A Mortal Terror bbwim-6

by James R Benn

  The shelling stopped abruptly and I was left with ringing in my ears and dirt in my mouth. I looked at Flint, and he was already at the entrance, looking out over the open field.

  “Jesus,” I said as I crawled next to him, neither of us ready to stick our necks out any farther.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Hell must look like this.”

  Trucks were wrecked and overturned. Gasoline burned in bright yellow-red plumes, tires in thick, acrid black smoke. Blackened shell holes were strewn in lines across the field, a half dozen in each group, testimony to the accuracy of the German fire. The ground smoldered, an odd smell drifting up, of burnt vegetation, burning rubber and human flesh. Too many men had been caught out in the field, replacements who hadn’t learned how to react without thinking or asking questions.

  “They had the field zeroed in,” Flint said. He crawled out of the dugout and stood. Other men followed his cue. Danny and Charlie, Father Dare, Einsmann, Bobby K, all safe. “Look at the shell holes. This wasn’t a random barrage. There were several batteries firing, all hitting within this field.”

  It didn’t make sense. We were in the rear, such as it was. The Germans couldn’t have an observation post that could see us, especially behind the roadway embankment. The farmhouse. Carabinieri still surrounded it, and not a single shell had come close. The white sheets still hung on the line.

  “You’re right,” I said. “Just like Le Ferriere. There was a farmhouse there, and a woman hung white sheets on the line. A few minutes later, the shelling hit a column on the road. We were in a blind spot, the Germans shouldn’t have been able to see us.”

  I took off at a run, toward the farmhouse, away from the carnage and the cries of the wounded. I should have stayed and helped, but I told myself I wasn’t a medic. I knew I was a coward. I couldn’t face the torn bodies, the pleas for help, for mercy, for mother. I ran, glad of the excuse, my palm on the butt of my. 45, itching to deliver revenge, or at least blot out the screams for a moment.

  Flint was at my heels, and as we closed in on the farmhouse I recognized Luca directing the Carabinieri, who were holding the farmer’s wife back as she screamed at him, hands outstretched to heaven one second, beating at her breasts the next. A small girl clung to her skirts, and an older one stood behind her, sullen.

  “Dove la radio e? ” Luca demanded.

  “It’s the sheets, isn’t it?” I said, breathless. The other Carabinieri had turned toward us, weapons at the ready, uncertain if we were a threat or a nuisance. Luca acted as if he expected us.

  “Yes, the sheets, the bright white sheets which can be seen at a distance. The signal for the German observers to tune to the frequency assigned to their radio. Fascisti,” he spat.

  “There are others,” I said. “I know of one outside Le Ferriere.”

  “There are many,” Luca said. “And we already have visited that farmhouse. Whenever they have a target to report, the wash goes out. We found out about it yesterday, when a neighbor of one family reported them, suspicious of all the laundry being hung. He said they were filthy pigs and doubted they washed once a month, much less every day.”

  “Have you found their radio?”

  “No, and if we do not, we may have to let them go. It could be a coincidence, after all.”

  “Can we look around?” Flint asked.

  Luca gave commands in Italian and one of his men led us inside, where other Carabinieri were ransacking the joint. In the kitchen, two officers had the farmer seated at his kitchen table. He had a stern face, his thick black hair peppered with gray. He wore a work shirt and vest; his hands were rough and callused. On the wall, a rectangular patch of dark wallpaper showed where Mussolini’s portrait had probably hung until the invasion.

  The Carabinieri were throwing rapid-fire questions at him, to which he shook his head repeatedly. They seemed frustrated. He looked calm and haughty, as if he knew his secret was safe. He was a good actor, but then Mussolini and his bunch were pretty theatrical.

  Flint moved closer, edging the officers out of the way. He reached into his pocket, and the farmer flinched. But he pulled out a pack of cigarettes, and the fellow relaxed. Flint offered one, and lit it for him.

  “ Nome? ” Flint asked, smiling as he clicked his Zippo shut.

