Swordpoint (2011) (15 page)

Things began to go wrong even before they arrived in San Bartolomeo.

It wasn’t the most inspiring of routes and the mist made the landscape soft – full of grey forbidding mountains, some even peaked with snow – with a strange lack of definition. The smudgy white walls of houses and farm buildings were sprayed with brown liquid mud from the wheels of speeding lorries, and the rust-red roofs took on a bluish tinge in the haze that rose stealthily from the valleys.

All along the road, as they moved forward in three-tonners of the Indian Army Service Corps, there were smashed hamlets and small towns. Drenched by the downpours of the past weeks, they were sometimes garishly lit by odd streaks of sunshine that broke through the heavy clouds to make distant groups of white houses momentarily blaze like jewels set in sharp relief against the prevailing dark blues, greys and violets of the mountains.

Italy was trying to stay alive, trying to claw itself back to a normal existence among the waste of destroyed buildings and devastated fields and vineyards. Heavy two-wheeled carts, dragged by lean oxen, held up the convoy, so that not infrequently they found themselves waiting alongside groups of peasants or even monks working by some ruined building. The roads were packed full of refugees – men, women and children pushing into the rain, umbrellas down against the wind, struggling along with all they possessed on their backs or piled on to a hand-cart, sodden bedding, mattresses and clothes all exposed to the rain as they plodded forward over the wet surfaces.

Of all the countries they’d seen since the beginning of the war, Italy seemed the worst hit. In the desert the fighting had gone on with no harm to anyone but the combatants. Here, the desolation was everywhere. It had become part of their lives, with each house a hazard course of mines and booby traps, the Germans using flame throwers that consumed everything in their path, the Allies using tanks that were supposed only to demolish machine-gun nests but invariably wrecked the houses as well.

Occasionally, in half-darkened rooms, they had found whole families crouched round a single table, muttering imprecations against Mussolini. Once, as they’d searched for rations, 000 Bawden had found an old dead woman sitting in a chair in a farmhouse, with four dead children lying on the floor, their hands on their breasts, their eyes closed, their limbs decently composed, the victims of blast.

The contrast between the British and American columns was marked. The British moved at a steady speed, each vehicle the regulation distance from the one in front, very orderly, correct and sedate – and very, very slow. The American columns – convoy after convoy of powerful six-wheeled trucks – swept past, the vehicles usually driven by black men with cigars in their mouths, so casual it wasn’t true. In North Africa they had liked to dangle one leg out of the cab window while the other operated the accelerator. There was no concern with spacing. They just went flat out for their destination and usually got themselves there in the end.

There was a big traffic block outside San Ambrosio. The convergence of two columns brought staff and military police into the growing confusion to pluck machines and vehicles from its centre and head them on to their separate routes. As the North Yorkshires waited, they tried to snatch a few winks of sleep; then suddenly the core of the jam came loose and they were on the move again.

As the vehicles disentangled, drivers and commanders watched for the traffic signs and guides. Because tanks blocked the road to troop carriers and guns, Tallemach’s ammunition dumping programme had begun to fall into arrears, and nobody dismounted at the halts because there were still ‘Beware of mines’ notices along the verges.

A painted board came up – ‘Go Slow. Bridge Ahead. Await Signal By Military Policeman’. But the bridge was down, and a military policeman directed them on to an already crowded diversion. One of the lorries, trying to edge past a parked Scammell, swiped the lower shutters from a house, bringing the owner into the street wailing with dismay, because shutters meant shadow in the heat of the summer and a freedom from draughts in winter. The railway station was only a mass of twisted wreckage, torn-up track and lopsided engines. Beyond it the road was flooded, the water lapping round the poplars as far as you could see. In Ferni, they halted for food in the piazza among lorries parked beneath the army signs – ‘Chaos Corner’, ‘This is a Star Route. Keep it open’. Then on they went again, the officers clutching bundles of new maps they’d picked up, the drivers hooting furiously at the creaking carrozzas hauled by skeletal horses.

