As Jim awaits his tank support, the soldiers occupy craters and abandoned slit trenches or dig their own shallow holes for protection, platoon and section leaders urging them to dig in with their shrill commands. He turns to Corporal Tillman, crouching nearby, chewing bubblegum and blowing balloon after pink balloon with his mouth from nervousness, and asks, “Are the mortar crews on schedule?”
“Yes, sir,” Tillman says as a bubble breaks with a wet smack. “They should deploy just as the tanks get here. They’ll set up in the woods on the Sydneys’ flank, as planned.”
“Okay, good.”
“Sir, message from TAC,” says Cavanagh from beside him, his set dismounted in front of him and its aerial extended, his hands cupping his earphones as if with them he could better hold onto the words pulled from the ether. “Charlie is crossing the river now and is proceeding to our flank.”
“Good to hear,” Jim answers, bemused and unnerved by the weighted momentum assembling behind him and urging him to spearhead the attack.
A while later, there is the squeaking, grumbling tremor of tanks. He turns his head and sees, behind, a squadron of Sherman tanks trundling toward them, high-profiled, the fronts of their hulls steeply sloped and capped by the turrets, side runners packed with pickaxes and spades and spare fuel cans, segmented lengths of spare treads laid out on their fronts for extra armour like medieval chainmail, barrels pointing this way and that. The commanders protrude from the turret hatches, the commander of the lead tank scanning with field glasses, the heads of the two drivers protruding from their hatches in the forward hull, the tanks trundling forward, fourteen in all, moving at a cautious, creeping pace. Just in time. The bridging was successful, thanks be to God.
They park, their passive engines grumbling as if impatient of waiting. The oily reek of diesel and gasoline fumes funnels up Jim’s nose, courtesy of a smog-bearing breeze. Pflagh! It calls to mind for a moment the smog of London. How the German airmen managed to pinpoint anything through that murk is beyond me. Like walking on the London sidewalk with rows of double deckers idling at the bus stops, with their black oily puff-puffing piston farts grunting away—
“Good to see you!” yells Jim up at the commander of the leading tank as it halts beside him, projecting his voice over the shudder of the idling engine.
“You too!” replies Major Marchand, the commander of the squadron.
“It sounds like the crossing was hairy!”
“It was! We traded a lot of fire with the enemy while waiting, that’s for sure.”
“Good to hear. If you’re ready, we’re ready, sir.”
“By all means—Brigade gave the go ahead.” Major Marchand is an older man, moustachioed, skin crinkled at the corners of his eyes. He wears a radio headset over his black beret. More droning of planes, more thunder of bombs.
They move ahead, the men and half of the tanks together, dug-in or passing soldiers from the Sydneys cheering them on or making jokes, or just looking at them, dazed and tired and awaiting the end of the battle, and as they approach the Sydneys’ flank, they become more cautious, crouching, ducking, compacted by instinct.
“I’ll call in a covering barrage!” Jim calls out into a telephone wired to the back of Marchand’s tank, which lumbers along in front of him.
“We’ll give you smoke cover.”
Here, they pause at Jim’s command at the bottom of a small incline and everyone crouches and hunches into squads. Jim dons his headphones and grabs his radio microphone again, and calls out the coordinates while crouching with Cavanagh behind a hedge, riflemen crouched about him, weapons raised at the ready, soldiers from the Sydneys amid them in their holes and ditches and depressions. “This is Sunray Victor 1, Sunray Victor 1, requesting creeping barrage before Tango 9-0, repeat, creeping barrage before Tango 9-0. Over.”
“Will comply Sunray Victor 1, creeping barrage before Tango 9-0. Over and out.”
“Heads up for our guns!” he barks. Here it comes, he thinks, here it comes and I’ll never hear again. A metallic whine above, and a line of explosions, one after another in quick succession, black Vesuvian eruptions of shellfire, their splitting bangs ringing off the trees, barns, contours of the land; and they get up and move, platoon by platoon, walking slowly behind the curtain of continuous shellfire exploding upward in rows like a budding bounty of crops sown and grown in an instant from seedpods of destruction, to supplant the crops they uproot in a rain of debris.
