Guns At Cassino (24 page)

They
caught Sergeant Metzger by complete surprise. As he turned startled, to the right, his heart beating suddenly like a trip-hammer, the brown arm snaked round his neck. His cigar-stump popped out of his mouth and his shriek was stifled instantly. Something sharp stuck into his ribs. In a flash there were dark, hawk-faced men all around him, breathing their garlic breath into his face.

`Comrade
... comrade,' he quavered, feeling the hot urine trickling down his leg into his dice-beaker. (1)

Roughly
Abou propelled him forward towards Bogex, his boots, full of urine, squelching as he did so.

`
Quoi
,
mon
Lieutenant
?
'
Abou asked gutturally.

Bogex,
preparing for the rush on the bunker, drew his forefinger across his throat. Metzger's face went ashen-grey.

`No,
no. I'm a cripple!' he pleaded, holding up his mutilated hand, the souvenir of Russia, which had saved him from frontline combat duty ever since. Bogex spat drily in the dust.

`SS,'
he said contemptuously, looking up at the panic-stricken Sergeant, 'I've shit 'em!
Allons
!
'
he whispered, `
allons
et
vivent
les
goumiers
!
'

As
the North African irregulars streamed forward silently to attack the Twin Tits position, Abou slit Metzger's throat with deliberate, unhurried calm. The former butcher boy could not have done the job better hirnself. Abou allowed him to sink to the blood-stained dirt. Swiftly he rifled the German's pocket. He found nothing save an Italian pornographic magazine. But Abou wasn't interested in women, unless there was nothing better available. He spat into Metzger's face and ripping open his flies, began to wield his knife swiftly and expertly on the German's loins. Within seconds he was finished and stowing his bloody souvenir in his pack. Silently he ran after the rest, leaving Sergeant Metzger to die, minus that organ of which he had once been so inordinately proud.

`Five
women I used to keep satisfied at one time,' he had been wont to boast to his cronies of the Sergeants' Mess, 'and one of them a doctor's wife - and you all know what dirty pigs
they
are in bed!'

But
another veteran of the SS Assault Battalion Wotan (2) Captain Schwarz did not fail his duty that dawn. He had just groped his way out of the still sleeping bunker, latrine paper in his good hand, when he heard Metzger's last dying gasp as Abou emasculated him. He could not identify its cause, but he could interpret its significance. The Amis had somehow or other worked their way through the minefield! Schwarz did not hesitate a second. Grabbing his machine-pistol he sprang into the latrine pit. His dark Jewish eyes gleaming crazily, he screamed:
'Alarm
...
alarm
,' and fired a burst into the crouched, running ranks of the Goumiers. The Vulture, helmetless and without his monocle, swung himself behind the sole remaining recoilless rifle, assisted by a trembling Creeper. The first shell blew a great hole in the Africans' ranks. Bogex went down. Abou and Achmed fell with him, their hawk-like faces impassive even in the moment of death. Still the Africans came on.

But
the three, officers held them. Knee-deep in stinking faeces, Schwarz swung his Schmeisser from left to right in a deadly arc. The Vulture pumped shell after shell at the Africans over open sights. Each one tore the attackers to pieces. But they did not surrender. They ran bare-footed at the German position time and time again to be slaughtered, their coal-black eyes gleaming in the frenzy of death; and it was only when the sound of running boots told them that reinforcements were arriving from the perimeter that they broke off their attack. Sullenly, they backed into the rocks from which they had come bending every now and again to pick up their fallen comrades' packs. Their dead and wounded could fend for themselves, but the loot could not be abandoned. Finally as a panting von Dodenburg appeared with his gasping, leaden-lunged section, they withdrew for good, and there was no need for his aid.

The
Vulture slumped down on the rock behind the gun, while Schwarz clambered out of the latrine pit, his boots encrusted with faeces. Geier fought to control his hectic breathing:

`Damn
close thing, von Dodenburg,' he said. 'Damn close.'

But
if he had managed to control his breathing, he could not control his hands. As he finally rose to his feet, von Dodenburg's eyes fell on them. They were trembling violently. The Vulture was mortally afraid.

The
Peak became a graveyard for the young men of the Wotan: The foxholes were heaped with their bodies. When the survivors stood on them, cries escaped from their open mouths; it was the gas escaping from their bellies, bloated in the warm Italian sun. Rats the size of cats were everywhere. The wounded near Twin Tits had to be given revolvers to fight them off. If they failed, they woke up to find them gnawing at their toes, fingers, even their noses.

The
whole perimeter was heavy with the sickly sweet stench of the dead and the dying. Those who could still stand and fight wore dirty rags soaked in
grappa
to ward off the smell. Otherwise they retched continually with dry, body-racking sobs that left them green and shaking. And still the enemy attacked. They no longer knew their nationality. Their attackers had become one amorphous mass, intent on wiping them off the face of the earth, dying in their scores, crying out in half a dozen European languages.

The
stream, their sole source of water was captured, its course full of bloated corpses. They drank the stagnant, green-scummed water from the shell-holes, fighting off the rats which infested them with hand grenades. Their food began to run out. At night when the shelling had died down, they crawled out into no-man's land and robbed the dead Tommies of their bully-beef and biscuits.

`The
best grub I've ever tasted,' Schulze cried, gulping down the stuff, his filthy hands covered with grease, the biscuit sticking to the thick stubble on his chin. 'Nothing like it in this world!'

He
spent the rest of the night spewing his guts up. The dead Tommy's hand from which he had torn it, was alive with maggots.

