Swordpoint (2011)

by John Harris

  The Engineers expected to finish it shortly and the tanks were gathering on the slopes of the hills behind San Bartolomeo for the dash down. God alone knew how many they’d get across before the road gave way under their weight, but Tallemach was determined to try it. If they could get enough across to support Warley, there was a chance of getting into San Eusebio. With that in their possession, they could move vehicles down the tarmac road from San Bartolomeo.

  The sound of the shelling had become like a monstrous iron foundry by now, and Warley was explaining carefully what he wanted, confident his men would endure anything so long as they knew the reason for it.

  ‘The only safe place round here’s in San Eusebio,’ he told them. ‘That bluff behind’ll protect us from the German guns. So see that we get there.’

  He’d just lit a cigarette when he snatched it from his mouth again and threw it away. Standing with his head up, his eyes were fierce and elated under his helmet. He looked a hundred years old with the strain and the dirt that smeared his features. The colonel of the Punjabis and the captain of the Baluchis were staring upwards, too, listening as the sound Warley had heard increased rapidly, swelling until the whole sky seemed to be full of it.

  Someone laughed and there was a thin cheer because they all knew by now what it was. It began to fill the whole of their existence, and Warley glanced round him for the pink identification panels and saw they were in place.

  ‘Where are they?’ Jago said, staring round him. ‘Where are the bastards?’

  He was moving with certainty again now. The fears that had been growing on him had vanished. The excitement and the noise and the willingness of the men around him had carried him forward. But the layer of courage was thin and brittle and he knew it would last only as long as the forward movement lasted. Like Warley, like all of them, he needed rest – a long rest. A man had only so much to give and when it was gone he was nothing but a husk.

  He jerked a hand. ‘There they are! End of the valley! Coming in from the north!’

  They became silent again as the roar of aircraft continued to echo backwards and forwards between the hills. Then they saw the aeroplanes pass between two crests, small dark machines laying over in a steep bank as they wheeled into position, coming in, in a long slanting run, as though they intended to knock off the top of the church tower with their wing-tips.

  Captain Reis was in the church. Since he’d received the reports of the British breakthrough and the disappearance – dead or captured – of Lieutenant Thiergartner, he’d had a premonition of disaster and had gone to the church to light a candle and attend Mass. Though the tower of the church was tottering and the nave open to the sky, the rest of the building was still in use. Since there were hardly any villagers left, the worshippers were all soldiers and, because most of his men were not Catholics but Lutherans, there weren’t many of them.

  It was the clearing sky that troubled Reis most. He’d noticed as he’d wakened before daylight that it was full of stars, and it had seemed an omen, for without doubt the low clouds and rain had been a great factor in the defence so far.

  As the old priest stood before the altar, invoking the blessing of the Madonna, the sound of the aeroplanes came to Reis’ ears. Almost immediately, the walls shuddered and gusts of air blasted through the church as a succession of explosions grew into one cataclysmic roar. As the first whorls of dust curled in through the broken stonework and the soldiers jumped to their feet, the old priest turned automatically and gave them absolution.

  The explosions were increasing. The earth quaked, walls cracked and bulged; and as the rafters came down, Reis saw a great oak beam fall in a shower of plaster to crush two men hurrying for the door. Struggling up, his lungs filled with dust, he saw several more men caught in the open, hugging the ground, their faces drawn and pale with shock. One of them got to his feet in a panic and started to run, only to be flung against a wall by blast in a smashed bundle of flesh, bone and clothing.

  For a second or two there was a lull and Reis struggled outside to dash to his strongpoint, only to stumble into a welter of smoking craters. Then, as the next salvo of bombs arrived, it seemed as if the gates of Hell had opened and he could see right into it.

  As San Eusebio erupted in destruction, he was aware of his body being struck by fragments of stone and wood and a shower of fine dirt. The walls about him seemed to dissolve and he saw what was left of the church tower lift, going upwards like an elevator before it crumbled, fell apart and came down in pieces on the ruins.

