A Thread of Grace

by Mary Doria Russel

Once the autumn rain began, it never stopped for long. Bridges washed out. Rivers flooded their banks, and fields disappeared under water. Torrents roared down mountainsides, and mud sloped by the ton onto civilian highways already hammered by heavy military equipment. Engineering battalions worked day and night, digging drainage ditches, plowing the syrupy mess to the sides of roads. They blasted rock from Apennine crags, crushed it, shoveled gravel into gouges and potholes, getting sloshed with sheets of mud for their trouble as trucks roared by carrying food and ammunition, casualties or replacements.

  Wet for weeks, feet would swell something awful. Men would limp into a town hoping for shelter from the endless goddamned rain, and there’d be nothing left. Not a building untouched. Whole houses blown to hell: splinters and gravel, that’s all. Nothing alive except maybe one poor damned cow, udder full to bursting, bellowing as she roamed through the muddy wreckage.

  And then they’d get to the front. Christ— even the air was muddy there, but nobody at home would read about that. The censors wouldn’t let them tell how mines and shells sent geysers of the stuff into the sky, how mud-covered birds fell to earth with bits of man meat and twisted metal. Boots and socks, bearings grease, blood, crankcase oil, vomit, shattered corpses— everything churned, liquefied, sucked into the mud.

  A few days of that, and everybody began to break down. Madman-hero or chickenshit draftee, they couldn’t think straight, couldn’t follow what the officers were saying. Men were court-martialed for disobeying orders they couldn’t remember having heard.

  In General Headquarters, topography and armies were represented on maps by tightly packed contour lines and geometric shapes, but armies didn’t fight in that campaign. It was companies at best. Platoons. Squads. Clusters of individual men struggling up narrow fingers of steep and stony mountains toward dug-in troops who could see them coming, and defended every goddamned inch.

  In that murderous, soul-killing, relentless way, the American Fifth took one mountain after another, while the British Eighth fought its way through the vast watery maze of Romagna’s swamps. By October, Highway 65 to Bologna was wide open and the Brenner Pass was blocked by debris from bombs. The German retreat was cut off, and behind their lines, the Italian Resistance was at work, disrupting communications, transportation, supply lines; blowing up bridges, ambushing troops, assassinating officials. Action by action, partisans took possession of the countryside, the forests, the high ground, and the night. No city, no building, no household in Italy was safe for Fascists.

  They could see the end. That was the hell of it. Whether they looked for victory or defeat, they could see the end. A breakthrough was days away, and then—

  Supplies and reinforcements were diverted from Italy to other theaters. The Allies reassigned their best generals to the western front and Greece. A few nights later, Kesselring’s staff car collided with a piece of towed artillery, and he was out of action, damned near killed. The sideshow was handed over to second-tier generals: the Allies’ colorless Leese, the Reich’s lackluster von Vietinghoff.

  Neither could win. Neither would yield. And then it began to snow.

  Across Europe, dense fog and deep cold encased every branch and twig in icy armor. Generals used the bone-chilling, heart-freezing winter of ’45 to consolidate broken units and hurl them against the enemy again, and again, and again. The infantry’s dream of “home by Christmas” became the Great War’s nightmare of stagnant lines and pointless slaughter.

  And every night more fine young ghosts whispered in a knife-blade wind: Welcome to hell, brother. Damn the generals. Damn the politicians. Damn them all. Damn everyone who is warm, and dry, and alive tonight.

  Northwestern Italy

  1945

  Anno Fascista XXIV

  February 1945

  ABOVE NORTHWESTERN ITALY

  Tracers stream by. Black puffs of AA blossom. The Dakota bucks and rocks. Simon Henley cringes, and the dispatching sergeant from Chicago laughs. “Relax! Jus’ some token shit from Sant’Andrea,” the Chicagoan yells over the deafening drone. “Nuttin’a worry ’bout.”

  The plane’s crew is American, its passengers British. Three Special Ops teams of two men each: an officer who speaks Italian and a signalman to establish communications between partisan bands and Allied Command. Two teams have already parachuted into Emilia-Romagna, and now it’s on to Piemonte, after cutting across the Gulf of Genoa.

