Swordpoint (2011)

by John Harris

  ‘Is this just a casual enquiry?’ he had asked. ‘Or an order? Because I have very few men trained in walking on water.’

  Heathfield now set up the position for them. ‘This will not be an easy operation,’ he said. ‘But we expect it to be made easier by the Liberators and Fortresses drenching the area with anti-personnel bombs. The aim is to knock the enemy back from the river bank so we can dominate it by patrols and fire, and the attack will go in after a heavy bombardment.’

  He went on to explain that the advance up Italy was in danger of coming to a stop and that it was necessary to keep up the momentum. Colonel Yuell listened thoughtfully, knowing only too well how right he was. There was no difficulty with a single rush, but wherever the line had paused to be regrouped it had always lost its forward movement.

  ‘There’ll be an artillery bombardment,’ Heathfield was saying, ‘and then the infantry will advance with close support fire from tanks.’

  Provided, Yuell thought, that the Germans hadn’t held their fire to conceal their positions, so that when they opened up the infantry would have to entrench or withdraw; and then, with the attack halted, the artillery would have to start up again and repeat the rhythm, as it had been repeated all through the dark foggy weeks of winter.

  ‘7th Infantry Brigade will make the crossing,’ Heathfield said. ‘Your people, Yuell, going in by Route A along the main road in front of San Eusebio; and the Yellowjackets further east by Route B in front of Castelgrande where the footbridge used to be. As soon as you’ve established your bridgeheads and the tanks have crossed, the Baluchis will push across to join you, giving the greatest support at whichever bridgehead appears to be most successful. It’s expected that the crossing will take roughly three minutes; the infantry will be behind the barrage and there will be a safety period for the artillery to plaster the opposite bank. However–’ Heathfield paused – ‘some of our guns are so worn they can’t guarantee there won’t be an odd round up to six hundred yards short. That means we shall have to form up three hundred yards short of the bank on our own side, and the artillery will have to lift six minutes before the start.’

  ‘Which,’ Tallemach pointed out quietly, ‘will give the Germans six minutes to emerge from their shelters.’

  After the divisional commander’s conference with the brigadiers asking the questions, it was the brigade commander’s turn with Heathfield sitting alongside, holding a watching brief, and the battalion commanders doing the worrying.

  Brigadier Tallemach gestured at the blackboard behind him where a simplified plan of the countryside in front of and around San Eusebio had been chalked up.

  When he had been forward to look over the territory they were to attack, what he had seen hadn’t encouraged him. Heathfield and his staff had worked with feverish activity to prepare the detailed plans but they seemed to have overlooked the fact that the river, the main line of resistance, was unfordable, twelve feet deep and fifty feet wide, with steep banks, a swift current, only one bridge – with its centre span smashed – and a rumoured 24,000 mines sown on both sides.

  Behind the river, beyond the railway line that ran to Rome, San Eusebio was built on a bluff. Once there, they could expect to be protected by the surrounding escarpment from the German guns above and on the flanks. But since the Germans would be just as much aware of this as they were, it was clear they’d have taken every possible precaution to prevent the capture of San Eusebio taking place and Tallemach’s battalions would be in full view of the heights until the minute they’d finally captured the village.

  He had tried to point this out to Heathfield, but Heathfield had seemed to be wearing blinkers. Despite all protests, he determinedly held to the view that the piecemeal methods used during the winter would again cause the Germans to withdraw.

  However, it wasn’t Tallemach’s role to question orders, and now he tried to make some sense of them for the men under him.

  ‘The idea’s to establish a bridgehead to the east of the village,’ he said. ‘We know that it’s built on a bluff a hundred-odd feet above the river, but to the east the ground’s broken and rolling and should provide plenty of cover for us.’

  For the Germans too, Colonel Yuell thought.

  Tallemach cleared his throat and went on briskly.

  ‘The Yellowjackets will be crossing well to the east of the town,’ he said, his voice crisp but unusually low, ‘so between them and the North Yorkshires we ought to be able to keep the enemy busy. When we’ve linked up, and the 3rd Baluchis are across in support, 9th Indian Brigade will go through us for San Eusebio.’

