A Pair of Silver Wings

by James Holland

  Edward nodded and ran on ahead of them, turning down beside the field where he had first landed, and on along the track beside the hidden path. He thought his lungs would burst, his legs seize, but he refused to stop. Keep going, he told himself. Panic was beginning to take over. What if the Germans had already reached the farm? What would he do? Images of Germans swarming through the yard, setting fire to the barn, filled his mind.

  Relief surged over him as he reached Pian del Castagna. The yard was empty; the Germans had not reached there yet. The household was only just waking, unaware of the catastrophe unfolding.

  ‘For the love of God,’ said Eleva as he burst into the kitchen, ‘whatever’s happened to you?’

  For a moment, Edward could not speak. He leant against the wall, his chest heaving. ‘The Germans,’ he said eventually, ‘the Germans are here. Coming up the mountain.’ Eleva put her hands to her mouth. ‘Quick,’ said Edward, his voice gradually recovering. ‘Get everyone up. You’ve got to get out of here.’

  Eleva gasped in horror, stumbled backwards and clutched a chair. She looked terrified.

  ‘Now, Eleva!’ said Edward, marching past her. ‘Get up! Get up!’ he yelled, ‘Everyone up!’

  Carla hurried across the yard from the hayloft where the girls were all now sleeping. ‘Eduardo, what’s going on?’

  ‘The Germans are coming,’ he told her. ‘The rastrellamento has begun.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ she said, looking at the dried mixture of his own and Volpe’s blood on his face. ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘No, no, I’m fine – I promise.’ He took her face in his hands. ‘Darling, you must go to the church at Casiglia. Stay there, and don’t move. Do you promise?’

  She nodded. Her eyes were frightened, her skin pale.

  In less than ten minutes they were ready. Edward led them back up the track until they reached the hidden path. ‘This is where we must part,’ said Edward. He turned to Orfeo and Federico, and then looked at the rest of the family. They stared at him, wide-eyed and disbelieving. Edward had seen that look before in the faces of pilots he’d known: it was fear – fear and shock. They all clasped one another, Federico and Orfeo hugging their families to them. ‘It’s all right,’ Arturo was saying to his sons, ‘I’ll look after them, now go!’

  Edward turned to Carla, took her hands and felt her fingers tighten around his. Her teeth chattered. ‘Promise me,’ he said. ‘Don’t leave the church. I’ll come and find you.’

  ‘I promise,’ she said. ‘I’d die if anything happened to you.’

  He smiled. ‘It won’t. I love you, Carla. I love you more than you can know.’

  Her hands slipped from his and he turned. ‘Come on,’ he said to Federico and Orfeo. ‘We must go.’

  As they reached the summit, the cloud suddenly lifted so that they could see the mountains and valleys below. Rising into the sky from all around the lower slopes were columns of smoke. Here and there, flickers of orange flame could be seen where farms were still or newly burning. Soldiers swarmed across the open land, and along the tracks and paths that wound their way up the mountains and through the wooded lower slopes.

  There were several hundred men up there at the top, some partisans, but most contadini. Edward stood with Orfeo and Federico, watching in grim silence as a thousand-year-old community burned before their eyes. In the distance they could still hear shellfire from the front; closer was the hollow sound of rifles and machine guns chattering and resounding around the mountains.

  He could see the church at Casiglia, and the track that led towards Cortino on the end of the spur. They’re down there, thought Edward, and wondered what Carla was thinking. His heart yearned for her. The expression on her face: the fear and anguish – and he’d had to let her go. Should I have brought them up here too? he wondered. At least then he could have comforted her, protected her. He felt so helpless, standing there in a clearing on the summit, looking down at the purge unfolding below. Now he really was an observer; Monte Luna, he realised with a sickening feeling, had become the box seat for the rastrellamento.

  ‘They’ll be safe in the church,’ said Orfeo numbly.

  ‘Yes,’ said Edward. ‘They’re not going to be interested in the women and children.’

  8.30 a.m. Giorgio and Jock found him. They needed his help to set up defence posts along the two paths that led to the summit. Rocks and bits of wood were being used as barricades. The Brens were positioned, and ammunition boxes placed beside them. No-one said much. Their faces were taut and strained. Giorgio had washed the worst of Volpe’s blood from his face, but he still looked grim and filthy.