  “Frederico Pazzini,” he said, giving a slight bow of his head, before taking a deep drag on his Lucky.

  Before he could exhale, Flint struck him on the cheekbone with the butt of his. 45, hard. Blood spurted onto the table, and Frederico choked on smoke and blood as Flint shook off the two Carabinieri who tried to pull him away. He grabbed Frederico’s arm and held it to the table, the muzzle of his automatic pressed into the palm of one callused hand. He thumbed back the hammer, and spoke one word.

  “Radio?”

  Frederico shook his head, but with fear in his eyes this time. The two officers stepped back, apparently liking what they saw, or at least the fact that someone else was doing it for them. I wondered how far Flint was going to take it. Myself, I was ready to shoot the other hand, images of the dead and wounded still fresh in my mind.

  But Flint didn’t shoot. He released Frederico, smiled, and shrugged his shoulders. Then he pointed outside, and simply said, “Signora Pazzini.” We hadn’t taken two steps when Frederico began bawling and pointed to a cupboard near the sink. The officers got down on their knees and pulled out cans of olive oil, tins of flour, and some large bowls. Then they pried up the floorboards, and lifted out a radio. Under one of the dials was the word Frequenzeinstellung.

  That told us all we needed to know. Flint hit him again, on the other cheekbone, then wiped his. 45 with a dishrag, and left. Under the floor, where the radio had been hidden, was the portrait of Il Duce.

  The Pazzini family was hauled away in a truck, their little girl in tears at the sight of her father’s face. I felt bad for her. I felt bad for the little girls back in the States who’d be crying when they heard their fathers were dead, killed in a field outside Anzio. I felt bad all around.

  “What will happen to them?” I asked Luca as he halfheartedly searched through the house.

  “They will be sent back to Naples. A trial for the father, perhaps a displaced persons camp for the woman and children.”

  “He must have been a die-hard Fascist.”

  “Many of these people are. You know Mussolini settled this area with them. They hate you, and they hate us more for fighting with you.” He tossed a pile of books off a chair and sat.

  “Must be hard,” I said, taking a chair myself.

  “At first I looked forward to this assignment. I thought we would be bringing law and justice here. But instead, now that General Lucas is not moving inland, we have received orders to remove all civilians.”

  “Everyone?”

  “Yes. First we have to track down the remaining Fascist spies and make sure they do not escape. Then all nonessential civilians will be shipped back to Naples. The entire Anzio-Nettuno area, evacuated. For their safety, the general said. Because of the bombing.”

  “He’s right, you know. Especially now that the Germans won’t have observers in our midst. The shelling is not going to be as accurate. Good news for us, bad news for civilians.”

  “Yes, yes. But I did not expect to spend this war putting civilians in camps, for both sides, no less.”

  “It’s not quite the same, Luca.”

  “No, but neither is it combat, where a man can be tested. What shall I tell my children? That I helped run a concentration camp, then worked for a capitano who was corrupt, before evicting thousands of Italians from their homes?”

  “What happened, Luca? On Rab?”

  “You have to understand, when the camp was first set up, it was to house partisan prisoners. Tito’s Yugoslav Partisans fought us and the Germans everywhere. The Nazis and the Fascists treated the Yugoslavian people horribly, shooting civilians without provocation. It quickly descended into bloodthirsty reprisals. The decision was made to remove many of the
local Croats and Slovenes and bring in Italians, to repopulate the area. So the camp expanded, with thousands of local civilians, whole families, brought in. Soon we had over fifteen thousand, living in tents. Many grew sick and starved. When the commander of our battalion complained, saying that this mistreatment only drove more people to support the partisans, conditions improved, somewhat.” He grew quiet, surveying the wreckage of the living room, one of many he must have seen in his strange career.

  “But then?”

  “Then the order came for all Yugoslavian Jews to be interned. About three thousand were brought into the camp.”

  “To be killed?”

