Swordpoint (2011)

by John Harris

  As the day grew brighter and the radio link with the river was repaired, a message came from the senior surviving officer of the Yellowjackets. The Germans had begun to attack with tanks and self-propelled guns and, in face of complete annihilation, he was asking permission to withdraw what men he could get out by the one remaining but now damaged footbridge.

  ‘No,’ Tallemach snapped. ‘Tell him to stay where he is! We’ll try to get support up there.’

  Calling for his jeep, he drove as hard as he could from San Bartolomeo. The rain was coming down heavily again and the skies had a funereal look about them. The highest points on the mountains opposite were out of sight in the clouds, but Tallemach was under no delusion that there weren’t plenty of other points lower down from which the Germans could see everything that was happening.

  When he arrived at Foiano, he was already too late. Only the few Yellowjackets who had got into the farm near Castelgrande were still across the river. The rest had started recrossing not long after sending their request and they were now arriving in Foiano, wet, muddy and exhausted. A few had returned by the footbridge, placing their feet on timbers just visible under the swirling water, but most were without their uniforms and equipment because they’d had to swim. The icy water had numbed them to indifference and their morale and self-confidence had been badly shaken. As a battalion they had virtually ceased to exist and it was quite obvious that everything now depended on Yuell. To Tallemach it seemed to be time to organise a second attempt for the coming evening, not so much to support Yuell as to rescue him with whoever could still walk.

  Weighed down with weariness and worry, he was just conferring with the colonel of the Baluchis by the light of a hurricane lamp whose flame jumped and flickered to the banging of the guns, when Heathfield arrived. Both Tallemach and the colonel were soaked by the rain, their clothes splashed by the liquid grey mud. In contrast, Heathfield was immaculate, his buttons polished, his boots shining, and immediately he and Tallemach began to disagree violently.

  ‘There’s no point in bringing them back,’ Heathfield snapped. ‘Having got them across, surely it would be much better to reinforce them.’

  ‘You don’t reinforce failures,’ Tallemach said. ‘And this is failure.’

  ‘Yuell’s still there,’ Heathfield snapped.

  ‘The Baluchis aren’t,’ Tallemach said. ‘And they’re supposed to be.’

  While they were arguing the telephone went. Tallemach answered it, listened, then handed it silently to Heathfield. Heathfield looked curiously at the other two, spoke briefly, then replaced the receiver.

  ‘That was the Divisional Intelligence Officer,’ he said. ‘He was with General Tonge. Their jeep was in collision with a six-wheeler belonging to the US 10th Corps. The driver was killed and the general has a broken arm. He’s been taken to hospital. It seems he was quite conscious, though in pain, and was able to say that the attack is to go on as if he were here. He’ll return as soon as he can. He wants the support troops across the moment we have a foothold.’ Heathfield shifted his shoulders in a kind of shrug. ‘It seems to me, gentlemen, that it’s up to me now to sort this thing out.’

  Although he was Tonge’s principal confidant at HQ, Heathfield’s job was primarily to co-ordinate the divisional artillery. As senior brigadier, it was Tallemach’s job to take Tonge’s place. But in the chaos existing, it was quite clear that Tallemach should stay where he was, and Heathfield was not a man to be argued with, anyway.

  Tallemach made no comment and for a while there was silence, before they got down to work again, leaving the position of the second crossing to be decided by events and conditions.

  ‘We need an all-out attack,’ Heathfield pointed out. ‘Preferably before noon while the Germans are off-balance.’

  ‘They don’t seem off-balance to me,’ Tallemach said.

  ‘They must be by now,’ Heathfield insisted. ‘They’re only Russians and Czechs anyway, and we’ve just had a message from Army to say they’re putting their men across tomorrow at Cassino. The Germans must already be sending their reserves in that direction.’

  ‘Chiefly, I suppose,’ Tallemach said dryly, ‘because it’ll already be clear that they won’t be needed here.’