As they pass through the dug-in positions of the Highlanders’ flank to shouts of “Give ‘em hell!”, they approach the serrated ruin of the town itself jutting up from the trees across an open field. Beside them, just beyond the roadside thickets, on either side, are untended overgrown vines, powdery with white dust and dirt kicked up by the guns; the vineyards are a cratered, upturned ruin, deep shellholes gouged out of the rich earth, many grapes harvested by the rough means of shellfire. They approach the outskirts ahead, the blocky houses of which are seen in silhouette through the smoke of the bombardment and the trees on the outskirts, against the dark and hazy blue of the predawn, the rear of the retreating of the night. Before this … what? What lies before this? Surely some German position ...
Jim leads, chewing his cheeks, his stomach boiling with fear. He refuses to draw his pistol, keeping it hidden in his holster under his pants for fear of being identified as an officer and shot. Beside him is the soft-spoken Private Cavanagh, radio on his back, rifle in hand. Cavanagh, like all the other riflemen in the company, spread out in squads and platoons, has his bayonet-tipped Lee Enfield rifle cocked at the ready. Into the unknown they weave their careful way. Squad by squad they move, the screen of exploding shells banging and pluming just ahead of them, throwing up great clouds and clods and chunks of earth. Another squadron of fighters overhead swoops in low in the distance far beside them and rakes the land below with a daggered spray of automatic cannon fire, following with the deep, rolling concussion of bombs, a seismic rumble underfoot, a shudder of the air. Closer, there is the wall of noise, the screaming, crashing cacophony of the creeping barrage. Close-up, there is the sound of boots in the dust of the road, boots in the grass. The air ahead is misted with creeping white smoke like incense from a priest’s censer as the tanks fire smoke rounds from their turrets, spreading white tendrils of heavy smoke that hang like curtains of mist. As they wade into the stinging miasma of smoke, there is a wobbly whine overhead, the eccentric path of a short round.
“Take cover!” someone yells, and all nearby hit the ground. The resultant explosion is to the side, and Jim is lashed by twigs and showered by grapes. Before he picks himself up, German return fire comes in the form of a clutch of mortars, diving in from high up in the air, pounding the earth about them in a brief, sharp concentration. He squints, hands on helmet, prostrate in the grass as earth pours down about them in a gritty shower. He picks up a handful of dusty, powdery grapes, and pockets them as he picks himself up to his feet a moment later. He surveys his company, the men weaving their way behind the protective bombardment, surveys for casualties as he himself moves forward, dragged ahead by the immediate demands of duty, pushed ahead and held together by the invisible but very tangible bonds of personal honour and regimental honour and national honour, bound in a web of expectations stretched between the king and the lowest and greenest of his privates, and threaded within his insignias and within the very values and fears and qualities of himself. There are, it appears at a sweeping, squinty glance in the smoke, three casualties.
They continue advancing, spread out in a hunched, brisk trot. Heavier German shells dive in and explode near them, among them, on them, and the soldiers fan out, the shrapnel singing and whirring by them and over them, and ripping through them. The shells part the air and pound the earth, throwing up great fountains of smoke and dirt and debris, crashing, deafening, sucking up the air around the men, buffeting them about in their conflicting crosswinds. Our
Father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name thy kingdom come thy will be done ... Past the moaning, writhing form of a soldier reaching out and grabbing his ankle, leaving a bloody handprint smudged on his dusty puttees as the hand slides off … Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses. Deep inside, somewhere, he is sorry for all wrongs done by him. Another terrific impact in front, and he finds himself squatting amid the push-pull displacement of dust, coughing and gagging.
“Keep going!” he yells, his voice hoarse about the explosions. He spits a gob of dirty saliva. Talons of shrapnel slash the air in angry red arcs. A pebble pings off his helmet, and it is knocked askew, a new etching in its hieroglyphs of experience. The line of shellfire creeps ahead in coordination with the infantry, and they find themselves at the entrance of the town, the shells hitting buildings, pounding roofs, blasting the streets, splintering trees, wrecking gardens, gouging out walls. He turns behind him and sees the land cratered, numerous men lying on the ground in the dissipating smoke cover, the lifting shroud of which reveals a wake of ruination. The stretcher-bearers tend to the wounded and try to whisk them off to an aid post; the dead are left for the men of grave details. Very grave details indeed. Behind them, the tanks approach. As they approach the first houses, Tango 9-0 according to the codes given to him, the protective shelling stops with an abrupt silence. Everyone hits the ground in anticipation of enemy bullets. The German shellfire continues, albeit sporadically.
