Guns At Cassino (23 page)

`Do
you remember the night of the patrol – when you pushed him down? Well, I helped him up and' – he hesitated – 'this sort of fell into my hand.' He reached into his tunic and pulled out the Creeper's notebook.

`Well?'

`It's the Creeper's notebook, sir. He's got us all in it in alphabetical order.'

`What
do you mean – got us all in?'

`Let
me show you, sir.' Schulze licked his dirty thumb and leafed quickly through the dog-eared pages. 'This is me – the Creeper's assessment of Mrs Schulze's boy.' He lowered his voice. ‘ "Schulze, holder of Knight's Cross. Ex-NCO. Demoted for some offence unknown to me. Confident of Major D" - that's you, sir ... Now, here's the assessment. "Typical big-mouthed waterfront red from Hamburg. Stupid, insolent, does his utmost to undermine the loyal men and destroy their National Socialist fervour." ' He looked up at his CO. 'Now what do you say to that, sir?'

`Is
there anything on me?'

`A
bit, sir. Not much. Here we are. "Major von Dodenburg. Knight's Cross, German Cross in Gold, silver wound medal - " '

`Skip
the details of the tin,' von Dodenburg interrupted. 'Let me have his assessment.'

‘
"Comes of a family of Prussian military aristocrats. Represents his class point of view, but a previous impressive record of National Socialist loyalty. Now undecided. To be watched." And that last bit is underlined in red ink, sir.' He looked up, worried. 'You and the Colonel are the only ones to have entries in red ink, by the way, sir.'

`And
the Colonel's?'

`Only
one word, sir.' Schulze hesitated, as if embarrassed.

‘
Well, spit it out!’

Schulze
licked his dry lips.

`It's
... well, it's traitor, sir. One word, underlined in red ink - traitor!'

Von
Dodenburg broke the heavy silence. A few metres away the rest were squashing lice eggs between thumb and finger and counting their score.

`So,
the Creeper's a Gestapo spy, you think, Schulze?'

`Looks
like it, sir. He obviously isn't a combat officer - the four-eyed little bastard. Prince Albrecht Strasse sent him here to spy on us poor old stubble-hoppers. God knows why! We're not going to live long enough on this shitty hill to ever be brought to trial, though what the hell we're supposed to have done wrong, I'll never know.'

Von
Dodenburg shook his head.

`If
s the same everywhere, Schulze. There's something very wrong with the Homeland. I saw that when we were in Berlin. There are traitors everywhere - men who wear the same uniform as we do, but who no longer believe in what we believe.'

`Who
does?' Schulze asked cynically.

`I
do!' von Dodenburg said harshly, his face set and hard. I believe that we must win, because - if nothing else - there is no other alternative left open to us. If we lose, the Amis will have the eggs off us with a blunt razor-blade. Make no mistake Schulze, if we lose this war, it will be the end of the Germany we know. They'll reduce us to the level of a slave state, based on an agricultural economy, which will be allowed to produce enough food to prevent us from starving, but nothing more. As for people like ourselves - members of a formation such as the Wotan - we're for the high jump, a quick short walk at the end of a hangman's noose. We're hopelessly compromised in their eyes.'

`You
mean the hospital?'

`Yes,
and a half a dozen other similar incidents over these four years. We've fought a hard war, Schulze - a very hard war. If we lose it, we have to pay the price. We have to fight on, you see. It's as simple as that.'

Down
in the valley the heavies were beginning to rumble again.

`But
if you'll forgive me, sir,' Schulze said. 'The folks back home have had a noseful. They've had it up to here.' The big soldier drew a dirty forefinger under his nose. 'The bombs, the rationing, the killing - everything. But I don't have to tell you that, sir! As for us lot out here - the front swine - we don't like the war any better. We have to fight on because if we don't - ' He broke off, making a trigger of his forefinger. 'That's the honest truth. That's the way it is in the Homeland and out here too. We've had it, sir.'

‘
We haven't, Schulze!' von Dodenburg retorted hotly. 'Besides, as I've already said, we have no alternative; we have to fight on.'

`But
how, sir?'

`How?'
the officer laughed mirthlessly. 'Simple. We have to rely on ourselves absolutely. Not another battalion. Not another regiment.
But
on
this
one
unit
! The Wotan will have to replace our homeland, our family, our organization. It must have our sole and absolute loyalty, then we might have a chance.' He leaned forward fervently, his fists clenched, his eyes hard and staring. 'Don't you see, Schulze? If we stick together, nothing can stop us. We might even inspire the whole army to new efforts. Remember the Führer started the whole movement with exactly seven men - seven men, mark you. And we're still a good three hundred or more left standing.' He paused for breath.

`And
the CO?'

`You
read the Creeper's assessment, didn't you?' von Dodenburg's voice was cold.

`Then
it's true?'

‘Yes.’

'So what are you going to do with him, sir?'

'There
is only one thing I can do, Schulze.' Von Dodenburg tapped his pistol holster.

Down
below in the Allied positions, preparations were being made for the last offensive to kill the survivors of Wotan. Maps and orders were checked for the last time. Fitters and drivers squirmed from under their vehicles, confident that they were in perfect condition. Stores and ammunition were stowed in the backs of the trucks and tanks. Officers and NCOs held their final conferences and briefings.

Those
with nothing to do now slept in the sunshine, but these were the old sweats. The new men - and there were many of them - sat around and tried to hide their fear and uncertainty by telling dirty jokes. Some wrote letters beginning with the traditional line:

`If
you don't hear from me for a little while, don't worry ...’

A
few prayed. By the late afternoon everything had been done. The guns had ceased firing, saving their ammunition for the great bombardment which would herald the advance. A strange silence descended upon the Cassino front: a silence heavy with tension and menace. The German guns fell silent too.

