Swordpoint (2011) (30 page)

The extent of the disaster was made clear by the message that was handed to Tallemach. It had been brought to his headquarters by an Engineer sergeant in San Bartolomeo who had seen Yuell’s pigeon returning home and had watched it all the way across the river to its loft.

The last of the pigeon handlers was lying face-down on the grass verge half-way along the San Bartolomeo road, where he’d been caught by a shell burst, and since there was no one about and because he was a pigeon fancier himself at home, the sergeant had entered the hut and examined the bird. Unclipping the message from its leg, he had shown it to his officer who had sent him at once by jeep to Tallemach’s headquarters.

‘Herewith pigeon is returned. We have enough to eat and look forward with pleasure to your next attempt.’

Tallemach stared at the message, written in English on a scrap of paper torn from a German message pad, then handed it in silence to his brigade major. Obviously they had barely scratched the surface of the German defence. He made a great effort to get his tired brain to concentrate, even now unable to accept that he no longer had any sons.

Without General Tonge, the fight seemed to have got out of hand and Heathfield was still demanding that they strengthen the Castelgrande attack. Rankin was up there now, raging that it was impossible, that those of his men who’d got across had found no survivors from the previous day’s fighting, and that he wasn’t going to commit his last battalion for any bastard.

By butting his head again and again at the German defences, he’d almost destroyed two of his battalions and, uncertain now what to do, was blaming everything on Heathfield. Much of it was certainly Heath-field’s doing, Tallemach knew, but he suspected Rankin wasn’t without blame either.

‘The man’s inefficient,’ Rankin had stormed on the telephone. ‘He shouldn’t be in a position to destroy men’s lives.’

Coming from a man of Rankin’s methods, the words were pure irony, but Tallemach said nothing and the angry voice went on. ‘He’s artillery, anyway, so what does he know about infantry tactics? And the bastard’s behind us in the Army List, you know, Tallemach. He’s just bloody lucky to be where he is. When this bloody thing’s over I’m going to raise the biggest stink you ever heard.’

Tallemach let him rant on. He’d known Rankin a long time and had never been particularly fond of him. It was one of the chances of war that he was obliged to work with him, but it was not something which roused much enthusiasm in him.

As he struggled to produce order out of the chaos that confronted him, Rankin himself appeared from Foiano, black in the face with fury.

‘Did you know 19th Div. artillery’s leaving already?’ he stormed.

‘Yes,’ Tallemach said. ‘They’re booked to give support fire at Cassino.’

‘That bastard Heathfield promised it. He promised it after the first day. Typical staff college nonsense. Staff college always constipates field soldiers. I got on the blower to him and told him that if he took the guns away from my sector before I’d got my chaps back, I’d go up there and shoot the bugger.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He said I was mad.’ Rankin rubbed a big red hand over his face. It left his moustache lopsided. ‘Probably I am. Italy makes us all a bit barmy. All the same, I said I’d do it. I told him, “What’s one life against the dozens you’ll destroy if you shift the guns?”’

Tallemach looked at him sadly. Rankin was all shout, and he knew – as doubtless Heathfield did – that it was an empty threat. All the same, it showed that to Rankin command wasn’t just pushing little flags about on a map as it was to Heathfield, unaware that they represented beings of flesh and blood, with thoughts and feelings and an awareness of pain and fear.

‘You’d never have done it, George,’ he said quietly.

‘No,’ Rankin admitted slowly. ‘I don’t suppose I would. But I was so bloody angry. I just hope it frightened him a bit.’

They were still gloomily wondering what could possibly be their next move when a message from Foiano arrived.

‘Under heavy fire,’
it announced.
‘Bridgehead untenable. All senior officers killed or wounded. Units disorganised. Bridges and boats gone. Am ordering remnants back east of river.’

Rankin sighed. ‘I’d better get back there,’ he said.

As he reached for his hat another message arrived. It was from Division this time and had been originated by Heathfield.

