Townsend looked at his notes, looked at Davis, looked
at his thumb. 'And where was the enemy meanwhile?'
he asked.
'Meanwhile,' Davis said with a sudden, lunatic smile, 'meanwhile the enemy was lying doggo halfway down the hill and shooting his funny bullets at us with complete disregard for expense.'
'Which means you lost a few men.'
'We lost about two hundred.'
'What happened to your covering fire?'
'Never came.'
'So then you withdrew?'
'Some did. Most of us found a little rock to hide behind. Then they started dropping shells on us, mortar bombs, Christ knows what. And every time we twitched, some bastard had a go at us with his funny bullets. Later on, it got hot, blinding baking hot. A thing I've learnt,' Davis said to Luis, 'is you get twice as thirsty four times as fast when you're under fire. Promise me you'll never go into battle without a full waterbottle.'
'Certainly,' Luis said, nodding hard.
'None of us had water.' Davis turned back to Townsend.
'They hadn't given us canteens, see. There were a lot of wounded out there, too, all wanting water. Another thing I've learnt,' he said to Luis, 'is don't get yourself wounded on a hot hill. Much better to be shot dead and have done with it.' Luis nodded again. 'I think they all died in the end, Davis said. 'They all shut up, anyway.'
'What happened to you?' Townsend asked.
'I got back at night.' Davis stood up and began piercing holes in the top of the sandbag. 'Next day we attacked again and another two hundred got killed and that was just about the end of the battalion.'
'Two-thirds killed in twenty-four hours," Townsend said. Luis began to worry. Maybe this was not such a good story. Now Davis was poking the string through the holes and blinking a lot; whether from tears or from the effort of focusing Luis could not be sure.
Townsend went over to an observation slit and glanced out. 'I don't understand why you didn't just plaster this hillside with bullets,' he said. 'Hell, you had height and -- '
'Didn't I tell you about the rifles?' Davis cried. 'Our famous Russian rifles! They were not really meant to fire bullets, and they all broke. One thing I've learnt -- ' He turned to Luis, but Townsend got in first: 'But you had grenades, you said.'
'Did I? I wonder.' Davis closed the neck of the sack and knotted the string. 'I really wonder. Can you call this a grenade?' He took a short length of steel pipe from his tunic pocket. 'There's half a stick of gelignite in there. See the fuse? Now, watch this. As the enemy-rushes towards me I light the fuse, so.' He patted his pockets until he found a flint-and-steel lighter, the no-petrol kind used by Spanish-shepherds. It consisted of a steel wheel, a flint, and a length of yellow tinder-cord. Davis thumbed the wheel doggedly Sparks flew and died. 'Never mind,' he said, 'the fuse is probably too wet, anyway.' He gave the grenade to Luis Luis weighed the weapon in his palm. It felt smoothly sinister.
'Rifles and grenades,' Townsend said. 'That was all they gave you? No mortars, no machine-guns?'
Davis heaved the sandbag over to the damaged slot and sat on it. 'We each had a shosser,' he said.
'Shosser?' Townsend repeated. 'Is that a make, or a nickname, or what?'
'It's French,' Davis said. 'It must be a very dirty French word. The French invented it, anyway.'
'What does it do?' Townsend was happier; even if Summers came back now, the gist of the story was down on paper. 'Is it automatic?'
'Completely automatic. Fires two-rounds and automatically jams.'
Luis studied the way Townsend and Davis were looking at each other: the American serious and questioning, the Englishman slouched, sombre, dull with anger. Luis sensed a violence that was beyond warfare, a despair beyond death, and it made him uncomfortable. He wished to help, if only he knew how.
Townsend asked: 'Didn't you know about the jamming?'
'None of us had fired the shosser before we made that attack. Not many of us fired the bloody silly thing after it, either.'
'Sounds like someone made a sweet little deal... I'd like to see one of your shossers.'
'Help yourself.' Davis waved an arm. 'They're all out there.'
'Ah.' Townsend put his notebook away. 'In that case I guess it's time for lunch. Can I get you any -- '
'Sir, please!' Luis interrupted. 'You wish to have this weapon?'
Townsend shrugged. 'Sure. Maybe there's a name on it, something to identify . . . You know where you can lay your hands on one?'
