by John Harris
But his wife and two teenage daughters lived in Steinach, which was just north of the Brenner Pass on the route from Rome into Austria, and having seen what the war had done to Italy he had no wish for it to do the same to Steinach. The longer, therefore, that the fighting remained outside Austria the better. Much wiser to let the Germans be knocked out in the north by the Russians or the RAF, or by the Second Front which they all knew was bound to come before long, and hold the enemy back in the south.
He pointed to the rough ground to the east of San Eusebio. It was full of machine-gun nests because the Germans believed that the Allies would never try a frontal attack but would approach from the side.
‘Not much there,’ he said. ‘They’ve got Russians there. Conscripted men. They’ve just arrived. There are some Czechs there, too.’
Marder’s heart leapt. Nobody had heard of defecting Czechs and Russians on this front before. It seemed to indicate a shortage of troops.
‘Here?’ he asked and Pramstrangl nodded.
‘What about the river bank?’
Pramstrangl shrugged, chiefly to give himself time to think again.
‘Not much,’ he said eventually. ‘They haven’t the weapons because they’re withdrawing them. They’re building a new line near Valmontone.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, it’s clear you’ll break this one eventually–’
‘Where does the line go?’
‘Along the mountains towards the Adriatic.’
‘You sure of that?’
‘I was up there with a lorry last week. They’ll pull back when the pressure here gets too much. They’re saving the troops for when you get to Germany.’
Pramstrangl decided this was a stroke of genius because it was just the sort of thing the Nazis would do.
Marder pushed the map across. ‘Machine-gun nests,’ he said. ‘Where are they?’
Pramstrangl almost smiled. This one was a pushover, he thought.
Lieutenant Marder was elated when he reported to Yuell. He had watched Pramstrangl being marched off to where a lorry was waiting to transport him to Division, then turned to find the colonel waiting for him. He spread a map across the blanket-covered table and opened his notebook.
‘Machine-gun nests, sir,’ he said. ‘Here, here and here. This route from the end of the San Bartolomeo road should be easy. There are only Russians and Czechs there.’
‘I didn’t know there were Russians and Czechs on this front,’ Yuell said.
‘They’ve just come,’ Marder pointed out. ‘We’d better inform Division, because it surely means our job’s going to be easier than we thought. In fact, he said that with a bit of pressure the Germans would pull back. They’re already constructing a new line along the mountains.’
After lunch and a long talk with Heathfield, Yuell decided to get his company commanders and the artillery, armour and engineers together again, to go over the final details.
He explained what Marder had told him. ‘Personally,’ he ended, ‘I’m inclined to think he’s a bit too optimistic and I’d warn you about rushing your fences. However, you all know how to go about things by now, so I’d suggest you do exactly that and move with care. Don’t imagine that just because you’ve been told there’s nothing in front of you, there won’t be.’ He looked at Jago who, as the only man who’d actually crossed the river, was also there. ‘What about you, Tony? Can you add anything to what we know?’
‘Only that the stream runs surprisingly fast, sir. There’s quite a lot of drift.’
Yuell nodded. The plan was clear in his mind, clarified by pad jottings and lines, arrows and symbols drawn in chinagraph on the talc of his map. ‘Let me say straight away,’ he went on, ‘that I think this is a pretty hasty operation we’ve been handed. I suspect the other side of the river – this side, too, for that matter – is more covered by mortars than we’ve been told, and I think we can expect the usual reception in the forming-up areas. Finally, the place is stiff with mines and we have no guarantee that they’ll be lifted before we go in.’
As he sat down, the colonel of the 215th Field Artillery, representing the 19th Division Artillery commander, stood up, clutching a formidable-looking table of fire support tasks. He was followed by the mortar platoon commander, and as they all thrashed out what they were to do, their anxieties came to the surface.
‘What disturbs me, sir,’ Warley said, ‘is the mine business. I’m wondering if the Sappers’ll be able to clear enough space for us to work.’