  “No, no, not at all. We followed the orders of our government, but the army insisted that the Jews be well treated, not as a hostile force. They weren’t fighting us; they were only peaceful people who’d been swept up in this madness. So they were put in a separate part of the camp, and provided with what comfort we could give. My commander told me it was the only way to preserve a shred of honor. We had to obey the German commands and the orders from Il Duce, but we could at least do so with some dignity.”

  “I didn’t know, Luca.”

  “No, and not all camps were the same. In some, Jews were treated terribly. But on Rab, we did what little we could. We were sick of fighting the partisans and all the hatred. It felt good to do something halfway decent.”

  “What happened?”

  “After the fall of Mussolini, orders came from the government that the Jews were to be released. For their own safety, they could remain in the camp voluntarily under our protection. Several hundred left to join the partisans, and many others were taken to partisan-controlled territory. At this point, we had an uneasy truce with the Yugoslavs, and worried more about our former German allies.”

  “All the Jews got out?” I knew this story wasn’t going to have a happy ending.

  “No. There were two hundred elderly and sick left in the camp. My battalion was ordered back to Italy after the armistice, and I was in charge of a detachment, which was to close the camp. The last of the Slovene and Croat prisoners were released, and I was trying to find medical care for those Jews who could not travel.”

  We sat in silence, and I could hear the low murmur of other Carabinieri in the yard and smell their cigarette smoke as they waited for Luca.

  “There was none. No transport, no fuel. A German column approached the camp, several hundred men in armored vehicles. We were but a few dozen, with nothing more than rifles. I gave the order. We ran. We ran away, leaving two hundred innocents behind. The Germans took them. I heard later they were sent to a camp in Poland. I expect they are all dead, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I do.” I didn’t expect they were dead, I knew it. From Zyklon B, probably in a place called Auschwitz. It had all been hard to believe when Diana told me Kurt Gerstein’s story in Switzerland, which seemed like another world, another time. But here it was, half a continent away. How large was this killing machine, that it would send an armored column to a little island in the Adriatic, and ship two hundred old and sick Jews to Poland? It made no sense. Of course, in a world where people were killed with assembly-line precision, nothing could make sense.

  “Now you know my shame. I did nothing.”

  “Once the Germans came, there was nothing you could do. Except die. And then you wouldn’t have been a witness. Believe me, I’m a cop, and sooner or later the law appreciates a good witness.”

  “Perhaps. When the war is over, do you think anyone will care? The graveyards will be full. Who will want to hear the truth? Who will care?”

  “The dead,” I said. I left Luca in the room staring at the wall. It wasn’t my job to absolve him. It wasn’t my job to explain that the methodical extermination of Jews and other undesirables could not be stopped by a single Carabiniere, that perhaps it was a small blessing that it was at least remembered. I began to feel the fervor with which Diana had told the story, her need to reveal the secret that burdened her.

  I walked back to where the platoon was camped. Graves Registration wandered the field, carrying sacks of mattress covers, stacking the dead like cordwood. Medics treated the lightly wounded as the last of the ambulances trundled off over uneven ground to Hell’s Half Acre. The wind stiffened and I felt a cold chill rising from the damp earth.

  “Billy, you won’t believe this,” Danny said as I approached the group. “The meat stew made it. It’s still warm. Have some, it’s not bad.” Danny had indeed passed over a threshold. On a field littered with the dead and injured, he still had his appetite, and celebrated what passed for the luck of the Irish at war: an intact pot of hot stew.

  Father Dare ladled some into my mess tin, and I sat on a crate next to Danny. Everyone gathered around the pot and its feeble warmth. Charlie passed a bottle of wine, and it tasted good, sharp on my tongue, warm in my stomach. The living have to take what pleasures they can, from each other and whatever comes their way.

  Phil Einsmann had a newspaper and was sharing pages around. “Only two weeks old,” he said. “The Chicago Tribune.”

  “Says here Charlie Chaplin is demanding a Second Front now,” Flint read.

