Death or Glory III

by Michael Asher

  ‘Smokescreen,’ he yelled. ‘They’re on their way.’

  28

  It took them half an hour to manhandle the field-gun into the pit: Wallace glowered at Jizzard in silence. His calf muscle stung like poison: it felt as though he’d got an iron manacle tightened around it. The dressing was drenched in blood, but at least the bleeding had stopped.

  His lips were still sore from the whack Jizzard had given him: he wouldn’t forget an old score – not even if Jizzard had been driving the carrier that had whisked them out of the killing zone, not even if he’d brought back this wonderful gun. Wallace couldn’t fathom why they’d come back: he half suspected more hanky-panky: he was watching Jizzard like a hawk.

  Cutler attached the field telephone: Jizzard and Wallace unloaded the twenty-one 57mm shells from the carrier, stacked them by the gun in neat piles. Cutler twirled the phone handle, spoke into the receiver, laid it back in its cradle. ‘You’re all set up. Be good.’

  He went off to the carrier: Wallace heard her engine treadle. The noise receded: they lit cigarettes, ogled piles of shells. Wallace stubbed out his fag, spat in the sand. ‘Twenty-one ain’t goin’ to get us far. Pity yer couldn’t ’ave found a few more.’

  Jizzard screwed up his parboiled face, stomped his fagend. He gave Wallace a bulge-eyed look.

  ‘Stow it, Wallace. I laid my arse on the line to come back here for the likes of you.’

  ‘Oh yeah? Well, the likes of me could o’ bloody done without the likes of you, you ratfaced piece of shit …’

  Before he’d even realized what he was doing, Wallace had thrown his massive bulk on the Scotsman, knocked him off his haunches, closed his pansized hands round the thick neck. He might have done real damage, but just then a probing sniper-round hit the parapet and yowled off with an adenoidal sigh: it passed so close to Wallace’s ear he felt its wind, buried itself in a sandbag with a low phut.

  Wallace let go of Jizzard, shuffled backwards. For a second, the Scotsman lay glued to the spot, shaking like a grass-stalk, his face sapped of colour, his eyes millstone-sized.

  ‘You’re flamin’ scared to death, ain’t yer?’ Wallace said.

  Jizzard’s face collapsed. He shifted back, slumped against the sandbagged wall, wiped spittle off his mouth with an unsteady hand. His eyes glimmered, his lips trembled: a muscle twitched under his jaw. Wallace guessed he was on the verge of breaking down.

  ‘Ye’ve never been scared in ye life, have ye, big man? Born brave you was …’

  ‘Don’t talk soft, mate. Anyone tells you he ain’t scared is lyin’. You know what they say: in any dingdong half the men is scared stiff, and the other half is terrified.’

  It was a weak attempt at a joke, but Jizzard didn’t take the bait. ‘I know I’m no gonny make it.’

  Wallace felt a flush: cold fingers touched his spine. Despite himself, despite everything, he felt a twinge of pity. Jizzard had lost all pretence: the cocksureness had all drained out of him. He’d forced himself into the situation he’d avoided all his life, and now there was nothing left of him but the reality of his own fear.

  ‘Every bugger’s shit-scared,’ Wallace said. ‘Only some shows it more than others. Some runs away, but some fights.’

  Jizzard raised himself into a crouch. ‘Not me. I’m off.’

  ‘No you ain’t, mate. You and me are the only ones as can fire this gun: I need you here.’

  ‘I’m no stayin’, I tell ye, I’m –’

  He was cut off by a chorus of sharp smacks: Kraut mortars firing in series. Wallace heard the missiles snatch air, heard the feral moan as they fell, heard them hit deck in staggered plumps. Neither of them moved. Jizzard’s eyes bugged: Wallace popped sweat. He crawled to the machine-gun emplacement, peered over, clocked a stain of smoke spreading across the plain in roils. ‘They’re comin’,’ he spat.

  The telephone trilled. Wallace reached for the receiver, heard Caine’s voice, clear but remote.

  ‘Jerry’s advancing in force. Two AFVs supporting company-strength assault. One of them’s heading straight towards the gap.’

  ‘We’ll have her, skipper.’

  ‘Good. We’ll keep the footsloggers off you from up here.’

  Wallace put the phone down: Jizzard cowered against sandbags. ‘Fritz is here,’ the big man told him. ‘Now you’ve got two choices. You can either pick up one of them flamin’ shells and ram it into the flamin’ breech, or you can stay where you are and wait till the Krauts come over the flamin’ top. Only make up yer mind quick ’cos we ain’t got all flamin’ day.’