  As promised, the flak ends in less than the time it takes to overfly the thin crescent of Liguria, but Corporal Henley has several excellent reasons for remaining terrified. One: he is in an airplane. Two: the airplane is over enemy territory. Three: very soon, he will be required to jump out of the plane into the enemy territory.

  Across the fuselage, Major Salvi grins beneath the sort of pencil mustache favored by dashing cinema stars. “Simon! How is your sphincter?” Simon registers shock, and once more provides a laugh. “Don’t be ashamed!” Salvi yells. “Even Lawrence of Arabia got the shits before a battle!”

  An Ancona expat who taught Dante at Cambridge, Giordano Salvi signed on with the Special Operations Executive back in ’42. His English is a strange mix of academic and army, but his Italian is native. Salvi already holds the Military Cross for the work he did north of Naples before Anzio, two years ago. This will be his third drop behind German lines.

  It’s Simon Henley’s first.

  Nineteen, a baby-faced blond, Mrs. Henley’s little boy spent his first winter of service freezing on coast guard duty, twelve miles from home. There he fired a Lewis gun from time to time at German aircraft passing overhead, but failed to impress either the Luftwaffe or the local girls. The latter failure, and the observable influence of a paratrooper’s distinctive red beret on women, accounts for Simon’s present predicament. In a fit of unrequited lust, he volunteered for paratroop training last year.

  With illogic that seemed typical of the army, Simon was posted to the Signal Corps in British Guiana instead. There four Negro NCOs, each a breathtakingly fast telegrapher who’d worked for the Georgetown post office, browbeat him relentlessly until he could reliably transmit thirty words per minute without error— a skill, he learned glumly, that had no measurable effect on his sex appeal. When his group started lessons in silent killing and unarmed combat, he began to wonder if he’d been assigned to Special Ops, but then it was back to England, when he was apparently reassigned to the paratroops after all. He spent two weeks stepping out of a wingless plane propped on scaffolding twelve feet above the ground while a sergeant screamed, “Tuck and roll, you bloody little cunt! Tuck and roll!”

  At last, the moment of truth: three training drops from a plane with wings and an engine. Only then did the freshly promoted Corporal Henley discover that the only thing more sickening than flying was the fear of plummeting to the ground like a rock. And the only thing more terrifying than that was the thought of displaying how frightened he was by hanging on to the dispatcher’s knees and sobbing, “Please, sir, may I be excused?”

  Tonight, like Major Salvi, Corporal Simon Henley carries a compass concealed inside a button of his tunic and a comb with a hidden saw in its shank. Less subtly, he wears a commando knife with an eight-inch blade sheathed on his left hip, a Colt.45 automatic holstered on his right, and a Marlin submachine gun slung across his back beneath the Irvine Stachute that will, he’s been assured, open automatically. He’s been told only that they’re to get themselves to Milan and link up with a band of autonomous partisans there. Major Salvi has the rest of their orders. Everything in the SOE is need-to-know.

  The pilot spots a signal fire made of hay bales, their outline blurred by wind. “Commies, pro’ly!” the sergeant blares through the noise. “You limey bastids won’t sen’ ’em any weapons, so dey use decoy signals to fool us inna droppin’ shit onna wrong spot. Yer signal’s a square shape!”

  “As opposed to a square color?” Salvi asks, ribbing him.

  “Smart-ass!” the Chicagoan replies, shouting a laugh w
hen Salvi says, “Major Smart-ass to you, Sergeant!”

  They continue to chat at the top of their lungs while the pilot banks for a closer look. A second signal fire comes into view, and then a third, on a different mountainside. “Shit!” the Chicagoan yells when AA opens up on them from the direction of a flaming T. “Jerries! Get ready, youse guys.”

  The red light comes on. The sergeant drags the door open. An icy blast of starlit air hits Simon Henley’s face. At thirty-second intervals, the sergeant flings out canisters of supplies, the wireless transmitter, and the hand generator, each on separate chutes. The plane jolts and sways alarmingly. The sergeant hits Salvi’s shoulder. The major disappears. Stepping up to the opening, Simon looks down, hoping to see Salvi’s parachute bloom above the folded, forested wilderness. The mountains are a study in black and white. Bloody hell, Simon thinks. It’s still winter here!

  He’s never jumped into snow.

  VALDOTTAVO

  “The charges are too close together,” Renzo says. “Move that one about half a meter.”

