For King and Country

by David Monnery

  ‘So instead of dropping bombs on the Germans perhaps we should just parachute in people with runny noses,’ McCaigh offered.

  ‘OK, OK,’ Morgan said, cutting through the laughter. ‘Let’s have a bit of hush. We might not be the only people in Italy.’

  ‘I bet we’re the only people this wet,’ Corrigan said under his breath.

  ‘You are,’ Beckwith muttered back.

  They set off on their night march, Morgan in the lead, Beckwith close behind him. It was almost as dark as it had been the previous night, but the CO had spent a considerable part of the day trying to memorize the map, and intended using his torch only as a last resort.

  They had walked about three-quarters of a mile down the valley when it became apparent that the ground beneath their feet was now a fairly well-beaten path. A little further and they could see the gaunt silhouettes of buildings on the slope above them. ‘Stigliano,’ Morgan murmured to himself, just as the sound of a dog barking cut through the silence. His mental map confirmed, Morgan turned away from the village, heading up the slope to his right. The dog continued to bark, and eventually a human voice responded with what was presumably a string of Italian curses.

  The team reached the top of the ridge and started down the other side. Another small village – Serripola on Morgan’s map – became dimly visible, clinging precariously to the other side of the valley. They bypassed it by following the stream which tumbled along the bottom, then clambered up what they hoped was the last ridge before San Severino.

  It was. The moon was now making an effort to shine through the clouds, and the roofs of the town below glowed in the pale light. It wasn’t a big town, but Farnham guessed it would be a pretty one in daylight. It had apparently been founded about fifteen hundred years earlier by Romans on the run from Barbarians, and was said to have a lovely elliptical square and some nice churches. After the war, Farnham told himself. For now it was just a lot of buildings next door to a bridge.

  The latter was still hidden from view by the curve of the ridge, but a faint yellow glow seemed to be emanating from its presumed position, suggesting a degree of illumination which reflected the enemy’s understanding of its strategic importance. The thought crossed Farnham’s mind that this was not going to be as easy as Morgan seemed to think.

  ‘I think another recce’s in order,’ Morgan said softly, breaking Farnham’s reverie. ‘We need to find a spot for an OP with a decent view of the bridge,’ he continued, ‘and there’s no sense in all of us stumbling around in the dark. I’ll take Rafferty.’

  Farnham nodded, his eyes still on the town below. It looked so peaceful.

  It took Morgan and Rafferty twenty minutes to reach their destination, but the view was worth the trip. From the edge of the trees which covered the end of the snub-nosed ridge the land fell steeply away to the railway, which itself followed a narrow shelf between cliff and river. To their right, across the rushing waters of the Potenza, the town slept, cloaked in grey. About two hundred yards to their left, the single track swept across the river on a simple underslung truss bridge. It was about seventy-five feet long, and extremely well lit by searchlights at either end. At the far end, which alone seemed to offer easy access, a railwaymen’s hut had been turned into a guardhouse. There was a light in the window, and even at this distance the two SAS men could hear raised voices inside it. Another two armed soldiers were halfway across the bridge, and unlike many such sentries Morgan had seen in his military career, they seemed to be actually taking note of the world around them.

  Beyond the bridge the railway completed an S-bend by turning into what was obviously the station and goods area. The single track divided into four, and long lines of goods wagons stood on the three to the left. The roof of a goods shed rose above them. On the other side of the through line, some thirty yards this side of the station itself, there was a small engine shed with a coaling platform and water-tower.

  The wagons in the goods yard might offer some cover for the approach, Morgan thought. He turned his binoculars on the road bridge, which crossed the river another couple of hundred yards beyond the railway. It was unlit and apparently unguarded.

  He smiled to himself. Blowing the bridge didn’t look that difficult – the real trick would be surviving the aftermath. There were thirty miles of fairly open country between them and the scheduled Navy pickup, and the local Germans were likely to be distinctly miffed. ‘Go and fetch the others,’ he told Rafferty. ‘We won’t find a better spot for an OP than this.’

