Swordpoint (2011) (36 page)

‘I think we’d better send a runner back to give them the gen,’ the colonel said.

Warley saw Fletcher-Smith standing nearby. There was blood on his face but he was unhurt and it seemed that the blood belonged to someone else. Who better, he thought.

It was well into the afternoon when Fletcher-Smith appeared once more at Tallemach’s headquarters. Tonge was there when he was brought in.

‘You again?’ Tallemach said. ‘How did you do it this time?’

‘Same as when I went back, sir,’ Fletcher-Smith said. ‘Down the ditch and across the stone bridge. It was nothing like as bad as last time.’

Tallemach smiled. ‘This is getting to be a habit,’ he said. He drew Tonge to one side. ‘I think this chap deserves something, sir,’ he said. ‘This is the third time he’s crossed the river under fire.’

When Fletcher-Smith had finished his report, Tonge moved forward. ‘You’d better go and get some food,’ he advised. ‘Then find yourself a snug corner to wait for your people to be relieved.’

Fletcher-Smith stiffened. ‘With your permission, sir, I’ll rejoin my battalion.’

Tonge studied him carefully. There was no suggestion of false heroism about him.

‘Crossing that bridge again?’

‘They’re getting jeeps and lorries across now, sir. They won’t worry about me. And I was there when it started, so I’d like to be there when it finishes.’

‘Why?’

Fletcher-Smith considered. There appeared to be only one answer. ‘We’re rather a good battalion, sir,’ he said.

As Fletcher-Smith vanished, Tallemach smiled. ‘I think this must be the beginning of the end for Jerry, sir,’ he said. ‘Funny we should think we were going to fail.’

Which raised quite a point, Tonge decided. He’d already made up his mind that Heathfield must go and had been working out the ways and means of doing it when he realised he’d have to be rather more circumspect about it than he’d intended.

Even before success had begun to appear from the fog of defeat, Heathfield had been curiously defiant.

‘If I’m to be accused, sir,’ he’d said, ‘thank the Lord I’m being accused of attacking, not retreating.’

Now, with success snatched out of chaos by the ordinary fighting man, Tonge imagined that Heathfield’s budding political instinct might even incline him to expect praise. Because, consider it how he might, Heathfield’s plan
had
come off and, in the end, he’d been shown to be right; ironically because he’d stubbornly persisted when the others had been inclined to throw in the sponge. The fact that his rightness had only been proved by better men of lesser rank was nothing to do with it, and Tonge could hardly chuck out someone whose ideas had worked, whose pertinacity had paid dividends – even if, by all the rules, they ought not to have done. He’d have to wait and give him enough rope to hang himself. He had a suspicion it wouldn’t take long.

‘Another case,’ he observed to Tallemach, ‘of the private soldier saving his senior officer’s reputation.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Tallemach said. ‘I suppose I’ve a lot to be grateful for.’

Tonge lit a cigarette and turned towards his car. ‘I wasn’t thinking of you, Tom,’ he said.

They were relieved two nights later.

The wounded had all been evacuated by this time and the dead buried; the British first, laid under the stony soil just outside the cemetery where some of them had died. They’d been brought up from the river and from Deacon’s Dip, from the machine-gun positions they’d rushed, from the wire, and from among the ruins of San Eusebio, their bodies not in the tidy attitudes you saw in Errol Flynn films but twisted bundles of flesh, blood and bones often blackened by high explosives. Major Peddy, the letter to his wife still in his pocket, was among them, along with Second-Lieutenant Taylor, Corporal Wymark, 766 Bawden, Martindale and a few more. They lay in neat rows. Army dead were like army living, always regimental. Crosses marked where they lay, neat white wooden markers made by the battalion carpenter of the Yellowjackets – because the carpenter of the North Yorkshires was under a cross himself – and they’d been painted by Lofty Duff who was a signwriter in civilian life.

The burial service had been conducted by O’Mara since the Anglican chaplain had still not appeared. Nobody minded the Latin. They wouldn’t have minded if he’d done it in Swahili because O’Mara had been there with them. In fact, the service was a mixture of all denominations and perhaps his last words, spoken in English, touched them more closely than all the rest.