  ‘It’s difficult country down to the river on this side, sir.’ The words came softly and Tallemach studied Yuell over his spectacles.

  ‘The river’s inundated the land, sir,’ Yuell continued, ‘and the country’s flat and open to observation from San Eusebio. And we all know the Germans have established posts and strongpoints right to the river’s edge and there isn’t a scrap of shelter to hide a gun or a tank.’

  There was a long silence. ‘Go on,’ Tallemach said.

  ‘There are minefields on both sides of the river and, on the other side, gun emplacements built into the river bank itself and near the railway. Farm buildings have been fortified with pill-boxes and tanks dug into the ground. Every one of these strongpoints will have to be reduced individually.’

  ‘Don’t you think you’re making rather a lot of it?’ Heath-field interrupted from his chair alongside Tallemach’s desk.

  ‘My men are going to have to face them,’ Yuell retorted stubbornly.

  ‘We’re trying to get at Cassino from the side,’ Heathfield explained patiently. ‘Going at it from the front’s produced surprisingly little mileage so far. Both the Americans and the New Zealanders have been thrown back. And you won’t be under fire from all those posts you mention because you’ll be crossing in darkness.’

  The regimental officers exchanged glances. The one thing nobody liked was a river crossing by night. There was another long silence before Heathfield asked:

  ‘Would you be satisfied if the heights on your flanks were under attack, although not actually in our possession?’

  ‘So long,’ Yuell said, ‘as the attacks are powerful enough to force the Germans to use every gun they’ve got to oppose them. Just two or three concealed 88s would be sufficient to destroy our bridges.’

  ‘I think we can guarantee we shall be able to prevent that. Division will be giving everything they’ve got and we also have Corps backing. Guns are being transferred even now.’

  Heathfield didn’t say how many, but nobody quibbled and the conference came to a halt. As he returned to his room, Tallemach took out a cigarette. He felt tired and knew he was inclined to be crochety and over-critical. The war seemed to have been going on such a long time, and now that it was showing signs of approaching its final phase every day seemed to drag. Reaching across his desk he picked up a lighter, and as he did so his eyes fell on a photograph of his wife and the two sons she had borne him. Only the previous month he had learned that he now had only one son; his younger boy, barely out of school, had died from wounds received in a grenade accident while rehearsing in England for what they all knew was to be the Second Front. Tallemach drew a deep breath. Keep the other one safe, God, he begged under his breath, knowing all too well that Bomber Command was hardly a secure haven from which to fight a war.

  Lighting up the cigarette quickly to stop himself from thinking, he moved to the window and peered through the rain-swept glass. If they were to keep their preparations out of sight of the Germans on Monte Cassino, he thought, there was going to be remarkably little elbow room to manoeuvre. Bridges couldn’t be established easily; there was no concealment for the Engineers in the open plain, and even smokescreens wouldn’t work because it would be no problem for the Germans to estimate where the bridges were and plaster the whole area with fire. When the Americans had tried it, at the beginning of the year, the result had been considered by
them the worst disaster to their forces since Pearl Harbour.

  He thought again of Heathfield’s plan. He’d even protested that it wasn’t wide enough in scope. There weren’t enough crossings, and too much pressure could be brought to bear on the ones that had been proposed. Heathfield had been smoothly ingratiating.

  ‘No enterprise in war ever turns out quite so well or so badly as the first reports lead you to believe,’ he’d said cheerfully. ‘I’ve no doubt we shall be worried at first, but I think it’ll work.’

  Tallemach drew on the cigarette and stared out of the window. The sky was a violet grey and the rain was lashing into the puddles.

  ‘Let’s just hope the weather gives us a chance,’ he observed to his brigade major, ‘because all that sunshine Italy’s supposed to have is nothing but a fallacy. I often think the photographers who take those picture postcards you see with all that blue sky in ’em sit waiting in the cafés for the clouds to clear; then, when it stops raining, rush out, take their pictures, and bolt back to the bar before the next cloudburst. One of the things the travel brochures have always been reticent about is that Italy’s mostly mountains and that where there are mountains there’s usually rain.’

  In Trepiazze, Yuell studied the map with Major Peddy.

