Swordpoint (2011) (33 page)

‘Got the bastards,’ Farnsworth said with satisfaction.

He struck a match and just ahead they saw three men lying on the ground, one of them still alive. The Germans had been rushing down the trench to investigate what was happening. At the end was a door, and a German who looked about sixteen was just trying to jam it shut. Rich pushed his rifle in the gap but there was a burst of firing from inside and he fell away, crying out in pain, the flesh shredded from his calf. The German was still trying to push the rifle out so he could close the door when Henry White pulled the pin from another grenade and slipped it through. Then, dragging Rich clear, they flung themselves flat.

The German hadn’t noticed the grenade and he threw out the rifle and slammed the door just as it went off. In the enclosed space the sound was like a firework in a tin can, a metallic roar that seemed to combine the crash of an explosion with the striking of a gong. There was no further movement from inside and they kicked open the door. The boy who’d finally closed it lay in bloody rags, and two other men were sprawled at the far side. The bunker smelled of smoke, cordite, charred wood, blood and fresh excreta.

Coming up for air, Warley realised they were now in a series of connecting trenches. The sky was full of flares as the Germans further up the slope tried to make out what was happening, and they could see everything about them in the trenches quite clearly.

They seemed to have gone as far as they safely could; to go any further would take them out into the open again. As they waited, getting their breath back, setting up the Brens and swinging the sandbags into a new position that would protect them against fire from the slopes, another group of men stumbled round the corner. Jumpy as a cat since the death of his namesake, 000 Bawden almost hit the first one with a spade, holding his hand just in time as he saw it was Deacon, closely followed by Syzling.

‘We knocked out a couple of machine-gun posts,’ Deacon said gleefully. ‘And old Frying hit one of the Teds with the Piat tube.’

They seemed to have control of the situation and became quite certain of their victory when they began to bump into men of the Baluchis who had followed up. They were all grinning but Warley set them to work at once, turning the defences to face the other way. Among the prisoners they had taken was an effeminate-looking young officer clutching a violin case. He handed over his pistol without fuss.

‘Thiergartner,’ he said. ‘Maximilian Thiergartner. Lieutenant.’

‘What are you going to do with that?’ Deacon asked, pointing at the violin.

Thiergartner smiled. ‘I think I shall need it to while away the long hours in a prison camp,’ he said. ‘Don’t you?’

As they crowded together in the trench, the first mortar bomb came down. The Germans higher up the slope had evidently made up their minds at last where they were. As the second bomb dropped, a wounded man appeared on the lip of the trench, hobbling frantically for shelter. They were just reaching up to help him when there was another crash and he slid sideways and crumpled up at their feet, his face torn open by a splinter.

Farnsworth fumbled for his field dressing but Thiergartner was quicker. Laying down the violin case, he was already producing bandages and lint. Without a word, they knelt beside the injured man and dressed the wound together. As they straightened up, Farnsworth eyed the German; then he reached into his battledress blouse and produced a packet of cigarettes.

‘Have a fag,’ he said.

They had seen Warley’s Very light go up from the other side of the river and heard the renewed fighting after the lull.

The wounded were coming back in a trickle now, first the stretcher-bearers and then the walking wounded, pale with shock and pain, their bandages bright with blood. One or two of the leg and arm injuries were able to say what Warley was doing, and immediately Tallemach pushed the Engineers forward.

‘Footbridges,’ he insisted. ‘Footbridges only for the time being! Let’s get the men across!’

The footbridges were flung over the river, rickety swaying affairs on boats, pontoons and kapok bales that allowed only one man at a time to pass. The Engineers had also put a girder across the broken span of the road bridge, and here Rankin sent over most of his Punjabis, balancing precariously, clutching their weapons, in mortal terror of falling into the river below.

But Tallemach had thought of that one, too, and he had the remaining assault boats in the water ready to pluck out anybody who did fall in.

‘You can take your pick, Johnny,’ the Engineer sergeants were yelling at the Indians. ‘It’s either Blondin crossing Niagara Falls on a tight wire or Oxford and Cambridge at Putney Bridge. And when you go at that bloody girder, run at it, and you’ll be across before you know it.’