‘In the hands of God the omniscient,’ he said as he turned away, ‘may the tears of Paradise fall upon them.’

After the British dead had come the Germans, but they made the prisoners do most of that because by this time, in the growing heat, the bodies had swelled and their skin had stretched so that their features had disappeared. Then, since they had to live in the place, they had started to tidy it up. A few dazed Italians had appeared from the ruins, hanging out white sheets as indications that they were on the side of the Allies and chanting repeatedly,
‘Vivano i nostri liberatori!’

Discarded weapons had been collected. A troop of Engineers had appeared with mine detectors, picket posts and tape to clear the minefields and to lay markings. Here and there, an occasional body was still being found; and a column of prisoners was moving rearwards under escort, passing the stretcher-bearers carrying their loads.

Warley reflected on what they’d achieved. He was saddened by their losses, though he knew casualties were not supposed to depress you because battles weren’t won at the cost of a few black eyes. Jago was relieved it was over. He couldn’t shake off the feeling that he was different. The violence of the night had jerked him out of his brooding, but he had decided he’d taken one chance too many and that from now on he was going to be more careful. Suddenly, he desperately wanted to survive the war.

They all reacted differently. Fletcher-Smith, now a corporal to fill one of the gaps that had been left by the dead, found himself pleased to be attached to HQ Company and told to keep his wits about him because, if he did, there was more promotion in the offing. Duff became a lance-corporal in his place. ‘They’re going to give ’im command of the war babies’ platoon,’ Parkin said, patting his head. ‘All little fellers.’ 000 Bawden, still lost without 766 Bawden, supposed that eventually he’d get over it because they’d never really had much in common beyond their names and the fact that they came from the same town. McWatters, who had fought his way from the river in his usual dour fashion, conducting his own little hate-filled war, expecting no mercy and giving none, considered the battle a victory for World Socialism. Henry White, looking like Mr Punch without his teeth, joined him in the view that the Germans were bastards. After all, they’d lost him a good set of dentures, hadn’t they? Parkin’s reaction to this disaster was as predictable as it had been to Duff’s promotion. ‘Always did say you’d lose them teeth, ’Enry,’ he insisted. ‘You shoulda changed ’em at the time of the Boer War.’

Lieutenant Deacon was proud that he’d added his name to the history books – because when the war was over and the history of the Italian Campaign was written, somebody would refer to Deacon’s Dip just as they already referred to other such bumps and hollows on the world’s surface as Fig Orchard, Aberdeen, Snipe and Kidney Ridge. He was still euphoric about Syzling who, scruffy as ever, was growing worried that his success might prove a dangerous thing, because Deacon now seemed to be expecting all sorts of things from him – even smartness.

Not a few of them were writing letters. Tallemach was trying to express to his wife his feelings about his son. ‘I suppose we must be proud,’ he was saying, unhappily conscious that his words were meaningless, ‘and, since there are now only the two of us, we must learn to lean on each other more.’ Gask, apparently unmoved by his destruction of a tank with a grenade, for which he’d been awarded an immediate Military Medal, was writing to his mother to tell her he’d been promoted sergeant. He was now aiming for company sergeant-major, he said, and was also increasing her allowance. He didn’t mention the Military Medal in case she worried he’d been in danger.

CSM Farnsworth, aware that he would inevitably step into the dead Mr Zeal’s shoes, wrote to his wife calmly, avoiding all talk of shells and machine-gunning, as he always had, making the battle sound like nothing much worse than a rough game of football. ‘We’ve just been in action,’ he said, ‘but we came out of it not too badly. How’s Jean’s school report showing up, by the way? You didn’t mention it in the last letter.’ Just like a father away on business.