In the hills they passed Indians working on the bends to scrape the mud off the surface, and pioneers filling in ruts, potholes and old latrines. There were mules everywhere now, caked with mud, their ears drooping wearily as they stood bent-kneed in front of shattered buildings. They jolted past to shouts of ‘You lucky people’ from troops billeted in houses with shattered roofs and holed walls. They passed burnt-out tanks, the debris of earlier battles, ditched lorries, once an aircraft bogged down and lopsided in a flooded airfield near the road.

It was a long way from Trepiazze. They were all tired, and a lot of them were wet because the misty rain had changed to a downpour. A few of the newly-joined wondered what they were in for. Then, as they descended the mountains towards San Bartolomeo, they were held up for a long time by an accident. A lorry had skidded on a hairpin bend and slithered into the vehicle in front. They were lying on their sides now below the road among the sparse trees beyond a broken stone wall, and the Red Cross people were hoisting a stretcher up.

‘Some poor bastard’s copped it,’ Rich said.

‘Ordnance Corps,’ Hunters observed. ‘Nothing to do with us.’

But, as it happened, it was.

They were approaching the front line now and the traffic had thinned out. It always thinned out as you drew nearer to the battle area. Wrecked vehicles, rusted, blackened and ugly, lay by the roadside. Telephone cables crossed and recrossed the ditches and hedgerows like an old woman’s knitting. Signs indicated mines or the possibility of shellfire, and one said ‘Stop here or–!’ followed by a macabre little figure of a man being separated from head and limbs.

The wayside graves indicated just what the signs meant, and all the time the ambulances with the wreckage moved back – converted Bren carriers, scout cars and jeeps, all painted white and marked with a red cross.

At last Yuell’s men reached San Bartolomeo. Because the northern end of the town was still just within range of the German guns across the river, the lorries set them down on the southern outskirts. Here they were hidden from view by the buildings, though they all knew that the German telescopes high up on Monte Cassino must have spotted the column as it came over the hill.

San Bartolomeo had all the appearance of a town that had only recently passed out of the front line. Houses were wrecked and their beams carried away, like the trees, for firewood. The ground had been churned by tanks and lorries into a morass of mud. Ahead there were shell-pitted fields, the grass torn or trampled but always lush in the spots where it covered minefields. A few shattered buildings were marked with the red cross or the insignia of headquarters.

Outside the Mayor’s office the statue of Garibaldi had lost its arm and head, and the plinth was pitted by shell fragments. Telephone lines trailed, and an ugly stench arose from the bodies of dead soldiers, dead mules and dead civilians in the bombed houses. It was cold and squalid in the extreme.

There was no hot food, though Yuell had sent Major Peddy, his second-in-command, ahead with the advance party to arrange it.

‘A shell got the kitchen, sir,’ Peddy explained. ‘It knocked out three of the cooks and wounded four other men. I’m sorry, but we’ll have to manage with bully beef until we can get organised.’

By late afternoon they learned that the replacement food Peddy had hoped to send up in hot boxes had also been lost; this time because the farm where a fresh set of field cookers had been set up was flooded to a depth of four feet when a small dam burst in the hills behind the town. They would now have to wait for their hot meal until after dark.

There was nowhere to brief the battalion as a whole, something Yuell liked to do. In the desert he’d always been able to get them sitting round in the sunshine in the Montgomery manner and tell them exactly what their job was; but no one wanted to sit down in the mud and rain, and it was far too dangerous, anyway, because the Germans on the heights opposite knew exactly where they were.

As darkness fell, he scattered his men in groups while the officers were assembled in a dimly lit barn to see a mock-up of the battlefield, complete with the Liri, the high slope of San Eusebio and a stick to indicate the height of Monte Cassino. Yuell outlined to them what they were to do.