Most of the Punjabis made it across the girder. Out of those who missed their footing and fell, only one vanished from sight under the weight of his equipment before he could be rescued.

Meanwhile, Fletcher-Smith was one of the first to reach the other bank and was already directing the major in command of the first company towards the ditch he’d previously used to approach the river.

‘Keep moving, Johnny,’ the Engineers were yelling. ‘Keep moving! If you stand still, you’re dead!’

Suddenly there was a confident sense of urgency about them, and it was a rewarding moment for Tallemach to realise they had their tails up again. You could feel it in the air. It was a battle-winning factor that only experience could gauge and, watching them, he began to feel better and really alive again.

Hidden by smoke, the tanks rumbled out of San Bartolomeo once more, the snouts of their guns pointing towards the river. German flares kept going up, but the wind had dropped at last and this time the smoke was just right. In San Bartolomeo there finally seemed to be room to move, and up above the clouds had broken up so that beyond the smoke it was possible to pick out stars. At last the imponderables were in their favour.

Fletcher-Smith was the first to fall into Deacon’s Dip.

‘The holy saints protect us!’ O’Mara’s accent grew broader in his excitement. ‘You made it, me brave bhoy!’

‘I was scared stiff, sir.’

‘Bravery’s being afraid of being afraid, my son. What have you brought?’

‘The Punjabis from 9th Indian Brigade, sir. There’s an air strike at dawn.’

‘Holy Mother of God! Then get ahead to Major Warley and tell him, boy.’

The padre watched Fletcher-Smith go, humble at the courage he’d seen in the last forty-eight hours, never thinking in his humility that his personal calmness was its own kind of courage. He put it all down to Yuell. Yuell had a good battalion, and it showed not only in the way they behaved on parade but in the way they behaved in action. Most men were far too sensible for heroics, yet men who were brave in a body usually managed to be brave on their own as well.

The Germans were beginning to put mortar stonks down on their own former positions now, but Fletcher-Smith made it from Deacon’s Dip. Pushing through the press of men huddling against the bank of the German trenches and fox-holes, he found Warley and Jago just as they were wondering if they could push their luck and try for San Eusebio at first light.

‘Fletcher-Smith!’ Warley’s reaction was the same as O’Mara’s. ‘So you got through!’

‘Yes, sir. And the Punjabis are coming up behind me. The padre said he’d send ’em on.’

Warley grinned, haggard with tiredness and filthy with mud, but suddenly elated and optimistic.

Fletcher-Smith’s words were still tumbling out. ‘The brigadier said to wait for an air strike, sir. It’s coming at first light. I heard him tell the CO of the Punjabis to let you know.’

‘Did you, by God?’ Warley grinned again. ‘Well, that’s wonderful news.’ He turned to Jago. ‘All right, Tony, we’ll let the fly boys have a crack at ’em for a change and go in as the dust settles.’

The English colonel in command of the Punjabis arrived shortly afterwards. He was a thin languid man but he seemed to know his job and was in no hurry to take over from Warley.

Warley produced a map and indicated the road up to San Eusebio. ‘I suggest we make a start up here, sir, but while they’re keeping their eye on us, there’s nothing to stop your lot going up the slope in front. It’ll be a stiff climb, hands and knees stuff, but it’ll shake ’em while they’re looking one way for us to find you coming from the other. Perhaps you’d better take over now, sir.’

The colonel was an amenable man and, while he was willing to accept responsibility, he insisted on Warley running the show. ‘You know the ground better than I do,’ he said. ‘Natural hazards, bunkers and so on. Have you got anybody you can trust to direct the attack up the road?’

‘Yes, sir. Tony Jago here.’

‘Then he’d better have the Baluchis.’ The colonel turned to the captain commanding the Baluchis. ‘Keep in close touch with Captain Jago. Give him his head and support him.’