As
the hours ticked by to H-hour the silence grew more oppressive. An artillery commander, thinking that the Germans might become suspicious at the lack of fire, ordered a few shells to be aimed at the enemy. The waiting infantry breathed a sigh of relief as the 25-pounders thundered into action. Silence at the front was something sinister. The situation now seemed normal again. They relaxed.

The
sun went down, sliding blood-red behind the mountains which barred the way to Rome. A little later the stars came out, bathing the land in silver. The commanders began to glance more frequently at the luminous dials of their watches.

At
eleven o'clock precisely, one thousand six hundred guns thundered into action, shattering the night calm. As far as the waiting men could see, the mountains were burning. Against the background of flames, it almost seemed as if the great earth masses had begun to dance under the weight of their fire. Ten minutes - twenty - thirty. The valleys and ravines echoed and re-echoed to the tremendous thunder of the guns. Forty-five minutes. Suddenly all fell silent. Then the whistles began to shrill. Officers shouted orders. NCOs cursed angrily. The waiting infantry stood up from the protection of the olive trees. The tanks took up their positions at the heads of the columns. The great khaki wave, designed to swamp the German Cassino Front once and for all, began to roll.

Eighteen

Dawn came at last. It had been a terrible night for the men of Wotan. The Poles - their new attackers - had come marching out of the wall of smoke in solid khaki ranks, bugles blowing, eagle banners flying. They had stopped them less than fifty metres from their perimeter. Polish dead were piled up a metre deep in front of the Wotan's positions. But they had come again. This time the Wotan had only managed to stop them when they were within a grenade's distance of the first foxhole line.

An
hour before dawn they had tried once more. The exhausted SS men had succeeded in halting them. But this time the Poles did not fall back down the hillside as before. Under the cover of a concentrated mortar barrage, they dug their heels in. With their bayonets, helmets, canteens - bare hands - they scraped shallow holes in the hard stony soil and fought on. Now, as the sun started to slide up over the mountains, their dead littered the whole hillside. But they were no less than twenty metres from the Wotan's out perimeter.

Dawn
brought other problems. While the Poles contained the Wotan with a steady stream of mortar and machine-gun fire, another enemy began to slip into the German's positions from the peak. All night their patrols had wormed their way through the minefield, digging out the deadly `deballockers'. Now the rest of the
burnous
-clad French Goumiers stole through the paths the patrols had cleared, the first rays of the sun sparkling on their knives.

General
Juin, the French: Army Commander, had unleashed twelve thousand of them on the Cassino front.

`Their
method of working is similar to the action of an incoming tide on a series of sand castles,
Mon
général
,
'
he had explained to Clark three days before. 'My Goumiers move up silently on any opposition, concentrate, dispose of it, and disperse again to deal with the next one. And the only sign of their passing is that their dead enemies are minus their heads. You see, my Goumiers like to bring back tangible evidence that they have carried out their orders.' He had shrugged. 'Unpleasant, possibly, but it puts the fear of God into the Boches!'

Now
the first company crept from the rocks towards the Twin Tit position, their feet bare to make no noise, their set and determined faces dark beneath their turbans. Lieutenant Bogex, their commander, knew they were out for blood.

Sergeant
Metzger had volunteered to do the dawn spell of sentry duty at the CP. During the night he preferred to cower in the deepest corner of the well-protected command bunker. Dawn, as he saw it, was the safest time of the day during a battle; at least you could see your enemy - and there was always the possibility of getting a bit of extra food because the dawn sentry was in charge of cooking the breakfast.

Now
he leaned against the rock on which he had mounted the CP's spandau, half listening to the battle on the other side of the perimeter, half dozing. Time and time again he had to force his eyes open to prevent himself falling into a deep sleep. All night long he had not been able to sleep: the possibility of the Poles' breaking through had kept him awake and quaking at the thought of a grenade coming through the open door of the bunker, followed by squat, flat-faced Polacks spraying the men inside with tommy guns.

The
eastern sky was glowing red now. Metzger yawned. The arsehole of the world - Cassino - looked almost beautiful this morning. He yawned again; he shoved his helmet to the back of his head and lit the stump of his last cigar. With a sigh of contentment he breathed out a stream of blue smoke. He thought of his wife Lore. He wondered where she was this morning? His face grew grim.

`She'd
better be in her own bed with her legs shut tight!' he said half aloud in a thick voice coarsened by years of cheap
Kron
and bellowing at recruits on barrack squares. 'I don't want her giving it away to any of them rear echelon stallions.' His grim look softened, as he fell to recollecting Lore's ample charms. She had not really been the right wife for the proud holder of the SS's senior non-commissioned rank in its premier formation, the Wotan; but she had a superb body. 'Legs right up to her sweet little arse,' he told himself and puffed a little more rapidly on his cheap ten pfennig cigar.

‘
Là!
’ Bogex whispered and pointed to the thin pillar of blue smoke rising from behind the boulder. 'Sentry!'

Sergeant
Achmed and Corporal Abou smiled. To Bogex they seemed to have more teeth than normal people. He shuddered. He wouldn't like to fall into their hands. But they were damn good irregular fighters - and they were expendable; there were thousands of them still in Morocco ready to die for
La
Belle
France
, for a few sous a day and as much plunder as they could carry in their infantry packs.

The
two Africans hushed forward. Their skinny brown feet did not seem to feel the cruelly sharp rocks. Bogex watched as they crept closer to the Boche position. Once they had knocked out the sentry, he would rush their main bunker. With luck he could do it before they tumbled to the fact that they were being attacked. Now the Goumiers were crouched behind the rock. Achmed stuck his long curved knife between his teeth. He sought and found a stone. He nodded to Corporal Abou. Achmed tossed the stone to the right of the boulder. In the same instant Abou moved swiftly to its left.