More than a week later, and a hundred miles further south, they came to their night’s lodging at the top of a straggling village, to be told by the priest that there were ‘due inglesi’ about a mile further down the valley. Normally, this information would have left them unmoved, but they gathered also that there was trouble, so after eating they walked down and found Captain the McInstalker and Captain Abercrowther. Abercrowther had his hand wrapped in a mountain of stained bandages. He had been carrying water in a glass wine flask and going down a steep hillside to fill it had slipped, broken the flask, and cut his hand deeply at the root of the thumb. The cut had never healed and was now in a very bad way indeed. The Italians had been helpful but had few disinfectants and no drugs. If the hand was no better in a few days’ time it would mean a German field hospital. Meanwhile, the two of them were lying up.
It had been a stupid accident and it was a reminder to them how much they lay at the mercy of the smallest mishap.
That night, not for the first time, they discussed the question of whether they ought to come down from the mountains and risk a quick journey by rail or road. Once more they decided against it. Liberty was too precious a coin to risk on the hazard. Their progress in the hills was mortally slow, but it was certain – or as certain as anything could be in an enemy country. If they walked twenty miles every day, crawling from upland to upland along the spine of the mountains, it might, at a hard day’s end, measure only twelve miles on the map of their progress. But if you advance twelve miles a day, for seven days a week, for week after week, you get somewhere in the end.
For the first two weeks they made very little real headway, for they were working their way into the mountains, travelling at right angles to their eventual course. They followed the Ronco upwards until it diminished from a broad river to a tiny mountain stream which split up and disappeared on the flanks of Monte Falterona. Then they turned south-east and for the next month only the smudged entries in Goyles’ notebook marked their progress. Indeed, they were sometimes hard put to it to say themselves how far they had come. The shepherds and the woodcutters and the charcoal-burners whom they met had little idea of distance. They cared nothing for kilometres. It was ‘una Mez’ ora’ – a half-hour: or something less definite even than that – ‘una mez’oretta’, which Tony Long translated for them as ‘a dear little sort of half-hour.’
And so, as September passed, and as October lengthened towards November, slowly – slowly as the sun crossing a window on a drowsy afternoon – slowly as the sap creeping down the branch of a tree – they swung east and south-east, and then, as the Gran Sasso rose along their horizon, majestic and menacing under its cap of unmelting snow, they found themselves looking south and even to the west of south.
Under this constant, slow, unremitting effort their bodies grew hard and serviceable again. Mentally, they drew apart. Talking afterwards to others who had had similar experiences, Goyles found that this was a normal result. At the time it worried him. He had imagined that their common experiences, the drive of a common purpose, would have cemented the friendship they had already formed. Instead, it was shaking it to pieces. At the time it was a thing he accepted without speculating about it. Tony Long was more and more silent. Roger Byfold’s humour turned first to cynicism, then to open sarcasm. It was only later that he tried to rationalise it, and came to the conclusion – helped by a hint from the diary of Scott, the explorer – that a party engaged on an uncommon enterprise needed the bond of a leader. The harder the circumstances, the less could you dispense with the discipline which flowed naturally from an established order. Everyday decisions had to be taken – whether to turn left or right – whether to stop or go on. Nor were they light decisions. If the answer was wrong, the most unimaginable consequence could flow from it. Being equals, none of them could lead. So the decision had to be made by the worst of all possible means – by debate and argument. It was like trying to fight a total war with a democratic government, Goyles decided.
The first outward sign of strain was when Goyles found himself addressing Tony formally as ‘Long’. This was so stupid that they almost managed to laugh themselves out of it. The habit nevertheless persisted. Shortly after that Byfold, temporarily defeated in some argument, sulked for a whole day. These spells of childishness were not continuous. There were long periods when they behaved like friends and adults. The symptoms of strain were usually underneath the surface.
On the fortieth day, Long walked out on the other two.
There had been an argument the night before – not a very serious one – as to where and when they should halt for the night. Goyles and Byfold had wanted to stop early and in the end they had their way. Long had been silent that morning. They were crossing some very difficult country north of Scai; every valley ran perversely across their line of advance, and the undergrowth was thick enough to make walking difficult without affording either cover or shade. All three of them were hot and ill-tempered. They were walking, as they usually did in open country, about a hundred yards apart, and when they came to a small coppice, a tangle of dwarf oak and juniper crowning the divide of the two valleys, Tony went to the right of it; the other two thought the left-hand side looked easier and took it. That was really all there was to it.
On the further side of the wood the valley forked, and the two of them were some way down the left-hand arm before they realised that Long was not with them. They kept on their way, moving up, gradually, on to the intervening ridge from where they were confident they would be able to see him. Sure enough, there he was, well on down the right-hand valley, four hundred yards ahead and going fast.
Goyles and Byfold shouted. First singly and moderately. Then loudly and in unison.
Long kept on. He didn’t even turn his head. Byfold looked worried. Both of them knew that the hills and valleys played strange tricks with sound.
‘Perhaps he can’t hear us and thinks we’re still ahead of him,’ he said. ‘If we run we might catch him.’
