to stick together. Now, it seems, we’re strung out, with Strong John alone and under fire in the ruin next door. The Gaffer is on his own in the house we started from.