Young Lions Roar

by Andrew Mackay

  “A standard infantry squad,” Mendoza interrupted.

  “Yes, sir,” Borghese agreed. “Although he may have lost a few men in the fighting before the murder.”

  “So there may well have been a dozen Nazis in total, but certainly no more than that.” Mendoza was thinking aloud.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “But how many survivors, Francisco? Two? Three? Perhaps more.”

  “I would say certainly no more than three, sir. Surely our shooting can’t be that bad? After all, we shot them at point-blank range.”

  Mendoza shook his head in disgust. “Apparently our marksmanship is not all that it’s cracked up to be.” He drummed his fingers on his desk as he spoke. “We need to spend more time on the firing range.”

  Borghese came to a position of attention. “Your orders, sir?”

  “Kill Scar Face and every one he comes into regular contact with. Let’s finish off these Nazi murderers once and for all.”

  “But why did you want to meet me specifically, Aurora?” Alan asked as they walked through the park,

  “Because of the way that you looked at me.”

  “I don’t understand,” Alan was perplexed. “I’m sure that you’ve noticed that your arrival has stirred up a hornet’s nest. Boys are hovering around you like bees around honey.”

  Aurora laughed. “How very gallant, Alan! Yes, of course, I’ve noticed. But you are different; your eyes are different.”

  “What do you mean, Aurora?”

  “Your eyes have seen things that your average fifteen year old boy hasn’t,” Aurora explained.

  Alan stopped walking as if he had rammed into a brick wall. “Aurora… you have no idea,” Alan searched for words. “I have seen things… I have done things which would give you nightmares. If I told you about the things that I have done you would run a mile and you would never talk to me again. You would not want to know me.”

  Aurora tenderly took both of Alan’s hands in her own. “Trust me, Alan. Let me help you fight your demons.”

  “There he is, Carlos,” Sergeant Borghese said under his breath. “Let’s go.”

  Borghese flicked his cigarette on to the pavement and ground it out with the heel of his boot. He didn’t want Scar Face to be able to spot the telltale light of the lit cigarette.

  “Where do you think he’s going, Jefe?” Corporal Carlos Ramirez asked him, “the pub?”

  Borghese nodded “Probably the ‘Chicken and Egg’, which is the SS pub, or if the Virgin Mary is smiling on us he’ll head for the ‘King Alfred Hotel’.”

  “Why is the King Alfred Hotel better?”

  “Because the King Alfred is neutral territory,” Borghese answered. “The SS, the Army, the Luftwaffe and even Navy officers and NCOs use it if any of them happen to be in town. It has dozens of bedrooms and many Germans use it for dirty weekends with their British girlfriends.”

  Ramirez gave an appreciative wolf whistle. “But how does that help us, Jefe?”

  “Because it’s also open to Government of National Unity personnel, British Union of Fascists members, and, crucially for us: friendly governments.”

  “Ah, I see,” Ramirez smiled cunningly. “So no one should bat an eyelid when we turn up. “

  “I certainly hope not, because we are probably the least Aryan-looking people in the entire town, if not the whole of England.”

  Ramirez laughed at Borghese’s dark humour as he looked at his own short-sleeved arm, that had been tanned the colour of mahogany by years under the Moroccan sun.

  “Let’s just hope that our Identification Cards don’t let us down…” Borghese thought aloud.

  “Fernando used to be a forger before he joined the Legión, Jefe,” Ramirez replied confidently. “He’s world class.”

  Borghese guffawed. “Fernando can’t be that world class, Carlos, or he wouldn’t have joined the Legión to escape from the Police. And I notice that he didn’t travel up with the rest of you from London.”

  “Major de Rivera couldn’t spare any more men, Sergeant,” Ramirez explained. “He said that it would have left him with too few Legiónaries to defend the Embassy against an attack by the Reds.” Old habits died hard with Ramirez. As far as he was concerned, any enemies of Spain were dirty, stinking Communist vermin, whatever their nationality. Ramirez straightened up. “Fernando won’t let us down,” he said resolutely.

  “Fernando better not, Carlos, or we’ll be chopped up like sliced chorizo before you can say seafood paella,” Borghese joked grimly.

