Guns At Cassino (20 page)

`Oh,
it isn't as bad as that, General,' he said. 'Our Intelligence, reports that the Krauts are not using the place for observation purposes.'

`Bugger
Intelligence!' Freyberg answered crudely. 'I want the place taken out by air.'

Gruenther
looked at him aghast.

`But
you can't mean that, General?'

`I
can and do. The place was converted into a fortress in the nineteenth century. The walls are a hundred and fifty feet high, of solid masonry and at least ten feet thick at the base. To cut a long story short, Monte Cassino is as powerful as any modern fortress and we've got to take it out by modern means'

`But
General - ' Gruenther spluttered.

`No
buts, General,' Freyberg interrupted brusquely. `Whether the damn place is occupied by the Jerries or not at the moment is immaterial to me. They'll use it in the end, believe you me. Now General Gruenther,' he lowered his voice confidentially, 'this is what we're going to do.'

`Hot
shit, Gruenther!' Clark cursed, 'that dam limey must be out of his mind! Do you realize what he wants me to authorize – our planes dropping blockbuster bombs on the goddam place! Can't you just hear the papers screaming in Boston? Goddamit Gruenther, those Catholics'd have the hide off me. And you can just imagine what the Pope's reaction would be.' He sighed wearily. 'Why is it everybody tries to sabotage me? What have I done to deserve generals like this? I try my goddam best, and all I get is lousy goldbrickers.' Gruenther remained silent. He knew Clark, his moods of self-pity did not last long. Clark raised his head.

`What
do you think, Gruenther?' he asked finally.

`Well,
sir, the Second Corps has had the heart knocked out of it on the Cassino front. As you know, every time they formed up for an attack, the Krauts knew they were coming. ‘Why?' He shrugged slightly. 'Because the Kraut observers in that damned monastery could see them coming. Okay, so now the limeys are going to have a crack and again the Monastery'll be signalling they're coming. In essence, sir, if you take it out, you'll have the Pope on your back; if you don't, you'll have Winnie Churchill breathing fire down on you. And I know which one of them is the worse.'

Three
hours later the order went out from Clark's Fifth Army Headquarters to the United States Army Air Corps in Italy. It was brutally simple:
Destroy
the
Abbey
of
Monte
Cassino
.

The
gleaming silver planes came in at fifteen thousand feet, their white vapour trails sketching straight lines on the harsh winter-blue wash of the sky. They came on in perfect formation. Here and there a black puffball exploded about them. Down below in the Abbey, on this February morning, the Abbot knelt in front of the little Madonna of De Matteis and began to croak the words, 'Beseech Christ on our behalf', as the first bomb came thundering down. The great walls shuddered visibly. The dust of centuries was dislodged from the cracks. Another bomb fell and another, their thunder reverberating along the vast stone passages of the ancient pile so that they seemed no longer a series of individual explosions but one huge cataclysmic roar.

The
monks, who had spent their lives hidden from the world in this mountain-top oasis of tranquillity, huddled together in terror. The wrinkled old Abbot commenced giving them absolution. Through the narrow windows the frightened monks, huddled in the corner, could see the blinding yellow flashes as treasure after treasure was destroyed, while the thunder of the explosions rolled back and forth down the vaulted corridors.

A
servant stumbled in, his face contorted with shock. He was gesticulating wildly, but uttering no sound. His hands moved back and forth in a language none of the ashen-faced monks could understand. He was trying to tell them that the cathedral had just gone.

The
four-engined Flying Forts had gone now. They had pounded the ancient monastery for four hours. Its roof was beginning to look jagged and uneven and here and there a window seemed unnaturally enlarged. But the place was still standing. Now it was the turn of the mediums; two-engined Mitchell bombers.

They
came in at three hundred miles an hour - twelve of them in a tight aggressive formation. Watching them on Peak 555, von Dodenburg saw how their leader dipped his wings suddenly. It was the signal to attack. They roared in, the thin winter sun sparkling on their silver wings. Here and there the flak attempted to ward them off. But their speed was too great and they were too low for the 88s. Zooming through the cottony smoke, they came in for the kill.

Von
Dodenburg started. Bright red flame spurted up at a dozen points as though a giant were striking matches against the mountainside. Almost instantly it was followed by a huge pillar of thick black smoke which rose straight upwards into the windstill blue sky until it was well over two hundred metres high.

`Oh,
my aching arse,' Schulze breathed in awe, 'those blacks (2) are certainly getting a belting this day!'

Slowly
the smoke started to clear, moving gradually so that what lay behind it appeared to shift and sway in sinister arabesques. At last the Monastery became visible again. Von Dodenburg whistled softly. Its whole outline had changed. The west wall had gone completely. The rest was in ruins. The Führer had his 'incident'.

Schulze
got to his feet and stared at the ruin for a moment or two. A solitary green flare soared into the sky at the base of the Peak. For one long moment it hung there, bathing the slope in a sickly light. Then it fell. As it did so, the slow heavy chatter of a Tommy bren began. Out of the rocks little brown figures in pudding-bowl helmets started to move forward cautiously, rifles held across their chests as they picked their way through the boulders.

`
An
attack!
' young Bauer gasped and reached for his whistle to sound the alarm.

Even
as he did so, the first Spandau hissed into action. Men pelted crazily to their foxholes. Von Dodenburg looked at Schulze grimly, his pale-face set.

`Well,
you rogue, this is it.' He reached out his hand. 'Happy landings, Schulze!'

Schulze
took his with genuine affection.

`And
to you, sir! Mind you don't put your turnip up when you should be putting it down.'

Von
Dodenburg swung round, crouched low and doubled madly for the sandbagged command post. Just as he reached it the full weight of the Tommy's creeping barrage hit the top of the mountain. The second battle for Cassino had commenced.

