Swordpoint (2011) (27 page)

Since Yuell’s crossing opposite San Bartolomeo had seemed at first to be a disaster, the Baluchis had been lorried upstream to support what had seemed a better option by the Yellowjackets, advancing on Castelgrande by way of Route B, the road from Foiano. Then, as the messages had begun to come in, it had become clear that of the two crossings, only Yuell’s showed the slightest promise at all and they’d been brought back again. Now, the increasing light revealed the same flooded meadows with nowhere to hide, and with the bridges smashed the Baluchis had had to withdraw to the safety of their original jumping-off point in San Bartolomeo before the German guns could destroy them. Only Yuell’s small group was now having any real effect on the battle.

A few wounded had managed to get back before the last footbridge had gone and from them they’d estimated Yuell’s casualties at around a hundred and fifty to two hundred, which was heavier than most units could stand. But at Castelgrande, the battle had produced an even worse mess.

Out of one group of the Yellowjackets, not a single man had got across; out of the other, elements of only one company had managed to reach the far side, but their casualties were even higher than Yuell’s and German mortars had pinned them to the edge of the river. Behind them, two more companies had waited as Engineers had tried to locate equipment which guides were unable to find or tried to repair bridge parts damaged by shellfire. The night had been an interminable period of fear, pain, confusion and delay, and only a few men had reached the shelter of a farm near Castelgrande.

As the day grew brighter and the radio link with the river was repaired, a message came from the senior surviving officer of the Yellowjackets. The Germans had begun to attack with tanks and self-propelled guns and, in face of complete annihilation, he was asking permission to withdraw what men he could get out by the one remaining but now damaged footbridge.

‘No,’ Tallemach snapped. ‘Tell him to stay where he is! We’ll try to get support up there.’

Calling for his jeep, he drove as hard as he could from San Bartolomeo. The rain was coming down heavily again and the skies had a funereal look about them. The highest points on the mountains opposite were out of sight in the clouds, but Tallemach was under no delusion that there weren’t plenty of other points lower down from which the Germans could see everything that was happening.

When he arrived at Foiano, he was already too late. Only the few Yellowjackets who had got into the farm near Castelgrande were still across the river. The rest had started recrossing not long after sending their request and they were now arriving in Foiano, wet, muddy and exhausted. A few had returned by the footbridge, placing their feet on timbers just visible under the swirling water, but most were without their uniforms and equipment because they’d had to swim. The icy water had numbed them to indifference and their morale and self-confidence had been badly shaken. As a battalion they had virtually ceased to exist and it was quite obvious that everything now depended on Yuell. To Tallemach it seemed to be time to organise a second attempt for the coming evening, not so much to support Yuell as to rescue him with whoever could still walk.

Weighed down with weariness and worry, he was just conferring with the colonel of the Baluchis by the light of a hurricane lamp whose flame jumped and flickered to the banging of the guns, when Heathfield arrived. Both Tallemach and the colonel were soaked by the rain, their clothes splashed by the liquid grey mud. In contrast, Heathfield was immaculate, his buttons polished, his boots shining, and immediately he and Tallemach began to disagree violently.

‘There’s no point in bringing them back,’ Heathfield snapped. ‘Having got them across, surely it would be much better to reinforce them.’

‘You don’t reinforce failures,’ Tallemach said. ‘And this is failure.’

‘Yuell’s still there,’ Heathfield snapped.

‘The Baluchis aren’t,’ Tallemach said. ‘And they’re supposed to be.’

While they were arguing the telephone went. Tallemach answered it, listened, then handed it silently to Heathfield. Heathfield looked curiously at the other two, spoke briefly, then replaced the receiver.

‘That was the Divisional Intelligence Officer,’ he said. ‘He was with General Tonge. Their jeep was in collision with a six-wheeler belonging to the US 10th Corps. The driver was killed and the general has a broken arm. He’s been taken to hospital. It seems he was quite conscious, though in pain, and was able to say that the attack is to go on as if he were here. He’ll return as soon as he can. He wants the support troops across the moment we have a foothold.’ Heathfield shifted his shoulders in a kind of shrug. ‘It seems to me, gentlemen, that it’s up to me now to sort this thing out.’