28
“Everything okay?” he asks Cavanagh as he warily stands, bent over as he does so.
“I think so. Not sure about my equipment. Heard some shrapnel whirring over me, sir, when we dove for cover.”
Jim inspects the radio. He looks and sees that the radio set is cracked and broken. There is a deep fissure inside which a smoking twist of shrapnel has embedded itself.
“The wireless is broken. Goddamnit. Well, you might as well dump that thing; it’s just dead weight now. You’re a rifleman now, like everyone else.”
“Yes, sir.”
Ahead, he shouts, “8 Platoon, lead the way! 7 and 9, covering positions! Ready your mortars with smoke!” His commands are relayed down the line by others. “Speaking of mortars, Tillman, do you reckon your 3-inchers are in place yet?” He turns behind to Tillman, who is nervously looking around, the earphones of his radio plugged into his ears and tuned for messages from his comrades.
“They’re getting into place, sir,” Tillman answers, “now that the bridge is up and the tanks are across. They’ll send me a message when they’re ready.”
“Good.” He turns around to observe his men moving in. The first German positions are a smoking, upturned, cratered ruin, with broken equipment, shredded barbed wire, blasted stumps, torn sandbags, and blasted-out slit trenches on the edge of the village. There is no one around. The squads of No. 8 Platoon pick through this abandoned ruin, covered by those behind crouched and crunched into firing positions, looking for any sign of the enemy; but as of yet, there is none.
Among the exploding shells, the tanks trundle up, steering around the dead and wounded, around the medical runners dashing off with bleeding men, and they make their way to Jim’s position. Major Marchand inquires about Able’s next moves.
“We’re sending in No. 8 Platoon first to probe and we’ll secure the way in.”
“We have you covered.” Into his microphone he commands, “Ready rounds, HE.” He holds onto the trigger of the turret-mounted machine gun, keeping at the ready. Squinting, his eye watering from a damnable piece of grit lodged in it from the bombardment, Jim envies Marchand his goggles, though they are pushed up over his beret.
“Our radio’s done with,” Jim says to Marchand.
“Sorry to hear.”
Jim signals Lieutenant Therrien, who has been looking back at him for directions, to go on ahead. Therrien nods, a knowing nod, the grim nod of a man accustomed to carrying out and ordering violent acts. With pounding heart Jim watches the twenty-five men of the platoon dash ahead in sections, covered by other sections, watched over by the rest of the company and the tanks. Soldiers kick in a door, run inside a house, and emerge, again. Others root through a backyard garden. Others disappear down a lane between battered houses. They do this again and again, down the street, house by house, getting smaller, disappearing into alleys. Sweat beads on Jim’s brow, sweat beads and time stands still in the eternities between heartbeats; the ambient artillery of the surrounding battle is a dull roar in the back of his mind as he focuses all his energy ahead, waiting for the eruption of gunfire, the ripping sound of a machine gun. There is nothing.
“I don’t believe it. They buggered off,” observes Sergeant Stringer from nearby, incredulous at the Germans’ disappearance. “Just buggered off and fell back.”
The day crowns itself with a shimmering diadem of sunlight—dawn.
“Let’s move,” commands Jim. “9 Platoon, go. 7 Platoon, cover and hold. Witchewski, Tillman, Cooley and Lafontaine, stay here and maintain a skeletal HQ. Cavanagh and Neidhart, you come in with me.” He looks up at the uncertain, suspicious-looking Major Marchand, who has his hands on the trigger of the mounted machine gun, his lower lip subsumed beneath his moustache and likely being chewed by his front teeth, a tableau of controlled fear.
“Are you coming in with us, sir?”
