Chapter Three
They moved off in sub-sections, Caine on point, patrolled across the headland in file, in full battle-order, carrying rucksacks. It was getting light: the sun was a burnished sprawl along a wave of magenta mist, forging a bright path across the fish-coloured sea, bleaching darkness out of the sky, lighting up whale-humps of cloud with undersides of bleeding fire.
It was rolling land: hills and ridges, low clefts filled with shadowy woods, a quilt of penny-packet fields, orchards, olive groves, grapevines in tight ranks, thickets of bramble-scrub and pawpaw cactus, ragged hedgerows around farmsteads that looked like white shoe-boxes in the new light.
There was no sign of the Hun: all the action seemed to be happening around Termoli to the south of them – visible as a huddle of roofs and church-towers, peeking over a high sea-wall on the beach. They could see dark blobs on the landscape – commandos skirmishing towards the town – could hear the crackle of small-arms, the occasional deeper bomp of ordnance, could make out gashes of fire, blue smoke in slowly rising spires.
The fields were soggy from the rain: they followed lanes and cart-tracks, moving five yards apart, weapons at the ready. They had two Brens with them, but most of the lads had Mi carbines: Caine had his trusty Tommy-gun, Copeland the SMLE .303 sniper-rifle that not even his promotion to full looey had parted him from.
The track led into a wood of Aleppo pines, umbrella shapes that dappled the way ahead with light in paisley patterns. They’d only been in its shade a few minutes when Caine heard the rumble of motors. He hopped behind a tree, scanned the track with his binos: at the other end of the wood, a good half-mile away, a small convoy was moving towards them at a snail’s pace. Caine leaned out of cover, signalled enemy approaching. He checked to see that his whole section had melted into the trees on both sides of the road. No further order was needed: the boys would wait for his shot, then let hellfire rip.
He squinted over his sights: saw an odd-looking vehicle leading the convoy. It was the kind of weird hybrid contraption only the Jerries could have come up with: an open trolley with tank-type tracks and a motorcycle front wheel hauling a field-gun on a wheeled carriage. It was the first time Caine had seen one of these trolley things close up, but it gave him a start. The only troops who had them were the Jerry Parachute Division – the same hard-hitters who’d done the famous drop on Crete. That meant they were up against the best.
Behind the half-track came two soft-skin lorries in camouflage trim, trundling slightly ahead of a German infantry platoon in field-grey tunics and coalscuttle helmets carrying sub-machine guns and rifles. They looked alert, but were tabbing so slowly it might have been a funeral march.
Caine proned out in a firing-position, eased the butt of his trench-sweeper into his shoulder: he fixed his bayonet to the lug, slipped off the safety, gripped the forward stock. He sighted up on the half-track: there were two Germans riding her, one clutching the handlebars, the other peering over his back. Caine had that strange sense he sometimes got before a contact – that it was all unreal, a kind of performance, a show – people acting out roles like extras in a film, going through the motions, following instructions from a hidden director. He knew it was real, though: the journeys of all their lives had brought them here to this point, on this day, and in a few moments some of them – Krauts or Tommies, or both – were going to be dead.
The half-track seemed to approach with painful slowness, pulling the field-gun after her: Caine touched steel, held his breath, went cotton-mouthed: his heart banged. The vehicle crawled into effective range: the Krauts on board had the casual watchfulness of veterans: the driver had a cigarette dangling from his lower lip.
Caine let her move a little further: he heard her flywheels rattle, the slap of her tracks, the sewing-machine stitch of her motor. She was only twenty yards away when he took first pressure. Fifteen. Ten. He aimed at the driver with both eyes wide, pulled steel, felt the Tommy-gun jump, felt its muzzle blitz fire, felt it dole out taps that sounded like his heartbeat, lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub.
His rounds scored red groove-lines across the Jerry’s chest, gouged open his throat, tore out a cheek: he saw shock on the man’s face, saw his eyes flare, saw him pitch across the handlebars. He hammered another burst, snagged the passenger’s neck, ripped open his gullet, saw him go airborne spraying spats of arterial blood. He crumped into the road, lay there with his knees up, twitching. The half-track slewed, bulldozed a tree, tipped up, hurled the driver out. The gun-carriage turned on its side. Copeland fired a rifle-grenade: Caine heard it pop, saw it hit the field-gun, saw it prang up with an ear-budding thwoooommmmppppp in a dark vortex of fumes and shredded steel.
