Monte Cassino (20 page)

We rushed toward. One mess kid flew high into the air when a hand grenade landed in it. We flung mines and hand grenades into their dugouts and swept the trench clear with our machine pistols.

There was enormous confusion. Within a few minutes we were on our way back. We had just had time to destroy their mortars and heavy machine guns before we went. We landed back in our own trenches thoroughly out of breath.

Mike was almost speechless with fury. Tiny had been too rough with Dunnawan and throttled him, so all Mike could do was kick his dead body. What angered him even more, perhaps, was the fact that he could not even punish Tiny for his ham-handedness, as the whole undertaking was quite irregular.

During the next few days we amused ourselves shooting with bow and arrow and blow pipe.

It began to rain. We froze in our camouflage dress. We could look across at the monastery that was like a menacing clenched fist. Early one morning, the entire southwesterly horizon seemed to go up in flames. The heavens opened and we found ourselves staring into a line of enormous blast furnaces. The mountains trembled. The whole Lire Valley quaked with terror, as eight thousand tons of steel fell thundering over us. The greatest artillery battle in history had begun. In one single day as many shells fell on our positions as were fired during the whole of the fighting for Verdun. It went on implacably, hour after hour.

Our dugouts kept collapsing and we had to dig ourselves out with hands, feet and teeth. We became moles. We squeezed against the trench walls, or rather what was left of them. It was the worst shelling hell we had experienced. We saw a 38 ton tank go soaring through the air. Scarcely had it landed, tracks in the air, balancing on its turret, when blast sent it hurling back to where it had come from.

An entire company making its way along a communication trench was buried alive in a couple of seconds. All that remained of them was the barrel of a rifle poking up here and there.

That night the shelling began to drive people mad. We had to knock them down and beat them to restore them to their senses. But we did not always manage to get hold of them in time to prevent their running out into the rain of shells, where no one survived long. The whole place was an inferno of red-hot flying steel.

Leutnant Sorg had both legs blown off and bled to death. Our two medical orderlies were killed. One was crushed by a balk falling on him. The other was cut in half, when a shell landed just in front of him as he was going to Leutnant Sorg. Tiny's nose was cut off and the Legionnaire and Heide held him, while Porta sewed it on again. This was done under cover of a pile of corpses. So it went on all night and all the next day. Our own field batteries had long ago been silenced, and our tanks had been burned where they stood.

Suddenly the barrage lifted, moved on behind us. Then they came, emerging out of craters and holes. They were devils. They shouted and screamed. Confident of victory they stormed forward, sure that none of us could be left alive. But we lay crouched behind our machine guns and flamethrowers in shell holes and between rocks. The first ran on past us, as we shammed dead. More and more came. One of them kicked my steel helmet and made my head ring. Wait, you swine, I thought. You won't get back alive. Through my lashes I could see running feet, long American laced boots, white French gaiters, English puttees. They were all mixed up. Then some negroes came, quite grey in the face with fear.

A hoarse voice commanded:

"Forward. Forward!"

A machine gun began to bark. I rolled on to my face, heaved the machine gun and stand out of the mud. Tiny shoved a belt in. I loaded, fired. Tracer went hissing into the backs of the khaki clad soldiers, mowing them down. They tried to surrender, but Death just harvested them.

We went at them with bayonets and spades. We trampled bodies, scattered and slipped in spilled guts, throttled our fellow humans with our bare hands.

Kill, soldier, kill for your country and the freedom you will never enjoy!

I swung my spade and sliced off the face of an American negro sergeant. His blood spurted over me. I leaped into the cover of a three-foot hole. Something moved beneath the mire. A face appeared beneath a flat helmet. I gave a cry of fear, clasped my spade, emptied my pistol without even hitting him. He rose up, dripping mud. I dealt him a kick in the belly. He came at me with a bayonet. I stood up, knocked the bayonet from his hand and hacked him again and again in the face with my knife-sharp spade.

Pro patria! Forward, my hero, on with your bayonet and spade.

