by Tim Pears
If the wealthy man will not give away what he has, then it shall be taken from him, Tom surmises. Well, and why not? He looks at Jovan: the inner fire burning has given a glow to his crooked, handsome face.
June 14
A PLANNING MEETING has been convened. The conference room consists of logs in a clearing. The Fourth Zone commander, present commissar and staff officer of the Fourth Zone are there, along with company leaders. Jack Farwell, Tom, Jovan. Ten-year-old Yugoslav maps are laid out and studied for targets: railways in Stajerska that have not yet been attacked, for want of explosives. The commander declares that once, at least, they should have the element of surprise. It must not be wasted.
Company leaders now begin to demand that they, and their small group, be given a target here, or here, on the map, each extolling the merits of his own fighters, miners, engineers. The eagerness of the Partisans for authentic military action becomes apparent. ‘We will blow these bastards out of here,’ one of the commanders proclaims.
Farwell had been anticipating the necessity of persuasion but finds himself instead engaged in arguing for realistic ambition. At one point he catches Tom’s eye. ‘I say, Freedman,’ he beams, ‘I can’t say I was too impressed to be sent to this sideshow. But damn it all, look at them: these boys are up for a scrap.’
CHAPTER THREE
Attack on the Viaduct
June 15
A RADIO MESSAGE was sent, and the reply is received the following morning: ‘Four Halifaxes tonight.’
They are in a mountain range called the Pohorje. At its highest point, Rogla, is a large flat meadow surrounded by forest, God-given for their supply drop that night: fire signals can only be seen from the air; pilots can come in low without fear of higher mountains around. All the Partisans in the Pohorje massif, around five hundred men, are congregating there.
Through the afternoon they join the headquarters, ragged bands of men, and a few women. Rough, ill-educated, tough country people. Each with a haversack, some with weapons. They have been fetched from caves, forest glades, mountain huts, led here by young couriers.
Oxen have been butchered. The cooks work without pause, and the hungry Partisans wait in silent gratitude, then eat their fill. Afterwards they lie and doze.
At dusk it is time to go. The Englishmen hear no orders given, yet sounds of rustling, clanking and knocking ripple through the trees all around them as the guerrilla soldiers stir from their slumber, gather their possessions, move.
They are all in the meadow hours before the time of arrival, listening out for the sound of aircraft in the night. Every few minutes someone thinks he hears something, everyone else strains even harder, but it is nothing. A wind-borne mirage of sound, a trick of the mind.
An hour after the designated time a sound comes that they all hear. It grows louder… then fades away to silence. Then is audible once more. The commander orders the fires lit. The drone becomes a roar and then there is only the big bomber flying directly overhead. Jack Farwell flashes their identification signal and the pilot responds.
The Halifax circles, and begins dropping its load on the return run: first, large metal containers under the wings and then, on subsequent passes, padded bundles pushed out of the hold. They can hear the rustle of the silk parachutes in the darkness above them before they appear. And when they do, each one is a fresh surprise: it seems to materialise as if out of another dimension.
The first plane completes its drop, and is followed by three more. In the meadow, hundreds of Partisans rush about, unharnessing parachutes as they land, carrying off containers. In addition to the military supplies, large bags of white flour are dropped without parachutes. Each bag has been placed inside a much larger sack, to collect the flour when the inner bag inevitably breaks on impact. These plummet from the sky and thump on the ground, in amongst the Partisans, as if some playful giant were tossing them down. A direct hit will squash a man like a fly.
It appears to Jack and Tom, watching with the commanders, like utter chaos, whoever is to hand collecting whatever lies nearest to them. But by dawn the meadow is cleared, supplies sorted and dispersed to temporarily secure hiding. The drop includes medical supplies, and a pedal generator for Sid Dixon’s radio batteries. There are also toothbrushes, soap, clothes, sweets, tobacco. Most of the guns and ammunition for the Partisans are German and Italian, to keep in line with those they already have, captured from the enemy or handed over by surrendering Italians. There are also a few British Bren guns.
