Night Crossing

by Robert Ryan

  ‘For a while, yeah,’ he said eventually. ‘We might get to see how grateful these guys are.’

  ‘Hey, it’s not the guys I want to be grateful. I hear a girl costs a quarter. A dollar the night.’

  ‘You’ll get your chance, son.’ Pantole looked for latrine paper, but ended up grabbing a Stars and Stripes magazine and walked away from the troop, heading up the slope, looking for somewhere to take a quiet dump. As he looked back he could see the park where some lucky stiffs had managed to bivouac properly. Beyond the park there was a tantalising glimpse of ancient ruins. He hoped he could get some pictures of the Colosseum before they left, prove to his grandpa he’d made it here.

  There were whistles sounding in the streets now, urging them to regroup. Would they get a rest and a crack at the dollar-whores? That depended on what Lieutenant General Mark Clark and Field Marshal Alexander, who commanded the British 8th Army, cooked up between them, once they stopped bickering. His guess was that Clark would give them a taste of the spoils before they moved on.

  The first thing Pantole thought when the smell hit him was that someone had beaten him to it. Then he realised that he was smelling more than shit. He took the magazine, tore off two strips and made wads for his nostrils. Ahead of him, the cave entrance was sealed with a mix of jerrycans and rubble from what looked like the aftermath of an explosion. Flies buzzed around the gaps in the barrier.

  ‘Sarge!’ came a distant voice from behind him, but something made him heave a dozen of the smaller boulders out of the way. He found the first one just inside. The flesh was largely gone, thanks to the dusting of quicklime that covered most of the body, but the hole in the back of the skull was clear enough. He imagined the man kneeling down, the pistol muzzle against the back of the head … boom. Pantole waited while his eyes adjusted and took half a dozen steps further in. The cave opened out into a huge main chamber, with side passages running off it. The floor was sticky with bat droppings and congealed blood. As his pupils dilated fully he began to count the bodies, most of them entombed in their sarcophagi of solidified quicklime. He stopped at a hundred and twenty. There were a lot more. All civilians, judging by their scraps of clothing. Slowly, Pantole backed out, trying to keep the bile where it belonged, and ran down the hill to tell the captain about the massacre.

  ‘I am very grateful, Cameron. Really I am.’ Ross still marvelled at Uli’s new accent: almost all the German inflection had gone, replaced by a mid-Atlantic twang that she had picked up in Canada.

  They were lunching in the small bistro off Kensington High Street that had become something of a canteen for those working at the London Cage. The proprietor, Luigi, was a stagy old showman, all big hugs and flowers for the lady, but there was nothing phony about the food, even if the shortage of cutlery meant that couples were asked to share spoons for dessert.

  ‘Is everything all right, Mister Ross, signorina?’ Luigi asked, and Ross shooed him away, smiling.

  ‘Grateful?’ Ross repeated.

  ‘For getting me back from Canada. For cutting through the red tape so that I could see my father before he passed on.’ Fritz Walter had been brought back to the mainland. He had got no further than Walton Hospital in Liverpool. Ross—or at least his father—had arranged for Uli to be flown up to the US airbase at Burtonwood and driven into the city to be at the dying man’s side. ‘And for getting me something useful to do. Grateful isn’t somehow enough, I know. It’s more than that.’

  ‘But not the same as I feel.’

  Uli pushed her plate away, the coniglio con rosmarino half finished, almost a crime in these parts. ‘Any girl would be flattered that she made such an impression on a man she met for such a short time.’

  Ross laughed. ‘Your mother made the same impression on me.’

  ‘Then perhaps you are in love with my mother?’ she teased.

  ‘Ah, signorina. Is everything all right? Oh dear. If it is not to your liking shall I get you something else? A little pasta, perhaps?’ Luigi looked distraught.

  ‘No, it was lovely. I am just a little under the weather. Really. Some coffee, if you have some, please.’

  ‘Of course.’

  As he left, Ross said: ‘No, it’s not your mother. Can’t you tell? Use your gift.’

  ‘I don’t trust my gift, as you call it. Not any longer.’