‘You can run if you like,’ said Goyles. ‘The pig-headed basket. He can hear us perfectly.’
He sat down on the bank.
‘Then what’s wrong with him?’ said Byfold.
‘He’s been working up to it for days. He thinks we’re slacking. I expect he also figures we’re holding him back.’
‘He travels the fastest who travels alone, that sort of thing, you mean?’
‘That’s the idea,’ said Goyles.
‘Let him go, then,’ agreed Byfold.
After a few minutes they got up and went on. It felt strange at first being only two.
When this happened they were twenty miles north of Vallemare. The next obvious move was to go down into the Sangro road and river loop. The southern and eastern boundaries were the River Sangro and there was talk of a German winter line here, and airfields on the Ventimiglia. The Eighth Army was known to be well north of Campo Basso. They had picked that up on the wireless two nights before, listening to the B.B.C. Italian broadcast. They had felt a tightening of the stomach muscles as they heard this.
All that day, they walked across the uplands. It was high plateau, sheep country, and absolutely open; it was said to be free of Germans. They made good progress and were across the Cocullo road by lunch-time. They crossed carefully, between German Army convoys, and were cheered by the sight of five Spitfires, red and blue and silver, playing in the sky ahead of them.
That afternoon they climbed again and came to a sheep settlement. It was a ramshackle place at nearly six thousand feet, used only in summer and autumn. They were glad of a blanket each in the straw that night, but slept peacefully in spite of the cold. It was to be almost their last undisturbed night.
Next day, they kept to their mountain crest, leaving Cocullo on their left. The going still looked good, but they were uncomfortably conscious that they were walking into a cul-de-sac.
The first sign of this was when they met a party coming back. They had passed stationary parties
before – people whose nerve or initiative had given out and who had talked themselves into lying up ‘until the English advance caught them up’. Cold or starvation would drive them down sooner or later into the villages and most of them would be picked up by the Germans before spring set the armies on the move once more.
This party was not sitting still – it was coming back. Possibly this showed more spirit. Nevertheless it was startling. There were three sergeants from the H.L.I. They had come all the way from a working camp near Modena.
‘It’s pretty dead hopeless down there, sir,’ said the leader of the party. ‘First you’ve got to get across the Sangro – that’s a road, river and railway. We did that all right, but then you run into an open bit, about ten miles across, where there’s a battle going on. Not much movement – observation and fire and that sort of thing.’
‘Don’t forget the mine-fields,’ said the small, dark sergeant.
‘All the casas are full of parties who’ve tried it and got turned back. They’re the lucky ones. Most of them started out and got picked up—’
Goyles and Byfold thanked them and moved on. They knew that a thing always sounded worse when talked about by someone who had tried it and failed. All the same, they weren’t underestimating what was ahead. They spent that night under a heap of sacks in an empty charcoal-burner’s hut.
Next morning they made their way quietly down to within distance of the Sangro, and lay up all day watching the road.
The sergeants had not exaggerated. The traffic was continuous. But there was more to it than that. When they looked closely they noticed that the same sort of truck would come backwards and forwards, once or twice in the hour. They were small German troop carriers, and they were not part of the through traffic. They were patrolling.
In the early afternoon, an even more alarming thing happened. One of the trucks which they had been watching stopped and spilled out a dozen men; small men in the dark green uniform of the Alpini. The party disappeared into the wood below the point where Goyles and Byfold were lying. An hour later they reappeared, got into the truck and moved slowly off.
‘Lucky we weren’t too close to the road,’ said Byfold.
‘Very lucky,’ said Goyles. ‘The thing may look a bit more practicable by night.’
As soon as it got dark they moved down towards the road. They had never tried moving by night before – certainly not across broken country – their progress was slow, painful and noisy.
They were still a hundred yards short of the road when they noticed the lights. These were coming on and off, irregularly; when one suddenly turned on immediately below them they realised what they were.
‘They’re headlights,’ said Byfold. ‘The bastards have got lorries parked up and down the road. When they hear anything they turn the lights on—’
Goyles was looking ahead, at the country on the other side of the river.
‘They’ve got patrols out there, too,’ he said. ‘You can see the lights from time to time. Defence in depth.’
‘What’s it all about?’ said Byfold. ‘They can’t have laid it all on, just for us.’
‘I expect this is one of the check points,’ said Goyles. ‘It’s one of the obvious places. Whenever we’ve looked at the map we’ve agreed we’d cross about here. They can’t be as thick as this on the ground all the way round the Sangro. We’ll go back and try again further to the east.’
It was very late indeed, and they were very tired by the time they got back to their charcoal-burner’s hut. They turned in without a word. They had hardly realised until then what a bad effect on their morale the act of turning back would have. Also they were running short of food.
Things looked more cheerful in the light of morning. It was late when they got up and set their faces northward up the valley. After a short walk they stumbled into a camp of Italians – refugees from a village which the Germans had taken over. They were unaccountably cheerful, and, since they had killed a sheep the night before, Goyles and Byfold were able to eat a satisfying breakfast of mutton broth and limp polenta.
They went on up the valley.