The
enemy brought up light tanks. How they ever got them up the slope, the red-eyed, exhausted Wotan men neither knew nor cared. Suddenly they were there, churning up the bodies of their fallen, as they crawled over them in low gear, their tracks covered in blood, whipping new life into the dead, making their arms and legs flail in ghastly motion.

Their
recoilless rifle had gone. Knocked out long ago. Screaming troopers rushed forward armed with
grappa
bottles filled with petrol, the rags being used as wicks burning brightly. One after another the tanks went up in flames. So did the troopers, dodging back too late as the flames roared up. Screaming men, burning oil and petrol, the nauseating stench of burned flesh.

When
the enemy were not attacking, the shells plastered them. A man fell, fountains of blood spurting up in the sunshine where his head had been. An NCO lying in a shell-hole, trying to stuff his guts back into the hole that was his belly and dying with his hands buried deep inside him. An officer running panic-stricken across the ever-shrinking perimeter, dragging his guts behind him like a monstrous worm. And at the end of one such bombardment, the single shot of the big Bavarian surgeon committing suicide because all his supplies had run out. Besides, his left hand had just been severed by a shell fragment.

Occasionally
they had a breather - a minute, an hour - they did not know. Time had no meaning for them now. Death had placed his hand on their shoulders and there were no more places to run. Their salvation was to accept his cold and final embrace and get it over with. On the morning of the third day, von Dodenburg found that two of his men had not responded to the weary order to 'stand to'. One had removed his boot, hooked his big toe in the rifle guard and wedged its muzzle under his chin; there was not much left of his face. The other had slit his wrists with a razor-blade.

Slowly,
but inevitably, the Tommies, the Polacks, the Niggers started to push them back. At the end of the fourth day they were down to two hundred men unwounded and their perimeter wasn't much bigger than a couple of pre-war football pitches. At the end of the fifth it was one football pitch, held by a hundred weary men. The ammunition began to run out. The end on Peak 555 was not far off now. On the morning of the sixth day - to the accompaniment of the belch and plop of the Tommies' 3-inch mortaring softening them up for yet another attack - the Vulture called the officers of Battle Group Wotan together for his last conference. There were exactly four of them: the Vulture, the Creeper, Captain Schwarz and von Dodenburg - four survivors out of forty.

`Gentlemen.'
The Vulture began exactly as he had always begun a conference since von Dodenburg first joined Wotan four years before as a young lieutenant. But the harsh Prussian rasp had gone from his voice now. 'I - we - have to make a decision.'

A
mortar bomb landed close by, and the bunker shook like a ship hitting a trough in the waves. The Hindenburg Light (3) flickered wildly and cast its shadows in monstrous relief on to the dirt wall.

`You
were saying, sir?' Schwarz was nursing his wooden arm as if he could still feel 'pain in it.’

The
Vulture licked his scummed lips as if he were not only afraid, but also embarrassed. 'Well, we ... we must evacuate the perimeter – evacuate the whole peak.'

If
he had expected any reaction to the announcement, he didn't get it. They all knew that there was no other way out if they wished to save the handful of men still alive. Besides, Peak 555 had no military value left now. The Cassino line was about finished. The Tommies were already well lodged on Monte Cassino itself. It would be only a matter of hours before they took the ruin itself.

`I
see you expected the decision.'

Von
Dodenburg nodded.

`The
problem is how we are going to evacuate the men. I've got fifty - ' he shrugged – 'perhaps sixty walking wounded. The rest will have to take their chance that the Tommies beat the Polacks up here. The Tommies may not shoot them, but the Polacks will. And I've got some forty men still capable of fighting.'

Schwarz
let go of his wooden arm.

`We've
got roughly the same number around the CP, sir,' he snapped. 'But we can't move them until - '

The
Vulture held up his hand. 'There is a slight technical problem.' He paused. Outside their spandaus belted lead into the Poles in short rationed bursts. In the pauses, von Dodenburg could even hear the guttural Slavic sounds of their officers' orders. ‘You see, all of us are not coming out.' The Vulture lowered his eyes as if he did not wish to see their dismay.

`Not
all of us,' Schwarz broke the silence. 'May I volunteer to stay behind with the rearguard?'

`It
is not a matter of a rearguard, Schwarz,' the Vulture said carefully. 'You see, I have Smiling Albert's permission to take out a few men who will form the cadre of a new Battle Group Wotan, to be formed in the Homeland with this summer's seventeen year olds. I shall select the members of that cadre who will be picked up in an hour's time by Kesselring's two personal Fieseler Storchs. They will land behind the CP. For that reason we must hold on to this position to the last.'

Von
Dodenburg let the Vulture's words die away while he did a rapid calculation. Two Fieseler Storchs – that would mean a dozen men at the most.

‘
Just
twelve
of
us
!
'
he interrupted, 'but that would mean the end of the Wotan!'

`Yes,'
the Vulture said, 'that figure would be about right - twelve key men to ensure that our old tradition is carried on in the new Group.'

`And
who are you going to take?' von Dodenburg asked, his hand falling to his holster.

The
gesture did not escape the Vulture. He licked his lips. Outside the Poles were falling back once again.

`Men
whom I think would be the most valuable. You, for instance, my dear Major. If - '

`Yes,
I, for instance,' von Dodenburg cut him short, 'if I became your creature.'

He
never finished the accusation. The Creeper elbowed him to one side, his face tense with fear.

`And
me, Colonel? I promise you absolute loyalty. Forget the past. I'm yours. You can trust me, sir.'

`Keep
your damned Gestapo spy paws off me!' the Vulture barked. 'I want none of your kind of arse-crawling toadies with me!' He turned to von Dodenburg. 'Well, this is the last time, von Dodenburg, you've got to make your decision – are you with us or not?'