  Ross almost dropped his knife. ‘You don’t trust it? It worked perfectly. Don’t start saying that around my father. I’ve convinced him—’

  Uli held his wrist and he was quiet. ‘For what you want, it is fine. But I now know that people can lie for many, many reasons. To spare one’s feelings, for instance. I once thought each expression was clear-cut—love, hate, lies, euphoria. It has taken me a long time to realise that each category has hundreds of subdivisions. And those I can’t read. I don’t know if it would help if I could. You know that some people can hear microtones in music? But those people sometimes hear so much detail that they miss the overall picture. The tune, if you like. Understand?’ Ross nodded, even though he wasn’t sure he did. ‘Yes, I think you think you love me. But it’s not that simple.’

  ‘Is it Erich?’ he blurted.

  ‘Erich?’

  ‘Erich. Yes, your childhood sweetheart. You must remember.’

  Uli shook her head sadly. ‘I don’t even know if Erich is alive.’

  ‘But you hope he is?’

  ‘I don’t wish him dead, if that’s what you mean.’

  Luigi returned with the coffee and Ross asked for the bill. It would be ten shillings for two to fit in with government regulations: anything above that would be made up by a variable ‘service charge’.

  ‘No … I didn’t mean that,’ he said. ‘Not the way it sounded.’

  ‘I know.’ She reached out and held his hand, gently this time. ‘Can you wait? A little longer?’

  Wait for what, exactly? he wondered, but he said: ‘Good God, yes. After all you’ve been through, the last thing you need is me … no. I’m just …’ He tugged an ear nervously. ‘Telling you the truth.’

  Uli blew him the tiniest of kisses. ‘I know.’

  The explosion made them all jump. It was Luigi with a bottle of prosecco, bustling from the kitchen, his face alight, bellowing to his customers. ‘On the BBC,’ he cried. ‘Winston has just stood up in Parliament. Roma has been liberated!’

  Twenty-Seven

  SAN CROCE, ITALY: 1944

  Sergeant Joe Pantole crouched in the side archway of the church, flattening himself against the bullet-scarred door. Ahead of him was a large cobbled square, which led to the stone bridge across the river that ran though the village. On the far side of the bridge was a four-storey Merchant’s House, once the grandest in the village, with its view of the church’s elegant edifice, and Pantole was certain he had seen movement in there.

  He looked across the street to where the rest of his platoon had taken cover. ‘Get me the radioman,’ he shouted.

  ‘Sarge!’ Arms pointed towards the bridge.

  The figure had sprinted from the ruined trattoria on the left of the square and was heading for the crossing, zig-zagging as he went. Pantole raised his carbine and squeezed off half a clip, the shell cases ringing as they hit the ground. The bullets struck the cobbles around the German’s boots, sending up puffs of grit. There was not enough range for a good, clean shot.

  ‘McCabe!’

  The New Jersey boy stepped out from his hiding place, raised his M-1 and took the sprinter out with a precisely aimed shot between the shoulder blades. The German staggered, arms splayed, and fell face down at the entrance to the bridge.

  Pantole flinched instinctively at the familiar harsh noise of the heavy machine gun that replied. The stream of shells lifted McCabe off his feet, ripping out his chest as it did so, leaving his corpse smoking and bloody in the centre of the street. Pantole shut his eyes. No need to call for a medic. The enemy fire had come from the Merchant’s House. He used his binoculars to scan the glassless windows and t
he roof, trying to pinpoint the machine-gun nest.

  Another burst of rapid firing sounded. Spurts of dust kicked up from the wall opposite and he felt a body barrel into him, almost pushing him out into the street. ‘Shit.’ He spun round. ‘Lieutenant. You wanna take it easy.’

  The lieutenant took off his helmet, wiped the sweat from his brow and put his headgear back on. ‘What’s going on, Pantole? The British are biting our ass back there. We should be in those hills by now.’ He pointed ahead to the green and purple foothills that rose in a series of gentle waves beyond the village.

  ‘Yeah, right. You seen McCabe? He always wanted to make it home for Christmas. I think he was kinda hopin’ he’d be alive when he did.’