The lorries screeched into reverse: Caine could see the faces of their crews through the windscreens. Behind them, Jerry footsloggers flopped down in the road: some scuttled for the trees. Schmeissers razzled, rifles racked: hot midges honed past Caine’s ears. From his right, Bren-guns bludgeoned: tracer-lines flicked out like gecko-tongues. A dozen carbines crackled, cross-hatched wefts of fire: bullets sizzed, sprayed dirt-spouts, tweetered off stones.
The three-inch mortar dumpered: Caine saw the big shell hustle a smoke-parabola, saw it hit the cab of the first lorry, expand in a shimmering miasma, rupture into a douche of fire-vapour, saw charbroiled bodies tumble out of the flaming core. The second truck was reversing erratically: Caine’s mortar-crew pitched another shell. Caine heard the bomb chafe air, heard the pwwwuummmfffffff as it belted home.
Field-grey figures were advancing through the trees towards him, led by a big Feldwebel with a fighting-bull’s face, making frantic hand-signals from point position. Caine saw him crouch ready to skirmish. He swivelled his muzzle: Cope fired first, over his shoulder, bummffff, bummffff, bummffff. Caine heard his slugs punch flesh, clocked rose mandalas splatter field-grey, saw the big Hun stagger: bloody divots dribbled from his gut.
Caine saw another Kraut toss a grenade, ducked, felt the kick, saw smoke-rags blow, felt shrapnel tunk his tin-hat. A giant, ash-faced Jerry loomed over him out of the smoke, eyes wide as a troll’s, a gleaming blade on the end of his weapon. The rifle went blampppphhh: Caine felt the lam of heat on his face, scrambled to his knees. He lunged up just as the Jerry jumped him, felt his bayonet pivot into the man’s groin, felt the Jerry’s own momentum drive it in.
The soldier’s body hit him like a bag of bricks. He reeled under the weight, let go his Tommy-gun, glimpsed glistening cheekbones, murky eyes, rictus-twisted mouth above the chinstrap. He punched the Jerry’s face, knocked him sideways, wrenched his weapon out, saw blood spritz, felt warm slavers on his hands and up his sleeves. The Hun jerked: his eyes rolled. Caine stuck the bayonet into his guts, kept sticking him till he lay still.
Two Jerries were haring towards him along the track, hefting rifles with bayonets fixed. Caine hardballed a burst, saw one keel over with his belly hot-pokered, saw the other stagger, saw his hip hose crimson squidges, saw his Kaiser helmet demolished by a long tantivvy from a Bren-gun behind him, saw the Kraut’s head flacked to rissoles, smelt burnt hair, sour cordite, poached flesh.
He looked up, panting, saw Slocum advancing down the track, a squat little cannon-ball on legs, with his Bren slung from the shoulder: Wade towered over him, loping along with his carbine held loosely at the hip. Jerry dead lay around the blazing vehicles: wounded writhed and groaned. A dead German suddenly jumped to his feet and dashed for the bushes: Wade shot him from the hip without breaking stride, hit him spang between the shoulder-blades, brought him crashing down. Slocum squeezed iron, rat-tat-tatted rounds, fire-hosed the bushes, just to make sure.
Chapter Four
The lorries were exhaling curdles of black smoke, crackling with acrid fire. Caine counted twelve Jerry dead – not bad for their first action. Cope called him over to look at the Feldwebel he’d shot: the long body was lolling in the trees, field-grey tunic splotched with crimson, mouth open, dead eyes staring at the sky. Copeland showed Caine the bronze para win
gs on the man’s chest, the white-and-gold band on his sleeve. ‘That’s a commemoration band for the Jerry drop on Crete in ’41, he said. ‘Luftwaffe Airborne Division. I knew it the minute I clocked that Kettenkrad.’
‘Ketta – what?’
Copeland nodded at the blackened skeleton of the motorcycle-thing.
‘Kettenkrad special-purpose vehicle. Used by airborne troops.’
Smith shuffled up to report that a trooper from another sub-section had taken a wound in the shoulder: Caine was relieved that it was the extent of their casualties. ‘We were lucky, skipper,’ the medic said. ‘If Billy Hill, the bookmaker, had been here, he’d have given it a hundred to one against.’
‘Let’s hope it stays that way.’
