by Leo Kessler
`But we aren't, my Führer!'
`Yes, but if they thought we were?'
`They would attempt to destroy the position – perhaps.'
`Perhaps. But because of the monastery's valuable antiquities, its venerability,' Hitler sneered, his contempt naked now, 'they might hesitate, eh?'
`Yes,' Kesselring conceded lamely.
`But if we provoked them into destroying that supposed observation post, Kesselring, and thus brought down the wrath of the so-called Christian world on their guilty heads?'
`How, sir? We haven't the strength for any large-scale operation. The front is at a stalemate. As Jodl has indicated they are probably at this moment gathering their strength for an amphibious landing behind the Cassino position, somewhere higher up the coast. If that comes off, Cassino will lose in importance. There will be no need to - neutralize,' he coughed over the word, as if he could not bring himself to utter the word ‘destroy' - 'the Cassino line'
Politely Hitler let him finish.
`All very sound reasoning, Kesselring. But you are forgetting one thing.'
`And that is, my Führer?'
`Colonel Geier's SS Battle Group Wotan!' Hitler snapped, iron in his voice. We shall use his roughnecks to provoke the Allies into destroying that precious monastery of yours. Kesselring, I want you to give an immediate order to Tenth Army Commander that Colonel Geier's men recapture Peak 555.'
Three
Major von Dodenburg's eyes were beginning to get used to the darkness now. As the long attack column from the Wotan's Panzer Grenadier Battalion came closer to their start line, he was able to pick out the trenches abandoned by the original German defenders of Peak 555 when the French had struck them with such overwhelming weight. Here and there he could make out their dead, strung across the barbed wire like rag dolls.
Behind him Schulze, the battalion's comedian from Hamburg, cursed softly and tugged at the mule's bridle.
`Come on you bitch, move!'
`What's the matter, Schulze?' he hissed at the man who had been with him now since the earliest days . of the Wotan SS Assault Battalion.
`It's these mules, sir,' Schulze answered in his Waterfront sing-song. 'You toss a coin and takes yer choice - heads the bastards take a lump out of yer arse, tails, they kick it.'
He tugged at the obstinate little animal again, whose hooves were muffled in sacking to cut down the noise.
`All right,' von Dodenburg whispered, grinning. 'You've registered your protest, but keep the noise down. They tell me those Africans up there have sharp ears.'
`Yeah, and sharp knives too,' Schulze said dourly. 'Those Goums cut the tails off a couple of paras last week and when a patrol found them, they had their tails stuck in their traps.'
`Can't worry you, Schulze,' the handsome young SS Major commented, waving his hand for the column to continue up the steep, treacherous track. 'The way you've been abusing yours, it must have fallen off years ago.'
Behind them in the darkness, the tough, rangy South Tyrolean farm boys who made up most of the First Company laughed softly and urged on their commandeered Italian mules, which carried the ammunition and rations they would need once they had captured the Peak and had dug in.
They plodded on carefully, bodies held tense and expectant, waiting for the sudden dramatic hush of a flare which would indicate that they had been discovered by the French. But none came. As a thick cold mist began to roll down from the peak, they started to work their way through the abandoned trenches. Once von Dodenburg stopped and glanced down at a dead paratrooper, sprawled on his back, his legs spread apart, his jump-suit ripped open down the middle. Where his genitals had once been, there was now nothing but a bloody mess. Schulze's story had not been another of his macabre inventions. Von Dodenburg swallowed hard and straightening up hastily, urged the grenadiers on before they could get a proper look at the para's mutilated body.
They passed between two miserable white-painted Italian cottages, their pathetic little gardens, littered with French and German equipment, both roofs gone. Kuno von Dodenburg, followed by Schulze carrying his Schmeisser machine pistol, gave them a quick examination. But they backed out hastily. They stank rankly of poverty, animals and human excreta - and in the second one, an old Italian woman lay huddled in a corner, one shoe gone, her black skirt thrown up over her head to reveal the obscenely naked flesh beneath.
`The Frogs don't think much of putting out sentries, do they sir?' Schulze said after a while, as they left the huts behind them.