  Borghese and Ramirez reached the King Alfred Hotel shortly after Scharführer Kophamel and his three comrades. About a dozen assorted Germans with their British girlfriends separated the Spaniards from their target. Borghese casually glanced behind him, and was reassured to see two more members of his hit team join the queue. About a dozen people also separated the other two assassins from Borghese. The queue was lengthening rapidly. Borghese looked to the front and paid close attention to the sentries guarding the entrance; the guards consisted of a squad of Army Military Policemen led by a Sergeant Major. Borghese was relieved to notice that the MPs were giving the Identification Cards no more than the most cursory of inspections. Borghese guessed that such was the length of the quickly growing queue that the Hauptwachtmeister had ordered his MPs to process as many thirsty military personnel and their girlfriends as quickly as possible.

  Borghese reached the front of the queue.

  “Identification Card, please, sir,” The MP Sergeant-Major requested.

  Borghese realised that since he was wearing civilian clothes the MP Hauptwachtmeister had no idea what rank he was. The German had obviously decided that it was more diplomatic to play it safe by referring to everyone in mufti as “Sir” rather than run the risk of offending someone important. Borghese handed over his ID card.

  “Bolivian eh, sir?” the MP asked as he examined the ID card. “Como estas, señor?” the Sergeant Major asked with a South American Spanish accent.

  “Ah… muy bien, gracias.” Borghese was momentarily taken by surprise.

  “You speak Spanish, Hauptwachtmeister?” he asked in Spanish.

  The MP laughed. “I certainly do, sir!” he continued in Bolivian Spanish. “I immigrated to Bolivia after the War when I saw an advertisement for military advisers. After the War, Germany was a complete and utter mess and you couldn’t get a job for love of money. So I spent nearly twenty years in Bolivia and I only returned to Germany when this war started. Happiest years of my life, sir! I fully intend to return when this blasted war is over. My wife and kids are still over there. I must say that it’s a surprise to meet a fellow Bolivian here. What brings you to Hereward, sir, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “I’m… I’m with the consulate…” Borghese thought quickly on his feet.

  “The consulate?” The Sergeant Major was confused. “I didn’t know that Bolivia had a consulate here.”

  “Ah no, Hauptwachtmeister, you’re correct.” A thin film of sweat broke out on Borghese’s forehead. “We don’t have a consulate here… Bolivia is too small a country. But we do have a Representative at the Spanish Consulate. Yours truly.”

  “I see.” The MP smiled.

  Borghese breathed a silent sigh of relief.

  “And how is La Paz, sir? Have they finished restoring the Cathedral yet?”

  “Well, La Paz is… La Paz,” Borghese said with a weak smile. “And as for the Cathedral? I’m afraid that I don’t know. It’s been many years since I’ve visited La Paz, or Bolivia for that matter…”

  “And your accent, sir. You don’t have a Bolivian accent. You speak more like a Spaniard than a Bolivian…”

  “As I said, Hauptwachtmeister, I’ve spent many years abroad in the Diplomatic Service,” Borghese said with a false smile fixed on his face. “Listen, I don’t mean to be rude. I’ve enjoyed talking with a fellow Bolivian…”

  The MP laughed.

  “But my compadre and I have been looking forward to t
his drink for a long time, and…”

  “Of course, sir! My humble apologies. I didn’t mean to detain you.” The Sergeant Major stood aside and waved them through.

  “Nice to meet you, Hauptwachtmeister…?”

  The Sergeant Major came to a position of attention. “Hauptwachtmeister Bratge, sir. Jakob Bratge.” He clicked his heels and bowed. “At your service, sir.”

  “Delighted to meet you, Hauptwachtmeister Bratge,” Borghese said as he shook the MP’s hand.

  “The pleasure’s all mine, sir,” the Sergeant Major replied with a firm handshake as he waved Borghese and Ramirez through.

  “Maybe we’ll see each other again,” Borghese said over his shoulder as he waved goodbye.

  “I guarantee that, sir.”

  “Do you think that he suspects anything, Jefe?” Ramirez asked with concern as he put his hand on his holster under his leather jacket.

  “I don’t know, Carlos,” Borghese said as he chewed his lip. “If the Virgin Mary is smiling on us then we may have gotten away with it by the skin of our teeth. If not…?”

