Seek Out and Destroy (Commander Cochrane Smith series)

by Alan Evans

  Buckley twirled the handle on the telephone, heard Billings answer and said, ‘Target!’

  Billings’ voice squawked, ‘Target!’

  Buckley reported to Smith, ‘Through, sir!’

  They would be taking post at the gun now.

  Smith watched grey figures come out of the mist, moving slowly as they advanced in a long line stretched across the marsh. He took a bearing with his compass, used his protractor to draw a line on the map, measured the distance along it and marked his estimate of the advancing troops’ position. ‘Target-troops advancing. Co-ordinates’ — he read them off from the map.

  Buckley repeated each phrase into the telephone as Smith said it and at the end reported. ‘Through, sir.’

  Back at the gun Jenkinson would be plotting the target on his map, working out the range and bearing gun to target and then the various corrections for wind, temperature, etc — and finally producing a range and bearing for the gun to fire at the target that was out of sight of the gunners.

  Buckley, telephone at his ear, reported, ‘Shot! Time of flight eight seconds!’

  Smith used his glasses to watch for the fall of the shell, counting... There was another line of men behind the first, another, and another. Garizzo had said the Austrians would try to run over his marines and there looked to be three thousand men out there already and more still emerging from the mist. Machine-guns were stuttering and all along the line of trenches the rifle-fire crackled... Now!

  He saw the burst, just, away beyond the leading troops and just a flash of yellow in the mist. How far? He hadn’t enough experience of this kind of observation but he thought it was about a quarter-mile too far. ‘Five hundred yards! Two o’clock!’ They were using the artillery clock code, the centre of the imaginary clock face being the target and twelve o’clock due north. So he had reported the burst as over by five hundred yards. Jenkinson at the gun could now correct.

  Buckley reported, ‘Shot! Time of flight eight seconds!’ Smith watched the tiny figures of men labouring forward through the mud and waited, counting, for the burst seven eight… The shell burst just ahead of the advancing troops. He licked his lips, dry now. That was luck. He might have ranged for several rounds but now — ‘Five rounds gunfire! Sweep two degrees!’

  He waited, rubbing his eyes until Buckley reported, ‘Shot, sir!’ Then he lifted the glasses again. The first round fell among the tiny, creeping figures out there in the open. So did the second but further to the right as the gun obeyed his order to sweep through two degrees. The machine-guns and rifles were still firing and men were falling, little moving figures stopping to become still grey dots on the marsh. It was terrible country to cross under fire, the mud and water making their advance more wading than walking.

  His glasses shifted across the front and settled on the track that ran up to the house alongside him. Troops were swarming on it now, some falling but the others hurrying on, able to move fast on its drier surface. He snatched at the map, used compass and protractor, marked the position of the men on the track. ‘Target! Troops advancing! Co-ordinates...!’

  This time it took him four ranging rounds before he bracketed the track with a shell close on either side. ‘Five rounds gunfire!’

  One after the other the shells howled overhead to burst on or near the track and troops running on it. The advance halted as the men left at the head sought cover and Smith corrected the fire, lifting it to search back along the track.

  ‘Five rounds gunfire!... Five rounds gunfire!’

  And all the time the rifles and machine-guns of Garizzo’s marines swept the marshland before their trenches. Until suddenly all along the front the grey lines were ebbing away, back into the mist.

  Smith ordered huskily, ‘Stand easy.’ And: ‘Good shooting.’

  He heard that passed by Buckley as he stared out through the hole in the roof at the open ground. Nothing moved there now. The mist had lifted in the course of the action and now he could see the line that marked the Cavetta canal. The rain began to fall. The ground before him and the surface of the track were pocked with shell-holes. They had done well at the gun but he was not so sure about himself. That first shoot was lucky, the second he just managed well enough. He was weary after the exertions of the night and the nervous tension — and thirsty, his mouth dry.

  The second telephone rang and Buckley answered it then passed the receiver to Smith. ‘The capitano, sir.’

  Garizzo’s voice crackled down the wire: ‘English! Good! You like some coffee? So come down. All quiet just for now.’