  Heathfield was silent for a moment – the silence of affront. ‘We could do them a great deal of harm by continuing the attack,’ he said eventually. He was still irritated by the way his well-planned attack had been relegated to the status of a feint, and had begun to see it now as a success that could earn him apologies and praise in equal quantities. It would be damned funny, he thought, if his attack succeeded while the bigger one further north failed.

  ‘If we reinforce this farm the Yellowjackets have got into,’ he said, ‘the Germans are going to have to withdraw men from Yuell’s front to stop us moving out of it.’

  ‘I favour supporting Yuell,’ Tallemach said. ‘Judging by the weight of the shelling at Castelgrande, nobody’s going to be moving forward anywhere in that sector.’

  ‘I disagree! The Yellowjackets are behind bricks and mortar. Yuell’s still out in the open and too much under observation. We’ll never get another bridge across in front of San Eusebio.’

  ‘Pity you didn’t think of that before,’ Tallemach growled.

  Heathfield ignored the remark. ‘The artillery claim they’re on top of the opposition at Castelgrande,’ he said, ‘and that’s certainly not the case opposite San Bartolomeo. So Castelgrande’s where we should push men across. We’ll switch the tanks up there in support.’

  ‘Crossing on what?’

  Heathfield frowned. ‘War isn’t a game of snakes and ladders,’ he said icily. ‘There are no rules. We have to react to events. Get the Engineers to push their Class 40 bridge over up there.’

  ‘It’ll mean shifting all their equipment.’

  ‘Then tell them to get on with it! If they do, they can finish it while the sun is in the Germans’ eyes.’

  Tallemach’s head jerked round. ‘That’s a ridiculous suggestion,’ he snapped. ‘There probably won’t be any sun and it only leaves us three hours to prepare!’

  ‘It’s got to be done,’ Heathfield said. ‘And Yuell must be supported to keep up the pressure in this sector as well. So let’s have two companies of the Baluchis across with ammunition and supplies. The other two can go in to help the Yellowjackets at Castelgrande, supported by one of Ran-kin’s battalions, the other two to be kept in reserve.’

  ‘Yuell will need more than two companies,’ Tallemach pointed out sharply. ‘And that’s impossible with the Baluchis as disorganised as they are.’

  ‘If we’re disorganised,’ Heathfield snapped, ‘then we shouldn’t be! What’s wrong with the Baluchis, anyway?’

  ‘They’re scattered all over the place. They were brought up in a hurry under intermittent fire and were pushed down to the river from Capodozzi to wherever there was shelter for them. When the bridges went they had to be brought back to San Bartolomeo.’

  ‘Then collect them, get them fed, and have them reorganise themselves. How soon can you get things moving?’

  ‘Not before noon,’ Tallemach said. ‘That’s for certain.’

  Heathfield gestured irritably. ‘By the time you finally get down to it,’ he said, ‘the Germans will have reinforced. They move pretty fast. You’d better get on with it.’

  As he picked up his cap and left, Tallemach noticed grimly that he’d left the details to him.

  Though Heathfield’s fears of German reinforcements were well founded, it was also clear that the early reverse had been more complete and demoralising than General Tonge had realised. The Yellowjackets no longer existed as a coherent organisation and if Yuell had lost as many men as appeared to be the case, he must also have lost many other things too – weapons, equipment and ammunition – that would make it hard for him to hang on. Time was needed to reorganise and regain control, while to repeat the failed night attack in daylight seemed to be making things just too easy for t
he Germans.

  Certainly the Germans thought so. To Captain Reis’ surprise, Lieutenant Thiergartner was doing very well. He was containing the British with remarkably few men, and Reis’ suggestion that he should push forward reserves to him had been rejected.

  ‘We’re holding them quite safely Herr Hauptmann,’ Thiergartner had told him over the telephone. ‘It only appears to be an armed reconnaissance.’

  Reis wasn’t so sure. From where he was, and judging by reports on the prisoners who’d been brought in from near Castelgrande, it was very much bigger than that.

  A movement opposite caught his attention, and he frowned and used his free hand to put his binoculars to his eyes.

  ‘Surely they’re not going to come again – in daylight!’ he said.