  ‘I’m sorry about Volpe,’ said Edward.

  ‘I know,’ said Giorgio. ‘We tried.’ He rolled a cigarette. ‘At least you got Pietro.’

  Edward sighed and rubbed his face. ‘Yes,’ he said.

  It was a little after nine when Federico suddenly appeared. He looked worried – more than worried. ‘Quick,’ he said to Edward. ‘Something’s happening.’

  They hurried back to the clearing. ‘There are Germans at the church,’ said Orfeo. Edward looked. Women and children were being ushered outside. There were more of them than Edward had realised. More than a hundred – two hundred even. He spotted Father Umberto, ahead, pleading with the soldiers.

  Edward asked Jock for his binoculars. He focussed and found Father Umberto again. He was standing with two soldiers. One looked like an officer. They were leading him away, into the trees. ‘No,’ said Edward, his heart hammering once more. The priest disappeared behind a tree. He could see the soldier but not the officer. Two shots, Edward felt himself jolt, and then saw Father Umberto reappear as he fell forward onto the ground.

  ‘What?’ said Federico. ‘What were those shots? What’s happening?’

  ‘They’ve just executed Father Umberto,’ said Edward. He felt his throat tighten and the taste of vomit fill his mouth. No-one spoke; they were now watching the women and children as they were led down the track towards the walled cemetery. Edward swept the binoculars further along the track, to Cortino. Buildings in the village were beginning to burn. He felt confused; panic began creeping over him. Scanning back to the line of people, he searched for Carla and the others.

  ‘What are they doing?’ Federico was saying. ‘Where can they be taking them?’

  Suddenly Edward spotted her. She was walking together with the others. It looked like they were holding hands. He watched Carla look around, at her mother, at the others. ‘They’re there,’ he said, passing the binoculars to Orfeo.

  ‘What are they doing?’ said Federico again. ‘What do they want with them? What has any of this got to do with the women and children?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ Edward snapped.

  ‘They’re putting them in the cemetery,’ said Giorgio. Edward put his hands to his head.

  ‘Can’t we do something?’ said Federico. ‘We’ve got to do something. Can’t we shoot the Germans from here? For God’s sake, we can’t just stand and watch.’

  ‘Mr Casalini,’ said Giorgio, ‘try and keep calm. We couldn’t possibly hit them from here – not without even greater risk to them all.’

  As the last of the women and children were ordered into the cemetery, they spotted four soldiers hurrying up the track from Casiglia. One carried a machine gun, the others several boxes. Edward felt his heart stop. He looked back to the cemetery, where the soldiers were lining the women and children up against the back wall.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, this can’t be happening.’

  Federico was now tearing at his hair. ‘They’re going to shoot them, they’re going to shoot them all,’ he said. He grabbed Giorgio by the shirt. ‘Do something! Do something! You’re the soldiers. You can’t let this happen.’

  Orfeo pulled Federico away and slapped him hard around the face. ‘What can they do? What can anyone do against this evil?’ Federico collapsed on the ground, sobbing. Edward felt his legs weaken. The Germans were now assembling the machi
ne gun by the gate of the cemetery, facing the line of women and children in front of them. He took the binoculars again and found Carla. She was further away now; it was hard to see her face. A baby began wailing. Someone else screamed hysterically. He felt paralysed; paralysed with dread, with shock, with his helplessness. With a sickening feeling that had enveloped him completely and was squeezing the life from him, a crushing weight that he was powerless to do anything about.

  He saw the puff of smoke from the barrel before he heard the chatter of its fire. The line of people tumbled and collapsed. Edward buried his head in his hands. ‘No!’ he yelled, ‘No! No! No!’ His legs buckled and he fell to his knees. ‘Carla,’ he sobbed, ‘Carla.’

  Italy – August, 1995

  No-one lived in Capriglia any more. Like Pian del Castagna, the place was a ruin. Roofless houses nestled in the trees, including the farm that had once been lived in by Sergio Panni. In the kitchen – the place where Edward had first met Colonel Bianco – there was now a large birch, its branches spilling out of the open space of the roof. Nothing stirred. There was no birdsong, no rustle of animals in the undergrowth. The place was completely still.