  ‘It would make a lot of difference,’ Peddy said, ‘if we were on the hills instead of the Germans.’

  Yuell nodded. ‘It’s notorious that enemy strength and morale always appear weaker to headquarters than they do to the chaps in more active contact.’

  He turned to the battalion Intelligence officer. ‘What do you think of the appreciation of the German capabilities, Harry?’ he asked.

  Lieutenant Harry Marder considered. He was an Oxford graduate with the university man’s habit of dissecting everything minutely – so minutely, in fact, you couldn’t sometimes see the pieces – and a superficially fluent command of French, German and Italian that would have been more valuable to the army if it had extended to a fuller understanding of some of the finer nuances of those languages. He liked to be amusing about the Intelligence branch, claiming it consisted of out-of-work journalists, Latin scholars, booksellers, unwanted clergymen and fugitives from university common rooms; but he was proud of his job nonetheless and regarded himself as making a considerable contribution to the war effort.

  ‘I understand, sir,’ he said, ‘that in the other war, General Marshall-Cornwall used to crawl out into No Man’s Land to listen to the Germans talking. He was able to judge whether they were from Bavaria or Saxony by their accents.’

  Yuell frowned, wishing that Marder would sometimes give him a direct answer.

  ‘That’s no help,’ he said testily.

  ‘No, sir,’ Marder agreed. ‘But until we have some prisoners to question, I can’t see how we can ever give a proper appreciation. The Duke of Wellington used to say that all the business of war, indeed all the business of life, was to endeavour to find out what you don’t know by what you do – what he called guessing what was at the other side of the hill. But that’s a bit difficult with a river between us. Whose was the appreciation, sir?’

  ‘Brigadier Heathfield’s.’

  ‘They say he intends to go in for politics after the war,’ Peddy observed.

  ‘It’s a measure of how safe he feels that he can plan for after the war,’ Yuell growled. ‘I wish I could. All the same, it’s not entirely a bad plan, though it’d be better if there were more crossings. It’s the first principle of forcing a river position that there should be plenty of points of attack, so that the enemy can’t deal with any of them in strength. On top of that, we’re too close together. The Germans can deal with both crossings with the same defence.’

  He lit a pipe and sucked at it for a while, before going on. ‘However, I gather we’ve been promised everything we want – boats, artillery, tanks, the lot, and all the back-up services we need. What’s more, if things begin to look dicey, it’s to be called off and something else tried.’

  ‘When’s it to be, sir?’

  ‘The thirteenth.’

  ‘Three days,’ Peddy mused. ‘That’s not long. Will there be a rehearsal?’

  ‘No time.’ Yuell frowned again, feeling this too was a mistake. ‘They decided, after all the rivers we’ve already crossed, that we ought to know something about it.’

  A Company officers received their first briefing the following day in Warley’s room. Graziella had swept and polished and dusted it as if he were the Pope about to give an audience.

  ‘It’s only a bunch of soldiers,’ he said.

  ‘Nevertheless, they must not feel you are neglected.’

  It had delighted him but, faced by his officers, he was in a thoughtful mood. ‘We’re for it,’ he said. ‘We’re to be part of a push across the river. In front of San Eusebio.’

  He explained the plan as he’d received it from Yuell, and Jago sniffed.

  ‘Bit optimistic, isn’t it?’ he said in a flat voice. ‘All this business of the Yellowjackets going across at Castelgrande half a mile away and then hacking along the river bank to San Eusebio.’

  ‘That’s the way I’ve got it, Tony.’

  ‘It’s too bloody obscure,’ Jago grumbled.

  ‘Well, it doesn’t exactly run out and bite you in the leg,’ Warley admitted with a grin. ‘But I suppose they know more about it than we do.’

  Jago grinned back at him. ‘It’s always been my impression that the staff know a bloody sight less than the chaps who’re going to do the job,’ he said. ‘Come to that, how are we going to do it? The bloody place bristles with guns and that’s God’s plain unvarnished and unbuckled truth, and you can’t get away from it.’

  Warley shrugged. ‘Brigade seems to think we can manage it; but then, of course, so do Division, Corps and Army. All the way back to Naples and London and Number 10, Downing Street, I expect. Let’s have Farnsworth in.’