It was clear to them all now that the battle for Cassino had clarified. As they’d hung on grimly in front of San Eusebio the New Zealanders’ attack on the town had finally succeeded, and they were now on Castle Hill, while the Gurkhas had got their entire battalion atop Hangman’s. Slowly, gradually, the Monastery was being pinched out and they must now surely be in a position to throw the final punch. Next time, the Teds would not merely be pushed back a few miles. Next time the battle would be a masterpiece, a major operation with full orchestra and chorus. And, with clear indications that the winter weather was ending at last, they’d be able to mount it, not by companies and battalions, but by massed divisions.

It was barely dawn when Warley’s men prepared to troop down the winding road from San Eusebio to the river. It still didn’t pay to linger, because although San Eusebio was now in Allied hands, the Germans on the upper slopes could still drop shells in the flat fields along the riverside.

The Punjabis had taken over the town now. They were virtually untouched and were due to be supported by the King’s Own from the 11th Indian Brigade. The bridges were still intact and the RAF was already seeking out the German guns higher up.

With that quaint custom of doing honours so beloved of the British Army, the captain of the Baluchis had conceded the privilege of leading the remnants of both battalions out of the town to Warley, and Farnsworth’s iron voice was subdued as they formed up in the square.

‘You will march out like the soldiers you never were,’ he announced. ‘Your own mothers won’t recognise you. You’re not scruffs. You’re soldiers. So get those heads up. We said we’d lick these Ted bastards and we did. So look as if we have. When you get to the other side, they’re going to be watching to see what we look like. So give ’em a good eyeful. You can be as mucky as you like, because you’ve been in a battle, but you’ll move like soldiers. Get it?’

They got it. They looked like men who’d been through a whirlwind, buried and dug up again, and they were careful not to spoil the effect by shaving and washing too much. So they lined up in their torn and bloody uniforms – as they had earlier in the day for the war correspondents and photographers – several of them wearing bandages and carrying weapons which had been cleaned until they were spotless, fully prepared to create awe in the breasts of the onlookers.

Still Farnsworth wasn’t satisfied. ‘You wouldn’t do credit to a whorehouse,’ he said. ‘Tighten that belt, that man! It’s hanging off you like something hanging off a feller’s boot. Adjust that strap, you! Up with that rifle! If I know him, the colonel’s going to be across the other side waiting, and he’s going to be proud of you or I’ll know the reason why. You may not realise it, but you’ve just won a great victory. I’ve had it from Mr Warley, who got it from the colonel of the Punjabis, who got it from the general himself, brought back by our own special hero, Corporal Fletcher-Smith. The New Zealanders are into Cassino and we – you lot! – are in San Eusebio where we defeated the whole bloody Nazi nation. When everybody else was licked, the North Yorkshires were
not
licked. And that’s the most important thing in a battle to any man. It’s the question we always ask afterwards. Did we win? Well, let me inform you, we did. So look like it.’

They all knew what he was getting at – regimental spirit, that curious mystique which enabled soldiers to do things that ought to have been impossible, pride in themselves and their history. It wouldn’t really matter to the people at the other side of the river what they looked like as they marched out. But it mattered to the North Yorkshires and that was the point Farnsworth was trying to make.

There was only one discordant note. Lieutenant Deacon’s dulcet obbligato came through the darkness.

‘Where’s that bloody Piat, Syzling?’ he was demanding.

‘I lost it,’ Syzling muttered.

‘You can’t lose something as big as a Piat, for God’s sake!’

‘Well, I did. I put it down.’

‘Where?’

‘I forgot.’

‘I expect the bloody Punjabis collared it,’ Deacon wailed. ‘Good God, Syzling, that god-damned Piat ought to be framed and hung up in the regimental museum, the things we did with it! Didn’t you realise?’

‘No.’

‘Sir!’

‘Sir! No, I didn’t, sir!’

Unity and amity seemed to have been forgotten. Things were back to normal.

Warley was occupied with his thoughts as he headed down the slope. The rain seemed to have gone for good because the sky was still clear and it felt warmer. Soon they’d be able to clean themselves up and wash and scrape off the mud without shivering. Mail would arrive and he intended to luxuriate in a bath in an avalanche of lather. They even knew where they were going – back to Trepiazze – and Warley fully intended to be billeted in Graziella Vanvitelli’s home again.