It was worrying but, as timings, communication arrangements and administrative details were announced, order seemed to emerge from the chaos. During the afternoon, however, Yuell began to worry again about the air strike, and eventually he contacted Tallemach who immediately got on to Heathfield.
‘They’re having trouble,’ Heathfield admitted. ‘The floods have spread to their airfield and it’s waterlogged. They can’t fly because they can’t take off.’
Tallemach frowned. What was the point, he wondered, in having a superiority in aircraft and tanks, if the planes spent most of their time grounded by the weather or the tanks sank to their bellies if they moved?
‘What’s happened to the strike then?’ he asked.
‘Don’t worry,’ Heathfield reassured him. ‘We’re watching it. We’ve appealed to squadrons further south for help and they’ve promised it.’
‘They’ll never fly all that way in this weather, with the mountains in the way,’ Tallemach replied tersely. ‘They wouldn’t dare risk fighter-bombers like that. There aren’t so damn many in Italy, anyway, since they started the build-up for the Second Front.’
‘We’re doing what we can. Tell Yuell to stop worrying.’
But Yuell went on worrying.
Italy was a bastard of a country. They’d all thought when they’d landed in Sicily and the Fascist government had collapsed, that they were going to walk straight up its length to the flat plains of the north, ready for the assault on the southern flank of Germany.
The loss of their North African empire had demoralised the Italian army, and with Mussolini deposed it had all seemed so simple.
But the Germans had reacted quickly, and what with the sea to guard its flanks, rivers running across it every few miles, and endless mountains with only a narrow coastal plain on either side, Italy had proved a hell of a place to win ground.
Yuell sighed. There were a thousand and one things to hold his attention.
The MO was badgering him to know if there were any buildings on the route they’d chosen to San Eusebio where he might set up an aid post, and just where Division was proposing to put the forward dressing station; the signallers were concerned that their ‘Eighteen’ sets had always presented problems when working with tanks; the artillery were concerned that they might not see the red smoke with which it was proposed to mark targets; and the padre was insistent that morale demanded that he should cross with the first wave.
‘The Yellowjackets’ C of E chap’s decided that it isn’t his job,’ Peddy pointed out. ‘The Church of England doesn’t seem to encourage the view that chaplains should get mixed up with the fighting.’
The Yellowjackets’ chaplain was young, and not long out of theological college. Whey-faced, smoothed-cheeked and limp, he winced when the latrine squad were making their feelings clear and, probably because of his cloistered existence, seemed not to have the faintest idea how to minister to the needs of several hundred hard-boiled difficult soldiers.
‘He prays well,’ Peddy had once said in his defence and Yuell had often felt that was all he did.
‘The chaps would have admired him if he’d gone all the same,’ he observed.
Though public opinion demanded that troops should have a padre handy to look after their souls, many of them were not only out of touch, they’d never even been in touch. As they struggled to promote the Kingdom of Heaven and tried to be funny in their sermons without mentioning sex, most of the men regarded them with frozen-fac
ed contempt or, if they were well to the back, read books or played cards.
In any case, Yuell reflected, if you wanted to see Christianity and brotherhood in action, you didn’t have to go to church, only towards the front line. Ten to one, you’d see soldiers there who not long before had been engaged in trying to kill other soldiers, sharing their cigarettes and rations with the captured enemy.
Fortunately O’Mara, the Liverpool Irishman who looked after the spiritual welfare of the North Yorkshires, for no other reason than that he had to be attached somewhere and there were eighty-odd Catholics among them, was one of the good padres. He and the MO were not only working partners but also good friends who were known to the battalion as ‘Body and Soul’.
Their co-operation contributed more than a little to confidence, and they had jointly decided to cross the river early. O’Mara even seemed to be contemplating the prospect with enjoyment.
‘It’s my job,’ he pointed out to Yuell, ‘to be wherever the fighting’s heaviest. The troops need more than sermons to inspire them.’
Yuell smiled. ‘I sometimes think,’ he reflected, ‘that the Anglican church lost something when it broke from the Catholic stem.’