  ‘Right.’ Smith passed the telephone back to Buckley. ‘I’m going down to the line. Can you keep a look-out and cook yourself some breakfast at the same time? Fetch the primus up here.’

  ‘I’ll do that, sir. You look out down there. You should have a tin hat. Maybe they can find one for you, sir.’

  ‘I won’t be long,’ Smith reassured him, then dropped down through the trap to the table beneath and so to the floor. He passed up the primus to Buckley and then left the house, smiling to himself at the leading hand’s concern for him.

  The entrance to the communication trench was at the left end of the row of houses and sheltered from enemy gunfire by them. Then it turned to lead forward towards the front line, zig-zagging so it could not be enfiladed by enemy machine-guns. It was shallow and he had to stoop so his head did not show above its lip. It had not been rivetted — there had been not enough time or timber to shore up its sides — and its floor was liquid mud that came up over his ankles. He passed little parties of marines digging out the trench in places where it had fallen in, working crouched, hurling shovelfuls of mud over the parapet. They looked tired. He had to squeeze past them, muttering an apology, but they seemed cheerful and pleased to see him. The explanation came when one of them pointed a finger and said, ‘Boom! Boom! Buono!’ So it was the work of the gun that had pleased them.

  The front line trench was deeper and partly revetted but heft the water and mud was knee-deep. He had to wade through it. A long firing step had been cut into the front wall of the trench and was carpeted with bodies of marines sleeping wrapped in blankets and groundsheets under the rain. The trench twisted and turned and at each bend a sentry crouched on the firing step keeping watch through a periscope. Smith waded along, thinking that too much of this and Garizzo would have cases of trenchfoot among his men. It sounded innocuous, like corns, but in fact it meant men’s feet rotted because of the continual immersion so they lost toes and holes were eaten through from sole to arch.

  He found Garizzo in a hole in the back wall of the trench, his dug-out. Smith had to bend almost double to enter it and Garizzo sat on an ammunition box with his knees up to his chin. He pushed another box at Smith. ‘English! The gun was good! Caffe!’ That last was bellowed and was answered by a distant yell. Garizzo said, ‘It went as I thought. They threw in three, four battalions without preparation — no bombardment. To try to catch. us before we were ready, run over us with many men. But we were ready. And they did not expect the gun, I think.’

  An orderly came splashing down the trench with coffee. Smith asked, ‘What about reserves? Reinforcements?’ Garizzo sipped at the bitter black coffee and smacked his lips. ‘No. There has been heavy fighting around Jesolo and up river.’ That was a village two miles inland. Garizzo scowled. ‘The generals think that is where the main attacks will be, to drive on Mestre and Venice. So any reinforcements go there.’

  Smith asked, ‘You don’t agree with them?’

  Garizzo thought a moment, then shook his head. ‘Maybe now they are right, but if the Austrians are held there? Suppose they broke through here? They walk straight down the road to the Porto di Lido. Then Venice falls.’

  Because from the Porto di Lido the Austrian guns would command the city. Smith saw in his mind’s eye the long, low littoral and the road flat and straight, pointing like an arrow at the Porto di Lido, the gateway to the lagoon — and Venice. There was only this thin line of
Garizzo’s battalion of marines to bar the way.

  Garizzo got out his map. ‘Their lines are the other side of the canal. I think they must wait until the night, and then bring over many men to wait below the bank of the canal and in the morning they will attack again. This time it will be planned. It will be bad.’

  Smith put down his empty mug. ‘I have work to do.’

  He walked back along the trench through the rain. At the house he ate breakfast of bacon that Buckley cooked over the primus, then made a careful little sketch of the country he could see before the house, to the canal beyond. He marked and labelled a number of salient features spread across the landscape. A low mound in the middle distance, some two hundred yards forward of the front-line trench, he labelled ‘Ridge’. He marked two points on the track along which the Austrians had advanced: a clump of bushes ‘Bush’, and a solitary tree as ‘Tree’. He marked a point on the canal as ‘Canal’. There were a dozen points in all.

  He twirled the handle on the telephone and heard an excited voice, ‘Gun!’

  ‘Smith. Mr. Menzies?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Target registration. Target “Ridge”.’

  ‘Target registration. Target “Ridge”, sir.’