Luis dodged past him, put one foot in the observation slit, and heaved himself onto the rim of the pit. Townsend shouted and Davis grabbed, but Luis jumped onto the hillside and began running. The slope seemed vaster and far steeper now that he was a part of it; he had a jumbled impression of rocks and scrub plunging to a distant, hazy flatness where a river gleamed, everything about him seeming huge and hanging high after the snugness of the observation post.
Then the bullets came.
He was dodging from rock to rock, and the harsh and startling crack! crack! from behind made him think that Davis was firing. At him? Luis stopped, looked back. Immediately the rocks in front detonated a string of blasts. Luis saw the stony splinters fly, and remembered the explosive bullets. He fell flat, and a steely whine raced overhead and made a crisp bang higher up the hillside.
The ground felt awkward and unhelpful, poking into his ribs and thighs and twisting one foot against the wishes of its ankle. A tangy fragrance reached his nose from a shrub crushed by his fall. Luis elbowed himself towards a larger rock. The shrub slowly swung upright and shivered to a tunnelling bullet which blew up far behind him.
The rock sheltered Luis as long as he lay flat and kept still. 'You didn't have to do that, son,' came Davis's voice. 'I'd have washed my feet, if only you'd asked nicely.'
'Where is a shosser?' Luis shouted. 'I cannot see any damned shossers.' As he squinted around him, he realised that he would not recognise a shosser even if he saw one.
'Are you crazy?' Townsend called. Under stress, his accent twanged like a big bow. 'Forget the sonofabitching shosser! Get your ass the hell back in here!'
Some ants were crawling up Luis's right leg. He half-raised it to knock them off and instantly attracted another bullet.
'Don't for Chrissake move!' Townsend shouted.
'One thing I've learnt..." Davis began conversationally.
Luis rolled onto his back and gazed in wonder at the sky. I have been under fire, he thought, and I have not disgraced myself! He beat his heel on the ground to dislodge the ants, failed, and decided to tolerate them; he and they had much in common, exposed to sudden death in strange surroundings.
'Listen, Luis!' It was Townsend again. 'Stay put, you hear me? Wait there till dark. You got that?'
'Sure, sure,' Luis murmured. Lie behind a rock for eight, nine hours? Absurd. Who would drive the correspondents back to Madrid? Townsend was still shouting instructions. 'Yes, yes, okay,' Luis answered irritably. There was a moment of silence, during which Luis admired a hawk, poised high above the crest of the hill, balanced on the rising air currents, searching for prey: another war within a war.
Thirty yards from him, urgent voices were being raised, overlapping and blurred. The hawk sideslipped away. Luis rolled onto his front. He was bored with this stupid hillside which kept sticking into him. He shifted his hips to avoid a hard lump and discovered that it was in fact inside his pocket. It was Davis's steel-pipe grenade.
'Magnificent,' he whispered. 'Utterly and outstandingly magnificent.'
The dull grey tube was about the size and shape of a kitchen candle. He twirled the wick and sniffed the other end. He had a box of matches. He struck three together. Flames spat and soared and he held the wick in their fire until it glowed gold. Gripped gently by the fingertips and poised in front of his face, the grenade seemed innocent and friendly, its wick hissing softly as the fibres were consumed.
Luis rose on one elbow, lobbed the grenade and flattened his
face in the dirt. It fell halfway to the observation post, slightly downhill. He braced his arms and legs. An ant, pushing on above the knee, explored his inside thigh. The explosion was immense: a crack like a lightning-strike, a crash like trains colliding. The ground quivered, and the noise pounded over him like a big sea. Then his hands forced him up and his feet thrust against the broken stone and slippery heather, and he was running into a mist of smoke and dirt.
The funny bullets sang as they searched for him, erupting in a harmless crackle, far uphill. Then he was out in the sunshine again. Bullets whined and droned, whined and buzzed. He dodged sudden bits of litter: a bayonet, a knapsack, a broken weapon . . . His feet were too slow, for his brain: they skidded as he turned to grab that weapon and he nearly fell. The post was ten feet away. He threw the weapon into it, forced his legs into a last, lurching dash, and flung himself over the wall. The place was crammed with people and he landed on half of them.