  Wallace set the Bren on its bipod on top of sandbags in the emplacement: he laid the haversack of magazines next to it, with the wallet of spare parts. Then he crouched against the six-pounder’s guntrail, drew out his sawnoff, made sure he had cartridges up both spouts. He slid it back into its home-made holster, pulled out his Colt .45, checked that it was ready to fire. He took a breath, opened the field-gun’s breech. Strands of smoke drifted over the pit: mortar bombs burst around them with vacant pops like paper bags. A swell of noise surged: Squareheads jabbered, rifles clacked, sub-machine pistols zipped, volleys furrowed air in angry bow-waves: slugs yawed off stones with doppler skreaks; rockchips pitched, dirtpowder blew.

  Jizzard dipped down at Wallace’s elbow, a slim 57mm shell gripped in trembling hands. Wallace cocked a grim eye at it. ‘That armour-piercin’?’

  Jizzard nodded, swung the shell into the bore. Wallace slammed the breech, let his big paw linger on the firing handle. He peered through the sights. The smoke was clearing: he could see most of the way across the plain – fieldgrey bodies with Kaiser helmets were skirmishing towards the gap in sections and platoons, advancing with methodical purpose, dropping, crawling, firing, popping up, running, zigzagging in all directions. Wallace concentrated on the armoured car leading the attack: another six-wheeler with a turret-mounted cannon. She was about four hundred yards off, and her gun was tilted up towards the blockhouse: as Wallace watched, she fired a stab of ochre flame. He heard the croooommmppp, felt the vibration. His fingers itched on the firing handle. ‘Now,’ he said to himself. ‘Now.’

  He didn’t fire, though. Instead, he let the vehicle trundle forward. I can’t afford to muck this one up. The AFV crew hasn’t clocked the gun, yet. Once I fire, they’ll know it’s here. There won’t be a second chance.

  He traversed the gunbarrel slightly, depressed the elevation a touch. He felt the firing handle under his fingers: the only thing that was real now. Battlesounds faded: he didn’t hear the screams or bulletwails. Every tendon in his body drew bowstring taut, every sense engaged: it was the old feeling he’d known as an artilleryman – that sense of power, as if you were about to do something momentous, to make a big noise that no one would forget. His eyes were riveted on the AFV’s turret as it moved back towards him: a red light flashed behind his eyes. Fire. He tugged the handle: the shell triphammered, the gun rocked on its carriage: the barrel spewed flame. Wallace heard the shell scrape air like an untuned violin, saw it steamtrail, skim the turret, saw the magma eruption as the round thunked the surface thirty yards on.

  His heart sank: sweat ran down his face. Fuckin’ missed.

  ‘Fuckin’ hell,’ Jizzard said.

  Wallace whamped the breech open, let the smoking shellcase tumble. ‘Lamp one in there. Now.’

  Jizzard was white-gilled: his eyes popped: he moved like a man in a dream. He grabbed a shell, slid it into the bore. Wallace clunked the breech, narrowly missed Jizzard’s fingers. He took a deep breath, held it, got the AFV in his sights, watched her dome traverse, knew they’d been spotted. This is it: last chance. The turret was a fraction out of line when Wallace pulled iron. The gun whoooooompped, the barrel pitched, the shell droned, pierced the AFV’s turret. Wallace felt the impact, saw the wagon teeter, saw downdraughts of flame whoosh from her insides. He clocked a charred Hun wriggle out of the burning cocoon just as there was another blitz of fire and a surf of smoke: the AFV went up lik
e a haystack: the Hun flew aloft on blazing shards.

  Caine saw the AFV disintegrate, blinked in the dazzling tinfoil glare. He watched Hun footmen scatter, saw them go to ground, saw them roll, fire, pop up, trot forward in duck-and-drake pairs. He lined up the Vickers, hoicked iron, blatted a firespurt, saw a Jerry scoop air with an open hand, saw another go down like a wet sack. Cutler whocked off a mortar bomb from the middle sangar: Caine heard its undertone hiss, saw it strike earth, turf up brown chiffon smudges, saw Germans tenpinned. In the third sangar, on Cutler’s right, Copeland stopped firing the machine-gun, started loosing aimed shots with his sniper’s rifle. Trubman, still on the roof, ranged his Browning at the bridge, etched squalls of fire across the haze.

  The Totenkopf were a tide of fieldgrey advancing on a ragged front, coming on under a curve of tracer rounds that floated over their heads, spatted along the blockhouse wall like stinging flies. The Jerries sloped forward in loose formation, dropping, rolling, welting fire, never presenting a target for more than a few seconds.