After the soldiers have slept, those who need to be are armed with the new weapons. Jovan takes Tom and Jack around the wood. The Partisans are cleaning their rifles; taking them apart and putting them back together if they are new. Again it is as if an order has been given, so universal appears the habit. They lavish attention on the task, but some become aware of the Englishmen and nod and smile, their appreciation evident. The Allied planes have brought them the tools to do the job.
June 17
TWO TARGETS HAVE been chosen. Tonight they will attack. Jack Farwell is to go with one large detachment to a tunnel some miles south. Tom and Jovan will accompany a second detachment to a railway viaduct further north.
Sid Dixon will stay behind on the Pohorje, with a skeleton headquarters staff. He has made friends among the Partisans without, it seems to Tom, learning a word of the language; and he has discovered a batch of Indian tea leaves among the supplies dropped, of which he has procured a couple of pounds. ‘Good luck, sir,’ he says, raising a mug of char to Tom.
‘Here is the sabotage you have come for,’ Jovan says. ‘I hope you approve of our methods.’
‘In artillery training, when I first joined the army, blowing things up was not exactly my speciality,’ Tom admits. ‘But I did like setting off Polish rail charges. Two small sticks of plastic explosive we attached to a single line of track. The wheels of the locomotive we wanted to stop crushed the charges, and set off the detonators; only about a metre of rail was taken out, but it could be just about enough to derail the train. We had a bit of fun playing with them on an old siding in Berkshire. A subtle explosive, if one could say such a thing.’ Tom nods at the memory. ‘Rather satisfying, actually.’
Jovan frowns. ‘I am not sure, Tom,’ he says, ‘that it will be quite like that here.’
Soon after dark they set off down the mountain, two hundred men and women each with fifty pounds of plastic explosive in his or her knapsack; some bear weapons; others carry shovels and picks. They walk in silence; but this is quite different from the long trudges of these last weeks: Tom discerns a peculiar energy in the gait of the soldiers along the column, as they close in upon their first large-scale military operation.
It is a beautiful night. A half-moon, the sky almost cloudless. It now feels quite natural to Tom to be awake, outside, on the move when the world is sleeping.
All of a sudden the column comes to a halt. Jovan tells Tom they are less than a mile from the target. The soldiers lower their rucksacks to the ground, and sit down, while half a dozen men slip ahead to dispatch the guards on the viaduct. After a while one comes back, to give the all-clear.
They now descend to the railway line, walk to the viaduct and scramble down the embankment. Three free-standing stone columns bear the weight of the middle of the bridge across the dry gulley: massive granite pillars, each at least twelve by twenty feet. Each porter deposits his or her explosives, then is sorted into new, smaller units to set up blockades and ambushes north and south along the line and an adjoining road: there are known to be German garrisons in all directions, the nearest a mile away.
Men with picks and shovels begin to attack the rocky ground around the pillars so that they can bury the explosive, giving it far greater power than if it were merely laid on the surface. At first the men, in an effort to minimise the sound of their labours, chip delicately at the stones, but this has little effect and their officers order them to use full force. Standing some feet away, the noise of a dozen navvies bang
ing and shovelling, of metal on stone, rings out in the night; it seems certain to Tom to wake all the Germans in Slovenia. This is not subterfuge, but a suicidal cacophony. Sparks are struck. Time slows down. The men make little impression in five minutes: Tom checks his watch in agitation and sees only one minute has ticked by. He follows Jovan from one pillar to another to view progress. The men take it in turns: two swing their picks, then the others dig. In between they lean on their shovels, panting, sweat visible on their faces in the moonlight.
After an hour of digging, the holes are sufficient; Tom watches the two Partisan miners put into each of them three thousand pounds of plastic explosives. These are connected with primer-cord, detonators are fixed, everything taped up, wires laid, before rocks are placed back into the holes on top of the explosives.
The wires are run up the embankment and along the tracks a safe distance. Jovan whispers to Tom that he doesn’t understand why the German guard on the viaduct has not been replaced. When they reconnoitred, it was checked, apparently, throughout the night, yet here they are performing this interminable noisy sabotage without interruption or challenge. The event takes on in Tom’s mind an air of unsettling improbability. It is as if at any moment reality will erupt in obliterating attack, the Partisans victims of some elaborate quisling entrapment.