He left a sub-section and the mortar-crew to secure the wood, led the rest on through the trees. He was still feeling the adrenalin-burn: his battledress was soaked in Kraut blood. The success of their first contact made him buoyant, though: without the wireless he had no way of finding out how the rest of the squadron was doing, but if it was all like this, Termoli would be a pushover.
He halted the section near the edge of the wood, slunk forward for a recce, found a patch of scrub, scanned the landscape with his binos. The bridge was less than half a mile away – a stone hunchback spanning the narrow river. An image of the el-Fayya bridge popped into his head: that was where where he’d last seen Trubman and Wallace. This Itie bridge wasn’t on that scale, though: it couldn’t have been more than ten yards across. The road from the forest sloped down to it through green pastures dotted with wild olives, sparse bushes, yellow flowers: the fields were intersected by a network of dykes. On the far side of the bridge stood a dilapidated farmhouse of butter-coloured stucco in a sprawl of outbuildings and a crescent of poplars and prickly pear. He watched the buildings for a while.
He waved the section forward: they moved into the open, spread out five yards apart, with one Bren on the flanks, the other at the rear. Every twenty yards or so Caine went down on one knee, eased the strap of his rucksack, swept the area. The sun was a gold yolk squashed behind long skeins of cloud that layered the sky with gossamer draperies: far to his right, the sea lay like grey lead under glittering highlights of silver and pearl. It was eerily quiet: no birdsong, no cicadas, no buzzing bees. There was no movement anywhere, yet the day seemed pregnant with it.
‘Skipper!’
Caine dekkoed over his shoulder, saw Lance-Corporal Sam Smith sliding towards him, bent forward: his big rucksack sat on his back like a turtle-shell. Smith crouched beside him, cradled his carbine, his Boy’s Brigade features flushed.
‘I thought I saw something move down there.’
Caine scanned the farm again, examined every window, every shutter, every decaying niche. He didn’t see anything, but something felt wrong. This bridge was a strategic point: it seemed unlikely that the Jerries wouldn’t defend it. There was a culvert in front of them, a dyke on both sides of the road; otherwise, hardly any cover at all.
He squinted backwards: Copeland was surveying the landscape through his telescopic sights. To his rear, the section was stretched out over fifty yards.
‘Deploy the men in that ditch,’ he told Cope. ‘Me and Sam are going to advance to the bridge for a close recce.’
‘Right. Watch it, though, skipper. It’s wide open.’
Caine nodded, made a fist to bring his Bren group in. Slocum and Wade stalked up the middle of the track, set up the light machine-gun on the culvert, ready to cover the rest of the crew as they deployed in the dyke.
Once the boys had started moving in, Caine rose to his feet, hefted his Thompson in both hands. They were going straight down the road: he didn’t like it, but there was no other choice. He nodded at Smith. ‘Come on,’ he said.
The orderly eased himself up, took a few paces forward. Caine shuftied the bridge, the riverbank, the farm buildings. For a fleeting instant, he caught the ghost of a movement.
‘Hang on,’ he said. ‘I . . .’
Smith had half turned to him when there was a blinding flash from the direction of the bridge: a bright ball of flame expanding. The deep-throat grump of a Kraut gun came only a split second before the shell pierced air, chomped the road in front of them with an ear-splitting barrrooooommffff, raked them with a foam of earth, smoke, twisted iron. Caine ducked: shrapnel twanged his helmet. He saw Smith’s lower jaw knocked off by a whirling hunk of hot metal bigger than his hand, saw the gush of blood, teeth, bone jetsam, saw Smith hurled back, felt bone-shards stab his cheek, felt warm blood and tissue splatter his face.
Before Smith had even hit the deck, a Spandau tattooed out rick-tick-tick-tick-tick – orange tracer whizzed in like a sunflash, struck the frame of Caine’s rucksack, spun him round. He fell flat on the track, saw men roll and scatter, saw a trooper behind him take the brunt of the burst, saw his chest wrenched apart in crimson tapes, saw another hit by a round smack between the eyes, saw his brains flushed out the back of his head in sticky strings.