  Smith handed over the telephone to Buckley, gave his orders and watched for the fall of the shell. He ordered successive corrections after each ranging shot until a shell fell on the “Ridge”. Then he moved on: ‘Target “Canal”.’

  ‘Target “Canal”, sir.’

  It went on steadily through the morning. He thought again that it was like an academic exercise, the careful plotting of each target, the ranging. It was simply preparation. When the registration was done the gun had the bearing, range and angle of sight to a dozen targets spread across the open ground and could fire on them at call without preliminary ranging.

  In the afternoon Smith and Buckley took it in turns to sleep. They ate as the sun went down and as night fell the quiet countryside became alive. Machine-guns chattered and tracer arced across the sky. Grenades flashed and thumped! Flares burst and drifted slowly down lighting the moonscape before the trenches.

  Smith twirled the handle on the telephone to Garizzo and heard his hoarse growl. ‘English?’

  Smith asked, ‘Orders?’

  ‘No. No gunfire. They are just Austrian raiding parties, to stop my men from sleeping and make them nervous. I have outposts out there. You sleep.’

  They took it in turns, one keeping watch while the other tried to sleep despite the continual firing, wrapped in a blanket and lying close by the wall. The ghostly, reflected glow of the flares cast leaping shadows in the loft. Smith dozed briefly to be jerked awake time and again. Helen Blair’s face floated into his mind. He saw her standing cool and elegant, heard her say softly, miserably, ‘I’m sorry, David. It’s for the best. There are other reasons.’

  What other reasons?

  He stood on watch in the cold dark before dawn, his blanket around his shoulders. The telephone jangled and he started, fumbled for it, answered thickly, ‘Smith.’

  ‘English! It will be light soon.’

  ‘Right.’ Smith put down that telephone, shook Buckley then worked the other phone, told Billings on the shore at the gun end, ‘Stand to.’

  Ten minutes later the dawn was upon them and the first Austrian shells from batteries beyond the canal burst in the marshland before the house. There was mist again but Smith could trace the communication trench and that of the front line, saw the flash and smoke of the shells bursting there. He ordered, ‘Target “Canal”! Ten rounds gunfire!’

  The shells from the six-inch howled overhead to add to the din and burst on or about the canal.. Smith saw their flaming, though mist still hid the canal itself.

  Garizzo’s battalion was being pounded by several Austrian batteries. Smith could not see the front-line trench now because of the smoke that drifted over it, but beyond and distantly towards the canal lines of men were visible advancing out of the mist. This time no rifle-fire came from the trench, no machine-gun rattled because the marines were pinned down by the barrage.

  Smith ordered, ‘Target “Tree”! Five rounds gunfire!’

  ‘Target “Bush”! Five rounds gunfire!’

  ‘Target “Ridge”! Ten rounds gunfire! Sweep one degree!’

  The gunfire switched from one registered target to another across the front of the position, returned again and again to. sweep the ridge and the track, but still the advancing lines reformed and closed on the Italian defences. The Austrian barrage ceased then for fear of hitting their own men and the marines crawled up from dug-outs and the depths of the trench and opened fire. Smith watched the distant figures falling before their fire.

  Ten minutes later he ordered, ‘Stand easy.’

  Once again the attack was over.

  His ears still rang as he went down to see Garizzo. He had to make his way down the communication trench against a tide of wounded, limping or borne on stretchers, making for the aid post behind the houses. He found the front-line trench broken down by the bombardment in several places and the marines digging it out furiously. He had to climb over the heaped mud knowing there might be men trapped beneath it. He caught up with Garizzo as he ranged along the trench like a big bear bawling at his men, roaring with laughter, slapping backs.

  He grinned at Smith but he was serious when he said, ‘Not good, English. I lost men and I can’t afford to lose one. And it will be worse. This afternoon perhaps, or tomorrow morning. When they have regrouped.’

  Smith said, ‘I need ammunition for the gun. We fired a lot this morning.’

  Garizzo nodded. ‘All right. Sevastano, my second-in-command, goes back to report and find out about reserves. He will see about your ammunition.’