As the first faint light began to appear, they could just pick out the spurs and peaks of the land in front. Then, against a clearing opal sky, they saw San Eusebio and the tower of the church emerge from the shadows and, soon afterwards, the bulk of Monte Cassino and the dark silhouette of the Monastery.

Behind them, in the river valley, there was an incredible racket going on. The fields were covered with smoke because Tallemach had brought up every smoke shell he could get hold of and the thick haze was drifting down the river on the faintest of breezes, moving infinitely slowly, obscuring the valley from view.

The Germans were dropping everything they could round the broken bridge, but Tallemach had sent the Engineers down the farm track from Capodozzi this time and a new bridge was going across near the disused ferry where Yuell’s B and C companies had started.

The Engineers expected to finish it shortly and the tanks were gathering on the slopes of the hills behind San Bartolomeo for the dash down. God alone knew how many they’d get across before the road gave way under their weight, but Tallemach was determined to try it. If they could get enough across to support Warley, there was a chance of getting into San Eusebio. With that in their possession, they could move vehicles down the tarmac road from San Bartolomeo.

The sound of the shelling had become like a monstrous iron foundry by now, and Warley was explaining carefully what he wanted, confident his men would endure anything so long as they knew the reason for it.

‘The only safe place round here’s in San Eusebio,’ he told them. ‘That bluff behind’ll protect us from the German guns. So see that we get there.’

He’d just lit a cigarette when he snatched it from his mouth again and threw it away. Standing with his head up, his eyes were fierce and elated under his helmet. He looked a hundred years old with the strain and the dirt that smeared his features. The colonel of the Punjabis and the captain of the Baluchis were staring upwards, too, listening as the sound Warley had heard increased rapidly, swelling until the whole sky seemed to be full of it.

Someone laughed and there was a thin cheer because they all knew by now what it was. It began to fill the whole of their existence, and Warley glanced round him for the pink identification panels and saw they were in place.

‘Where are they?’ Jago said, staring round him. ‘Where are the bastards?’

He was moving with certainty again now. The fears that had been growing on him had vanished. The excitement and the noise and the willingness of the men around him had carried him forward. But the layer of courage was thin and brittle and he knew it would last only as long as the forward movement lasted. Like Warley, like all of them, he needed rest – a long rest. A man had only so much to give and when it was gone he was nothing but a husk.

He jerked a hand. ‘There they are! End of the valley! Coming in from the north!’

They became silent again as the roar of aircraft continued to echo backwards and forwards between the hills. Then they saw the aeroplanes pass between two crests, small dark machines laying over in a steep bank as they wheeled into position, coming in, in a long slanting run, as though they intended to knock off the top of the church tower with their wing-tips.

Captain Reis was in the church. Since he’d received the reports of the British breakthrough and the disappearance – dead or captured – of Lieutenant Thiergartner, he’d had a premonition of disaster and had gone to the church to light a candle and attend Mass. Though the tower of the church was tottering and the nave open to the sky, the rest of the building was still in use. Since there were hardly any villagers left, the worshippers were all soldiers and, because most of his men were not Catholics but Lutherans, there weren’t many of them.

It was the clearing sky that troubled Reis most. He’d noticed as he’d wakened before daylight that it was full of stars, and it had seemed an omen, for without doubt the low clouds and rain had been a great factor in the defence so far.

As the old priest stood before the altar, invoking the blessing of the Madonna, the sound of the aeroplanes came to Reis’ ears. Almost immediately, the walls shuddered and gusts of air blasted through the church as a succession of explosions grew into one cataclysmic roar. As the first whorls of dust curled in through the broken stonework and the soldiers jumped to their feet, the old priest turned automatically and gave them absolution.

The explosions were increasing. The earth quaked, walls cracked and bulged; and as the rafters came down, Reis saw a great oak beam fall in a shower of plaster to crush two men hurrying for the door. Struggling up, his lungs filled with dust, he saw several more men caught in the open, hugging the ground, their faces drawn and pale with shock. One of them got to his feet in a panic and started to run, only to be flung against a wall by blast in a smashed bundle of flesh, bone and clothing.