  “Madre Dios!” Ramirez swore. “Now I know why I hate cops so much!”

  “But I tell you what, Carlos,” Borghese continued. “Even if we’ve gotten away with it, they certainly won’t.” He pointed outside to the other two members of the assassination squad who were swiftly approaching the front of the queue where the Sergeant Major was waiting. “I don’t mean to be rude; the boys are born killers and I’d sooner have them beside me in a fight than anyone else, but they’re hardly the sharpest knives in the drawer. That bloody cop will have them confessing to being Spanish hitmen before they have time to sing ‘The song of the Legiónary.’” Borghese shook his head. “Two pairs of South Americans on the same night are too much of a coincidence.”

  Borghese walked outside, where he swiftly caught the eye of his other two hitmen. Borghese shook his head from side to side, and the two would-be assassins immediately left the queue and wandered off as if they were looking for a less busy venue.

  Borghese breathed a giant sigh of relief and walked back in to rendezvous with Ramirez.

  “It’s just you and me now, Carlos,” Borghese said grimly. “Are you ready for this?”

  “I was born ready, Jefe,” Ramirez said brazenly.

  Borghese laughed and clapped Ramirez on the shoulder. “I knew that I could count on you, Carlos!”

  Ramirez flashed his set of pearly whites. “Two’s company and four’s a crowd, Jefe. Besides, Antonio and Enrique are rotten shots. They’d just slow us down.”

  Borghese was too busy laughing to notice Hauptwachtmeister Bratge turn around and stare after them as they walked towards the bar.

  Chapter Five

  The Battle of the Ebro River, Catalonia, Spain, August 1938.

  El Bonito lowered his binoculars and spoke in a low voice to his Runner. “Bob, pass the word along: stand to, the Fascists are massing for a new attack, everyone is to open fire with everything that we’ve got when I give the order by whistle blast, and not a moment before. Understood?”

  “Yes, boss. Understood,” Bob replied with a smile, before he took off as fast as his young legs could carry him, running down the zigzag network of trenches.

  Captain Juan Mendoza shouted at the top of his voice “Viva España! Viva la Legión!” He blew his whistle and clambered out of his foxhole with his pistol in his hand. Three companies of the XVIIth Bandera of the Spanish Foreign Legión followed Mendoza over the top and repeated the slogan that echoed around the valley. The Moorish troops advancing on the Bandera’s left flank joined in the general cacophony with high-pitched battle cries that were designed to unnerve and intimidate their Republican opponents. The Legiónaries advanced rapidly up Dead Man’s Hill, that had been given its nick name as a result of the Nationalist’s repeated failed attempts to capture the hill from their Republican enemies. The hill was literally strewn with a carpet of Legiónary and Moor corpses and it was almost possible to walk all the way to the top on bodies without one’s feet touching the stony ground.

  “Right on cue,” Mendoza said, as he heard a barrage of shells fired by a German Condor Legión Artillery Battery fly over head to crash onto the Republican trenches.

  “Take cover!” El Bonito shouted as the shells landed on the Republican position. He dived to the ground of the trench and covered his head with his hands as a shell exploded a dozen yards away, collapsing a bunker and burying its occupants alive inside. Shells continued to land in front of, behind and on top of the Republican position, until the artillery barrage suddenly stopped. El Bonito heard another whistle blast and loud cheering from nearby, which could only mean one thing.

  “Stand to!” El Bonito rushed to the trench firing step, hoisted himself up, and shouted “Battalion! One hundred! To the front! Rapid fire!”

  The British Battalion’s six surviving Maxim machine guns and five hundred assorted rifles opened fire at virtually point-blank range into the shocked and surprised Legiónaries and Moors, who had optimistically expected the German artillery barrage to have destroyed the British Battalion’s trenches and to have swept their Republican enemies from the summit of the hill. The machine guns cut huge swathes through the ranks of the advancing Nationalists, and the Legiónaries and Moors fell as if a giant scythe wielded by the Grim Reaper himself had cut them down. Within a few minutes the six hundred attacking Nationalists had been reduced to half that number and fled in a confused rabble like rabbits with their tails between their legs, abandoning their weapons and their wounded in their desperation to get back to their lines and find safety. The Republican machine guns offered no mercy and continued to fire at the retreating troops without respite, with rounds striking the Nationalists at ranges of up to eight hundred yards.