  Caine stuck his head up: slugs whistled and crooned, hived off sharp bats of stone around him. He focussed on the Jerries nearest the gunpit, clocked a squad creeping forward with stick-grenades. The six-pounder lofted fire: a high-explosive shell scammered, light burned, a fireball ballooned up in a shuddering maelstrom: flying iron took off a grenadier’s legs, sent others squirming. Caine followed through with the machine-gun, gusted lead, blattablattablattablat, saw his tracer camber in, saw his rounds sabre the enemy down.

  He heard a cannoncrack from his right: a shell ploughed a hot furrow right-angled across his arc of fire. It hit the rock wall behind the gunpit in a burst of whitehot slivers and oilrag smoke. He had almost forgotten the second AFV, riding shotgun on the Hun’s right flank. She was now traversing left not far from the foot of the cliff: she’d spotted the field-gun and was homing in to take it out. ‘Knock out that armour,’ Caine brayed.

  Cutler laid the mortar tube aside, crouched on one knee. Quinnell picked up the rocket-launcher with both hands, kneewalked over to Cutler, set the weapon on his shoulder. ‘OK,’ Cutler winced. ‘Load her up.’

  There was one rocket left. ‘Which one do you want?’ Quinnell joked.

  ‘Gimme the lucky one.’

  Quinnell armed the rocket, lifted it gently, knelt down behind Cutler, eased the bomb into the tube, heard it click home. He edged himself out of the backblast path, threw his arms round Cutler’s torso to steady him. ‘No good,’ Cutler objected. ‘I’m going to have to stick my neck out for this one.’

  ‘Ah, shame, and here’s me thinking you needed a cuddle.’

  ‘There’ll be plenty of time for shenanigans later.’

  Cutler leaned out over the sandbags, angled the bazooka’s snout low, lined up the sights against the AFV’s balloon wheels. It was always hard to hit a moving target, even a big one, even at close range: Cutler knew he’d only have one go. He swung the tube, aimed ahead of the armoured car’s hull, drew a tight breath, took the pressure. Just as he squeezed iron, he felt a stabbing pain: a Jerry round snapped through his right hand, drilled into the base of his left thumb, wazzed off and scored a furrow across Quinnell’s cap-comforter. The shriek of the bazooka drowned Cutler’s yell: the backblast whooomped, the rocket pinched air, slewed across the AFV’s deck with the scranch of steel on steel, exploded ten yards away with a concussion that knocked two Jerry soldiers off their feet.

  More enemy rounds chewed stone, lashed sandbags: Cutler dropped the bazooka, staggered back, sat down heavily, stared at the burnt and bloody wrecks of his hands. ‘Shit. Shit. Shit.’

  Quinnell scrabbled at his cap-comforter, shuftied it, saw that the round had missed him by a hair’s breadth: his heart banged. He forced himself to peek over the parapet, saw the six-wheeler careering through dust, saw her drum another shell at the gunpit, heard it reave air, heard it blat apart. For a second he wondered if he should drop a mortar bomb on her. No, she’s too close. He was about to go to Cutler’s aid when a Bren-gun carrier rattled around the butte, reeled into the AFV’s path. He shook his head in amazement. Am I seeing this? Caine, Copeland and Trubman were still shooting: Jizzard and Wallace hadn’t left the gunpit. Who the bleeding heck is that?

  Shorty Grimshaw was hanging on to the wheel, throttling the carrier straight at the armoured car. When he’d crawled out of Quinnell’s makeshift aid-post in the blockhouse minutes before, unnoticed by the others, his only idea had been to get back into the fight. He’d lost a lot of blood: he was lucky to have lasted this long. For a while he’d lain on the stretcher, half comatose. When he’d come round, heard the rickticktick of machine-guns, heard the whine of mortars, he’d ached to be back in the thick of it. He was ratshit, but Quinnell had dosed him with morphia, and his arse felt like dead flesh. If he’d just crawled out into the yard and opened up, Caine would have made him go back, and he wasn’t going to die in bed. Not with a fight going on.

  He’d lurched through the tunnel, steadied himself against the wall, found the Bren-carrier unattended. Can I drive her? Is the Pope a Catholic? I can do anything: I’m SAS, my son. How does that poem go, the one they’re always recitin’ to us in training? ‘If you can force your heart, and nerve and sinew, to serve their turn long after they are gone, and carry on when there is nothing in you, except the will, that says to you, “Hold on” …’

  He’d forgotten the rest, but it didn’t matter: he was holding on, like the poem said. As he’d dragged himself into the carrier, he’d noticed that somebody had set up a daisy-chain of grenades in the back – seven or eight No. 36s attached to a string. Grunting with effort, twisting his shoulders, he’d reached for the string, looped it round his wrist. All he’d have to do was yank it and the grenades would be armed.