Although he was Tonge’s principal confidant at HQ, Heathfield’s job was primarily to co-ordinate the divisional artillery. As senior brigadier, it was Tallemach’s job to take Tonge’s place. But in the chaos existing, it was quite clear that Tallemach should stay where he was, and Heathfield was not a man to be argued with, anyway.

Tallemach made no comment and for a while there was silence, before they got down to work again, leaving the position of the second crossing to be decided by events and conditions.

‘We need an all-out attack,’ Heathfield pointed out. ‘Preferably before noon while the Germans are off-balance.’

‘They don’t seem off-balance to me,’ Tallemach said.

‘They must be by now,’ Heathfield insisted. ‘They’re only Russians and Czechs anyway, and we’ve just had a message from Army to say they’re putting their men across tomorrow at Cassino. The Germans must already be sending their reserves in that direction.’

‘Chiefly, I suppose,’ Tallemach said dryly, ‘because it’ll already be clear that they won’t be needed here.’

Heathfield was silent for a moment – the silence of affront. ‘We could do them a great deal of harm by continuing the attack,’ he said eventually. He was still irritated by the way his well-planned attack had been relegated to the status of a feint, and had begun to see it now as a success that could earn him apologies and praise in equal quantities. It would be damned funny, he thought, if his attack succeeded while the bigger one further north failed.

‘If we reinforce this farm the Yellowjackets have got into,’ he said, ‘the Germans are going to have to withdraw men from Yuell’s front to stop us moving out of it.’

‘I favour supporting Yuell,’ Tallemach said. ‘Judging by the weight of the shelling at Castelgrande, nobody’s going to be moving forward anywhere in that sector.’

‘I disagree! The Yellowjackets are behind bricks and mortar. Yuell’s still out in the open and too much under observation. We’ll never get another bridge across in front of San Eusebio.’

‘Pity you didn’t think of that before,’ Tallemach growled.

Heathfield ignored the remark. ‘The artillery claim they’re on top of the opposition at Castelgrande,’ he said, ‘and that’s certainly not the case opposite San Bartolomeo. So Castelgrande’s where we should push men across. We’ll switch the tanks up there in support.’

‘Crossing on what?’

Heathfield frowned. ‘War isn’t a game of snakes and ladders,’ he said icily. ‘There are no rules. We have to react to events. Get the Engineers to push their Class 40 bridge over up there.’

‘It’ll mean shifting all their equipment.’

‘Then tell them to get on with it! If they do, they can finish it while the sun is in the Germans’ eyes.’

Tallemach’s head jerked round. ‘That’s a ridiculous suggestion,’ he snapped. ‘There probably won’t be any sun and it only leaves us three hours to prepare!’

‘It’s got to be done,’ Heathfield said. ‘And Yuell must be supported to keep up the pressure in this sector as well. So let’s have two companies of the Baluchis across with ammunition and supplies. The other two can go in to help the Yellowjackets at Castelgrande, supported by one of Ran-kin’s battalions, the other two to be kept in reserve.’

‘Yuell will need more than two companies,’ Tallemach pointed out sharply. ‘And that’s impossible with the Baluchis as disorganised as they are.’

‘If we’re disorganised,’ Heathfield snapped, ‘then we shouldn’t be! What’s wrong with the Baluchis, anyway?’

‘They’re scattered all over the place. They were brought up in a hurry under intermittent fire and were pushed down to the river from Capodozzi to wherever there was shelter for them. When the bridges went they had to be brought back to San Bartolomeo.’

‘Then collect them, get them fed, and have them reorganise themselves. How soon can you get things moving?’

‘Not before noon,’ Tallemach said. ‘That’s for certain.’

Heathfield gestured irritably. ‘By the time you finally get down to it,’ he said, ‘the Germans will have reinforced. They move pretty fast. You’d better get on with it.’

As he picked up his cap and left, Tallemach noticed grimly that he’d left the details to him.

Though Heathfield’s fears of German reinforcements were well founded, it was also clear that the early reverse had been more complete and demoralising than General Tonge had realised. The Yellowjackets no longer existed as a coherent organisation and if Yuell had lost as many men as appeared to be the case, he must also have lost many other things too – weapons, equipment and ammunition – that would make it hard for him to hang on. Time was needed to reorganise and regain control, while to repeat the failed night attack in daylight seemed to be making things just too easy for the Germans.