Men piled into the dyke helter-skelter: Spandau bullets dopplered and shrieked, tracer seeded patterns, fireballs skittered air. The Jerry field-gun stonked again: a small-calibre shell yawed over them with a shrill whinny, hit the track behind Caine in horns of fire: a forest of dust-splashes sprouted along the road in front of him. Copeland fired a round, cocked, yelled: ‘Watch my tracer!’ So calm and collected, he’d already pinpointed the target. He whaled a clip of .303 bullets, almost stove in Caine’s eardrums: blammm, blammm, blammm blammm. Slocum spotted his strike, pulled in spasms: Wade’s carbine kicked in, a descant in staccato whines.
Caine brought his Thompson up, fired bursts around Smith’s body: the enemy weren’t in the farm at all: they had dug in behind the riverbank. Hardman’s gruff voice came from the dyke. ‘Twelve o’clock. Enemy behind bank, to right of bridge. Two hundred yards. FIRE!’ Carbines clattered: the second Bren-gun ripped and truckled.
Most of the lads were in cover now: there were two dead on the track. Wade and Slocum were lying with their heads in the dirt, bullets popping all around them. Smith was sprawled face-down a yard away from him. Copeland helped Caine drag the orderly back by the webbing: they heaved him into the dyke. Spandau slugs hived off damp sods around them as they propped him up against the side. He was still alive, but his eyes were vacant: there was gaping red sphincter where his mouth should have been.
They dumped their rucksacks, removed Smith’s kit. Copeland jabbed him with morphia, slapped a shell-dressing on his lower face: bullets lumped in with squalling wallops: dirt-spouts rilled along the parapet. A ricochet skimmed Cope’s arm, hit the back of Smith’s skull with a taut slap. Smith tipped sideways, left a mush of brain-matter on the wall. Copeland dekkoed his own arm, clocked blood welling from above his wrist: he grimaced, swore, put aimed shots over the edge with Hardman and the others.
Caine had a quick shufti at Smith: he was dead, lying in a swamp of mud and gore. He noticed Dangerfield bending over the wireless a few yards along, with the headphones clamped over his ears, shiny eyes behind wire-rim specs. ‘It’s working, skipper. I think I can get . . .’
A dropping round beamed through the top of his hat with a fly-swatter thwooockkk, plopped out through his throat in a swelter of bloody skin-shreds, hit the wireless with a metallic clunk. Dangerfield’s hands went rigid: his eyes blanked out: he slumped over the wireless, dropped blood-gobs from his nostrils.
An iron claw squeezed Caine’s chest: he ground his teeth, breathed in sulphur, cordite, scorched blood. He popped up on the parapet right of where Slocum and Wade had set up their Bren, took a breath, triggered a long burst, saw Wade switch mags, heard Slocum cracker-jack fire.
An artillery round clamshelled in front of Hardman, shook the earth, split into a poke-shaped core of fire. The blast blew away half the sergeant’s torso, plucked his right arm out of its socket: his carbine soared ten yards: its fractured muzzle stuck through another man’s neck like a bayonet, came out the other side fest
ooned with bits of bloody flesh.
Hardman’s body flew backwards, hit the other side of the dyke, helmet gone, boulder head smoking: his eyes were still open, but he looked no more than surprised. A bloody flap of skin hung over his belly: Caine could see his heart pulse through yawning white ribs. To his right, the speared trooper was clawing at the rod stuck through his neck: he went down with his eyes rolling, battling for breath. Caine saw the trooper next to him try to pull the carbine out.
There was a lull in enemy fire: it felt ominously like a prelude. Caine looked sideways: the dyke was slopping with blood, smeared with filaments of gut and entrails: dead and maimed men seemed to be everywhere. Caine made a swift head-count. Only eight men standing, some of them hurt.
He touched Cope’s arm. ‘They’re going to attack, Harry. Take every man who can walk – pull out.’
Copeland stared at him dumbly. His cornflower-blue eyes were wet gems in a face black with dirt and powder. He’d lost his helmet: his blonde bog-brush hair was smeared with mud, blood, body tissue; his forearm bulged from the dressing he’d slapped on. ‘What’re you going to do?’
‘Stay here with the Bren group. Give covering fire.’
Cope’s big Adam’s apple quivered. ‘Tom, I’m not going to . . .’
‘Get them out, Harry. That’s a fucking order.’
Copeland’s eyes widened. They’d been in so many tight corners together, had covered each other so often, that even to Caine it seemed like a betrayal.
Cope looked livid: for a moment Caine thought he was going to argue. Instead, he blinked, said quietly, ‘I’ll stay. You go, mate.’
Code of Combat Page 2