  “Come on, boys! We’ve got them on the run! After them!” a British volunteer shouted.

  He was answered with a ragged cheer as dozens of volunteers climbed out of their trenches and poured over the top, pursuing the fleeing Nationalist troops.

  “No! Come back, you idiots!” El Bonito shouted desperately. “You’ll be caught out in the open with no cover!”

  “Come on, boss!” Bob his young runner urged, “We’ve got them on the run! We can chase them back to Morocco!”

  “No, Bob!” El Bonito shouted in vain. “Come back!”

  But Bob had already disappeared. Bob Robinson was only sixteen and had run away from home in Liverpool to join the International Brigade. He was frequently teased for his useful exuberance and impulsive behaviour, and was acting true to form.

  “It’s no use, Jefe. You’re wasting your breath.” Ramón, the British Battalion’s Spanish Republican liaison officer said. “Your men smell victory and they think that the battle is won.”

  El Bonito shook his head in despair. “The bloody fools. Once the Fascists get back to their foxholes they’ll be able to open fire on them with their machine guns and their artillery.”

  Mendoza had only just managed to reach the relative safety of the Nationalist lines and had barely caught his breath when he saw dozens of Republican soldiers streaming over No Man’s Land in hot pursuit.

  “Legiónaries! One hundred metres! To your front! Rapid fire!” Mendoza ordered.

  His surviving Legiónaries fired a ragged salvo that succeeded in dropping a dozen or so Republican soldiers. The remaining volunteers took cover and started to open fire on the Nationalist positions. However, most of the Legiónaries had managed to find fox-holes, and the Republicans were sheltered from fire and from view by the stony ground, covered in thick cactus, which concealed many dips and ditches. The fire fight was threatening to settle into an inconclusive stalemate when the guns of the German Condor Legión decided to join in and began to fire shells into No Man’s Land. The artillery intervention tipped the balance and the volunteers started to rise up and retreat back to their positions at the top of the hill. The Legiónaries stood up in their fox hills and cheered whenever an artille
ry shell found its target and blew up a band of Republican soldiers.

  A volunteer scrambled over the top of the trench and landed in a tangled heap on the bottom of the trench.

  “Paddy, did you see Bob?” El Bonito asked.

  “No, boss,” a soldier answered in a broad Irish brogue. “I didn’t see him.”

  Another soldier appeared over the parapet and plummeted to the bottom of the trench.

  “Fred, have you seen Bob?” El Bonito asked anxiously.

  “No, boss, I…” Fred began to answer, when a terrible wailing sound began to echo from the Nationalist position at the bottom of the valley to the Republican position at the summit of the hill. The hair on the back of El Bonito’s neck stood on end and he felt a cold hand squeeze his heart as he listened to the tortured sound of a soul in agony.

  “What the… what the hell is that?” Fred asked, as the blood drained from his face.

  El Bonito carefully climbed the firing step, raised his binoculars to his eyes and looked over the edge of the trench.

  A figure stumbled across No Man’s Land with his arms stretched in front of him, crying and sobbing inconsolably. The man turned and for a fleeting moment, El Bonito saw his face. The man’s face was covered in blood and he gave a yelp of pain as he tripped and fell into a shell crater.

  “What… who is it, boss?” Fred asked, with his hand to his mouth.

  El Bonito answered as if he was in a trance. “It’s… it’s Bob…” he answered as tears streamed down his face. “They’ve blinded him...”

  “What?”

  “They’ve gouged out his eyes…”

  Fred gave a cry of horror. He rushed over to El Bonito, snatched the binoculars from his hand and leaped onto the firing step. He searched No Man’s Land and found Bob as he finally managed to scramble out of the shell crater. A mop of gore-matted hair hung down over Bob’s eyeless sockets that were still leaking blood which ran in streams down his blood and dirt-encrusted face.

  “Those bloody bastards!” Fred said with fury.

  “He was the same age as my kid brother…” El Bonito said with tear-filled eyes.