  “Why?” the kid wants to know.

  “If the second detonation isn’t offset correctly, the wheels on the other side of the track will keep the train from derailing.”

  “All right,” the boy says sullenly. He’s fourteen, maybe. Full of bravado and crap. “Why don’t you help?”

  “Because,” Renzo explains patiently, “I’m a drunken old gimp. Either I fall over, or I can’t get up.” They can hear the locomotive’s engine now. “Move the charge.”

  Renzo slogs back through the snowy mud toward Schramm and the others who wait on the slope above the tracks. “You shouldn’t talk like that about yourself,” Schramm says. “It’s bad for discipline.”

  Lighting a cigarette, Renzo looks up, attention drawn by anti-aircraft fire in the distance. Low on the jagged horizon, an airplane smokes into sight. “Busy night.”

  Schramm follows Renzo’s gaze. “British?”

  “American. Starboard engine throwing oil. Feather that prop, friend.”

  As if heeding Renzo’s advice, the pilot tries to bring the propeller vertical. The windmilling goes on, creating so much drag the plane nearly stalls. “Lighten the load,” Renzo murmurs. The damaged engine bursts into flame. “Cut the fuel…”

  The train’s whistle blasts as the locomotive starts through its last tunnel. Renzo beckons to the boy. “Pietro— Paolo, whatever the hell your name is—”

  “It’s Franco!” the boy shouts back.

  “Are you going to stay there and argue with that train?”

  Canisters, boxes, and a couple of paratroopers sail out of the crippled Dakota and disappear behind a nearby mountain. The crew remains on board, hurling flak jackets, a chart table and oxygen tanks into the night.

  “Will they make it?” Schramm asks.

  “If they bail out now.”

  The plane begins to climb, but not fast enough.

  “Scheisse,” Schramm sighs when it explodes against a cliff. “Survivors?”

  “The crew? Not a chance.” Renzo pulls out his flask and raises it to the dead. “The jumpers? Possibly.”

  Franco sloshes through muddy snow, looking back through dirt-gray branches in time to see the train crew leap into trackside weeds as the locomotive blares out of the tunnel. “You warned them!”

  Renzo wipes his mouth on the back of his hand. “Of course!”

  “But they’re Fascists! They’re—”

  The air is compressed by two explosions in quick succession, then ripped by the screech of metal on metal. A shatteringly loud crash seems to go on forever. Across the ravine, Tullio Goletta gives the sign and thirty men in motley leave the trees to slide down a snow-covered slope. The trainmen call greetings to Renzo, and join the partisans in emptying the freight cars of their cargo.

  Mouth open, Franco turns. Renzo’s eyes are mocking and mature, if slightly unfocused. “That’s why I’m the boss, and you’re the one who’s going to shut up and carry a box back to base.” Renzo waves to Tullio and pitches his voice to carry. “Anyone over there speak English?”

  Tullio consults with the others. “Otello does, boss!”

  “And I do, a little,” Schramm says.

  “We’re going after that airdrop,” Renzo calls. “You’re with me, Tullio. Bring Otello and five or six others! You, too, Schramm. We may need a doctor.”

  Roman candle. That’s the jump-school term for it. Occasionally chutes fail, and that’s what you look like, going down.

  It seemed hours before Simon felt the welcome jerk of his own straps. He lost sight of Salvi’s all too rapid descent, rotating on the lines in time to see the Dakota itself crash into the mountainside. With tracers trying to find him, the long swaying float to earth seemed endless, even while the ground hurtled upward to meet him. He kept his elbows tucked and meant to roll, but thudded instead into snow, less than a minute after the Chicagoan gave Simon a shove into the frigid air.

  Winded by the fall, he hears more explosions— two, three? Nearer this time. Expecting Germans at any moment, Simon tries to get out of his harness but can’t move. I’m paralyzed, he thinks. I didn’t roll, and I’ve broken my own silly neck!

  In the next instant he realizes he can wiggle his toes. Crossing his eyes, he can focus on the snow just in front of him. He turns his head from side to side to clear a little airway in front of his nose. Kicks and presses and gouges with knees and elbows. Gains some space around himself, but makes no progress upward.

  Not paralyzed then, but definitely immobilized.

  Rest a bit, he decides.