‘We’ll go well to the east, this time,’ said Goyles. Towards Agnone.’
‘We mustn’t funk it again,’ said Byfold. ‘It’s like jumping in the deep end of the swimming bath. Anyone can be excused for fluffing it once, but if you fluff it twice you’re finished.’
A little later they caught sight of a figure, some way ahead of them on the path and coming fast.
They removed themselves circumspectly into the under-growth.
A few seconds later Byfold raised his head, took another look at the advancing figure, scrambled to his feet and ran forward.
Goyles put a hand to stop him, but Byfold said, ‘It’s all right, Cuckoo. I’d know those trousers anywhere. It’s Tony.’
He ran on to the path. Goyles sat watching him.
Chapter 16
‘—and Far Away’
1
It was Long all right.
In a few minutes they had heard each other’s stories. In an hour it was as if they had never parted.
Long didn’t say much about his defection and the others refrained from pressing him. ‘I heard you shouting, all right,’ he said, ‘but I didn’t take any notice, because I was fed up with you. I very soon got un-fed up. In fact, I was pretty lonely. I’m glad to see your faces again.’
He asked them about their adventures and they told him.
‘Yes. I gather that crossing isn’t healthy,’ said Long. ‘I fell in yesterday with an S.A.S. type – chap called Morgan – regular cloak-and-dagger merchant. As a matter of fact I’d met him once before when I was training in England. Apparently he and two or three others have been sent to tell us to get a move on—’
‘Hell,’ said Byfold. ‘What do they expect us to do – double smartly across the lines?’
‘It’s not us,’ said Long. ‘In fact, he admitted we’d done very well getting as far as we had in the time – but apparently there are a lot of parties just sitting on their bottoms waiting to be rescued – people who, anyway, started from the southern camps, and have come about fifty miles in two months and got tired. His job is to whip them on as quickly as possible—’
‘The implication being,’ said Goyles thoughtfully, ‘that the British Army has done all the advancing it’s going to do this year.’
‘I think so, yes. He couldn’t say so, of course. However, I got some tips off him. One was on no account to try to cross that bit of road you two types seem to have taken a running jump at—’
‘Thank you for nothing,’ said Byfold.
‘The other was more constructive. He gave me a route towards the Adriatic. The fighting’s pretty fluid there, and it’s not armoured country, so you’ve got nothing but patrols. I wrote down the key points, but a lot of it’s in my head. You start from San Lorenzo – that’s two cottages and a sheep-run about ten miles east of here. Cross the Ventimiglia upland – you’ve got to be careful about that. Pietransieri – Agnone – Trivento—’
They spent some time working it out on Goyles’ map. They got to San Lorenzo that evening. The farmer welcomed them without embarrassment. He seemed quite used to British prisoners.
When they were sitting over their evening meal, Goyles, remembering his breakfast, said, ‘Do you think he’d sell us a sheep. We’ve still got quite a lot of money—’
‘Drive it in front of us, do you mean?’ said Byfold. ‘Sort of camouflage?’
‘Ass. No. Have it killed and boiled. Food’s not going to be so easy now, especially if we have to move at night.’
‘Quite an idea – what do you think, Tony?’
Long came out of a deep reverie and agreed that it was a good idea.
Fortune favoured them. The farmer was not even interested in their money. He would give them a sheep. ‘Normally,’ he explained, ‘in the autumn, we drive them down to the plains at Campo Basso. Now both armies are across the road. The sheep
must stay in the hills. When the snow comes, most of them must die.’
The butchery took place promptly and the meat was boiled there and then with salt – they had to pay for the salt – in a huge cauldron. They had a second supper of mutton broth and they breakfasted off mutton chops. When they started out the next morning each of them had a cold joint of mutton in his sack. There was no paper of any sort in the house. Goyles wrapped his in his spare pullover.
The sky that morning was grey, with a promise of rain before the evening. They made their way slowly up a long neck of the valley, Long, with his eye constantly on the compass and the map. At eleven o’clock he called a halt.
‘Here’s where we have to make a detour,’ he said. They turned off the track and went up the left-hand side of the valley. It had looked innocent enough when they were walking along a made track at the bottom, but it was a rough and exhausting sixty minutes before they had pulled themselves up and could look over the crest into the valley which paralleled them to the east. This was a much shallower valley – almost an upland. It was full of sheep. There were thick woods crowning the bluff on the other side, and beyond the woods the ground fell away, presumably to the river, which was out of sight.
‘What are we waiting for?’ said Goyles. ‘The sooner we’re in those woods the better.’
‘That’s what you’re meant to think,’ said Long. ‘Do you see those huts?’
‘Shepherds’ shelters.’
‘They’re guard huts,’ said Long. ‘Just you watch them.’
An hour later they saw a German make his way carefully up behind one of the huts and disappear into it.
At four o’clock it started to rain, a maddening, persistent drizzle which always promised to stop and never did. If they had been on the move they would have thought nothing of it. They lay in the shelter of a large rock and cursed.
‘Shelter, my foot,’ said Roger. ‘All it does it to collect the rain and empty it down my neck.’
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