Certainly the Germans thought so. To Captain Reis’ surprise, Lieutenant Thiergartner was doing very well. He was containing the British with remarkably few men, and Reis’ suggestion that he should push forward reserves to him had been rejected.

‘We’re holding them quite safely Herr Hauptmann,’ Thiergartner had told him over the telephone. ‘It only appears to be an armed reconnaissance.’

Reis wasn’t so sure. From where he was, and judging by reports on the prisoners who’d been brought in from near Castelgrande, it was very much bigger than that.

A movement opposite caught his attention, and he
frowned and used his free hand to put his binoculars to his eyes.

‘Surely they’re not going to come again – in
daylight!’
he said.

‘Yes, Herr Hauptmann,’ Thiergartner answered calmly. ‘They must be mad. If I’d started such a movement, I’d not expect to be treated kindly either by you or the people above you. To persist in this fashion’s crazy.’

‘Never mind the military psychology, Thiergartner,’ Reis snapped, ‘What about help? Are you sure you don’t need any down there?’

‘Of course not, Herr Hauptmann,’ Thiergartner said. ‘We need no reserves. We’re holding without trouble. We even know their numbers because we captured a pigeon they sent off. It was a little bewildered and its direction-finding equipment seemed to have broken down. It arrived just outside our position and Pulovski enticed it in. He might be dim in some ways but he has a way with living things. I’ve sent him back to you with its message and returned the bird. He talked it into recovering a little and it flew off exactly where it was originally supposed to go.’

‘Doesn’t it occur to you, Thiergartner,’ Reis snapped, ‘that even a pigeon has its uses? They can use it again and it’s our job to deny them the use of
anything
that may be of value to them. Even pigeons!’

‘All the same–’ Thiergartner’s chuckle came down the line ‘–we ought not to lose our sense of humour, Herr Hauptmann. There’s little enough of it in wartime. I couldn’t resist it. I attached a message– “Herewith pigeon returned. We have enough to eat and look forward with pleasure to your next attempt.”’

It had always been hard in training exercises in England to persuade men to dig. Here, however, wherever it was possible, they had dug for all they were worth and, where it wasn’t possible, they’d thrown up sangars of stones. They’d learned a lot in North Africa and advancing up Italy. Once Yuell had had to threaten them with punishment to make them go down two or three feet. Now, wherever the rocky nature of the soil permitted, they were already much deeper than that.

It was a good job, too, because the Germans had brought up a nebelwerfer, the multi-barrelled mortar which fired six bombs at once. In flight the clusters emitted a noise that was a cross between a shriek, a whine and a sigh, and was no help to the nerves of those at the receiving end. Shaped like a small cannon, it had been dug into the hillside higher up the slope and the officer directing the fire was obviously doing his observing through a narrow notch chipped out of the rock.

The Germans knew now where they were and the first cluster came in to burst with a series of shattering explosions. They heard the bombs coming and dived for cover, huddling at the bottom of what had become known as Deacon’s Dip. The barrage lasted only two or three minutes, but by the time it finished they had lost seven more men killed and wounded.

Nobody was firing back much because instructions had gone round to reserve ammunition for the night, but one or two did and the German machine-guns retaliated and the heavy mortars started again. If one of their bombs landed in a hole where a man crouched it would save the need for a burial party.

‘If only t’bloody rain would stop,’ Rich wailed.

But it didn’t. It still fell, not heavily now but steadily, and already the holes they’d managed to dig were full of water and grey ooze into which bloody scraps of clothing and ammunition clips had been trampled by heavy boots. A German light machine-gun chattered hysterically and the bullets clacked and clapped overhead. Evans the Bomb tried retaliation with his two-inch mortar, setting it up just behind the lip of the hollow. As the loader slid a bomb into the muzzle, ducking sideways to avoid the blast, Evans waited for it to explode, made a small correction and tried again. Then two lights soared up into the gloom, and almost immediately three German mortar bombs exploded in red-yellow flashes just in front of them. The loader’s steel helmet was whipped off by the blast and he rolled into the bottom of the dip with a wound in the head.