Airborne

by Robert Radcliffe

‘Three days and nights, no food, no water, and no relief. I’ve two dead in the cellar, two wounded covering the back, and three upstairs watching the road. I’m not giving it up. I’m not retreating, not surrendering, and if we cease firing, Jerry will only take advantage and reposition.’

  ‘I understand. But—’

  ‘We’ll fight here until the ammo runs out, then we’ll take ’em on with bayonets. We’ll stand until we die.’

  ‘Yes. I see.’ Silence falls, for I have no answer to that. A shrill screech splits the air as swifts fly overhead in the evening calm. I rack my brains. ‘All right, listen. I’m going to drop my satchel next to the wall here. It has bandages, dressings and a little morphia for your wounded. Water too.’

  A grunt.

  ‘And a packet of Players.’

  ‘Cigs, Jesus!’

  The magic of tobacco. I lower the bag, and an unseen hand reaches out and drags it from view.

  ‘Thanks, Doc.’

  ‘That’s OK. We’ve run out of everything too, you know. Yet we’ve two hundred injured, including some from your unit probably, and nothing we can do for them. Jerry’s bringing trucks. We can get them out of this, and take them to proper hospitals. They’ll stand a chance. If not…’

  I hear a cigarette lighting. ‘One hour, you say?’

  ‘One hour.’

  ‘And Hackett ordered this?’

  ‘The man himself.’ I hold my breath. Then something comes to me. The ancient war cry of the Parachute Regiment, first heard in desperate fighting against Rommel’s Afrika Korps in Tunisia. Now it’s a password among wearers of the red beret. As a novice and non-combatant I have little right to use it.

  ‘Waho Mohammed?’

  ‘OK, Doc.’ Another grunt. ‘Waho Mohammed.’

  *

  I meet Anna one final time in the garden of the Schoonoord.

  ‘You’re leaving?’ she asks.

  ‘Yes. Colonel Marrable’s sending a medical team with the wounded. My name came up.’ I force a wry smile. ‘I think he’s trying to get rid of me.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I’m not sure. A place was mentioned. Apeldoorn?’

  ‘Yes, it’s about thirty kilometres north of here. There’s a prisoner-of-war hospital.’

  ‘Ah. And you?’

  She looks around the ruined grounds. Pitted with shell holes, littered with fallen trees and rubble, it looks more like a building site than a garden. Except for the dead. Two rows of new fatalities lie waiting for burial, many uncovered and grotesquely mutilated. Some have been burned by flame-throwers; the smell of death and putrescence and burned flesh hangs heavy. Yet after so long we barely notice.

  ‘I haven’t seen my father in days. I have word he’s unhurt, but our home is damaged and I must return to help him. Then I expect I will take up my job at the Queen Elizabeth hospital, and wait for the war to end. Once more.’

  ‘Let’s hope it’s for good next time.’ I hold my breath. ‘Shall I write?’

  Her eyes widen. ‘To me?’

  ‘No, to Father Christmas. Would you like me to? It seems I’ll have plenty of time.’

  ‘Well, I…’ Her face clouds as implications sprout. Then a frown appears. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘What’s what?’

  ‘That! My God, look, he’s moving!’

  I turn, mystified, towards the rows of dead bodies. Then a hand appears, hovering above one of them, as though suspended on a string.

  ‘Jesus,’ I gape. ‘Jesus, that one’s still alive!’

  *

  And that’s how I meet Theo Trickey.

  CHAPTER 5

  Theo Trickey’s father, Victor Trickey, met his mother, Carmelina Ladurner, in Innsbruck in the winter of 1921. Victor was twenty-six, fair, dashing, an officer of the British army, in Austria to train for the first-ever winter Olympics, due to be held in Chamonix. Carmelina (Carla) was eighteen, beautiful, headstrong, the daughter of a print-shop owner from Bolzano in the Italian Alps. Both were accomplished skiers, but hurtling down Nockspitze Mountain one day that November, their paths crossed; they collided and fell. Carla twisted an ankle, so Victor, strapping their skis to his back, swept her into his arms and carried her the mile down to the lodge. Where it was love at first sight.