O’Mara returned the smile. ‘That’s just the strength of the Irish, Colonel, sir,’ he observed. ‘The Irish and the Italians are nearest to God’s heart – as you can see at once by looking at the number of them in the calendar of saints.’
Yuell smiled. He liked O’Mara. He was a small red-faced man who looked like a jockey and – perhaps because he’d come from a Liverpool slum parish – never turned a hair at the troops’ drinking. He did a little himself, in fact, and possessed a marked sense of humour that allowed him to regard his profession with a levity that never interfered with his faith – ‘We celebrated Mass today,’ he liked to report. ‘There were no casualties’ – while his attitude to bad language was easy-going. When one of the sergeants was at it hammer and tongs at some maladroit swaddy, he merely remarked that you could hardly expect a harassed NCO to be touched with celestial fire.
‘It must have been a whole lot easier, Padre,’ Yuell said, ‘When you thought you were fighting a holy war.’
O’Mara smiled again. ‘Are we not fightin’ a holy war now, Colonel, sir?’ he asked gently.
‘Would you not consider Hitler and his minions part of the powers of darkness? Sure, I would. I’m a practical man and I believe in practical things – even in the practice of religion – and if these evil forces are to be destroyed, then it’s up to us – and that means me – to destroy ’em. A crusade’s better than making it seem as if we’re asking men to risk their lives for one of the Water Board’s by-laws, and, in any case, I always thought those people on the Titanic who stood around singing ‘Nearer My God To Thee’ were just wasting their time when they could have been building rafts.’
Four
It had rained all afternoon, slashing and crackling down so that their ears were constantly filled with the sound of rushing water. The barns where they sheltered were leaking, puddles covered the floor, and the hay was teeming with animal life.
‘A louse born in t’ morning,’ Rich pointed out indignantly, ‘is a mummy by midday and a grandma by evenin’.’
Spurred on by Peddy, and with a superhuman effort, the cooks had finally got their pressure cookers roaring alongside a reeking cowshed and had produced a meal, mostly out of tins; meat and vegetables – or dog’s vomit as the troops liked to call it – but at least it hadn’t been going stale in hot boxes for hours. The potatoes and vegetables were dehydrated but the cooks serving the stew from in front of a mound of opened tins wore self-satisfied looks on their faces, feeling they’d performed a miracle.
‘This the bloody best you can do?’ Syzling asked.
The smiles were wiped away in a flash. ‘Do you release what we’ve been through to provide this?’ the cook-corporal demanded. ‘This is the third bleeding meal we’ve got ready. The first got blown up and the second’s floating down the Liri.’
The hot food warmed them only temporarily and they were soon wet, cold and miserable again, all of them occupied with their thoughts. Yuell was still worrying about the air strike. He’d heard nothing and was by this time firmly of the opinion that he never would. He was also worried about his grenades and mortar bombs, because there was no sign of the mule train that was supposed to be bringing them. Something had clearly gone wrong and, due to weariness, weather, wounds, or plain bloody-mindedness, someone had failed to do what he ought to have done. He was still brooding when Peddy brought a message to the effect that Colonel Baron of the Yellowjackets had been injured in a jeep accident.
‘Slid off the road into a ditch,’ he said.
‘Is he much hurt?’ Yuell asked. He and Baron had been through the desert together and were old friends.
‘They say not. Strained neck and three broken fingers. He insists on carrying on. Except–’
Yuell’s head turned. ‘Except what?’
‘They’re wondering if he’s got concussion. He insists he’s all right but it seems he gave his head a pretty hard whack.’
‘I hope he’s wise,’ Yuell said. ‘He’s got a good second-in-command and, under the circumstances, he might do better to lie up for a day or two. From a purely selfish point of view, we’re expecting the Yellowjackets to join up with us and if, for some reason, they don’t, we’re going to be pretty hard-pushed. There are already enough things that have gone wrong with this affair, and the Yellowjackets aren’t the best in the business at the moment. They took a lot of casualties at Sant’ Agata and they’re pretty well a new battalion.’