  ‘Yes, Herr Hauptmann,’ Thiergartner answered calmly. ‘They must be mad. If I’d started such a movement, I’d not expect to be treated kindly either by you or the people above you. To persist in this fashion’s crazy.’

  ‘Never mind the military psychology, Thiergartner,’ Reis snapped, ‘What about help? Are you sure you don’t need any down there?’

  ‘Of course not, Herr Hauptmann,’ Thiergartner said. ‘We need no reserves. We’re holding without trouble. We even know their numbers because we captured a pigeon they sent off. It was a little bewildered and its direction-finding equipment seemed to have broken down. It arrived just outside our position and Pulovski enticed it in. He might be dim in some ways but he has a way with living things. I’ve sent him back to you with its message and returned the bird. He talked it into recovering a little and it flew off exactly where it was originally supposed to go.’

  ‘Doesn’t it occur to you, Thiergartner,’ Reis snapped, ‘that even a pigeon has its uses? They can use it again and it’s our job to deny them the use of anything that may be of value to them. Even pigeons!’

  ‘All the same–’ Thiergartner’s chuckle came down the line ‘–we ought not to lose our sense of humour, Herr Hauptmann. There’s little enough of it in wartime. I couldn’t resist it. I attached a message– “Herewith pigeon returned. We have enough to eat and look forward with pleasure to your next attempt.”’

  Four

  It had always been hard in training exercises in England to persuade men to dig. Here, however, wherever it was possible, they had dug for all they were worth and, where it wasn’t possible, they’d thrown up sangars of stones. They’d learned a lot in North Africa and advancing up Italy. Once Yuell had had to threaten them with punishment to make them go down two or three feet. Now, wherever the rocky nature of the soil permitted, they were already much deeper than that.

  It was a good job, too, because the Germans had brought up a nebelwerfer, the multi-barrelled mortar which fired six bombs at once. In flight the clusters emitted a noise that was a cross between a shriek, a whine and a sigh, and was no help to the nerves of those at the receiving end. Shaped like a small cannon, it had been dug into the hillside higher up the slope and the officer directing the fire was obviously doing his observing through a narrow notch chipped out of the rock.

  The Germans knew now where they were and the first cluster came in to burst with a series of shattering explosions. They heard the bombs coming and dived for cover, huddling at the bottom of what had become known as Deacon’s Dip. The barrage lasted only two or three minutes, but by the time it finished they had lost seven more men killed and wounded.

  Nobody was firing back much because instructions had gone round to reserve ammunition for the night, but one or two did and the German machine-guns retaliated and the heavy mortars started again. If one of their bombs landed in a hole where a man crouched it would save the need for a burial party.

  ‘If only t’bloody rain would stop,’ Rich wailed.

  But it didn’t. It still fell, not heavily now but steadily, and already the holes they’d managed to dig were full of water and grey ooze into which bloody scraps of clothing and ammunition clips had been trampled by heavy boots. A German light machine-gun chattered hysterically and the bullets clacked and clapped overhead. Evans the Bomb tried retaliation with his two-inch mortar, setting it up just behind the lip of the hollow. As the loader slid a bomb into the muzzle, ducking sideways to avoid the blast, Evans waited for it to explode, made a small correction and tried again. Then two lights soared up into the gloom, and almost immediately three German mortar bombs exploded in red-yellow flashes just in front of them. The loader’s steel helmet was whipped off by the blast and he rolled into the bottom of the dip with a wound in the head.

  ‘They must be able to see us from San Eusebio,’ Yuell said, his head down as mud and small stones spattered down on them. ‘If we could only get an air strike on the place, we might get somewhere.’

  But, even if they’d had the means to direct one, there could have been no help from the air with the cloud level below one thousand feet. Their position was growing desperate. Fletcher-Smith had been gone some time, but whether he’d succeeded or not nobody knew, and all they could do was hang on.