  The place was still full of flashing light and his ears were hammered by the smack of the bombs, his body flung in a series of jerks against the revetments of the trench where he now crouched. The ground in front of him was filled with bouncing stones and bricks and fragments of timber, and a great drifting cloud of dust and pulverised soil. A blackness like that of night enveloped him, and on his tongue was the taste of scorched earth.

  He climbed from the trench and groped his way forward through the fog, crawling, falling and stumbling until eventually hands reached up and he was pulled head-first into another trench by his men. Lifting his head again, he saw the church had gone completely, the stumps of pillars sticking up like broken teeth, and he wondered what had happened to the priest.

  Then, suddenly, there was silence except for the fading sound of engines.

  San Eusebio was a ruin. It had been damaged before but now it was nothing but a tumbled heap of stone, its splintered timbers sticking out of the rubble like shattered bones; stones, tiles, woodwork were all flung in incredible confusion like a child’s playthings scattered in a temper; flames were appearing already, and he could see soldiers dragging themselves into the daylight.

  Feeling dazedly about as he climbed into the open again, trying to find survivors among the broken rafters and masonry, Reis bent low to avoid presenting a target, thankful that the bombardment had stopped but knowing perfectly well that it was only the prelude to another kind of horror. He had lost all sense of time but, as he moved about, slowly recovering his wits, the responsibility of command began to act as a stimulant and reduce the impact of fear.

  A few more soldiers appeared and he managed to instil in them some of his own determination, so that they stumbled off in some semblance of order to the strongpoints on the outskirts of the village.

  Then a corporal, his uniform torn, his face covered with blood, came staggering towards him, his eyes staring. But as Reis reached for him, he heard the sound of a British Bren, and the air became full of bullets swishing and cracking above his head.

  He knew at once what it meant and, releasing the corporal, he jerked a hand at the men still struggling from the trench he’d shared with them and set off running down the street.

  As the RAF bombers vanished, the British artillery opened up from the other side of the river, hammering every known German artillery position. For once the spotting aircraft could see, and Yuell’s information had been sound. To the men just scrambling from the captured enemy positions, it seemed an unbelievable concentration of fire.

  As they ran forward, San Eusebio was still hidden by smoke and dust, and for a moment the German guns were silent. Then, as they recovered, they began to put down a counter-barrage; but the running men escaped the worst by the speed at which they crossed the stretch of land to the steep slopes below the village.

  It was quite unnecessary to issue orders. Everybody knew exactly what to do because they’d done it a dozen times already on the way up Italy. There was only one way to go – forward – and they scrambled up the hillside, leaving the wounded where they fell.

  But the climb was very steep and a whole shower of mortar bombs was dropping on them, while crossfire came from machine-guns higher up the slopes. As Warley had said, there was only one safe place to be, and that was in San Eusebio itself where there were cellars and buildings to hide in.

  Slinging their weapons across their backs, they struggled up on hands and knees with the German ma
chine-guns spitting over their heads because they couldn’t be depressed sufficiently to hit them. The grim bit came when they had to rush the machine-gun positions which should in theory have been blotted out by the artillery. As usual, however, the infantry had to finish the job by demolishing them with hand grenades.

  They came at last to a stretch of wire by a broken wall, but there were plenty of gaps in it and they were through them at once.

  Their first sight of the defenders of the village was of the backs of German machine-gunners, facing and firing steadily down the road towards where Jago’s men were approaching. Farnsworth threw a grenade. The German gunners fell sideways, and a whole line of other Germans popped up like rabbits from their trenches to find out where the bomb had come from. Gask got the lot with a Bren he’d set up, and then they stood panting and exhilarated, aware that they’d reached their objective.

  ‘I think I’ve mislaid a lung somewhere,’ Warley said.

  As he spoke, there was a colossal crash that sent them diving for cover at once, their bodies battered by a shower of dirt and stones that also obscured the view.