`No, obviously not,' von Dodenburg answered softly, still trying to absorb the discovery of the mutilated para and the raped Italian crone. 'They're too confident they have beaten us for good, it seems.'
He glanced up at the stark black outline of the peak far above, towering up through the grey cold mist.
`Wotan will teach them to be more careful next time, won't it, Schulze?'
`If you say so, sir,' Schulze answered non-committally.
They plodded on.
Four hours later the sentries did not have to wake them in the miserable holes they had scraped in the iron-hard 'earth, ready for the dawn stand-to. The mist that covered the mountain side was freezing cold and most of them lay in their camouflaged capes, awake and shivering.
Stiff-legged and shuddering, Major von Dodenburg crossed over to the battalion HQ, a hole covered by four camouflaged capes, clipped together to hide the light of the lantern. Here and there a trooper was attempting to wash himself from the water in his canteen; but most of them were standing around in a daze, munching mechanically on slices of hard Army bread or urinating on the naked rock. As he passed the mule lines, Schulze got up sleepily from where he had been bedding down between two of the animals and gave him a parody of a salute.
`Well, I must admit the bastards keep you warm,' he said thickly. ‘But both of them snored worse than a couple of drunken whores!'
Von Dodenburg grinned and pushing open the flap of the cape, dropped inside. The radio operator, bent over his set in the yellow glow of the lantern turned, startled.
`It's only me,' the CO said. 'And if it had been one of those Goums, it would have been too late anyway. They would have slit your throat - or worse by now ... All right, what's the situation?'
Quickly Major von Dodenburg set about putting his battalion in order for the attack. In less than sixty minutes, the barrage would begin and as soon as it ended, his first two companies, scattered all over the western side of the Peak, would have to be ready to move in. He'd seen often enough what happened to infantry when they waited too long to move in after the softening-up shelling had finished. He would start moving his first two companies in immediately, chancing a few casualties from shorts or delayed action fuses.
Sometime later Schulze came in and thrust a canteen cup at him.
`Here, drink that,' he commanded. 'Cold nigger sweat' - he meant Army coffee - 'and a good shot of grappa.'
`That's not the way to talk to your commanding officer,' he said without rancour and accepted the cup.
`It's the tin, sir,' Schulze said. 'Gives me special privileges, you see. Only common soldier in the Battle Group with the throat ache.'
He tapped the black-and-white metal of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross which hung from his neck significantly.
Von Dodenburg took a swig of the fiery Italian spirit and gasped.
`Yes, Schulze, and one of these days that big Hamburg mouth of yours is going to get you a nice old arse-ache too. But thanks all the same.'
Schulze sniffed. 'After four years in the Wotan, what could happen to me that - ’
`You might have to face me, Schulze,' a well-known Prussian voice rasped coldly, and Colonel Geier - the Vulture - Wotan's monocled CO dropped lightly into the hole, armed as usual only with his riding crop.
`Achtung!' von Dodenburg snapped and tried to come to attention in the confined space.
`None of that foolishness, von Dodenburg! We are not playing soldiers now.' As Captain Sc
hwarz, his one-armed adjutant, dropped into the hole, the Vulture pushed by Schulze to the map. 'Everything in order?' he asked, looking down at it, his monstrous beak of a nose which had helped to give him his nickname silhouetted in the yellow light.
‘Yessir H-hour is at zero six hours. My two lead companies will jump off at zero six, ten. Companies three and four will follow at a two hundred metres interval. I shall go in with the third company.'
`Good.' The Vulture looked up, screwing his monocle more firmly in his cold blue eye. 'I think we shall catch them on the hop. If there's any trouble, I've got the tank battalion dismounted and ready to give you additional support. I shall go up with you, however. Schwarz here will maintain contact.'
Schwarz's crazy eyes flashed a look of acknowledgement.
`It could be dangerous, sir,' von Dodenburg said a little hesitantly, afraid of provoking one of the Vulture's unpredictable rages.
`I know, von Dodenburg, and I can assure you that I treasure my skin as much as the next man. But as you know the operation has been ordered by the Führer himself and if I am to obtain those precious general's stars, I must ensure that the greatest captain of all times is not disappointed, eh?'