  Daylight found all eight men well concealed in two rectangular trenches. One narrow end of each looked out across the bridge and station area, and it was here that the men took turns keeping watch through the narrow slit between ground and cover. The other ends were for sleeping, cooking on the tiny hexamine stoves, and, in the case of the eastern trench, manufacturing explosive devices. Morrie Beckwith was the resident expert, bringing together the ingredients they had carried with them – lumps of the new plastic explosive, thermite and lubricant – into his own variations on SAS pioneer Jock Lewes’s famous Lewes bomb. Beckwith had an almost dreamy look on his face as he worked, which suggested both intense concentration and a strange joy in the process.

  Those on watch had rather less to keep them interested. It soon became apparent that the day shift in the guardhouse below was remarkably similar to the night shift – a total of six guards, two of whom would be crossing and recrossing the bridge at roughly five-minute intervals. During the day a further pair of soldiers could be seen pacing up and down the distant station platform. There was presumably a local German garrison which supplied these guards, but where it was, and how many men it comprised, God only knew. The SAS men hoped it was a long way away.

  A troop convoy comprising over twenty lorries passed through the town early in the afternoon, but trains were conspicuous by their absence. The Allied air forces no doubt discouraged the Germans from too much movement during the hours of daylight, but in any case this was a little-used line. If the SAS parties to the north did their jobs then the Germans would need it badly, but by that time, with any luck, it would be out of action.

  Soon after dark Morgan called a conference in one of the hides, and all eight men squeezed in. Once the four visitors had made appropriate remarks about the décor and prevailing odours he went through the catalogue of their observations over the past sixteen hours, presented a possible plan of action and, in true SAS spirit, invited comments from all and sundry.

  ‘Almost sounds too easy, boss,’ McCaigh said.

  It was close to one o’clock when the eight men slipped one by one across the road bridge, down the small embankment, and into the deeper shadow of the trees beside the river. The light was better than on the previous two nights, though still a long way short of what the moon could manage from a clear sky. It was probably about perfect, Morgan thought – bright enough for Beckwith to do his demolition work, dark enough to cloak their escape into the hills.

  Three hundred yards upstream, the illuminated bridge looked more substantial than it had from their bird’s-eye vantage-point.

  They started working their way along the bank, crouching slightly as they walked, more from instinct than any real fear that they would silhouette themselves against the cliffs on the other side of the river. There was no need to worry about noise – the rush of the black water beside them was loud enough to drown out a male voice choir’s rendition of ‘God Save the King’.

  Fifty yards or so from the guardhouse Morgan gestured everyone to the ground, and they all lay there waiting for the two-man patrol to reach the designated stage of their regular route. As they set foot on the near side of the bridge Morgan and Farnham rose to their feet and walked swiftly towards the windowless back wall of the railway hut turned guardhouse. Reaching it, they stood still for a moment, listening to the German voices inside. They sounded like they were having a good time.

  At Morgan’s signal the two men inched their way round the end of
the hut furthest from the bridge, hoping the door was open, as it had been when they broke camp an hour and a half earlier.

  It was.

  The two men on patrol had almost reached the other end of the bridge. Morgan took one step inside the door and another to his left, allowing Farnham an equal angle of fire. The two men had a fleeting glimpse of bareheaded, greatcoated men sitting round a packing case, cards in hand, before the silent fusillade ripped the scene to pieces, shredding the back and head of the man who was facing away from the door, spurting blood and brains in a welter of collapsing bodies. There was a sound like furniture falling, a moment of utter silence, and then they could hear the river once more.

  They pulled two of the bodies out of their greatcoats, grabbed a coal-scuttle helmet each, and waited by the door. Glancing back at the four dead men, Farnham was struck by how young the faces looked. In a few days four homes in Germany would be getting letters from the Wehrmacht, and tears would be rolling down their mothers’ cheeks.

  A wave of cold anger ran through him, anger at the bastards who had set the whole bloody mess in motion.