  ‘That’s an 88,’ Farnsworth said. ‘And bloody close, too. Point-blank range, I reckon. They’ll have got the bastard dug in somewhere.’

  Warley looked about him. The bombing had had a cataleptic effect on the Germans for a while, but they were recovering quickly and unexpected points of resistance were already beginning to appear.

  ‘We’ve got nothing to touch an 88,’ he said. ‘I think we could do with one or two tanks up here.’

  Eight

  As it happened the tanks weren’t far away, and they were itching for a fight.

  They had moved forward slowly under low-revving engines, their main armament loaded with high explosive. Armour-piercing shot would come later as they prepared to meet German tanks and self-propelled guns, but for the moment they’d been told to help the infantry. Signalling would doubtless be by shouting when they got into position, because nobody placed much reliance on the infantry radios and they all preferred the old well-tried methods such as tracer ammunition or Very flares.

  Loaders swung open the main armament breech blocks and thrust home a round of ammunition until the rim tripped the extractors and closed the breech automatically. Belts of ammunition were dragged from their boxes and threaded into the machine-guns. Then, as the guns were cocked, the orders came from the leader of the first troop.

  ‘Hello, Tiger Two. Our friends are in San Eusebio and it’s our job to support them, so you go like the clappers as soon as you’re across. I shall lead and the rest of you will come as fast as you can after me. And keep a bloody sharp look-out for this road as you move down to the bridge. The edges are soft so you’d better stay slap in the middle.’

  Under the smoke screen, the Engineers had finally spanned the river by the disused ferry and the Yeomanry’s first tank came hurtling towards it down the long narrow track from Capodozzi. At the end, it slowed and edged on to the bridge and crossed without a shell being fired against it. The road behind it had been churned up by its tracks, but the troop leader radioed back encouragement to his next in line.

  ‘The road’s holding, but it’s a mess, so don’t stop. It ought to support half a dozen of us.’

  The second tank made the journey, like the first, in record time, rattled over the bridge to the far side and, still under cover of smoke, began to edge after the troop leader towards the slopes of San Eusebio. But Germans were obviously suspecting something – or else from high up on Monastery Hill in the clearing weather they had seen the tanks moving in Capodozzi – and shells began to drop through the smoke near the bridge. None of them struck it, however, and the third tank came down at the same speed as the others. Half way along the road, it seemed to slither sideways and the sergeant in command yelled in alarm.

  ‘Slow down, driver! You’ll have to take it more carefully.’

  They made it to the bridge, and crossed with the splinters from the German shells rattling against their armour plate.

  On advice from the third tank, the fourth tank took the road at a gentler pace, because the edges were beginning to crumble and it looked a bit dicey. As it crossed, the fifth tank followed.

  Six tanks made it, and Tallemach was just about to ask for more when a German shell carved a chunk out of the road, scattering its muddy surface all over the fields. It was obvious there would be no more tanks across for the moment and it was possible that the bridge itself would be destroyed before long; but six Churchills were on their way up to San Eusebio, and with the smell of success in the air at last, it seemed that the situation needed urgently reinforcing.

  As he reached for the telephone, Tallemach saw General Tonge standing alongside him. Heathfield was just behind him but Tallemach noticed that he was saying nothing, so quiet he might have been attending a convocation of bishops.

  ‘What the devil’s going on?’ Tonge demanded abruptly.

  ‘We’re into San Eusebio, sir,’ Tallemach said. ‘We’ve had a message from the Yorkshires. The Baluchis and the Punjabis are with them, but they’ve come to a halt at the moment and they’ve asked for the tanks.’

  ‘And the tanks?’ Tonge said.

  ‘We have six across, sir. Now the road’s gone and I’m afraid that’s it for a bit. But the six we’ve got across ought to be a help and we’ve still got the vehicle bridge intact, together with a footbridge. We ought to be able to get more across soon.’