I
t was Carl's idea to block Via del Capoci and a traffic policeman helped us to place a rack across the street at either end. Mario fetched the bowls and we began playing Petanque. Some people made a fuss, but the policeman just roared at them. The entire street joined in. It was wonderful, except for a few slanging matches with drivers who could not understand why the street was blocked.

The quiet was broken only by the pleasant click of the bowls striking each other. We knelt and aimed, measured and argued. We played all day and only stopped when it began to rain.

We did not remove the blocks before we left. We might want the street again the next day.

Then we set out for the brothels in Mario de' Fiori, but before we got so far, we became involved in a fight with some Italian mountain troops. That was outside the big confectioners in Via del Corso. We went through one of the glass windows. Then the carabinieri arrived, but it was only Italians they caught. The rest of us took up position in a brothel.

"It's lovely here in Rome," Carl said.

Several times the truck felt as though it would go over, as it lurched over the countless shell holes. My leave pass rustled in the breast pocket of my stiff camouflage jacket, promising me a fortnight's oblivion in Hamburg. The adjutant had whispered something about a chance of getting it stamped to allow me across into Denmark. The regiment could not do that for me, but if I could get it done in Hamburg, I could go on to Copenhagen. But what should I do there? Hop across to Sweden and be handed back by the Swedes? That was routine with them. Three days before we had provided the firing squad for a couple of airmen who had deserted from Rome and got as far as Stockholm. They had travelled back in handcuffs. The Swedish police had escorted them to Halsingborg, where they were handed over to the military police. And eventually we had shot them. One of them died cursing the Swedes.

"Where are you off to?" an elderly obergefreiter with the red braid of the Grenadiers on his shoulderstraps, asked.

I gazed at him in silence. I could not answer.

"I asked, where you were off to?" he said with peasant stubbornness.

"What bloody business is that of yours, you stupid swine? Have I asked where you are going?"

"You seem to want a bash in the face, you young bugger. I'm old enough to be your father."

"Come on then. I'm ready." I whipped off my belt and wound it round my fist, ready to fight.

He hesitated, unable to understand why I was so angry. But I had to take it out on someone or other, and the old chap would have done very well. If he would just hit me, I'd kill him. I didn't care what would happen to me. I just felt I had to do something desperate after 62 maddening hours in the stinking turret of a tank.

I seemed to be surrounded by Service Corps men, but away at the back I caught sight of two sailors in crumpled, oil-smeared uniforms. The buttons on their jackets were green with verdigris. One had lost his capband and even with the best will in the world, you could not read what was on the other's. The badges on their sleeves told me they were in submarines. I felt that I would not mind a chat with them and imagined that they would be glad of a chat with me. But, like me, they were no doubt afraid to make the first move. Perhaps we would never exchange a word throughout the 100 miles we had to go in that lumbering truck.

We got to Rome in time for me to catch the express north, but first I had to go to No. 12 Hospital to deliver a packet for One-Eye, a packet addressed to a woman doctor. It was incredible, but our General One-Eye was in love. I was eager to see the girl. If she was One-Eye's equal in looks, she would not be up to much. But the girl turned out to be amazingly pretty and I hopped into bed with her as One-Eye's deputy.

My pockets were stuffed with letters that I was taking so that they did not go through the field censor, a nice collection of highly treasonable missives. The worst, no doubt was Porta's. It was to a friend of his, a deserter spending his fifth year in hiding, who had started a sort of 'illegal group' along with a policeman giving help to those who could pay for it. But woe betide you if you got into their clutches without being able to pay. Porta had some sort of business agreement with them; what it was, was a bit of a mystery, but it was undoubtedly something on a grandiose scale. After the war Porta's friend became chief of police in a well-known town in Germany. I won't say which, in case he brings a libel action against me.

The truck rattled into Rome. A couple of mangy dogs ran barking after us for quite a long way. We stopped outside a barracks, a stinking place with peeling walls. You could see that it was not occupied by its rightful owners. They, in fact, were far away, buried in the African sand or rotting in POW camps in Libya.

A feldwebel began bawling at us.