  Edward rejoined the path. The church, too, lay in ruins. For a moment, he paused, imagining the mass of women and children huddled there, believing they were safe. Carla and the Casalinis; he wondered where they’d been standing – which end of the church – and what they’d been thinking as they’d heard the soldiers ordering them outside.

  He walked on, out of the trees to the cemetery. It was mid-afternoon, the sun warm. White puffs of cloud were scattered across the sky. The scrunch of his footsteps on the stony track was the only sound. Once, he thought, these mountains would have been full of noise – a vibrant community. There’d been a shop in Cortino, just a kilometre along the track, and a bar. Now the mountains seemed deserted.

  As he reached the cemetery, he was surprised by what he saw. In contrast with Capriglia, it was still clearly carefully tended. There was a floral wreath fastened to the iron gate and pots of flowers on some of the graves. It struck him as ironic that where there had once been so much life there was now nothing, but where the dead had been buried, there were freshly repaired walls and newly cut grass.

  He glanced up at the mountain looming above. The summit was only a few hundred feet above this mountain spur. In places the rock was sheer, elsewhere it was as wooded as he remembered. He could see a clearing at the top. Yes, he thought, that was where we had stood. He turned his gaze towards the wall opposite the gate. The view from it was stunning: a wide, sweeping view of the mountains. A place of beauty.

  Edward’s thoughts turned to the last time he had been inside the cemetery. It had been evening, dusk on that most terrible of days: 29th September, nearly fifty-one years before.

  Volpe had been right about one thing – the Germans had not stayed up in the mountains overnight. As dusk had fallen, so they had slipped away back to the valleys. Up on the summit, the remaining partisans had begun to melt away too – heading for the south, towards the Allies, or back to Bologna; anywhere but Monte Luna. For the contadini there had been harder decisions: where could they go? What should they do? Edward remembered Federico’s raving. He had been uncontrollable, demented with grief. He remembered the two brothers sitting on the ground, Federico crouched in Orfeo’s arms, howling, while tears ran silently down Orfeo’s face. Everyone grieves differently, he thought. ‘I’m going to take him back to Pian del Castagna,’ Orfeo had told Edward. ‘We can live in the woods for a few days. I’ve got more hidden supplies. We’ll survive.’ But their hearts had been broken; that had been obvious. Edward wondered now, as he had many times before, whether they had survived, as Orfeo had promised they would. Whether they had learned to live again.

  Edward had spent much of that day in a stupor, his brain unable to absorb what he’d witnessed. It was all wrong: the women were supposed to have been safe. He’d thought he’d done the right thing, telling them to go to the church. Instead, he’s sent them to their deaths, something he would have to live with for the rest of his life. Yet again, the wrong people had died – first Harry, now Carla, and many other friends besides. And yet again, he’d survived. It was a curse; he was damned to roam the earth, while those he had ever loved were snatched away.

  He recognised now that he’d become every bit as demented as Federico, but in a different way, obsessed with the need to find her. ‘She might have survived,’ he’d kept saying. Jock and Giorgio had tried to reason with him, but to no avail. ‘I have to see her,’ he had said over and over. ‘I have to see her.’ And so as the light of the day began to fade, they’d climbed down the mountain and crept into the cemetery. Jock had vomited – Jock, who’d seen more death and mutilation than most. Contorted bodies had lain piled on one another. The smell of death had been overpowering, one that Edward had been unable to rid himself of for weeks after. At unexpected times or places, he would suddenly detect a whiff of it on the air. He and Giorgio had begun moving the bodies, retching as they’d done so. They had found Isabella first, with Gino still in her arms. Then Edward had seen Carla. Her entire body had been covered with blood, not just from her own wounds, but also from those bodies above which had seeped over her. Edward had lifted her and carried her to one side, where beneath a young tree he had sat and cradled her lifeless body in his arms. Her hair had been matted and stiff. Four bullets had killed her – four bullets that had torn into her chest. Ripped into her heart. ‘She wouldn’t have felt a thing,’ Jock had said, as he’d stood over him. ‘Not a thing.’