He grinned cynically as he used the malicious term for the Führer. Schwarz, the fanatical National Socialist, whose uncle, murdered by British killers the previous summer, had been the great Heydrich himself, glared at the CO. Von Dodenburg contented himself with a faint shake of his head. The Vulture had absolutely no feeling whatsoever for the National Socialist cause; his sole concern was promotion and more promotion, indeed that was why the ex-regular cavalryman had transferred to Himmler's Black Guards in the first place. Promotion was quicker in the elite SS formation. But there was no time now to waste on such considerations. H-hour was approaching rapidly.
`I suggest we go out now, sir,' he said, throwing a quick glance at his watch. 'The lead companies will already be forming up.'
`Good,' the Vulture said. 'Schwarz, take over here. I shall dispense with my bodyguards. Use them to throw out a picket line. Anyone coming down from the peak unwounded or not on orders, shoot them!’
`But sir,' von Dodenburg protested, his pale face flushing hotly. 'My men - '
`Your men are like the rest these days, von Dodenburg.' The Vulture cut him short. 'The steam is going out of our dear stubble-hoppers, even if they do belong to the SS. We must ensure that they understand we won't allow them to lose that steam. Come on!' Gripping his cane more firmly, he swung himself out of the hole with easy grace.
Outside the two leading companies were already formed up in two well-spaced out lines, disappearing into the grey mist on both sides. Here and there men fiddled with their equipment or munched bars of chocolate, slowly becoming high on the drug pervitin which they contained; but for the most part they crouched tensely, their eyes fixed on the peak which stood out above the mist.
The Vulture gave them a hard look and then turned to the remaining two companies, still in their foxholes and in some cases digging them even deeper. They were the veterans. They knew the enemy counterfire would start hitting their lines, once the Frogs had recovered from the shock of the initial artillery barrage; they were not going to be caught out in the open. The Vulture nodded his approval.
`Everything seems to be in best butter, von Dodenburg,' he snapped, using the soldiers' phrase and slapping his cane against the side of his polished cavalry boots. 'Let us go over and join the second line.'
Von Dodenburg indicated that Schulze, who was to act as his bodyguard during the attack, should follow and together they stumbled over the rough, mist-shrouded hillside to the waiting SS men. The attack could begin.
It did so with a frightening, earth-shaking roar. At the stroke of six, the whole of the Hermann Goering Division artillery crashed into action. With a hoarse exultant scream the heavy shells tore over their heads. Flight after flight of hushing fiery rockets flew after them from the multiple electric mortars, tipping the still dawn apart in savage fury. The first angry sighs became a baleful howl. It mounted in intensity, elemental yet controlled. It grew to become a monstrous Wagnerian cacophony.
The first French line of defence disappeared. The shells moved on to the second one, their explosions splitting the mist apart in ugly red spurts of flame. To the right of the peak something began to bum suddenly. Perhaps a fuel dump. Still the artillery kept up its terrible inhuman hammering. Surely no one could live through it, Kuno von Dodenburg told himself, eyeing the tense faces of his men, coloured a sickly red hue by the flames from the French dump. But he knew there would be some who would survive; there always were.
And then as abruptly as it had started, the barrage stopped, leaving an echoing silence behind it, which reverberated back and forth from the amphitheatre of the surrounding peaks.
The next instant the officers of the first two companies were on their feet, waving their arms and blowing their whistles urgently. The NCOs followed, yelling at the troopers and pushing them forward with their machine pistols. Somewhere a slow French machine gun began to chatter like an angry woodpecker. The troopers, their rifles held across their chests protectively, stumbled on up the hill. The French reacted quickly. There was a sudden series of obscene plops. A salvo of mortar bombs straddled the waiting men. Huge holes appeared suddenly among their ranks.
`Stretcher-bearer!' a thin voice screamed hysterically.
`Stand fast!' von Dodenburg yelled instantly, springing to his feet, as red-hot, razor-sharp slivers of metal hissed through the air around them.
Above them there was the crackle of small arms fire. The attackers responded. The Schmeissers returned the fire with hysterical, high-pitched urgency. Tracer stitched white and red patterns through the mist. There were long answering bursts from the slower French machine guns. Von Dodenburg bit his lip and flung an urgent glance at the green glowing dial of his wrist-watch. Nearly time to move off.
