by Tim Pears
The men and women flop down, in barns where there is space, or in the open, and sleep. When Tom is woken, he and Pero go and find the headquarters staff. They chew on lumps of boiled meat and bread, while the company commanders speculate on when the air attack will come off. The Allied planes are due any time after four.
At two o’clock the commanders return to their companies, detachments are sent to take up their positions. Tom and Pero move forward. Soldiers lean against tree trunks, crouch by the path, lie on the forest floor. Some smoke, others doze. One or two look anxious, troubled by the violence that awaits. As he passes her, Tom notices one young woman give an involuntary shudder: her body is trying to shake off the morbid prospects conjured by her mind. Yet most are lost in thought, gazing at nothing visible, in a state of narcoleptic vacancy, or acceptance.
Tom and Pero reach the divisional commander. ‘How far are we from the bridge?’ Tom asks.
The commander is a young man, much the same age as Tom. He removes his Titovka, to reveal a shaven head. Perhaps he had bad lice? It gives him a menacing appearance. ‘One kilometre.’
Tom shakes his head. ‘The bomb line is one mile.’
The commander shrugs his shoulders, and laughs. ‘One kilometre, one mile.’
Tom wanders away. He would like to see Marija, and Stipe. Not to speak with them but just to see her, on the eve of battle, summoning within herself – he is certain she must perform such a ritual – martial energy; a brooding malevolence. But he cannot find them. He is struck, indeed, by how few soldiers there seem to be. Whether this is because they are now dispersed across the forested hill above the bridge, or because as the time of the attack draws near so however many there are do not seem to him to be enough, Tom is not sure. He returns to the shaven-headed commander. Tom offers him a cigarette.
The commander inhales deeply, and exhales through his nose. ‘I thought he was your interpreter,’ he says, nodding to Pero.
‘He is not supposed to speak our language so well,’ Pero protests. ‘It is not my fault, sir. I did not teach him.’
As they talk, Tom and the commander find out they were born in the same month, April, 1918. Both were studying when war called them out, one at Oxford, the other in Budapest.
‘Will you return, do you think, when this is over?’ Tom asks. He wonders if the man shaves his head to disguise his education.
‘I studied history. Now I am one of those making it. I suppose afterwards I shall have to teach it.’
They cease their conversation, and wait. The Partisans await the Allied air attack like a runner the starting pistol. How vital the planes are! Sound takes on that anticipatory quality familiar, from all the midnight drops, of an emptiness, a silence in which noise is imminent. The airwaves, it seems, are themselves taut with expectation.
Shortly before four thirty they hear the faint sound of the planes. The commander leaps up, grabbing his Schmeisser, and runs to his lookout point. Tom follows, with his binoculars. Far above, six fighters fly over, very high. Tom looks around. Every soldier peers through the canopy of leaves above him. The enemy’s guns are still silent, for he is unaware who is overhead and what is about to befall him.
The first of the six Mustangs comes back, diving, and now the ack-ack opens up. Tom sees from the plane’s wings two black shapes detach themselves and drop down. The crunch of the explosion mingles with the flak, as the second plane comes in. Under the trees the Partisans now are laughing and slapping each other on the back, yelling encouragement to the pilots as one Mustang after the other dives, unloads its bombs, and is gone. There are the final bursts of anti-aircraft fire that chase the last plane from the valley like a terrier yapping after a visitor. The silence that follows the departure of the last plane is eerie. It is terribly strange, for it cannot last. Tom is suspended from existence, he hovers above it, time holds its breath.
And then suddenly there is gunfire everywhere. On the far side of the river the brigade that has come up from the free territory in the south – tracing perhaps the same route Tom and the others took three months ago – is making its attack.
The commander waves his Schmeisser in the air and yells to his men, ‘Juris, hura!’ He rushes forward through the trees, followed by soldiers, including Tom and Pero. They scurry down the steep hillside, grabbing saplings and branches to slow their helter-skelter headlong progress.
In a gap between trees Tom sees the bridge laid across the wide river, high sides a latticework of metal. On the far bank a farmhouse is consumed by yellow flames. The bridge is untouched. The Mustangs with their small bombs were enough merely to inspire the Partisans, demoralise the enemy.