  Victor stayed in Innsbruck four months, with Carla making repeated trips from her home to visit him. Though her grasp of English was modest and his Italian non-existent, their rapport was at once intuitive and intimate, founded more on physical attraction and a shared love of the outdoors than meaningful conversation. Victor lived thriftily and lodged in a males-only hostel, while Carla stayed with an aunt who allowed him to the door but no further. So each day they skied the region’s famous slopes, before retiring to a tavern for the evening, there to sit entwined before blazing fires, sipping hot Stroh rum, listening to Tyrolean folk musicians and fictionalizing a future together. His army salary precluded heavy spending but Carla had money enough to finance these outings, and also the occasional trip away. One week she persuaded him to return with her to Bolzano to meet her family.

  ‘They want much know you,’ she coaxed.

  ‘But the cost, old sport.’

  ‘I pay!’

  ‘In that case… Why not!’

  Bolzano lies sixty miles south of Innsbruck in the far northern Italian province of South Tyrol. Wild, mountainous, spectacularly beautiful, South Tyrol had for centuries enjoyed semi-independence and a rich if confused cultural heritage. At various times coming under Holy Roman, Austro-Hungarian, Venetian, Bavarian, Italian and even Napoleonic jurisdiction, following the First World War South Tyrol lost its prized autonomy and became formally annexed to Italy, an arrangement many inhabitants deplored. By the 1920s unrest was growing in the province, with some residents seeing themselves as Austrian or German, while others sympathized with the new Italian nationalism under Benito Mussolini. Many simply wanted to remain as independent South Tyroleans. Factions developed, communities split, neighbour fell out with neighbour, even families feuded. Bolzano, as the region’s capital, became the focal point for this ethnic turmoil.

  The event was a family celebration, the baptism of Carla’s niece, held in a church hall near Bolzano’s famous Castello Mareccio. Victor wore his uniform, which impressed the gathering almost as much as his wit and charm. An English officer of the Great War, handsome, dashing, amusingly mannered, was a notable catch by the young Ladurner girl, whom most family elders considered flighty and irresponsible. For his part Victor was surprised and bewildered by Carla’s clan, which was large and diverse and managed to embrace all sides of the ethnic argument. Strong views were held, he soon learned, and expressed, loudly and in a variety of tongues including German, Italian, a local dialect called Ladin, and even occasionally English. Despite the internal feuding, the British, he found to his relief, were well regarded, especially in matters military.

  ‘What is you regiment?’ Carla’s father Josef demanded, pouring him schnapps.

  ‘I’m a second lieutenant of the East Surreys,’ Victor recited. ‘The Young Buffs.’

  Josef slapped his thigh. ‘This is fantastisch!’ and launched into a long and complicated story, which Victor already knew from Carla, about how Josef had encountered the East Surreys in the field of battle.

  ‘This most famous battle Piave River, the sixteenth of June 1918. You remember, of course?’

  ‘Well, now you mention it—’

  ‘Yes, yes, very near to here. But first I fight at Caporetto under the young lion Rommel. You know him of course.’

  ‘Um, Romm… Who? ’

  ‘Rommel! Move quick and make them panic, he always say. With just one platoon running fast we take two thousand prisoners in one day! Anyway, then he leave and we fall on the enemy at Piave River and poum! A crushing victory for Italy!’

  ‘Ah. Congratulations.’

  ‘NO! It is katastrophal! I fight for Austro-Hungary, of course!’

  ‘But they lost?’

/>   ‘Yes, I just say this! Were you not there?’

  ‘Well, as it happens—’

  ‘Your East Surrey boys reinforce useless Italians. This is why they won. They were fantastisch!’

  ‘But they were the enemy.’

  ‘NO! Well, yes, but, pah, I no surrender to useless Italians but to your East Surrey boys. Gentlemen, very fine gentlemen, most respectful!’

  This exchange typified the region’s ethnic confusion, which, Victor realized during that long afternoon, extended right through Carla’s family. Having met her rather nervous mother Eleanora, he was introduced to her grandfather, also bewilderingly called Josef, a sinewy ancient who carried the Ladurner name, spoke only Ladin, and was descended from South Tyrol’s most famous folk hero, Andreas Hofer. Meanwhile the old man’s wife was from Slavic peasant stock and spoke no recognizable language at all. By contrast Eleanora’s antecedents, Carla explained, were part southern Italian plutocrats, and part Austro-Hungarian Jewish aristocracy.

  ‘So I am Habsburg also, see, Victor?’

  ‘Does that mean you’re rich and own a castle?’

  ‘Ha!’ She patted his rump. ‘No rich no castle. Oh, but see my uncle Rodolfo there? He very rich!’

  ‘Let’s meet him.’