  Tonge didn’t waste time asking any more questions. ‘Let’s have the 11th Indian Brigade up,’ he said briskly. ‘Give me a telephone. There’s talk of sending them along to Cassino, but I doubt if they need ’em and we could do with them here. And, Wallace, get in touch with Rankin and tell him we want every man he’s got up here. He can forget Castelgrande for good. We’re not going to make any gains there.’

  The fighting in San Eusebio had become a mosaic of grim little encounters over small distances, a game of hide and seek in craters and the ruins of buildings, each of which could and often did conceal a man with a gun. In addition, the Germans higher up, aware that they’d lost their strong-point, were dropping shells on the outskirts of the village now, and the British soldiers were seeking out cellars and digging in, preparatory to the next move forward. Until they could reach the far end, where the road swept into it from the river, they couldn’t feel safe. Once there, the bluff behind the village would protect them; but until then it was a yard-by-yard fight through the rubble, with unexpected points of resistance appearing in the shape of self-propelled guns which had been sealed inside houses with only their snouts protruding.

  Sniping had also come into its own because the rubble was a sniper’s dream. Although mortaring and machine-gun fire was a general hazard, the personal menace of someone who was able to pick you off without being seen seemed infinitely more dangerous and terrifying. There was a particularly troublesome German concealed in a house above the road where Jago was watching from behind a bank, and he was glad to hear the rumble of tank engines. Running back down the road, keeping out of sight behind the curve of the land, he met the leading Churchill as it approached and waved it to a stop. As the turret lid lifted, he raised his voice and bellowed.

  ‘Don’t stick your head out. There’s a sniper. In the tall flat-faced house in front of you. Can you stick a couple of shells into it for us?’

  ‘No sooner asked than done, old boy,’ the tank commander said, clanging the lid shut again. ‘Gunner, flat-faced house in front slightly to the right. Give him a couple of rounds when I say and make no mistake about it. Bring the bloody thing down. Take her forward a bit, driver.’

  The tank’s engine puffed exhaust smoke as the driver put his foot down, and it nosed into the road, tracks clawing for a grip.

  ‘Traverse right,’ the commander ordered. ‘On. Now to give that bugger one in the breadbasket.’

  The Besa rattled in rhythmic harmony to make the hidden German keep his head down, just in case there
was a panzerfaust waiting for them with a rocket bomb.

  ‘Okay, gunner. Fire!’

  The gun banged and lunged on the recoil, smoke oozing from its open breech until the loader rammed home another round. The first shell had plonked solidly into the front of the house and exploded, gouging out two walls with the result that the building now appeared to be balanced on the corner of the two remaining ones.

  ‘Stick the next right on the corner, gunner.’

  The second shell brought down the rest of the house in a cascade of bricks and tiles, leaving a dead man in a grey uniform, his feet trapped among the timbers, hanging head down above the settling dust and drifting smoke.

  ‘Got the bastard,’ Jago said but, just as he rose to his feet, Corporal Wymark stepped from cover ahead of him and a shot from the ruined house stopped him dead in his tracks. Shocked, they watched as he dropped his rifle, one hand groping forward like a blind man feeling his way. Then his knees buckled, the hand went down to break his fall, and for a moment he squatted on his heels, before sinking back as his legs slowly stretched out and he finally lay sprawled, his arms wide, staring at the sky.

  Jago was still wondering what to do about him when Duff dashed forward, bent double and dragged him to cover. Bending over the injured man as the stretcher-bearers arrived, Jago turned to Duff.

  ‘That was a bloody daft thing to do,’ he said. ‘Why didn’t you leave it till the armour had sorted the bastard out? He might have got you too.’

  ‘Well–’ Duff’s small face puckered with the effort of thinking – ‘’e’s got four kids. I’ve only got two, so it’s only right, innit?’

  Jago looked at him wonderingly, then turned to the tank commander peering through his half-opened hatch.

  ‘Can you see an opening to a cellar from up there?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Give him one in the eye then, will you? He must still be in there.’