The miners connect the electric wires to a plunger, and one of them yells out a countdown. ‘Deset! Devet! Osem! Sedem!’ In between the man’s declarations is total silence. ‘Šest! Pet! Štiri!’ Tom takes a last look at the granite viaduct, monumental in the silvery night. ‘Tri! Dva! Ena!’ He looks across, and sees one of the miners depress the plunger with an emphatic flourish. A second later comes what sounds like the loudest and most terrifying clap of thunder Tom has ever heard. It reverberates up and down the mountain valley for several seconds. Stones are thrown up into the air by the explosion. He notices that he is not the only one flinching; the men crouch down and cover their heads, and even at that distance Tom feels pinprick shards peppering the backs of his hands.
He follows the miners at a run to the viaduct. All three columns and arches have been destroyed: where the bridge stood is a gap of fifty yards. Sundered railway tracks stretch from each end into the gap, twisted and broken. Tom cannot quite work out his response. He hears Jovan’s voice beside him, feels his arm around his shoulders.
‘It is very beautiful, Tom, is it not?’
Tom smiles. ‘Yes, Jovan,’ he says. ‘That’s exactly what it is.’
They run back along the track and into the forest up the paths by which they came, a small rearguard left behind to cover their retreat; though they do not need to, and soon rejoin the main body of troops, with not a shot fired.
June 19
JACK FARWELL’S GROUP return to the Pohorje similarly unscathed, their attack on the tunnel also a success. There were sentries at either end, but, on coming under fire, all had surrendered. Jack himself, so he claimed, had found holes in the side walls of the tunnel expressly made to plant explosives, and there the Partisans laid their charges.
‘The Austrians put the holes in when they built it, so they could block the line if they needed to, to keep the barbarians out. Now we’ve blocked it for them.’ He tips his cap in a northerly direction. ‘Most welcome, Adolf, old boy.’
The Partisan commander is certain the Germans will come looking for them now, will come pouring across the massif, but he is loath to quit the best supply drop point imaginable. So sentries are posted, dotted at vantage points around the hills, and messages transmitted to Italy: send us more explosives.
June 21
THE PARTISANS ARE camped in the woods all around the fringe of the massif. Meat is stewing in pots; in improvised ovens, bread is baking. Jovan escorts Tom around the encampment. A barber cuts hair. A dentist is checking teeth: his only remedy for pain is to pull them; his skill is to do so swiftly and cleanly. A man walks away hunched, resentful, holding a darkening bandage to his mouth. A doctor holds a clinic under a linden tree, his instruments laid out along a branch. ‘When we had no medicine, the normal ailments of life disappeared,’ he tells Tom. ‘Now you have given us medicine, look!’ He gestures towards the line of sorry-looking Partisans waiting to see him. ‘Now they are all falling ill, and drag themselves to see me.’
The doctor inserts stethoscope earpieces and places the diaphragm on a patient’s chest. There is something comical about the consulting-room procedure taking place outdoors; Tom pulls on Jovan’s sleeve, and they move on. Morale is high. It makes Tom think of some great Scout jamboree more than a war of resistance against occupation.
‘For those like me,’ Jovan tells him, ‘of course it was more, it was a revolution from the beginning. Slovenia, though, is a nation of smallholders. What would be the appeal of communism for them? People accept the truth of the revolutionary movement not because they believe in it as we do, but because it has offered the only way out of this mortal crisis.’ They sit on the ground. They each smoke a Player’s untipped, from among the supplies dropped. Jovan frowns through the smoke. ‘It became a civil war because other groups sided with the enemy. Once the Chetniks agreed not to attack the Germans or the Italians, it was a small step to accept food from them; a further small step to accept weapons, to use against us. If the Chetniks had fought against the occupation, we would not be so strong. They have betrayed their people, and helped us.’