As the slope of the hill flattens out, Tom and Pero sprint through the trees. They come to a road which runs straight for a hundred yards then curves gradually out of sight. Partisans ahead of them are moving forward carefully. Then others come back the other way, carrying the wounded. As Tom walks along the road, he hears the whistle of German mortar shells. He flings himself down. Others hug either side of the road. Some have not taken cover. The commander walks slowly towards the bend in the road: the communist officers pride themselves on meeting danger head on. Tom is glad that Pero crouches beside him – even if only, perhaps, because these are his orders. They lie low, and Tom passes a cigarette to Pero, and another to a boy behind him. If this is the only road to the bridge, he wonders, then where is everyone? Suddenly he is rocked back. Pero, a couple of yards ahead, looks at him, as surprised as Tom is. Something has happened but no one knows what. But of course: a mortar shell landed, close by. Tom turns to the boy. The boy’s eyes widen as his shirt and jacket bloom with blood. Tom crawls across and grasps his shoulders, and lowers him gently to the grass. The boy moans. Blood trickles from his lips, his nose. His face is otherwise pale. He still looks surprised. He gulps sounds that are like words, faintly, then he gasps and the life is gone from him. Tom reaches over and closes the boy’s eyes. He turns and sees that mortars are still coming in, landing in puffs of black smoke.
A young woman stalks up the road carrying a sub-machine gun. Reaching the bend in the road she stops, leans back and fires her gun from the hip. A crouching figure tries to pull her down to cover, grabbing one of her trouser legs, but she kicks herself free and runs on, disappearing from sight.
She is the last one Tom sees go on towards the bridge. Others come the other way, retreating; some wounded, many not. They come back with the air of people who have changed their minds about something.
Tom runs past them. He has a compulsion to see the bridge, or the attack, or simply what lies around the bend in the road. The view of a battlefield is rarely clear. Even the few who are able to think clearly can make little sense of the chaos when they are in the midst of it. When he turns the corner, Tom can see the bridge two to three hundred yards ahead. Figures are running in all directions. Mortar fire comes from German positions; there is a tank in front of the bridge. Small-arms fire rattles around them, past them. A disorientating din. Tom feels a tug on his sleeve and lets himself be dragged by Pero towards the frail shelter of some thin trees at the side of the road.
There are many Partisans sheltering amongst the trees. Some lean out from behind a trunk, fire from their carbines, then duck back. Tom becomes aware of a strong, sweet smell. Peering deeper into the wood he makes out Partisan sappers preparing their explosive devices from the plastic loaves brought in in twos and threes. First a path has to be cleared to the bridge.
Tom and Pero work their way through the wood, closer towards the river. There are many soldiers but it is hard to tell if they are massing here for a full-frontal assault or hiding, having retreated from the perilous road. They come across the young commander. A girl is beside him. She cuts off the sleeve of the right arm of his jacket.
‘What’s happening?’ Tom asks him.
Now the girl removes the sleeve of the commander’s shirt. ‘We took them by surprise,’ he says, with some vehemence, though this may be due to the pain
he must be feeling. His arm is covered in blood. It pours from a wound above his elbow. ‘But they were expecting us,’ he says, with equal anger.
The young woman dresses the wound with a bandage. ‘Come back,’ she tells him. ‘Come to the rear.’
‘No,’ he replies. ‘The bone is not broken. Our people on the other side,’ he says, turning to Tom, ‘they have artillery. Antitank guns. They have ox-carts to carry the wounded home! We must wait for them to break through and clear the bridge, before we can mine it.’
‘But German reinforcements might come while you are waiting…’ Tom ventures.
The commander frowns, as if Tom has reminded him of something he’d considered, but then tried to ignore. ‘Yes, yes. But if we hold them off till nightfall.’ He shakes his head, as if disagreeing with himself.