"Bugger off," shouted one of the sailors, as he jumped down. Close together, their kitbags on their shoulders, the two sailors rolled out through Sie barrack gates. I ran after them deaf to the feldwebel's shouts. They stank of oil and salt water. We walked on and on. When we got to the Spanish Steps, we stopped for a rest. Then we came to Via Mario de' Fiori and dived into a bar, a narrow gut of a place with a long counter. A traffic policeman, goggles hanging round his neck, cigarette dangling from a corner of his mouth, was talking big. His uniform was all spattered. He stopped talking as he caught sight of us.

A couple of whores were lounging across the bar looking as if they had their apprenticeship well behind them.

The bartender, a tall, fat giant of a man wearing a short sleeved pullover, a sweat rag round his neck, was lazily polishing a glass. The policeman said in a loud whisper:

"Attenzione! Rotten Germans!"

The smaller of the two sailors went straight towards him, one hand resting on his bayonet.

"Comrade," he began. "You are a Roman. We are Germans. We are decent chaps, we won't harm anyone, if we aren't provoked. I believe our friend behind the bar takes things the same way. He only wants what he is entitled to receive. These two ladies are nice ladies, as long as they get what they are entitled to have." He paused briefly, drew his bayonet and picked his teeth with the point of it, then bent right over to the policeman, in doing which his neck stretched forward revealing red, scalded skin, such as you see on survivors, those who have got out of a steam-filled room at the last moment. "But, and please remember this, policeman, none of us is rotten. You know your streets and roads, I my sea. I have been lying out submerged waiting for the big convoys, as you have been hiding behind a stone waiting for a drunken sot to come along." He let go of his bayonet and slammed the flat of his hand down on the bar. "Here with some beer. Three quarters beer and the rest slibowitz. Followed by poor man's champagne," (half beer, half champagne).

The barman grinned understandingly. Wiped his belly with his sweat cloth.

"You're in a hurry to get tight, eh?" He scratched his behind and bit the cork out of a champagne bottle.

We studied the pictures on the wall behind the barman. Fly-spotted pictures of naked girls, which only new customers even noticed.

We three had not yet said a word to each other. We couldn't until we had drunk our first glass, a ritual that had to be scrupulously followed. They did not concern me, nor I them, until we had drunk a glass of slibowitz and beer together. The barman took a lot of trouble over our beer. It took him a quarter of an hour.

"Do you want sticks?" he asked.

Our silence told him that we did.

He shoved a litre mug in front of each of us and put a semi-clean stick in each, the dirty black end up. He took some juniper berries from a big earthenware pot and put some into each mug. Then he pushed a bowl of olives and anchovies across to us. They had no sticks in them as they do in smart places. We just used our fingers.

We clinked mugs and drank in long thirsty gulps. The taller of the sailors, a long thin beanpole, offered us cigarettes. Camel. He scratched his crutch and stared at the two whores, weighing them up.

"We're on the way to hospital," he explained. "Carl burst something inside, when a torpedo fell on him. And my old syph's playing me up, and we both have burns to be anointed." By way of amplification he opened his fall so that I could see the red, burned flesh. "That's the result of a hammering we got off Cyprus. We had been lying on the bottom for 48 hours, then the skipper lost patience. He wouldn't listen to our No. 2, but went up to periscope depth. He was young and inexperienced. Only 21. No. 2 was 47 and had plenty of experience. He had been in a tramp before coming to U boats. When we dragged him out of the command room, his flesh was smouldering on his bones. Boiling oil. We never found the CO. He had vanished. He was after a knight's cross, had been all the time. Thirty-seven of the crew went with them. But we got the old tub home. We had the first engineer to thank for that."

"Fancy bothering to tell him all that," said the smaller of the two, who was called Carl. "Let's whet our whistles."

We each stood a round. Then the barman did. The policeman was taken into favour and had one. We poured the dregs into the v's of the girls' dresses.

Another girl came in.

"Oho," growled Carl sticking a long finger into the tall sailor's ribs, "I want to fuck that one. Wonder what she costs? I'd give 500 for a night." He discussed the price with the girl and they agreed on 500 marks and 10 packets of Lucky Strike. She lived on the second floor over the bar. Otto and I went up with them. The barman stuck a few bottles under our arms as we left.