When Tom returns to their tent, Dixon tells him they have received a radio message: four Dakotas are coming tonight with further supplies.
June 22
ANOTHER GLORIOUS NIGHT of chaos in the meadow. Parachutes falling, flour thumping. Explosives, weapons, food, warmly received. A second radio and, to Tom’s amazement, a man drifting to earth: he turns out to be a second wireless operator, Morris, sent to join them; no word of his arrival had been given, as far as Tom knows, and he has deciphered all the incoming radio messages. Jack is less surprised, although this is in keeping with the image of insouciance he likes to give off. Tom saw plenty of such types in Oxford: Jack affects to have seen it all.
There are also two containers of entirely left-footed boots. Responses vary wildly: some, taking Jack Farwell’s lead, laugh with facetious delight at this bureaucratic incompetence; the Fourth Zone commissar and others scowl at the deliberate slight, attempt to interpret its intended meaning. ‘The Red Army would never insult us like this,’ he says.
‘No,’ Jack tells Tom. ‘The Soviets have avoided insulting the Jugs by never giving them anything.’
Ian Morris is a cockney corporal. He emerges from his tent after a few hours’ sleep and takes a look around the forest. Sid Dixon is already up, boiling a kettle. ‘I thought the next place I’d see’d be Rome,’ Morris says, mournfully. ‘I can see all the trees I want in Richmond Park.’ He paces around the clearing.
‘Sugar?’
The two men discuss signal codes, call times, wireless reception. ‘Weird thing is, you begin to make out the different operators at base,’ Dixon says. ‘I don’t know how. From the speed they tap at, I suppose.’
Morris takes his first gulp of tea, then leaps up and spits it on the ground. ‘Urgh,’ he exclaims. ‘What the ’eck’s that?’
Sid Dixon grins. ‘Goat’s milk,’ he says. ‘You’ll get used to it.’
Scouts report that, on orders from the German district commander, a dozen men from the garrison nearest to the viaduct have been shot. A courier brings up a copy of the German-language paper published in Maribor, in which the rail attacks are blamed on Allied saboteurs. A large reward is offered for their capture. Tom feels oddly different after reading it. No longer anonymous figures passing through the landscape, ghost soldiers, now the Englishmen’s presence is known; they are identifiable, tangible targets. From now on, he understands, they will be hunted. And there is a new hunter.
‘The Crna Roka,’ Jovan tells him. The Black Hand. At their mention Tom notices Pero, sitting close by, wince. Jovan’s face darkens.
‘Who are they?’ Tom asks.
‘The worst section of the Home Guard,’ Jovan explains. ‘Made up of criminals and thugs. There are rumours that they have moved to Maribor, just north of here. Their purpose is to hunt down Partisans, and our sympathisers, and kill them as brutally as they can.’ He looks at Tom. ‘Do not be so worried,’ he says. ‘They are cowards. We will be quite safe from them with the headquarters staff. It is only small units, families or individuals that they dare to attack.’
June 27
TOM IS SHAVING one morning when he hears gunfire. Couriers come running, to give reports and receive orders. A German patrol has stumbled upon a Partisan unit; a skirmish ensued; enemy reinforcements have been brought to the mountain, and now encircle it. They are held off until dark, whereupon the command is given to break out: they must somehow sneak through the enemy lines. But the enemy knows that is what they will try to do. Just as they set off, the heavens open: a summer storm, an absolute corker. Bright electric filaments of lightning streak out of the clouds, biting the earth. Then the sky darkens, and there is drumming rain. The voice of thy thunder was in the heavens: the lightnings lightened the world: the earth trembled and shook. It is impossible to see or hear anything. Following couriers who know these mountains they shuffle forward in single file, an endless caterpillar, holding on to the man in front, and make a slow, orderly procession. The enemy are presumably sheltering in whatever bivouacs they can muster, hoping the Yugoslavs won’t bump into them. The only sound is the rain on leaves, oilskins, the bubbling earth; if there is firing further away than a dozen yards, they cannot hear it. The Partisans and their English guests stumble along, in a kind of nature-imposed truce.