  The lieutenant glanced across at the body. He’d seen too many dead Americans lying in Italian streets since they’d left Rome for it to register much. If they’d thought the Germans would pick up and run, they’d been wrong. Progress now was no faster than it had been breaking out of Anzio. ‘What do you need?’

  ‘Where are the Shermans?’

  ‘About two miles back.’

  ‘I think we need ’em right here.’

  ‘Is the bridge mined?’

  Pantole shrugged. They’d come across dozens of blown crossings in the past two weeks. ‘I dunno. Can’t see no wires. I’d like an engineer to take a look.’

  ‘OK, sergeant.’ The lieutenant made to move and Pantole grabbed his arm.

  ‘Before you go, we’d better lay down some cover.’

  ‘Right.’

  Pantole signalled to his men and the Merchant’s House quickly began to look pock-marked as rounds smashed into the stonework and through the windows, the bullets’ impacts dancing across the façade, keeping German heads low while the young officer sprinted down the street.

  ‘I don’t think she’s wired,’ said the engineer two hours later, after examining the bridge from several angles.

  ‘If we knock out the machine gun over there, would you walk across to prove it?’ asked Pantole.

  The engineer grinned and tapped his name tag. ‘It doesn’t say infallible, sergeant.’

  ‘Get outta here.’

  Pantole wasted another clip trying to hit the Merchant’s House as the engineer left, and as he stopped firing, he heard the welcome squeak-squeak sound of the tracks of the M4s, the Sherman tanks, edging forward, the noise of their Ford engines reverberating through the narrow streets. He guessed that the Germans heard it too. He hoped they felt sick to their stomachs.

  He made his platoon cover him while he dragged McCabe’s carcass out of the way of the tanks’ tracks, took the dead boy’s dogtags and a few personal effects and shoved them in his tunic. He waved the lead tank on and as it drew level it halted, the lid went up, and Pantole explained the problem to the commander.

  The M4 jerked forward, the turret and its gun rotating towards the house. Almost immediately heavy machine-gun rounds pinged off the tank and Pantole crouched down, aware that a ricochet could be lethal.

  The first shell took out the whole top corner of the four-storey house, collapsing part of the roof. A second thump from the tank’s 75mm gun and the entire top floor was wreathed in smoke. Two more and the façade gave a loud groan and crashed down, bricks bouncing across the house’s forecourt and into the river. There was no more machine-gun fire. Pantole stood up, took a breath, and waved his men out to take cover behind the tank. Now was the time to find out just how fallible that engineer was.

  SS-Obersturmführer Axel Schuller watched as the crouching Americans gathered behind the tank, ready to cross the San Croce bridge. He was several hundred metres above the town, on a ridge in the foothills, and had watched the brave machine gunners pin down the Americans for hours. They’d known that resistance against the tank was hopeless but had carried on anyway. His unit desperately needed more anti-tank weapons. He’d requested a dozen of the Panzerfaust launchers from the supply dumps to the north but none had arrived.

  His SS-Polizei were mixed in with Waffen-SS artillery along the ridge. On either side of him were his three Untersturmführer, Hetz, Kroll and Bauert, who had survived the Rome bombing and helped in the reprisals. Now the house was gone and the trio were waiting for his orders. Bauert had a field telephone clamped to his ear.

  The tank rolled forward at walking speed, making sure that the soldiers behind could keep up. A few of the platoon detached themselves and swung over the balustrade of the bridge. Hetz shouldered his sniper rifle but Schuller raised a hand. Not yet. The Americans were checking for explosives. There were none.

  Halfway across now and Schuller lowered his binoculars. ‘Go,’ he said quietly.

  Bauert repeated the order into the mouthpiece, yelling it three times. Within five seconds the front of the tank peeled open and the turret exploded, popping off like the whistle from a kettle as an 88 round hit it. The mortars that the Germans had spent the previous day so carefully ranging came soon after, exploding around the tank in spheres of shrapnel, slicing through the American GIs. After a minute of this bombardment, the backbone of the bridge shattered and the M4 and dozens of bodies slid slowly into the dancing waters of the river. Hetz fired twice at the couple of Americans who had managed to cross the length of the structure. Both crumpled and lay still.