  He hadn’t clocked the Hun AFV until he’d swerved round the end of the rock face: she was haring straight at him, and he suddenly knew what he had to do. Alfie charging Jerry machine-gun nests on the Somme, bayonet fixed: Go for ’em. Kill the bastards.

  His head swam, his senses strobed: I’m behind the wheel of a Bren-gun carrier. A pulse of terror swept through him. What am I doing? This is fucking insane. He was oscillating through awareness, one moment hearing the roars and shrieks, the cradlesong of rifle-shots, the palpitation of ordnance, the expletive shrill of machine-guns: the next he was floating through silence. He saw the AFV’s turret swing slow, oh so fucking slow, saw the gunbore fix on him like an evil eye. Kiss my arse, Kraut bastard. He gave the carrier full head, saw the blurt of smoke as the Jerry cannon ramped, heard the shell chigger. Missed me. Couldn’t hit a whale in a fucking duckpond.

  She was a hundred yards away and closing: the carrier’s tracks clappered, the engine honed: Grimshaw choked, felt blood gush from his mouth. He took in the AFV with her iron plates and angles, felt his strength wilt, clutched the wheel with rigid fingers. If you can fill the unforgiving minute, with sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, then yours is the earth, and everything that’s in it, and what is more, you’ll be SAS, my son.

  The AFV loomed above him like a battle-cruiser. Grimshaw let go the wheel, yanked the daisy-chain. Gotcher, he crowed.

  29

  Wallace and Jizzard loaded, fired, covered their ears, felt the barrel jump, pitched shells, dropped geysers of flame and shrapnel among the advancing Hun. An AFV shell mushed into the rock wall behind them with a baaarowwwwmmm: they ate raw cordite, snuffled hot dust. Wallace took a dekko through the sights just in time to see the Bren-carrier carambole into the Hun ironside: his jaw dropped. He heard metal chomp, saw the carrier detonate, saw the outrageous fishtail of light, saw whorling lava swallow up both wagons with a vrooooooosshshshh that seemed dim and distant to his shelldeafened ears. ‘Bleedin’ hell,’ he said.

  Totenkopf infantry pepperpotted nearer: rounds devoured air, twanged off the gunshield. Should of brought my friggin’ tinlid. He snatched a shell from Jizzard, rammed it up the breech, jobbed a porkchop finger at the Bren. ‘Get behind th
at, mate. They’re getting’ too close.’ What’re they playin’ at up there? What happened to the coverin’ fire?

  Wallace banged the breech shut, peeked through the sights. Jizzard monkeywalked to the Bren: he was pale, his eyes as wide as a weasel’s. He blew his cheeks, chewed his tongue, braced the weapon, yocked the handle. He saw two Squareheads sweeping at the pit from an oblique angle, ahead of the Totenkopf point platoon: a porky trooper with a Schmeisser, a lanky one with a rifle, bayonet fixed. They worked with practised ease: one crisscrossed, the other fell prone, yomped rounds. Jizzard saw Porky drop, saw Lanky leap up: he wrenched iron, plumped a burst with both eyes wide. The Bren bucked, firegas popped, ballfire splittered. Jizzard saw Lanky’s fieldgrey tunic split, glimpsed the pattern of gules he’d painted across it, saw the Jerry timber. He saw Porky’s coalscuttle bob up five yards away, ripped rounds through it. His finger seemed to be stuck on the trigger for an eternity before the helmet went still.

  Krauts screamed towards him from all sides – scores of fieldgrey ghosts, too many to count. The Bren kept stomping rounds, firing as if by its own volition, switching left and right without his guidance. He wasn’t aiming: the weapon was choosing his targets. He felt his finger tense and release as if the gun were compelling it, saw tracer whip out red razorwires, saw Jerries lashed down, saw limbs cleaved, saw faces demolished: it was as if he was watching it all from outside.

  The field-gun whommfffed, brought him back to earth: he realized he’d been shooting for only a few minutes. He felt shellrush, felt the round skew past on a vapourtrail. He didn’t have time to look where it landed, though: three Squareheads were hurtling out of the roil, not ten yards distant, crowing like roosters. Jizzard clocked bayonets, saw faces, black with dirt and powder, distorted into deathwatch grins. These Krauts had given up skirmishing, were launching a frontal charge. More Jerries moved behind them through the dusteddies – shadowmen, cloaked with haze. Where’s the covering fire? Where’s the bloody covering fire?