The young woman ties the bandage and the commander rises without a word to her, or to Tom, and walks through the trees towards the bridge, calling out to his soldiers to accompany him. They obey, getting stiffly to their feet. Within moments, it seems, the wood around Tom and Pero has emptied. Even the young nurse has disappeared. Tom realises with dismay that a few stupid words he uttered to the commander have prompted a proud and reckless response. The forces at his disposal are clearly inadequate to the task in hand. But why? Why are there not more Partisans? What is going on? He saw the orders sent from Marshal Tito, via British signals, for major attacks across Yugoslavia, of which this is one. And then it occurs to him: something unthinkable which, as soon as it is thought, becomes obvious: that original order was followed by other orders, separate from the Allies, for the Partisans themselves. Do not commit large numbers of men, weapons or explosives. We shall need these for later. Make an effort, for those who provide for us. A little effort.
It strikes Tom, too, that Jovan knows. The truth washes through him, like a wave of nausea. So why then let the command send Tom? Did Jovan think he was the simplest British officer? The one most easily duped? But there is no time to ponder now.
Tom runs after the departed Partisans, Pero with him. He reaches the edge of the wood much sooner than he had expected. There is a large, mostly open area between the wood and the river. The Partisans are storming the bridge with little covering fire, and few places to hide. They fall, stumble, are dragged and carried back.
There is a yell, a few yards away, to their left. Tom turns. Pero is already moving. It is Stipe who cried out. Tom rushes over. It is not Stipe who has been hit, but Marija, collapsed over her gun.
‘Come,’ Tom says. ‘Quick.’ Stipe lifts her shoulders, Pero her legs, and they carry her back through the trees.
‘The gun,’ Pero says.
‘Leave it,’ Tom tells him.
When they have passed beyond the line of fire they lay Marija down. Tom opens her shirt. A bullet has entered just above her left breast, and passed out below the shoulder blade, leaving a jagged hole. She is bleeding profusely. Tom takes off his shirt, dirty and sweat-soaked as it is, and they bind her as best they can.
‘There is a first-aid station in the village where we stayed this morning,’ Pero says.
‘Good,’ Tom says. ‘We will carry her back.’ Stipe cuts two ash saplings, lashing them together with smaller branches. Pero is gone and reappears with a blanket, with which they fashion a stretcher. Tom picks up the end opposite Stipe and they follow Pero back through the trees and up the hill away from the river. Marija is unconscious. The sounds of battle grow fainter.
The stretcher is jerry-built, and Marija’s weight is awkward. Tom stumbles, and they almost drop her, so they stop and find flexible tendrils of a climbing plant and tie her to the stretcher.
It seems to take twice as long to trace the journey back from the bridge to the village, and it is dark by the time they find the small farmhouse at the end of a gloomy lane and carry Marija in. There are two low-ceilinged rooms. A Partisan follows the doctor around with a kerosene lamp. The floors are covered with hay and crowded with wounded men. They lay Marija down. An aide removes Tom’s blood-soaked shirt from her. The doctor takes off his spectacles and wipes them carefully, before kneeling down and washing the wound in Marija’s back. Her flesh is very white and delicate. The wound does not stop bleeding. He cleans it with sulphonamide powder and bandages it with fresh linen, then turns her over and does the same for the little entry wound above her small, pale breast. It is only as he finishes dressing the wounds that Marija wakes up. The first thing she does is to grimace and groan with pain. Tom wishes she could return to unconsciousness.
‘It is all right,’ the doctor says. ‘We still have a little morphine.’ He gives Marija an injection, and though she does not open her eyes, she stops moaning.
When the doctor stands up he looks at Tom, at his uniform, and says in English, ‘May I have a cigarette?’
‘How is she?’ Tom asks, snapping open his lighter.
The doctor exhales the smoke. ‘There is nothing I can do for her here,’ he says. ‘Perhaps there is nothing anyone can do.’ He smokes some more. ‘I would prefer not to move her, but we shall all have to move out during the night. The Germans will be keen, as always, to kill our wounded.’ He leaves them, to deal with another patient who has been brought in.
Stipe kneels beside Marija, holding her hand. She is sleeping once more.
‘Could you follow the route we took?’ Tom asks Pero. ‘Back to the valley?’