  The snow insulates him at first, but soon begins to drain his body heat away. Shivering, he tries again to dig out, swearing now, and scared. The activity makes him warmer briefly, but his muscles start to tense up. Fatigue sets in faster this time.

  He rests, shuddering uncontrollably. His fingers and toes ache with cold. He tries again, digging like a demented terrier, but exhausts himself just to get his fingers up by his chest.

  Astounded, he thinks, This is it then! Unless the Germans come and shoot me first, I’m going to freeze to death. Standing up. In a snowdrift. In Italy! I never even got to wear that bloody red beret.

  He wishes he’d written to his mother. He wishes Major Salvi’s parachute had opened. He wishes it were spring, and that the snow would melt.

  In a fit of determination, he grits his teeth and puts everything he’s got into last effort to free himself.

  Don’t cry, he tells himself afterward. Just don’t cry.

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  Angelo stands still, one arm into a jacket that’s already too small. “To the privy. Really,” he says. “The explosions woke me up. I had to pee.”

  “Look me in the eye,” Mirella orders. “Tell me you weren’t going to look for bullets.”

  “Honest, Mamma. I have to pee.”

  “All right,” she says, eyes narrow. “I’ll just wait right here until you’re done.”

  He jams his feet into wooden-soled boots. “You never believe me,” he mutters, indignant at being caught.

  Mirella sags onto a kitchen chair as her son clumps out to the privy. Oh, Angelo, she thinks, fighting nausea. What am I going to do with you?

  Is it because he’s a boy, or because he’s nine? Is it the war, or is it just Angelo, needing a man’s hand? She wishes she had Lidia to advise her. She wishes Iacopo were here to take charge. She wishes she could sleep through the night.

  The door bangs shut. She looks up. “Angelo, come here,” she says. He does, but he won’t let her put her arm around him. “Angelo, please! Try to understand! I’m all alone here—”

  “No, you’re not! There’s Mariano and Tomasso and—”

  “That’s not what I mean, and you know it! It’s just you and me and the girls now. I have so much work to do, and I’m… I don’t feel well. I worry about Babbo, and if you make me worry, too, it’s just too much! I need you to be as grown up as you ca
n be. You must look after the girls, and take care of me a little bit, too. Can you do that?”

  Arms crossed against his chest, he shrugs, rolling his eyes but nodding. She tries to kiss him, but he squirms away and stomps up the stairs to the bedroom, ahead of his mother.

  He and Stefania share a bed with Rosina to keep warm. Rosina’s asleep, but Stefania’s only pretending. She probably noticed when he got up to watch the airplane go by, and ratted him out to Mamma. Girls, he thinks, disgusted.

  His mother stands in the bedroom doorway until Angelo undresses and gets back into bed. He waits, listening to the hallway floor creak under his mother’s footsteps, until her door closes. Then he pinches Stefania really hard, like Bruno Ceretto taught him. Stefania squawks, and he covers her mouth with his hand. “Nobody likes a rat, Stefania. You snitch on me again, I’ll cut your hair off.”

  “You wouldn’t!”

  “I’ll wait till you’re asleep and cut it off until you’re bald.”

  “You’ll get spanked,” she warns.

  “You’ll be bald a lot longer than my culo will hurt.” He pulls his pants back on, drags two sweaters over his head, opens the window, and tosses his boots out. Won’t be the first time he’s climbed down the vines. Throwing a leg over the sill, he fixes Stefania with a stare. “Rat on me again, and you’ll be sorry, baldie.”

  The starlight’s all blue, but when your eyes are used to it, you can see real easy because the snow sort of shines. And anyway the parachutes are easy to spot. The camouflage is all wrong— black, green, and brown against the white. Course, they didn’t expect to get shot down. They probably figured they’d be past the mountains when they jumped.

  Germans look for airdrops, but Angelo’s not scared of them. They don’t like coming into the mountains at night anymore, so they walk real slow, and won’t get here for a while. Dead bodies don’t scare him either. They did when he was little, but not anymore, not after that one Bruno Ceretto found. It must have been a partisan, because he wasn’t wearing a real uniform. He died near the orphanage, and Bruno found the body when the sisters sent everybody out to look for mushrooms and bird eggs and ruculo to eat. He told Angelo, and they snuck back out that night to see it. There were flies and worms, and no eyes, and it really stank.