  They ducked together as a shell shrieked in and exploded short of the trench, showering them with mud and earth. Garizzo cursed and said, ‘Get down or get out, English!’

  That shell was the first of many. The Austrians were not laying down another barrage but maintaining a harassing fire. The shells fell singly at intervals of ten seconds or so. Smith wed his way back along the front line into the communication trench, past the marines huddled down for cover. He was relieved to get away from the front, to be heading back along the communication trench towards the house. He splashed quickly through the mud but he panted as if he had been running. He knew that was because of the shelling and tried to walk more slowly and breathe deeply.

  He was getting away but Garizzo and his marines had to stick it out. And for how long?

  He asked himself that question again at nightfall. In the afternoon the guns had lifted their aim and fired on the straggling row of houses. Smith and Buckley, grabbed the telephones and jumped down from the loft, ran across the road and dropped into the shallow ditch on the other side. It was flooded and they crouched with water running around their waists. The guns blasted the houses for minutes on end. Some of the shells went astray and fell short, or over into the marsh close to where Smith and Buckley lay and near to the aid post. The tent with the red cross was packed with wounded, though stretcher-bearers kept coming to take them further to the rear, to the barges the Italians were using to lift them across the lagoon to Venice. Many of the hotels were hospitals now.

  At the end of the shelling the houses still stood, though with holes in the walls and little of the roofs left. The house they used had the front door blown out and across the road like a leaf on the wind.

  The guns went back to firing at the trench and Garizzo’s marines. Smith and Buckley returned to the loft. As the light ebbed Garizzo telephoned to say Sevastano had returned. ‘He says the line is holding, all attacks have been beaten off but there are no reinforcements for us. They will send your ammunition but they say everybody screams for ammunition. How many have you?’

  ‘Twenty rounds.’ Smith thought that he could have sent Hercules for ammunition but he needed her close by at Piave Vecchia in case he had to pull the gu
n out quickly. If the Austrians broke through... He asked, ‘How is it with you?’

  ‘Not good. The shelling all day — I think I will lose some men with shell-shock soon. You know?’

  ‘I know.’ The incessant battering that deafened, shook the teeth in a man’s head, that sucked the breath out of his body and blinded him with dirt, that kept on and on until he wept and trembled, crawled around aimlessly like a bewildered animal.

  Garizzo said, ‘Rain again. Trieste weather.’

  ‘What?’

  Garizzo explained, ‘The wind is from the north-east so it brings the weather from Trieste. If it rains there tonight then in the morning it rains here. And if it snows...’He laughed. ‘Good night, English.’

  The darkness came and the shelling stopped. Instead there was once again the stammering machine-guns, the flares, the grenades bursting in no-man’s land where raiding parties ran into outposts.

  Smith wondered, ‘How long?’

  ‘How long could they stand it?’

  Despite the surge and fall of the fighting out in the night, he slept when it was his turn. Dreams disturbed him more than grenades and woke him to lie wide-eyed, staring up at the sky seen through the shattered roof. He would sleep again, weariness claiming him, but only to dream again of Salzburg.

  11. A fine morning

  It rained far into the night but stopped an hour or so before the dawn. Buckley woke Smith then to take his turn on watch and about that time the firing ceased in no-man’s land and it became very quiet. The sky was clear and he stood with his blanket around his shoulders staring out into the darkness of the open ground or up at the stars seen through the holes in the roof. There were more holes than roof after the shelling of the houses. He thought about Helen Blair and that he wanted to see her again.

  Finally he shrugged out from under his blanket. It would be light soon and down in the trenches the marines would be standing to. Garizzo thought there would be another attack. Smith was certain of it. He squatted down inside the little tent Buckley had made out of the old sacks found in the loft to stop the glow from the primus showing through the holes in the wall and the roof. He lit the primus and held his hands close around the hissing flame until the kettle perched on it jetted steam. Then he turned off the stove, juggled the lid off the kettle and spooned in tea. He poured it into the two tin mugs, added a spoonful of condensed milk like glue to each, got stiffly to his feet and carried one cup over to Buckley where he slept cocooned in his blanket by the wall. He shook the big man’s shoulder, feeling the, wool damp under his hand. Buckley grumbled and pulled the blanket from over his head.