‘Keep up pressure. Attack at Cassino started. First reports indicate success.’

Tallemach handed it to Rankin. ‘I’m pleased he’s pleased,’ he said quietly.

Tallemach was still pondering the imponderables when Fletcher-Smith was brought in.

Rankin had long since disappeared to the Castelgrande sector and the reports that had come in had indicated a disaster there even worse than the one in the early hours of the morning. Rankin’s men had made their way back under extreme difficulties, leaving their dead and wounded behind them, and he was occupied at the moment with attempts to bring out the last few isolated groups. Those who had made it had lost clothes, weapons, everything. The whole thing was a mess, one of the worst foul-ups since Tobruk.

Tallemach was studying the map when his brigade major appeared. ‘They’ve just brought in a chap who’s got across the river from Colonel Yuell, sir,’ he announced.

‘Got across?’ Tallemach lifted his head. ‘How?’

‘Seems he swam, sir.’

‘Did he, by God? Bring him in.’

Fletcher-Smith was blue with cold and wrapped in a blanket, beneath which he wore nothing but a pair of ragged underpants.

The crossing had been more hellish than he’d ever expected but, having succeeded, he was possessed by a feeling of elation that at last he’d found his proper niche. Never in his wildest dreams had he expected to be able to use in the army the one thing he was really good at – swimming – but now he felt he wouldn’t mind swimming back and forth across the river all day.

Getting to the water’s edge had taken him hours. The German machine-guns had chased him from one rock and hollow to another until he’d had to dive for cover into a shell crater and crouch there for what had seemed years. It was almost as if the Germans had suspected what he was up to because, in addition to the machine-guns, they seemed to have put a sniper to watch him, and every time he tried to move, a bullet clipped the earth to send flecks of mud into his face. As evening approached and the light had gone, however, he had seen his chance and, dodging from the crater, his heel clipped as he went by a last shot from the sniper, he had dived into the ditch Warley had indicated. It was full of filthy brown water and weeds and smelled of sewage, which he’d decided meant that the Italians, in their slap-happy fashion, had used it to get rid of the effluent from San Eusebio. Nevertheless, it was a lot better than being in the open, and, with the German machine-guns still clipping away, he’d crawled along the muddy sloping side most of the way, slithering helplessly from time to time into the water. At one point where the bank was bare and he couldn’t find a damn thing with which to pull himself out, he’d thought he was drowning – him, Francis Fletcher-Smith who’d swum the length of Windermere and bloody nearly made it to Cap Gris Nez! In the end, he’d got a grip on himself and stopped panicking, and had continued down the ditch, half wading, half swimming, until he’d found a tree with which to drag himself clear.

Soaked, half frozen and plastered with mud, he’d reached the river bank as it grew dusk. He’d seen groups of dark-faced Indian soldiers crouching on the mud by the bridge – clutching weapons, ammunition boxes and sandbags – and was staggered at the number of bodies, both Indian and British, that were sprawled about. Here and there a man still moved feebly, and a medical orderly with a bandaged head had dragged one or two of them into the shelter of the bank. When he discovered what Fletcher-Smith intended, he gave him a tired smile.

‘You’ll be lucky even to get to the water,’ he said.

As he spoke, a man sheltering among the tufts of grass not far away jumped up and tried to run to where an assault boat was lying lopsidedly by the water’s edge. Immediately, a machine-gun churned up the mud around him, throwing it up in little black splashes until he sank down and sprawled on his face.

Fletcher-Smith knew this was going to be the hard bit and he stripped slowly to his underpants. They were a little on the grubby side but this didn’t seem to be a time when he needed to worry about who was going to see him. As a boy his mother had always insisted on clean underclothes – in case he was run over, she’d said, and was taken to hospital. In the precise, dogmatic way which marked him now and was already emerging even in childhood, he’d never been able to understand why it was more important to be dead in clean underclothes than alive in dirty ones.

As he dropped his shirt to the grass, he took off his glasses and handed them with his wallet to the medical orderly. ‘That’s my money,’ he said. ‘It isn’t much, but some time I’d like it back.’