  Morgan was looking at his watch. It usually took the guards five minutes to complete their circuit, which meant there was one to go. Straining his ears, he thought he could hear the faint drumming of feet on the bridge, and seconds later he heard their voices. Thirty yards, he guessed. Twenty, fifteen…

  The two SAS men exchanged nods, and walked calmly out through the door.

  One of the approaching Germans shouted out a question in a cheerful voice, and in reply Morgan’s Sten seemed to lift him off his feet. Farnham’s target died less dramatically, dropping like a stone as the bullets stitched a line from belly button to forehead.

  They walked quickly forward, grabbed the bodies by the ankles, and dragged them back across the cinders to the makeshift mass grave in the guardhouse. ‘Call in the others,’ Morgan told Farnham.

  They were already on their way, squeezing into the hut one by one.

  ‘Nice and warm in here,’ Beckwith muttered, feigning not to notice the pile of corpses around the stove. The faces of both Tobin and Imrie, Farnham noticed, were decidedly pale.

  ‘So far so…’ Morgan started to say, but at that moment all eight heads turned in response to the unmistakable sound of approaching heavy vehicles. In a move worthy of the Marx Brothers all eight men moved towards the doorway, causing a general scrum, and tipping Imrie off his feet and into the lap of a German corpse. He froze for a second, took a deep breath and clambered back up.

  Meanwhile Morgan had asserted rank and claimed the view from the door. Two large lorries had drawn up in the station forecourt about a hundred and fifty yards away. Their uniformed drivers had already climbed down and were lighting cigarettes. A man in an officer’s cap was just disappearing into the station building.

  ‘Maybe he’s just stopped for a shit,’ McCaigh suggested hopefully.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Morgan decided. ‘Trev, Roger – get some coats and helmets on and start pretending to be guards. Robbie,’ he went on, looking out through the doorway, ‘form a line of defence. Two of you behind this hut, the other two behind the engine shed over there. If Jerry starts pouring out of those lorries and heading this way, start shooting.’ He pushed a lock of unruly hair back inside the beret and turned to Beckwith. ‘Come on, Morrie, we’ve got a bridge to blow.’

  There was still no movement in the distant forecourt, though this time Morgan thought he could hear laughter from inside one of the lorries. The officer had not returned – if McCaigh had been right about his destination maybe the bastard was constipated.

  As Corrigan and Imrie, suitably coated and helmeted, walked along the track towards the bridge, Morgan and Beckwith skirted round the pool of light, reached the bank of river some thirty yards downstream and then worked their way back along the water’s edge. Climbing up into the underslung girder was as easy as it had looked from the OP, and they encountered no difficulties crossing to the other side along the wide, L-shaped beams. The only real problem was a distinct lack of light, but then Beckwith had always claimed he could put together explosive charges in his sleep.

  On the bridge above them Corrigan and Imrie had stopped to light cigarettes and were now leaning over the parapet, puffing away as contentedly as their German predecessors had done. Away to their right the lorries were still sitting in the forecourt.

  The striking of a match betrayed the position of the missing officer. ‘The bastard’s standing on the platform,’ Imrie suddenly realized.

  ‘Maybe he’s waiting for a train,’ Corrigan said flippantly.

  A few seconds later the two men were staring at each other, suddenly aware of what that might mean.

  Thirty yards away, crouched behind a corner of the stone-built engine shed, Farnham was mentally sifting through the same implications. If the lorries were there to meet a train, then the chances of it arriving either just before or just after the bridge blew up were pretty good. But was there any way to take the train down with the bridge? He couldn’t think of one. It was already too late – Beckwith would have the time pencils in place by now. They would have to trust to luck.

  The mingled smell of coal, tar and oil was heavy in Farnham’s nostrils, taking him back to his schooldays and the frequent illicit trips to Bishop’s Stortford engine shed which he and Tubby Mayne had made. Fifteen years ago now. A lot had happened in that time. The Depression, the War, marriage, growing up. Tubby had been killed in the Battle of Britain.