  ‘No! He is southern Fascista. My father detest him!’

  ‘His own brother?’

  ‘No! He family Zambon from my mother side. Victor, you must learn these if we are to marry.’

  *

  It was two weeks before she could visit him again, as her travels depended upon permission from her mother and cash from her father, neither of which could be taken for granted. She and Victor both found the separation hard; in the meantime they corresponded, daily and with growing fervour, such that by the time she finally stepped from the Innsbruck train and into his arms their passion was uncontainable.

  ‘I miss you so many!’ she gasped, showering him with kisses. ‘I want us be one.’

  ‘Yes, well, yes! But shouldn’t we, you know—’

  ‘Kiss me more, Victor!’

  Ten minutes later Theo Trickey was conceived in an archway beneath the rail bridge at Mühlau. It was January of the new year 1922.

  For Carla, a committed if wayward Catholic, consummating their union meant marriage was a given. This may have been her intention. Victor was not her first affair, but the first to offer the possibility of release from Bolzano and her family. Nor was the attraction just physical, for, war hero and Olympic contender apart, Victor was clearly a man of means, with business interests outside the army in retail, property and commerce. He lived in London, which was capital of the world’s mightiest empire, and the British had recently won the greatest war in history. England was therefore the place to be. Victor was her ticket there.

  For his part, marriage was a rather vaguer notion, something to be savoured for the future, although naturally, and with minimal prompting, he honoured their physical congress with a formal proposal.

  ‘Next winter perhaps,’ he mused over dinner that evening. ‘Or what about the one after, at the Games in Chamonix!’

  Carla squeezed his hand. ‘Next winter, Victor.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  Thus the plan was agreed. He would return to his regiment in the spring as intended, notify his superiors and family of the good news, obtain a promotion, make the necessary arrangements for Carla’s immigration, then return to Bolzano in November to claim his bride.

  ‘Perfect, Victor.’ She beamed. ‘Everything will be perfect.’

  But nine weeks after their archway tryst, and with his time to leave Austria drawing near, he received an urgent telegram summoning him to Bolzano. He arrived to a cooler welcome than before, Carla pale-faced at the door, a thunderous-looking Josef, Eleanora standing behind sniffing into a handkerchief.

  ‘What is it?’ he whispered to Carla as they waited. ‘Did someone die?’

  ‘I have baby.’

  A few minutes later a heavily revised plan was laid out before him in Josef’s office behind the print shop. No schnapps was offered.

  ‘You are already propose my daughter Carmelina.’

  ‘Yes, sir. With great honour and—’

  ‘There is British legation of trade in Bolzano. They will make licence.’

  ‘Licence?’

  ‘Tomorrow you marry Carmelina. Then you return England and make arrange import Carmelina and baby to London. You agree?’

  ‘Well, yes, sir. Of course.’

  ‘Good. All is settled.’

  The following day and with the usual formalities miraculously waived, Victor Trickey married Carmelina Ladurner by special licence at the British legation on Via Dante followed by a Catholic blessing at the nearby Cappella di San Giovanni. There was no wedding party, and by the evening Victor was on the train back to Innsbruck. Two days later he returned to London.

  *

  Theo was born in Bolzano that September of 1922. By this time South Tyrol’s ethnic troubles were becoming acute. In Rome Mussolini ordered a programme of compulsory ‘Italianization’ for the region, and installed a grim-faced senator called Tolomei in Bolzano to oversee this cleansing process. Nicknamed ‘the Undertaker’, Tolomei ruthlessly instigated a thirty-two-point programme aimed at ridding South Tyrol of any vestige of autonomy, and erasing all trace of its indigenous heritage. These steps included the appointment of Italian-only municipal officials, civil servants, teachers, judges and senior police, enforcing Italian as the only permissible language, cash incentives for southern Italians to settle in the province, banning the teaching of German or Ladin in schools, and, most repressive of all, the Italianization of all place names, many of them centuries old, from mountains, rivers, towns and villages right down to streets and houses. To add further insult, this draconian and deeply unpopular measure included the Italianization of new babies’ names.