  “They can give him this one,” Charlie said, and everyone laughed. Except him. He was serious.

  “Coal miners are on strike for more money and decent working conditions,” Danny read from another section. “Sure feel bad for them, burrowing underground and all.” That got a laugh, and I drank some more wine, happy to be with Danny, happy to be alive.

  I flipped through the paper as it was passed around. Nightclub owners in Miami were protesting having to close at midnight to conserve electricity. Business was good. In Michigan, thirteen legislators were arrested on bribery and corruption charges. Business was good there too, until you got caught.

  I walked over to Einsmann, and gave him back the paper. “Phil, what do you know about what the Nazis are doing to the Jews?”

  “What everybody knows, I guess. They take their property, send them to camps, shoot a lot of them. Why?”

  “You ought to talk to Luca Amatori, a lieutenant with the Carabinieri here. He knows what went on in one of the Italian concentration camps.”

  “No thanks. Not worth my time. The Italians are our allies now. No one wants to air dirty laundry, not when we need them fighting the Germans.”

  “You’ve been told that?”

  “Not in so many words. But you get the sense of things after enough stories have been squashed. Italian concentration camps? Not what the reading public wants to hear about.”

  “Ask Luca about clean laundry then. Might be worth your time.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “You’re the reporter, you find out,” I said as I got up and went back to my seat. Maybe if he got the story about the spies from Luca, he’d ask him about the camp. Maybe not. Maybe Einsmann was busy planning his next murder. Maybe not. Maybe I’d live to see the dawn.

  We drank some more. Guys smoked and chatted. No one was trying to kill us. We had warm food and good wine, and deep holes to jump into. Anything beyond those immediate needs was insignificant.

  “You sure keep that weapon mighty clean, Padre,” Flint said as he opened a letter. Father Dare had his automatic in pieces, cleaning each with a toothbrush.

  “Cleanliness is next to Godliness, they say. Letter from home?”

  “Yeah,” Flint said. “Mail truck had this for me, and a couple for Louie and Rusty. That’s it. Sorry, fellas.” He looked around at the others, then scanned the single page, before tucking the letter back in the envelope and stowing it away. He shook a cigarette loose from a crumpled pack. “Anyone got a light?”

  “I never saw a padre carry a pistol,” Bobby K said, tossing Flint a lighter while eyeing Father Dare.

  “There’s a first time for everything, son,” Father Dare said, as he rubbed gun oil on the metal. He cleaned the pieces slowly, handling each like holy relics. When he had it all put back together, he held it between
his palms, as if it gave off warmth. “Especially at war, there are many first times.”

  He sounded weary, and I wondered if the pistol was a temptation, a way out for a man who, in his mind, had failed at whatever good he had tried to do. Or did he worship the weapon, aware of the power it bestowed, so much more immediate than penance? Or maybe the vino had gone to my head.

  Einsmann took out his. 45 and began cleaning it as well. He had a little trouble taking it apart, not being as adept as Father Dare.

  “Geez,” Bobby K said. “Watch out, you could shoot someone with that thing.” Everybody thought that was hilarious.

  “Flint,” a captain called as his jeep pulled up. “Your replacements never made it out of the truck. Take a vehicle down to the docks and see what you can find.” He scribbled out an order and gave it to Flint.

  “Right now, sir?”

  “Right now. They won’t last long.” With that, he was off.

  “Okay, let’s see what we can find. Danny, you come with me. We’ll show these new boys it doesn’t take long to become a grizzled veteran. Billy, sorry, but duty calls. Good luck back in Naples.” Flint smiled, shook my hand, and walked away, giving Danny and me a minute.

  “Be careful,” I said, wishing I could take Danny with me.

  “I will be. I’m in good hands, Billy. And remember, you were the one who taught me how to fight.” We shook hands, even though I wanted to give him a bear hug, which would have embarrassed him. I stopped myself from reminding him that knowing how to bob and weave in the ring was not going to help at Anzio.