  He looked at his watch – Morgan and Beckwith had been under the bridge for almost fifteen minutes. And then he heard the train whistle in the distance. It was still a few miles away, he thought. Probably approaching one of the three tunnels that lay between San Severino and Tolentino.

  Under the bridge Morgan had heard it too, and the same possibilities had occurred to him. But by this time Beckwith had placed all the charges and was now scurrying through the girders, squeezing the detonators on the black-coded time pencils. As the ampoules shattered, the acid began eating into the thin wire, and in roughly ten minutes – the ‘roughly’ was a sore point among users – the wires would break, releasing the springs and slamming firing pins into initiators, exploding the charges and hopefully, in this case, dropping the bridge into the river.

  Morgan could hear the wheeze of the approaching locomotive. It couldn’t be much more than a mile away.

  Beckwith was only a few feet away now, breathing heavily as he reached for the final device. The last thing Morgan heard was his sergeant’s mutter of frustration, and then the charge went off, tearing Beckwith limb from limb and hurling Morgan himself against an iron girder with the force of a hurricane. Both bodies dropped into the surging river.

  Thirty yards away Farnham spun round to see the bridge still standing, the smoke clearing to reveal Corrigan on the far bank, pointing at something in the water. He just had time to notice that the German officer had vanished from the station platform when the man re-emerged in the forecourt barking orders at the standing lorries. There was a sound of boots hitting the ground.

  Realizing he’d been holding his breath, Farnham took in a gulp of cold air and tried to think. As far as he could tell the best way out was the way they’d come in – the only alternative was to retreat across the bridge and then they’d be trapped between cliff and river.

  ‘Get across to Neil,’ he told Tobin, who was crouching wild-eyed beside him. ‘Tell him to keep Jerry at a distance. I’m going to check the bridge.’ Without waiting for an answer he launched himself across the space towards the river’s edge, reaching it just in time to see what looked like a severed leg bobbing beyond the circle of illumination offered by the searchlights. On the far bank Corrigan and Imrie were gazing hopelessly at the water, and for a few seconds Farnham felt equally paralysed. The sound of the approaching train mingled with the clatter of boots in the forecourt and the guttural shouts of the German NCOs.

  He forced himself to think
. Morgan and Beckwith must have been under the bridge long enough to place and prime all the charges, but Farnham was certain that only one of them had exploded. The bridge would probably still go up, but when? There’d been no discussion of which time pencils would be used – making sure everyone was on the same page had never been one of Morgan’s strengths. If they made a run for it now the Germans might have time to save the bridge, but could he ask the others to die holding them off when he wasn’t even sure the bridge was going to blow?

  He gulped in another lungful of air and decided he couldn’t. ‘Get back over here,’ he shouted at Corrigan and Imrie, who both looked at him stupidly for a second and then started clambering back up from the water’s edge.

  A second later the Germans opened fire, presumably in response to the silent Stens of Rafferty, Tobin and McCaigh.

  Farnham began zig-zagging his way back towards the shelter of the guardhouse. He was about halfway there when a second charge went off behind him, and then a third. He turned to see a huge cloud of smoke rising to obscure the cliffs beyond as the far end of the bridge, with what sounded eerily like a huge sigh, sank heavily into the river.

  As the smoke cleared he could see Corrigan and Imrie climbing shakily to their feet on the far bank. The bad news was that they couldn’t get back across; the good news was that neither could the Germans. Farnham gestured to them to escape along the tracks and after only a few seconds’ hesitation Corrigan flashed a thumbs up and turned away, pulling Imrie after him.

  Farnham resumed his run towards the guardhouse, just as a hail of bullets swept over his head. The train was now entering the station, pouring a dark plume of smoke at the sky and half drowning the sound of the German guns. With something akin to a leap of the heart Farnham realized that it was going to pull right through the station, effectively cutting them off from the German troops who were inching their way forward from the end of the platform.

  Reaching the shelter of the guardhouse, he opened up with his own Sten and saw a German fall, though whether from his or Rafferty’s fire he couldn’t tell. The Italian locomotive was still coming forward, and at this rate it might even reach what remained of the bridge.