  Theo was baptized Andreas Theodor Josef Victor Ladurner-Trickey, in the same chapel in which Carla and Victor were married and by the same sympathetic pastor. But registering these names proved less straightforward. Soon after the baptism Carla presented herself nervously at the register office, her unusually pale-skinned baby in her arms, while a scowling registrar scrutinized her choice of names. Unknown to him, ‘Andreas’ was blatant civil disobedience, being the name of Josef’s famous ancestor Andreas Hofer who had fought for South Tyrol’s independence. But since it was also an Italian name the registrar, ignorant of the symbolism, ticked it with his pen. ‘Theodor’ met with less approval, which was ironic as Carla had only included it as a sop to her pro-Italian mother who had relatives bearing the name. Unfortunately the relatives were Hungarian and spelled it differently from Italians. ‘Theodor’ was thus swiftly changed to ‘Teodoro’ by the pen-wielding registrar. ‘Josef’ meanwhile, in honour of Carla’s father and grandfather, was immediately rejected by the tongue-clicking registrar for being too ‘Germanic’. Striking his pen through it, he scrawled the Italian version: ‘Giuseppe’. Then, with his patience already waning, he got to ‘Victor’.

  ‘Are you mad? What is this!’

  ‘His father’s name, sir. He is English.’

  ‘I don’t care if he’s double Dutch! Victor is a name of Anglo-Saxon or Teutonic provenance and utterly banned.’

  ‘But his father…’

  ‘Italian names only! Those are the rules.’

  Five minutes later, having exhausted the registrar by explaining Theo’s surname, Carla fled clutching his new birth certificate.

  Despite the inauspicious circumstances and a quarrelsome domestic situation, Andreas Theodor/Teodoro Josef/Giuseppe Victor/Vittorio Ladurner-Trickey was a contented baby. He and his mother lodged with Carla’s parents in the house above the print shop in Laubengasse, where the four rubbed along in an atmosphere of strained forbearance, despite their political differences. These invariably centred on the ethnic question. Josef was an ardent South Tyrolean separatist, whereas Eleanora’s sympathies lay with Mussolini and Rome
. As a couple they had learned to tolerate each other’s position, but Carla’s presence upset the balance – she sided with Josef – so arguments regularly flared. And when other family members visited, their opinions served only to fan the flames of disagreement, such that the clamour of raised voices became the background to Theo’s childhood. And not just at the print shop, for by then disputes were spilling on to the streets to engulf whole communities. Factions developed, graffiti appeared – much of it racist – leaflets and posters circulated urging action, gangs roamed, goading the black-shirted militia. Civil unrest became a feature of Bolzano life. One night Senator Tolomei removed a statue of the Austrian poet Vogelweide from the main square. Word quickly spread, and in no time protestors were gathering, clamouring for its reinstatement. Opposition parties clashed, abuse was hurled and then sticks and bricks, a mêlée broke out, and the carabinieri were called to disperse it. Josef and Carla were in the thick of it.

  Meanwhile Eleanora sat at home with the toddler Theo, who despite the family’s disagreements had become the darling of the clan. Fair, chubby, cheerful, right from birth his smiling face and placid demeanour had a calming effect. Eleanora was especially fond, often retreating with him to her room when disputes flared, or wheeling him to market to be admired by neighbours, his fair complexion and china-blue eyes a diversion from the incessant quarrels. Sometimes he’d be lying on the floor surrounded by arguing relatives, and then, just as matters were turning unpleasant, he’d look up and chuckle, and the tension would melt into laughter.

  But even Theo couldn’t melt the tension over his father.

  A modest trickle of correspondence had arrived in the months following Victor’s departure from an address care of his Greek landlady in somewhere called Kingston upon Thames. Carla dutifully responded, painstakingly transcribing her replies into English using a dictionary. This was laborious, as on average she wrote three letters to Victor’s every one, and also because decoding his appalling handwriting and abbreviated style was not easy: ‘Pub meet Rose and Crown with Arthur G next Tues interesting trade proposition auto spares’ was a typical sentence. Mercifully his letters were short. Soon they were even shorter, such that by the time of Theo’s birth they were half a page every three weeks or so. His final missive arrived a month later; it congratulated Carla on the birth, applauded her choice of names, and assured her all was proceeding to plan vis-à-vis his return to Bolzano to collect them. That was October. November came and went, then December and still no word. By then Carla was writing almost daily, short plaintive notes desperately appealing for news. Finally, and at considerable expense, she sent him a telegram: why you not here victor stop we wait in worry stop respectfully carmelina and teodoro please please reply. A week later she received her reply, also by telegram. Standing at the door of the print shop, Theo on her hip, she tore open the envelope, then sank to her knees: regret you inform vic tricky dead accident skiing scotland stop popodopoulos eleni.