  Crowding the tumbledown cowshed, the wounded lay side by side in the mud without benefit of stretchers or blankets. The doctor and the orderlies were giving morphia injections and writing in copying pencil on the injured men’s foreheads the time and size of the dose they’d given. O’Mara had been moving among them the whole of the night, his spectacles shining, his smile always present. Because of his calmness, men who’d schemed like foxes to avoid church parades had asked him to say a prayer for them, and more than one had gone to his Maker with Latin phrases falling on his fading hearing. Warley could only suppose it was because O’Mara was unafraid of death.

  ‘The apprehension of personal danger can be mastered,’ O’Mara said. ‘Once you accept that nothing worse than death can be expected.’

  ‘It’s a useful faith to have, Padre.’

  O’Mara smiled. ‘Faith’s not just a guess at what lies beyond the clouds, my son. Sometimes I think that’s something that bishops and cardinals don’t always appreciate. To someone with faith, death’s only a step into a better world.’

  ‘It’s not the better world I fear, Padre,’ Warley admitted, his voice a croak because, after all the shouting of the night, it had finally whirred away into nothingness like a broken watch-spring. ‘It’s the step itself, the pain of the mortal wound.’

  As they crawled across the bottom of the dip, the doctor was just putting a man’s arm in a splint while an orderly gave him a sniff of chloroform. One of the corporals had also just been dragged in, with one leg half-severed. The shock seemed to grip him, however, and he appeared to feel no pain. The morphia he’d been given hadn’t yet begun to take effect, but his leg was bleeding badly and the dressings had slipped. The doctor told Warley to hold a pad on it. Then, to Warley’s surprise, he opened his jack-knife and quickly cut through the fragment of sinew and flesh that still attached it. The corporal didn’t seem to feel a thing.

  A great many of the injured were suffering from head or eye injuries because the fragments of shells and bombs bursting on the rocky slopes flew further. As O’Mara continued to move among them with his dwindling supply of water, he became increasingly conscious how essential it was that those men still lying in the open should be brought in.

  ‘I’m going to try to get the wounded in,’ he announced suddenly.

  Yuell swung round. ‘Don’t be damn silly, Padre! It’s impossible.’

  ‘I’m going to try, nevertheless, Colonel, sir. Perhaps the Lord will cause the Germans to act with mercy.’

  Yuell was about to reply when he was called to the other side of the dip and in the urgency forgot about O’Mara. Frowning, the padre stripped to the waist, finally removing his white vest. Then he replaced his shirt and tunic and attached the vest to his walking stick. Before anyone realised what he was doing, he had raised this impromptu flag and slowly begun to edge himself above the lip of the hollow. A burst of machine-gun bullets threw earth in his face and he blinked; then the
gun stopped. Beyond the wire, they could hear shouts and gradually all the firing ceased and there was an almost unearthly lull in the battle.

  ‘You wish to surrender?’

  The voice came clearly across the open ground.

  ‘I do not wish to surrender,’ O’Mara shouted. ‘I claim the security of the Red Cross, though I have no Red Cross flag. I am a Roman Catholic padre and I wish to bring in the wounded and give absolution to the dying.’

  There was a long silence. Seeing O’Mara’s flag, Yuell had crawled back across the bottom of the dip.

  ‘Come down, Padre!’ he snapped. ‘There’ll be no surrender here.’

  ‘I’m not surrendering, Colonel, sir,’ O’Mara said calmly. ‘I’m a Christian appealing for mercy to men who are also supposed to be Christians.’ And with that he slowly straightened up and stepped outside the dip.

  ‘The buggers’ll shoot the sod,’ Puddephatt gasped.

  ‘Dry up,’ Warley said, his heart in his mouth.

  The silence seemed interminable, and then a voice came from the German lines. It was Reis. By good fortune he’d joined Thiergartner to check that he was as secure as he said he was.

  ‘I, too, am a Catholic,’ he said. ‘You may collect your wounded, Father, but I have not the authority to allow you to evacuate them to the river. You have one hour and you must not approach our wire.’

  O’Mara lifted his hand in a blessing, two fingers upraised; then he called briskly over his shoulder to Warley.

  ‘One hour, me boy! Better get cracking!’