  In front of the officers, CSM Farnsworth was so stiff he seemed all bone. Warley offered him a cigarette and pushed a chair forward.

  His first meeting with Farnsworth had been on the Egypt-Libya border. Standing upright by a heap of sandbags, staring across the empty desert with his binoculars, Warley had asked, ‘Where’s the front line?’ Farnsworth, crouching well down, had hesitated for a second before answering, ‘At the moment, sir, I suspect you’re standing on it.’

  Warley had ducked out of sight and they had grinned at each other, Warley faintly sheepish, Farnsworth with no sign of superiority, and it had been the beginning of a long and easy relationship that made the passing on of orders a very simple business.

  ‘We’re moving up, Fred,’ Warley announced briskly. ‘In two days’ time.’

  Farnsworth smiled. It was like a crack appearing in concrete. ‘This river crossing, sir?’

  Warley’s head jerked round. ‘How did you hear about that?’

  ‘It seems to have been around since yesterday, sir.’

  ‘Does it, by God? Where did it come from?’

  ‘HQ Company runner was at Brigade, sir, you’ll remember. He brought it back. He didn’t like the sound of it. Come to that, sir, neither do I.’

  Warley frowned; then he shrugged. ‘I expect,’ he said, ‘that, as usual, the ordinary common or garden soldier will salvage everybody’s reputation.’

  Perhaps he would, but he wasn’t very keen all the same. Unlike the people, sitting at home in clubs complaining about the slow movement of the army up Italy, unlike the Prime Minister who felt they were being wasted and should be allowed to get on with the job; unlike everybody except themselves and their friends, in fact, they had no particular wish to be part of the battle. People got hurt in battles.

  It was all right planning battles, seeing them in great sweeps on the map. It was a bit different when you were up at the sharp end. The descriptive phrases used by newspaper correspondents and war commentators about ‘flinging in armour’, ‘pouring in reserves’ and ‘launching pincer movements’ gave a fairly reaso
nable impression to those at home with a map in front of them; but most of the men involved would have found it difficult to recognise just what part they’d really played, even if they’d had it pointed out to them.

  It had come as a surprise to them to read in such newspapers as found their way out from home that the time when they’d spent three days cowering in the mud behind a wrecked farmhouse, they were reserves being ‘poured in’, and that the shambles at Sant’ Agata di Militello was part of a ‘pincer movement’. They hadn’t been aware that these occasions even were battles. They’d merely thought they were just continuing the painful advance up Italy through mud, mountain and river, which seemed to have been going on ever since the dawn of time and, as far as they could see, would continue until the Last Trump sounded.

  The more intelligent of them, of course, knew that the war was on the home straight at last and that if they could only get going again in Italy, the Second Front could be launched across the Channel while the attention of the Germans was occupied in trying to hold on to Rome.

  ‘After all–’ Fletcher-Smith spoke with the authority of scholarship and the romantic view of a man heavily involved with an Italian girl – ‘they’re bound to try. Italy’s the land of the Romans.’

  ‘You know what they can do with Italy?’ 766 Bawden said. ‘They can fold it three ways and stick it where the monkey sticks its nuts.’

  ‘If they up-ended the mountains and slotted ’em into the valleys,’ 000 Bawden chimed in, ‘they’d be able to roll it reasonably flat.’

  ‘Tha ought to suggest that to t’ staff,’ Rich said enthusiastically. ‘It’d make transport a ’ell of a lot easier.’

  For just a little longer Heaven continued to lie about them, but soon it began to dawn that with all the new equipment and new weapons that were flying about, something was in the wind.

  A river crossing, they were told, and they were even less happy when they heard that. River crossings were the worst possible means of getting from one place to another. Without the Navy around to help, the launching of small boats by rank amateurs, weighed down by heavy equipment, was bad enough even in daylight. At night time, while being shot at, it was about as horrifying as anything that wartime could produce. And added to that they were all too well aware that the boats, flat-bottomed and not possessed of much in the nature of bows or stern, wouldn’t lend themselves to anything much more demanding than a duckpond on a calm day; especially when their occupants were being shelled, mortared and raked by machine-gun fire.