Summers was there, bleeding slightly from the head where the broken weapon had hit him. Barker and Dru were there. Townsend and Davis were still there, and they had been joined by three or four officers. The whole packed assembly had been shouting at each other when Luis fell from the sky and briefly silenced them. Summers was one of the men he felled, and Summers was already angry at having been struck on the head. By the time he struggled to his feet he was shaking with fury. 'What the hell are you doing?' He kicked Luis. 'How dare you?'
Townsend dragged Summers away. 'Cut that out, you maniac,' he growled.
'I'll have you shot.' Summers' face was white with loathing. I'll have you both shot.'
'What with?' Davis mocked. He held up the broken weapon which Luis had found. 'This junk?'
'Shosser? Luis panted eagerly.
'Half a shosser,' Davis said.
'You came here to spy,' Summers accused. 'You're all spies, fascist traitors -- '
'Oh, shut up,' Barker said.
'Sir, do you have what you need?' Luis asked Townsend. He felt bewildered; everyone was so upset. He desperately wanted to be told that he had done well.
One of the officers said: 'Is that what all this row is about? A broken shosser? For God's sake ...'
'It's a useless piece of shit,' said Davis, 'and whoever got it for us ought to be shot.'
'Give that thing to me,' Summers demanded.
Davis handed the broken shosser to Townsend. 'Tell the world, friend,'he said. 'They won't like it, they won't believe it, but for Chrissake tell them anyway.'
Summers' trembling fingers drew his pistol and thrust it at Townsend's face. 'Give that thing to me!' he demanded again.
'Go get your own,' Townsend snapped.
The muzzle was twitching and trembling. 'That equipment is military property.'
'Shit!' Davis shouted. 'It's shit!'
'Milton,' said Dru gently, 'this guy is very, very inexperienced at handling firearms. Believe me, it's not worth it. Give him the shosser.'
Townsend twirled the weapon and looked straight into Summers' furiously blinking eyes. He gave him the shosser.
Summers threw it out of the post with all his strength. It clattered far downhill ."Townsend held Luis by the arm. 'I've seen it, Luis,' he said. 'That's good enough. Leave it be, okay?'
'Hey! Why not chuck everything out there?' Davis asked. 'You chucked the battalion down the hill, why not -- '
'Silence!' Summers roared. His voice,was not made for roaring and it broke.
'Chuck everything!' Davis hurled his battered saucepan out of the post. 'Everything!' His ropesoled shoes went flying, then his cap. He wrenched Summers' pistol free and sent it spinning away. 'Every . . . bloody . . . thing . . .!' he sang, stretching the words like a dedication, and raising his arms to the wide blue sky.
'You're under arrest, Davis,' Summers said. He spoke flatly, not trusting his voice: everything betrayed him now. 'You'll be court-martialled.'
'Really? With tanks, and planes, and guns?' Davis taunted. 'Promise?'
'Get him out of here.' Summers turned to one of the officers. Davis grabbed the sandbag and slammed it hard against the side of Summers' head. Summers lurched and thudded against the wall, folded at the knees and slid to the floor, bringing a little rain of dirt and pebbles down on top of him. It coated his head and shoulders and trickled down his arms.
'Clear off!' one of the officers snapped. At once Davis vanished up the communications trench.
Summers lay stunned; his eyes kept opening and closing; each time they opened he was looking in a different direction.
'I guess we ought to be going too,' Townsend said, but at that moment Davis came back. Behind him tramped the huge, unhappy figure of Andre Marty. The trench was too narrow for both of them.
At the sight of Summers, Marty stopped. He gave the little circle a glare of scalding contempt; then he stooped, seized Summers by the tunic and hauled him semi-upright. 'Zis man,' he growled, 'equals fifty of you!' He thrust Summers at the nearest officer and dusted his hands.
Davis had backed out and escaped again. Marty went to an observation slit. He took out his pistol and blasted off the complete clip in the general direction of Mola's camp. 'Sales boches!' he spat. Summers moaned.
The correspondents slipped out, and filed through the trenches in silence. As they emerged onto the hillside they saw Davis talking to Templeton. He waved cheerily.
'You ought to lie low, you know,' Townsend called.
Davis shrugged. Townsend walked on, worrying, and then turned back. 'That bastard is liable to have you shot,' he said.