  It was all over in three hundred seconds. A platoon wiped out, a tank destroyed, the only crossing for twenty kilometres rendered useless.

  ‘We’ll pull back,’ said Schuller.

  ‘Why?’ asked Kroll. ‘We can pick off the next lot who come to fish out their buddies.’

  ‘Next,’ said Schuller, ‘there will be an air strike on this ridge. Then shelling. We’d best relocate.’

  As they scrambled down from their camouflaged hiding place towards the road, the stench of smoke and oil and burned flesh from the village filling their nostrils, a motorcycle courier pulled to a halt beside them. He undid his chinstrap and raised his goggles.

  ‘Obersturmführer Schuller?’

  ‘Yes?’

  A quick salute. ‘I have orders to accompany you and your men to divisional headquarters.’

  That was nearly thirty miles away. In the wrong direction. ‘I’m sorry, but we have a valley to block.’ Schuller pointed into the hills. ‘That way.’

  The messenger handed over a sealed envelope, which Schuller took. He walked away from the group while the rest of his troop emerged from cover and headed for the lorries. He saw the signature first and felt his heart miss a beat. He quickly read the message, refolded it and turned back to the motorcyclist. ‘I’ll be along by seven hundred hours.’

  ‘Sir.’

  As the man kicked the bike back into life, Bauert asked: ‘What is it?’

  ‘We’ve been summoned for a special mission,’ he said with pride.

  ‘Who by?’ asked Hetz.

  Schuller couldn’t keep the grin off his face. ‘SS-Standartenführer Skorzeny.’ The man who had rescued Mussolini. The most daring officer in the SS. It had to be something very special indeed.

  Twenty-Eight

  LONDON: LATE AUGUST 1944

  ‘Can you confirm that you are SS-Obersturmführer Alex Schiller?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Of the SS-Polizei Regiment ‘Bozen’?’

  ‘Yes. Police number two three zero seven six five slash B. Your German is very good.’

  Colonel Ross ignored the compliments. They were in the interrogation room of the London Cage, once a bedchamber, now stripped and used for the preliminary war-crimes questioning. His son sat to his left, behind them was a stenographer, at the door a uniformed sentry. Sometimes there would be an American observer, at other times a Russian whose presence was a psychological threat—many Germans had such a fear of being sent east that they would break if such an action was even implied. Not this one, though. This one would require more than a bit of bluff.

  On the desk in front of Cameron Ross was a box with three lights, which the prisoner could not see. It was called the traffic s
ignal and, at the moment, the light shone green for ‘go’. This was the sixth time they had used it, and so far it had been useful, rather than spectacular, but his father seemed happy enough.

  ‘Do you have any complaints about your treatment so far? You have not been physically or mentally abused in any way?’

  ‘No, I have not. No complaints.’

  ‘We have you as being captured in the hills to the north of Rome by the 8th Army,’ continued the Colonel. A curt nod from Schuller. ‘You were actually stationed in Rome throughout March 1943.’

  ‘I cannot discuss my unit’s movements.’

  The Colonel handed a mimeographed document across. ‘This was recovered from the Macau barracks by occupying troops. Daily Orders for your group on 22 March. You were there, Obersturmführer.’

  Schuller’s face darkened.

  ‘On 23 March the men of the SS-Polizei Regiment ‘Bozen’ were returning to barracks when a bomb placed in a refuse cart exploded.’

  Schuller jerked involuntarily at the memory. The man had been there, all right, the Colonel thought. He seemed surprised that his interrogators knew about the event.

  ‘Several of your men died.’

  ‘Twenty-six,’ corrected Schuller firmly. ‘Sixty wounded.’

  ‘What was your reaction to this?’

  Ross watched him closely. MI19, the organisation in overall charge of PoWs, had discovered that, unlike the British, German officers were not tutored in anti-interrogation techniques. It was assumed at the beginning of the war that the Germans would be the ones taking prisoners—or else they would all fight to the death anyway.

  ‘Obersturmführer, we know what happened next. We need to establish what our American colleagues call a timeline.’

  ‘What happened next was that we cleared up the dead and wounded. We treated the latter and buried the former with honours.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘We went back to our duties.’