Fifteen

The whole Liri Valley quaked with the roar. From end to end the angry red lights blinked like enormous blast furnaces. The whole weight of the New Zealanders' artillery smacked into action. With a hoarse scream, four hundred shells ripped through the sky over the advancing Indians' heads and crashed into the side of Peak 555. In an instant it had disappeared in a choking grey-yellow fog of acrid smoke and dust.

The
men of Wotan huddled at the bottom of their bunkers, as the whole mountainside swayed and heaved like a ship at sea. Foxholes collapsed. Bleeding, screaming men fought the soil, scratching at it hysterically before they were choked to death. Behind the Twin Tits Command Post, the signallers' bunker received a direct hit. In an instant the trench had become a mess of dead and dying men, drowning in their own blood. Lieutenant Bauer, intent on setting an example to his new command by standing upright on the edge of his foxhole, as they had taught him to do at the cadet school of Bad Toelz, had his legs torn off. He bled to death, watching his severed legs with numbed curiosity and wondering if Sauerbruch might be able to sew them on again, while the blood poured out of his shattered stumps. The barrage stopped as startlingly as it had started. Its boom reverberated to and fro among the circle of hills and gradually died away. The men cowering at the bottom of the foxholes did not move until the wounded's faint cries of 'stretcher-bearer' alerted them to the danger. Hastily brushing off the dirt and rubble, they raised their heads. Bauer's machine gunner pushed his officer's mutilated body over the edge of the peak. It began to roll towards the enemy who were now only a hundred metres away.

Von
Dodenburg sprang to the top of his CP. The mountainside was brown with the figures of Freyberg's turbaned 4th Indian Division. Sikhs, he told himself hurriedly, and blew a shrill blast on his whistle.

`
Now!
' he bellowed frantically and fired a wild burst at the Tommies.

The
next instant he ducked as an Indian threw a grenade. It exploded over his shoulder, sending rock splinters and steel flying everywhere. Something slapped against his steel map case. It stung like hell. But he had no time to check if he had been wounded. The enemy were almost upon them now.

Bending
double he ran towards his firing line. A dark-eyed face started up from somewhere. A heavy body crashed into him and he saw the man's bayonet fall to the rock. Automatically he fired a burst into the Indian. He went down on to one knee, his dark face contorted with pain and then leaped up again. He was too close for von Dodenburg to fire again. He aimed a kick at the man's groin. Like an eel he twisted to the right and avoided the kick. He grabbed von Dodenburg's neck. Von Dodenburg dropped his machine-pistol as the thin fingers dug deeply into his flesh. Suddenly he realized the man was some kind of unarmed combat expert. Twist and turn as he might, the Indian held on, blood pouring from his multiple wounds and soaking the German's tunic. Frantic with fear and lack of oxygen as he began to lose consciousness, von Dodenburg told himself that he was going to die. Then far away a well-known voice yelled:

`Get
those shitty black hands off my officer!'

It
was Schulze. The Reeperbahn equalizer crashed into the back of the Indian's neck. His spine arched and the grip slackened. Von Dodenburg stood there swaying, gasping for breath. The Indian dropped to the ground, his body quivering. Schulze ground his nailed heel into his face. Together they ran on.

The
Indians were everywhere among their positions now. Schulze pulled out the china grenade ring and lobbed the bomb into the second wave. A second later he had waded into the confused mess of gasping men struggling back and forth on the crumbling edges of the foxholes. Von Dodenburg doubled past them leaving Schulze to do the best he could. Frantically he pushed aside the dead spandau gunner slumped over his weapon, and swung it round to face the second wave. The gun leaped to life under his hands.

The
Indians of the second wave ran into a wall of lead. At that distance von Dodenburg could not miss. Most of them lay where they fell in the scuffed, bloody dust. Others tried frantically to fight their way out of range. Von Dodenburg, crouched over the spandau, did not give them a chance. Riddled with bullets they dropped on to the grotesquely stacked bodies of their dead and dying comrades.

Behind
him the first wave had been dealt with. The survivors of the Wotan perimeter doubled forward, panting asthmatically. They flopped into the dust and took up their firing positions, just as the third wave of Tommies came in.

This
time the faces under the pudding-shaped helmets were white. Freyberg was sending in the British infantry component of his 4th Indian Division. But they died as easily and as swiftly as had his Sikhs and Rajputanas. Von Dodenburg's spandau burst into its high-pitched song of death once again. The tracer stitched a long line of red and white lead along the line of the advancing Sussex. The British, advancing in perfect formation as if on parade, went down in droves. But still they came.

`That
Tommy's mine!' Schulze cried above the chatter of the spandau. He pulled the string out of a potato masher. It sailed slowly through the air. If the British infantry saw it, they did not let it disturb their measured pace. It exploded beneath the tall officer.

The
death of the CO was enough for the Sussex. Still firing, trying to hold their shattered formation, they began to back down the slope the way they had come, firing at regular intervals. But there was no joy in von Dodenburg's heart as the Tommies started to clear the hillside. For as the firing started to die down, he could hear the rusty rumble of tracks and the grind of powerful engines trying to ascend the khaki-littered slope in low gear. And he knew what that meant: the British were bringing up tanks.

`Well?'
the Vulture snapped, as von Dodenburg stumbled into the Twin Tits' CP, his tunic covered with blood, his face black with powder burns.

`We
held them,' the Panzer Grenadier CO gasped. 'But only just.'

`A
cup of nigger's sweat – I've laced it with grappa,' Metzger thrust a cup of steaming black coffee in front of him.

Von
Dodenburg knocked it aside.

‘I
haven't got time for your coffee, Metzger. The Tommies are bringing up tanks!'

The
Vulture's monocle popped out of his eye.