`I'll piss up my sleeve, sir, but you're going to get yourself killed standing up like that!' Schulze screamed above the din.
`Shut up, Schulze!' von Dodenburg yelled.
The first casualties began stumbling back down the hillside. As they came through the line of NCOs set up by Schwarz, the waiting men could see their eyes were wild with shock. Mumbling meaningless phrases, raising their bloodied arms they jogged on towards the aid station below.
Von Dodenburg placed his whistle between his teeth. A bareheaded trooper, his arms flailing wildly, his weapon gone, came blundering through their lines. The Vulture sprang up. He thrust his cane neatly between the panic-stricken boy's legs. He crashed full length in the dirt, and lay there gasping wildly. As von Dodenburg blew the first blast on his whistle, the Vulture yelled:
`Schwarz, over here! ... A deserter ... Shoot the bastard at once!'
`Follow me!' von Dodenburg bellowed.
The Third and Fourth Companies obeyed immediately. They knew it was safer to move forward than to stay where they were. They rose at once.
`Alles fuer Deutschland!' von Dodenburg screamed the motto of the SS.
'Alles fuer Deutschland!' four hundred throats took up the cry, as they surged forward.
Within minutes the two companies were broken up into little groups of men, jumping from hole to hole, dropping suddenly in gasping panic as white streams of tracer cut the air at waist-height and stumbling to their feet again under the blows and kicks of their officers and NCOs. Now they began suffering casualties. Somewhere to their right a nest of slow-firing French machine-guns cut great swathes through their ranks, flinging men right and left like puppets.
`Grenades - heaven, arse and twine, man!' the Vulture gasped, 'give me your grenades, Schulze.'
The big Hamburger pulled the two stick grenades from his belt.
Hastily the Vulture thrust his cane down the side of his boot.
`Carry on, von Dodenburg, I'll see to those damned Frog guns!'
With unusual speed for such an old man, he doubled off in the direction of
the French machine-gun nest.
Von Dodenburg and the little group of men with him hurried forward, dodging a shell which filled the air with hissing red-hot shards. A dark face loomed up out of the night. At first von Dodenburg took it to be that of one of his own men, with his face blackened. Then he saw the man's thick lips. A Sengalese!
The French colonial soldier reacted slowly. Von Dodenburg did not give him a chance to recover. He fired a burst from the hip. At that range the 9mm slugs ripped the man almost in half. The Sengalese's knees gave way and he began to sink to the ground. Von Dodenburg kicked him in the face. Just in time. Another soldier was coming at him with a bayonet. Before the German officer could fire, the Negro lunged. The bayonet sliced along his hand. He felt the hot blood spurt over his knuckles suddenly. He yelped with pain. The next instant Schulze ripped off an angry burst. The Negro was bowled over screaming piteously.
They ran on, zig-zagging between the shell bursts, springing over the sudden holes. From behind came the crump of Schulze's potato mashers. The Vulture had successfully put the French machine-gun nest out of action! The troopers it had pinned down came rushing up to join the confused attack, screaming with rage at the horror and misery of it all. Von Dodenburg blew his whistle shrilly.
`To me - to me, Wotan!' he yelled desperately and spread his fingers on the top of his helmet in the infantry sign for rally.
They ran towards him, their rifles tossed to one side, their sweating hands gripping axes, knives, bayonets - anything that would cut and hack and allow them to work off their animal fury.
`Forward!' von Dodenburg commanded and firing a wild burst from the hip, lead the charge.
Scrambling over the dead and dying of the first wave, they slammed into the Sengalese line. Like a pack of wild animals, they began the terrible work of slaughter, slashing, hacking, slicing, gouging without mercy.
A white officer loomed up out of the mist, a revolver in his hand. Von Dodenburg squeezed the trigger of his machine-pistol. Nothing happened. The Frenchman raised his pistol. Von Dodenburg could see his face contorted with absolute terror. In a paroxysm of fear, he brought up the Schmeisseer’s steel butt. It caught the Frenchman under the chin. He screamed. A clot of blood shot out of the side of his mouth. His head flew back, neck broken. As he crumpled another trooper kicked him in the face.