There wasn’t much money in the wallet but there was a photograph of the girl in Trepiazze. In his heart of hearts, Fletcher-Smith knew his interest in her was only physical and that it was purely fortuitous that she was interested in reading like himself. Nevertheless, it had been nice to think of her at times, and as she had provided him with his first experience of the warmth of a woman’s body, he felt he owed her a debt of gratitude if nothing else.

‘I’m off,’ he said and began to move along the river bank, his head down, looking for the best place to cross.

There seemed to be a lot of debris floating about, but most of it had been cleared by the current. Deciding that the safest place was near the bridge, which would at least give him protection on one side, he made his way to the mud between the abandoned equipment and holed boats that lay about. Finally, standing upright, he set off towards the water at full speed.

When he was shown in to Tallemach by the Brigade Intelligence Officer, it was dark. He had a bandage round his foot where he’d cut it as he’d run to the water, and his teeth were chattering furiously.

‘Has he had anything to drink?’ Tallemach asked.

‘Rum, sir,’ Fletcher-Smith managed between the shuddering. ‘From the Engineers when I arrived.’

Tallemach reached for a bottle of whisky, sloshed out a tumblerful and pushed it across.

‘Better drink that,’ he said. ‘Where’ve you come from?’

The whisky was taking Fletcher-Smith’s breath away more than the swim had. ‘Colonel Yuell sent me, sir,’ he panted. ‘I’m a good swimmer and I volunteered to try to get across.’

‘You were damn lucky some sniper didn’t get you.’

‘The swimming wasn’t too difficult, sir,’ Fletcher-Smith said. ‘It was getting to the river that was the worst. I thought I’d never make it.’

To Tallemach it seemed he was totally unaware that what he’d done was brave; as if he’d done it merely because it had to be done, like polishing a barrack room floor or enduring a freezing night on sentry duty. He glanced out into the night. There was a suggestion of sleet in the air, and he realised just how cold it must have been.

‘Find him a mug of tea somewhere,’ he said to the Intelligence officer. ‘Hot as you can get it.’ He turned again to Fletcher-Smith, his brain functioning properly now that there was something concrete to grasp. ‘What’s happening across there?’

‘Colonel Yuell’s in a dip, sir, just to the east of San Eusebio. We got to our first objective but we’re pinned down now, and running short of ammunition.’

‘Haven’t you received any more? Two companies of the Baluchis were sent across with as much as they could carry.’

‘When I left they were still pinned down near the bridge, sir, but they’ve probably reached Colonel Yuell now it’s dark.’

‘What else can you tell us? How about casualties?’

‘Thirty per cent, sir, Colonel Yuell told me to say. He also said to say he’s all right at the moment but can’t move anywhere without reinforcements. With help something might be done, but we need all we can get, sir.’

‘Can you read a map?’ Tallemach asked.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Think you could pinpoint the German machine-gun posts?’

Fletcher-Smith rose from the chair they’d found for him. As he did so, the blanket swung open and he was horribly aware of his tattered, mud-stained underpants. His mother was right – the thought came crazily into his head – it was always best to wear clean underwear. You never knew when you might have to report to the brigadier wearing nothing else. He jabbed his finger at Tallemach’s map.

‘Sir, Colonel Yuell said if we could only get an air strike–’

‘I wish to God we could,’ Tallemach admitted. ‘But not only can they not fly in this stuff, but half of them are bogged down on their own fields.’ He looked at a sergeant standing behind the brigade major. ‘Get him somewhere warm, Sergeant, and see he gets a good hot meal.’

‘I’ll go back, sir,’ Fletcher-Smith offered. ‘If I could be fitted up with a uniform and a rifle, I’ll go back.’

‘You’ve done enough.’

‘I’d
like
to go back, sir. They need me. They might need someone to swim across again.’

Tallemach put his hand on his shoulder. ‘I think you’d better stay here,’ he said.