  ‘Come on,’ Giorgio had said. ‘Leave her. You’ve said your goodbye.’ But even then, it had been so hard – so difficult to accept that the moment he laid her down, he would never, ever see her again; would never again feel her kiss, or hear her voice, her laughter, or see the way her face lit up whenever she saw him. That ahead of him he faced long years without her. A lifetime of wishing it could have been so very different.

  As he had stepped out of the cemetery at the end of that terrible day, he had understood that he was utterly exhausted, in mind, body and spirit. There had been no reserves left. At twenty-three, his spirit, and his heart, had been shattered.

  Was this the tree? he wondered, as he stood before an ageing birch. Certainly, it was the right wall. He looked down, imagining himself sitting there that night. He rubbed his eyes. Enough, he told himself.

  The sound of a car disturbed him and he wandered back to the gate as a small Peugeot van pulled up outside. A man with greying hair stepped out and opening the back of the van, pulled out a fresh wreath of flowers.

  ‘Buongiorno,’ said Edward.

  ‘Buongiorno,’ the man replied and then Edward asked him about the wreath. It was to commemorate the massacre, the man replied. They put up a new wreath every week.

  ‘Every week?’ said Edward.

  ‘Every week – here and all over the mountain where the massacres took place.’

  ‘Were you living here then?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ the man replied. ‘I lived in Saragano. You know it?’ Edward nodded. ‘It was destroyed on the second day,’ the man continued. ‘I ran and hid, but I watched them execute seven members of my family.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ said Edward.

  The man shrugged. ‘Time heals everything. But I still like to pay my respects, you know?’

  ‘Do you know what happened to the doctor?’ Edward asked. ‘Dr Gandolfi?’

  ‘He was killed. All the men were taken to a barn. They machine-gunned them, then burned the place to the ground. 30th September, 1944.’ He finished attaching the wreath to the gate. ‘Why do you ask about Dr Gandolfi? Did you know him?’

  ‘Yes,’ Edward nodded. ‘Yes, he was a friend.’

  ‘During the war?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The man looked at him quizzically, then said, ‘Do you mind me asking your name?’

  ‘No, of course not – I’m sorry, I should have said. It’s End
erby. Edward Enderby.’

  ‘Eduardo!’ The man’s face lit up. ‘My God, Eduardo back here after all these years. We’ve all wondered what had become of you!’ He took Edward’s hand and shook it vigorously. ‘I don’t believe it!’ he said, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘Eduardo, come back to see us!’

  Edward was stunned. He laughed, embarrassed, and said, ‘I’m so sorry – do I know you?’

  ‘No, my name is Francesco Soldi,’ Francesco grinned. ‘I was just a boy – fifteen at the time – but we all knew who you were: you and Volpe and Giorgio Corti. The Blue Brigade. There’s a street named after you in Veggio! We tried so hard to track you down for the naming ceremony, but we got nowhere.’ Francesco shook his head again. ‘It’s incredible, after all these years.’

  ‘Well, I –’ Edward felt dumbfounded, suddenly at a loss as to what to say.

  ‘Where are you staying?’ Francesco asked.

  ‘Er, in Bologna.’

  ‘And you’re here for a few days?’

  ‘A week. I arrived last Saturday.’

  ‘And it’s Monday now,’ said Francesco. ‘Plenty of time! Have you seen the memorial at Mazzola?’

  ‘No,’ said Edward. ‘No, I didn’t realise there was one.’

  ‘It’s very beautiful. It’s where all the victims are buried – one thousand eight hundred and eight in all. It’s in the centre of the town – you can’t miss it. I’ll gladly take you there myself if you’d like.’

  ‘I’m sorry – how many did you say?’

  ‘One thousand eight hundred and eight. That’s how many people they killed in the three days from 29th September to 1st October.’

  ‘My God,’ said Edward and clutched the iron gate to steady himself. ‘I had no idea.’ So many, he thought. A sense of shame washed over him. ‘Francesco, I’m sorry. I haven’t been here since the war. You must forgive me – this is a lot to take in, to think about.’

  Francesco’s face softened. ‘Don’t apologise – I understand.’