Pero considers the question, then slowly nods. ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘I believe I could.’
‘Come on,’ Tom says. ‘We’re leaving.’
September 4
THEY WALK THROUGH the dark night. Stipe holds the front of the stretcher, Tom is at the back. In the depths of the forest Pero ties a plait of bindweed around his waist and Stipe’s, and leads him forward. In the darkness Tom could almost forget he is a stretcher-bearer; can imagine the poles are in his hands to guide him.
Tom is in a mulish frame of mind. He has set his shoulder to this task: to get Marija home. Their temporary home in the liberated valley, and one of the hospitals there. The doctor, Olga. If she can be saved, Olga will save her.
How does Pero know the way? He is like a homing pigeon. Perhaps couriers have awakened in themselves some dormant animal instinct, some internal compass tuned to the magnetic fields of the earth.
Crossing a hilltop meadow, Tom notices a faint warm glow in the darkness ahead, intermittently visible past Stipe’s solid body. As they come closer, the outline of a small wayside shrine begins to take form. The yellow light is from a tiny altar lamp. They pause for a rest. ‘It is safe here,’ Pero says. ‘The people light the lamps in the shrines only when an area is free of German patrols.’
Marija sleeps. Pero goes to the nearby farmhouse and comes back with a loaf of bread, and some apples. The men consume half the food, then set off again.
The weight of the stretcher is not great, and Stipe has the heavier end, but Tom’s shoulders burn. He can feel a soreness in his palms where blisters are forming, for though the bark of the ash poles is smooth it is constantly shifting, rubbing his skin, as they walk.
He is dimly aware of people following behind him.
Soon after dawn they rest in a clearing. There are twenty or thirty other Partisans with them now. Some are wounded, with bandages tied over their heads, or with sticks to help their limping gait, two more on makeshift stretchers carried by comrades. Marija is still unconscious. Stipe feeds her water, and apple mush, like a baby. She swallows it in her sleep. Do not wake up, Tom pleads. Then he himself puts his head to the ground, and falls asleep.
They wake very soon and walk on, having shared the last of the bread and apples. Stipe will not let the other two carry the stretcher. Pero takes over from Tom, but Stipe turns the stretcher around, with Marija carried feet first now, so that he still bears the heavier end. Tom trudges after him. The others straggle behind Tom.
The day is baking hot. They move at a slow but steady pace. Every now and again Tom hears motorised vehicles �
� one, or two; at other times a whole column – thundering close or rumbling in the distance along a road. There is no consistency to the vehicles’ direction.
Late in the morning they stop. Tom climbs with Pero to a ridge from where they can see the way ahead. They must cross a river. Through his field glasses Tom can see small clusters of soldiers in German uniforms on the meadows above the canyon. They have red and white chequerboard insignia on the arms of their jackets: Ustasha, the Croatian fascists.
When Tom and Pero return to their comrades, Stipe waves them frantically over: Marija is conscious. Her eyes seem to have withdrawn, are hooded and grey. Stipe tells them that she feels no pain. She smiles when she recognises Tom, kneeling beside her, taking her right hand in his.
‘You are here,’ she says, her voice faint.
Tom nods. ‘We’re going to get you back,’ he tells her. ‘To a hospital.’
‘You are here,’ she whispers. Tom feels a slight sensation, a pulse, in his bloody palm, realises it is Marija’s attempt to squeeze his hand. He squeezes hers, lets it go, and stands. Around him, it is clear, are many more Partisans than there were earlier. Pero is their courier and Tom their leader. He gives the order to move out. He and Stipe carry Marija’s stretcher; it occurs to Tom to appoint two able-bodied men to carry a corner each; but he cannot persuade Stipe to share a handle, and so nor does he. It is their cross to bear, together.
Pero leads the way. They descend towards the river. The trees thin out. In front of them is a clearing where the trees have been felled by loggers. A huddle of half a dozen Partisans whom they have caught up with are ahead of them, sheltering behind the last trees. They explain that a battery of howitzers are shelling the clearing, but there is no way round it, for there are cliffs above and below.