‘Intention,’ he said, ‘to seize and hold San Eusebio. That’s all. No more. But no less either, so never lose sight of it. Method: this has changed a little – I hope for the better. To relieve the congestion on the San Bartolomeo road by Route A, we shall now be crossing by a new route – Route C – a dirt road from Capodozzi to the river and make our way along the river bank on the other side towards the end of the San Bartolomeo-San Eusebio road. This will place our crossing nearer to the Yellowjackets who’ll be going over by Route B at the end of the Foiano road, towards Castelgrande. It will make linking up easier. Fire support will be pretty extensive and fighter-bombers will take on the enemy mortar and machine-gun positions.’

‘If the weather improves,’ Jago murmured.

Yuell heard him. ‘Exactly,’ he admitted. ‘A, B and C Companies will form the first wave. A will lead, and will leave Capodozzi half an hour before the rest to enable them to get into position. B and C will start exactly on the hour, by which time A should be in position. It’ll be their job to link up with A and move with them to the end of the San Bartolomeo road where the ground’s more uneven and will provide more shelter. Mark Warley will be running the show.’

There was a little muttering. Yuell allowed them time for coughing, lighting cigarettes, and comments; then he continued: ‘D Company will be in San Bartolomeo ready to reinforce as soon as the Engineers have a bridge across. This shouldn’t take long because I understand they’re proposing to use the broken span as the basis for a footbridge. They’ll also throw across a new Class 40 Bailey for the tanks alongside, where the stonework will give them some protection from the guns on the left.’

He glanced at his notes and went on quickly. ‘Boats: lorries will move them down to within three hundred yards of the river. Once on the other side, the plan of what we have to do is relatively simple. We have to get into San Eusebio. That’s
all
we have to do. We have to get in and dig in at once because they’re bound to counter-attack. The Yellowjackets should join up within an hour or so. If we get San Eusebio quickly, it’ll give the Engineers a few hours freedom from observation. Once they get their bridge across, we can be supported by tanks.’

It sounded simple but Yuell knew as well as any of them it wasn’t likely to be.

Warley certainly didn’t think so, and said so.

‘I didn’t say it would be simple in execution,’ Yuell pointed out quietly. ‘Only that the plan was simple.’

‘Planning and performing are two different things, sir.’

‘I’m as well aware of that as you are, Mark. Until you’re established, I shall remain on this side doing everything in my power to see you get every scrap of support you need. As soon as you’re established, I shall join you with the vehicles and, I hope, the Baluchis.’ Yuell paused to glance at his notes again. ‘Greatcoats will not be carried because everybody will already have enough to lug along, and this thing will depend on speed and therefore on lightness of equipment. If it’s raining, gas capes will be worn. Identification panels will be carried to show to the Air Force when they come in. Under no circumstances are these to be abandoned. We want no accidents, and if we have to call on the RAF again when we’re across we want them to know exactly where we are. Pigeons will also be taken in case anything happens to the radios or field telephones.’

After the officers were dismissed, Major Peddy reappeared. His face was grave.

‘What the devil’s wrong with you?’ Yuell asked. ‘You look as if you’ve lost a shilling and found sixpence.’

‘Well, we
have
lost our mortar bombs and grenades,’ Peddy said.

Yuell stared. ‘What do you mean? The brigadier promised us two lorry-loads.’

‘Those were the two lorries that ran off the road through the mountains.’

Yuell’s heart sank. ‘Aren’t they salvaging them, for God’s sake?’

Peddy pointed through the open barn doors to where the night was full of the hiss and rattle of water.

‘That doesn’t help,’ he said. ‘I gather they’re trying, but there’s a mist up there now and you can’t see your hand before your face. A few have been stuck on other lorries, but nobody has that much room and they’re arriving only in dribs and drabs. Unfortunately also, some of them have gone to Capodozzi and I don’t suppose in the darkness anybody will know where the hell they are.’

Yuell did not reply but stalked off through the rain to the headquarters he’d set up in a small farmhouse.

‘Get me Division – Brigadier Heathfield,’ he snapped to the man waiting by the rear link telephone.

Heathfield was already a little worried because of an earlier telephone call from a friend at Army HQ who he suspected had been deliberately chosen to make it just because they knew each other well.