While Yuell added Baron to his worries, Peddy worried about his wife. They’d been married for twelve years and had grown used to each other. Trying now to write to her as he always did before going into action, he was less concerned with what might happen to himself than with how she’d feel if it did.
Jago was worrying in case his nerve was going. He’d recovered from the shakes after the patrol but it was something that hadn’t happened before and he was concerned that it might happen again – at the wrong time. Second-Lieutenant Taylor, being new to war, was worried that too much might be expected of him. Private Fletcher-Smith was worried about the girl in Trepiazze because it had suddenly occurred to him that he hadn’t been very careful. Now he was trying to make up his mind whether he was in love or not and, if he were, should he marry her? He also had enough knowledge of war to suspect that things had started to go wrong in San Bartolomeo and couldn’t resist quoting to those whose education didn’t match his own the words of other more famous soldiers.
‘“There is such a choice of difficulties,”’ he said, ‘“that I own myself at a loss how to determine them.”’
‘Oo said that?’ Private Rich asked.
‘General Wolfe at Quebec.’
‘General ’oo where?’ Private Rich had probably once heard of General Wolfe but, if he had, it hadn’t registered. ‘What’s ’e got to do wi’ us ’ere?’
‘The circumstances are the same,’ Fletcher-Smith pointed out.
‘No, they’re not,’ Rich insisted funereally. ‘’E was there; We’re ’ere. That makes ’em a lot different.’
Fletcher-Smith gave up but Private Rich hadn’t finished.
‘’E won’t need to worry after tomorrow any road,’ he said. ‘By that time, we’ll either be in San Eusebio, else we’ll be dead.’
It was blunt and forthright but, though it disturbed Fletcher-Smith, it didn’t disturb Rich. To Rich it was all the same, being alive or being dead. He preferred to be alive because it meant beer and food and getting girls on their backs in the long summer grass. He supposed being dead was unpleasant, but his mind had never explored the question very far and he was quite incapable of imagining it.
‘By tomorrow we’ll be in it proper,’ he said.
‘“And a day of battle is a day of harvest for the devil,”’ Fletcher-Smith quoted.
‘Why d
on’t you shut up, you morbid sod?’ 000 Bawden growled.
Lieutenant Deacon worried about Private Syzling who, he felt sure, would be bound to do something stupid. Deacon was less concerned that Syzling’s stupidity would halt the attack dead in its tracks and lose the war than that it should redound to the shame of Lieutenant Deacon. Private Syzling, inevitably, didn’t worry at all. He found a corn bin in the outhouse of the ruined farm where they were billeted, crawled inside and pulled the lid down on top of him. Anybody else would have worried about mice or fleas or that that the lid would jam and he would suffocate. None of these things occurred to Private Syzling and, of course, there were no mice or fleas and the lid didn’t jam, and he slept, warm, dry, comfortable and lost to the sergeants, while everybody else was wet through, cold, miserable and chivvied.
Major Warley found he was worrying chiefly about himself. Up to that moment, he’d never been inclined to worry much, but suddenly he felt he needed to survive. He was twenty-five and, after five years in the army, old age seemed to be zooming towards him at full speed. He needed to go back and find Graziella Vanvitelli and talk to her again. Thinking about her, he knew he’d never now marry the girl in Manchester he’d been engaged to before he’d left for overseas. For some time he hadn’t cared much about what happened between them and had been largely indifferent to her letters. Now he didn’t care at all, because Graziella Vanvitelli filled his mind.
‘Must be soul mates or something,’ he said ruefully to himself.
They were all in the mood to talk about themselves and discuss their hopes for after the war, what they intended to do, the businesses they were going to start, the plans they’d made. Fletcher-Smith’s ambition had always been to go in for teaching and become the headmaster of a forward-looking school. Now he found it was merely to get his hands on the girl in Trepiazze again. Rich wanted to open a corner shop. Hunters felt it would be best to emigrate. ‘There’ll be no future in England after this lot,’ he said.