Marchand breaks his pose. “Oui. Yes, we’ll move in now.” He relays a command into his microphone for the other tanks to follow. Into the ghostly, empty streets they creep ahead, Jim with Stringer’s platoon. Sergeant Stringer is yards ahead, scanning left to right, appraising the situation, his Thompson submachine gun held at the ready. Behind Jim are Cooley and Neidhart. Other soldiers are fanned out in their squads. All is silent inside the town save for their boots and for the kicking in of doors, the dashing up the stairs of houses, the surrounding battle reduced to a dull echoing roar refracting off the façades of the buildings. The cobblestone street goes up at an angle, and is strewn with broken masonry and glass. Shattered windows gape down at them through their empty sockets. In the growing morning breeze groan on their hinges a pair of open red shutters. A half-painted whitewashed wall, pitted and peppered, a sign leaning against it—Vernice fresca! Fresh Paint! The interruption of daily life, the sudden onset of disaster. Like the set tables in Pompeii, petrified figs and bread laid out for a last supper never eaten, and the ancient Roman election signs seen when on leave back to Naples in the midsummer so many eons ago, the ragged stump of Vesuvius steaming, brooding in a vapourous, sulphurous haze in the background.
Hunched over at an intersection, the road bisected by a winding lane lined with an ivied stone wall, topped by a wrought-iron fence, trees peering down from an embankment above it. The ivy triggers a momentary longing for the safety of England … Above, a buzzing drone as a squadron of two-engine Mitchell bombers returns from a raid, rumbling in the sky, dozens of them soaring like great birds of prey, one of them trailing a line of black smoke from a burning engine. Out of a large house with a shelled-out roof emerges a squad of soldiers from No. 9 Platoon. Their leader, Corporal McLeod, shrugs, one hand on his Tommy gun, and he says, “Nothing, sir. No one. Not a trace.” Nearby, a soldier kicks in the door of a wooden shed, rifle projecting from the hip at the ready. The door squeaks on its hinges. No yell of surprise, no eruption of fire. Nobody emerges. No prisoner is yanked out of a furtive hiding place. Behind, the tanks creep down the street, barrels sniffing this way and that with the mechanical whine of turning turrets.
“Nothing, nothing at all so far. This area is secured,” Jim calls up to Marchand from the field telephone wired to his tank, his tank now second in line.
Marchand mulls this intelligence over for a moment, and decides, “We’ll move on ahead.” And so the tanks do, picking up the pace, their engines grunting, one after another, outpacing the infantry who now are less cautious, walking casually down this street and that, still sweepi
ng for activity, but seeming to be no longer very convinced of any.
29
The two platoons continue snaking their way through the streets, securing the town and awaiting the arrival of both Baker and Charlie. Ahead, to the right, a white Romanesque church perched on a knoll and smashed by shellfire, steeple blasted away, the large ragged holes in the walls and the shattered windows revealing within shifted rows of pews covered in stones and plaster. A flash of San Matteo, of Lieutenant Blake. From out the corner of his eye, to the right, in a shard of a broken window, a glance of Fitzpatrick, wan and white and staring back at him. A shudder, and he sees his own reflection. Christ, I’m tired. Pompeii. Plaster cast corpses strewn about. Vernice fresca! A row of townhouses, packed close together, with their roofs blown off or their façades blasted wide open, spilling their guts of furniture, bricks, framework and decorations. A wrought-iron fence, a line of wrecked houses and an arch leading into the main piazza, and beyond, the smashed clock tower of the post office and municipal office, another possible vantage point destroyed by the air force and artillery and a midnight barrage from tanks.
The tanks press on, farther and farther ahead, the weighted squeaking trundle of their treads and the rasping rumble of their engines receding, and the first one passes under the arch leading into the central piazza. He turns his head from the line of tanks heading up the street to a flurry of motion in the corner of his eye—he looks down at a street cat peering up at him through suspicious yellow eyes from between two wrecked buildings, a mangy-looking black tabby, flanks ridged in ribs. It pours its form into one soft-pawed step after another. The cat pauses and hisses as he passes, along with Cavanagh and Neidhart, and it withdraws a step and condenses its lithe form low to the ground, shaped to pounce. Or to run. Get away, get away, all of you, it seems to say with its shifting, yellow, suspicious eyes, this is my trash heap. Animals made destitute by war, like the stunned three-legged dog at Pesaro, stumbling about in a shell-stupor, or the goat, compressed and terrified by the exploding truck during the long hours of the night.
Beckoning War Page 23