'Oh well.' Davis scratched at his scabby face. 'Isn't that what bastards are for?'
'You're crazy.' Townsend was angry and concerned; if he hadn't stayed to talk, Davis wouldn't be in this mess. 'Listen, come back to Madrid with us. Lie low for a bit. Take a break.'
'No thanks. I didn't come to Spain to lie low.'
'Why the hell did you come to Spain?'
'Can't remember. But it seemed a good idea at the time.'
Townsend ran to catch up with the others. 'Get a good story?' Dru asked.
'Dunno. The International Brigade got screwed at Jarama. Is that a good story?'
'But they won,' Barker said. 'I mean, they really did win. Mola got badly beaten. That's what those officers told us.' 'The man Davis is very funny,' Luis remarked. 'I laughed till I cried,' Townsend said.
Three days later Dru was back at Jarama -- but on the other side of the lines.
Townsend and Barker had lost interest in the battle. Dru, however, now hoped to get a good pro-Franco story out of it. Victories usually made better news than defeats, and Dru couldn't see the Republicans winning this one. So Luis drove all around the flank of the war zone, approached Jarama through the Franco lines, and delivered Dru to the flat roof of General Mola's headquarters in good time to watch Mola's men go up the hill to attack the International Brigade. This battle had gone on long enough; Dru wanted a good, clean-cut result. He rested his binoculars on the parapet and searched for signs of success in Mola's men. 'These guys look like they know what they're doing,' he told Luis.
They did. Six batteries of Spanish artillery had lobbed shells at the Republican positions; German gunners of the Condor Legion had been pounding away with their 88-millimetres; and a unit of the Italian Air Force had bombed the crest. Now Mola's infantry were climbing to take the hills: professionals from the Army of Africa, lithe, agile, Moorish-looking riflemen in grey blanket-capes. They seemed to flit up the slope like a plague of moths climbing a brown curtain, pausing every few paces to find cover where even Dru, using binoculars, could see no cover. Their shots sounded like someone breaking up firewood, a busy, irregular snapping which nibbled away at the quiet of the valley. Once they had broken the Line, Mola said, he would launch his cavalry at the retreating remnants.
A German captain of the Condor Legion came onto the roof to watch the assault. Dru nodded to him, and said: 'Those eighty-eights of yours pack quite a punch.'
'In Germany we
make the best artillery in the world.'
'You enjoying yourself in Spain?'
'It is good training for my men.' The German accepted a glass of beer from an orderly, and grimaced at it. 'See: no guts. That's the trouble with this country. They make bad beer. And bad bread. And bad governments.'
'Do they make anything good?' Luis asked him.
'They make good targets.' The German turned away and called down to a friend who was walking by and spilled some beer over the edge to make him dodge.
Luis was about to reply when Dru nudged him. 'Forget it,' he said.
'Spain does not need these foreign mechanics to save herself,' Luis scowled. 'I wish they would all go home.'
'How about those foreign mechanics, up there?' Dru asked.
'At least they are dying for Spain.'
'Uh-huh. You've got to die for something before you're accepted into the club. Is that it?'
There was an answer to that but Luis could not immediately produce it. He folded his arms and stared sullenly at the hill. At length he made a statement. 'It is all a matter of courage and sacrifice,' he said. 'That is what matters in Spain.'
When they went downstairs for lunch, the assault had been halted by raking machine-gun fire from the top: the Republicans' elderly, armour-plated Maxims were clattering away as regularly and implacably as farm machinery. Mola was in good humour, however. He welcomed Dru and asked him about his impressions of the Republican forces. 'I'm told those curious volunteers up there actually have no maps,' he said. 'Is that right?'
'It's possible. I saw no maps.'
'Their commander does not believe in using maps. It seems he associates maps with treachery.' Mola spread his arms in a gesture of mild amazement. 'How can one win a war without a map?'
Dru put his finger to his lips, The muted clatter of the Maxims came down the hot midday air, soft and steady, like someone lazily popping the stitches of an endless, metallic seam. 'They don't think they're losing,' he said.
'Nor does the bull when he charges the matador,' Mola replied, and there was a ripple of laughter from his aides.
The Eldorado Network Page 6