Swordpoint (2011)

by John Harris

  ‘Yes, sir, they were. But it seems Jerry keeps slipping back across the river and replacing them.’

  Heathfield stared at the Yellowjackets’ report on the loss of their patrol. ‘How is it,’ he demanded fretfully, ‘that they can put patrols across to our side without being interfered with, yet we don’t seem to be able to put patrols across to their side?’

  ‘Because we can’t see what they’re up to, I suppose. They can see everything that goes on.’

  ‘The patrol didn’t cross until after dark.’

  ‘They probably saw the boat being carried down, sir.’

  ‘It was kept in San Bartolomeo until dark.’

  ‘They can see beyond San Bartolomeo from Monte Cassino, sir. Well beyond.’

  ‘Well, tell them to have another go. And inform the Sappers that those mines will have to be cleared.’

  ‘At the moment they’re trying to lay tank routes to the river, sir. They’ve got hold of wire matting from the American air force. They use it for temporary landing strips, I believe.’

  Heathfield’s frown deepened still further. He could foresee this damned road from San Bartolomeo causing trouble. He was well aware that in his determination to force his plan forward, he had cheated a little when he’d said a timetable had been worked out based on other similar movements. So it had, but it had been worked out on hard winter roads whereas the verges from San Bartolomeo were soft with rain.

  All the same, he felt, he was right to push the thing. It had to go on. They’d been told it had to go on. And nobody got promotion by refusing responsibility. Perhaps it was as well orders had come down from the high altar, because already there were too many people raising objections, too many people finding difficulties which ought not to exist. In his warm and comfortable office, Brigadier Heathfield believed firmly that a little more spirit was needed, a little more determination, a little more enterprise such as the Engineers were showing with the air force strips they were building for Vivian’s tanks.

  ‘Who put ’em up to these wire mat things?’ he asked.

  ‘The Yeomanry, sir. Colonel Vivian, to be exact. He says he has to have some means of getting past all the bridging material.’

  ‘What’s happening about assault boats?’

  ‘I’m still trying, sir. But Corps seem to have grabbed them all for their effort further north.’

  ‘Try the Americans. They’ll probably let us have some.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  ‘How about DUKWs? Aren’t there any of those? They had ’em at Anzio and Salerno.’

  ‘I gather they’re being rounded up and sent home, sir. For the Second Front.’

  ‘Well, we can’t cross rivers without boats. Why wasn’t the matter put in hand before Corps grabbed them all?’

  ‘Sir–’ the other officer stiffened at the suggestion of inefficiency – ‘I was only informed two days ago that boats would be needed.’

  ‘How the devil did you expect to cross a river?’

  ‘Sir, I gather the plan was made five days ago, but I’ve never been told what form it was to take. We could have been using parachutists.’

  ‘Don’t be bloody impertinent!’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, but I had no idea.’

  Heathfield waved the other man away irritably. ‘Anyway, get on with it! There must be boats somewhere. Corps can’t have grabbed them all. Try to round up a few from the local Italians.’

  ‘I gather the Germans thought of that, sir,’ the AAQMG said bleakly. ‘What they couldn’t move, they sank.’

  In Trepiazze, Yuell’s men were coming to the end of their rest period. They all knew it.

  Food increased, new uniforms were issued, and there was a rash of kit inspections. Inevitably, Syzling was short of several things. Not only had he lost them but, knowing his reputation, everybody else in A Company had kept a sharp eye on their own belongings and he hadn’t been able to lift anything.

  Lieutenant Deacon, his smooth round face pink with rage, stormed at him.

  ‘You’re the most useless bloody object I’ve ever had to deal with, Syzling,’ he said, his voice rising until it was almost a screech.

  Syzling stared at him dully, trying to look defiant without looking defiant enough to be put on a charge. He was put on a charge, anyway.

  Watching him shuffle off with Corporal Wymark towards the barn that did duty as a stores, Deacon felt exhausted. Syzling always made him feel exhausted. In Deacon’s ordered world, there was no such thing as an individual like Syzling. When he’d been a sergeant in his school OTC, he’d had boys under him who were as keen as he was to get into a proper uniform and nobody had been difficult. A few had considered him an opinionated, self-important ass and had told him so, but, because they came from his own class, he could understand them. He’d never had to deal with anybody of the sullen stupidity of Syzling.

  If only Deacon had possessed a sense of humour, he might have struck a spark from Syzling who somehow always managed to behave himself with people who could make him laugh, like Wymark or even CSM Farnsworth whose ramrod exterior concealed a whole inheritance of old army jokes that might have been invented as a means of getting through to the Syzlings of this world. Humour, however, was one quality that Deacon conspicuously lacked.

  Seeking to distract their minds from what lay ahead, Major Peddy organised a concert party in the cold and comfortless marquee that had been used for the cinema show and an ENSA troupe was summoned from Naples. It contained no famous names because the marquee wasn’t big enough to hold the crowd famous names would have attracted, and in any case there just wasn’t time enough for the famous names to fit in so relatively unimportant a place as Trepiazze with all their other commitments.

  ‘They should shove Deacon on the stage with Frying Tonight,’ CSM Farnsworth remarked. ‘Set to music, and with a troupe of belly dancers in support, they’d have ’em rolling in the aisles.’

  The ENSA troupe were late arriving, and there was a lot of slow clapping and ‘Why are we waiting?’ until they began to sing their own particular song, the song of the army of Italy:

  ‘We are the D-Day dodgers, out in Italy,

  Always drinking vino and always on the spree.

  The desert shirkers and the Yanks,

  We live in peace and dodge the tanks.

  We are the D-Day dodgers,

  The boys D-Day will dodge.’

  They sang it to the tune of ‘Lili Marlene’, which they’d pinched from the Germans in North Africa, and the lilting melody gave the words a curious poignancy. And when they appeared to have finished, somebody at the back began to sing an extra verse on his own. He had a good voice, and the men around him pushed him to his feet so that he could be heard still more clearly:

  ‘Look around the mountains, in the mud and rain,

  You’ll find the scattered crosses, some which bear

  no name.

  Heartbreak and toil and suffering gone,

  The lads beneath them slumber on.

  They are the D-Day dodgers,

  Who’ll stay in Italy.’

  The soloist was young, with a face like a choirboy’s, and the truth in the words he sang brought a dead silence to the marquee that lasted for several moments after the last note died away. It was uncomfortable and uneasy and spoiled the mood; but it expressed the bitterness they all felt at having a thankless task, unappreciated at home where nobody could think of anything but the forthcoming invasion of Western Europe. It was a bitterness they shared with the Fourteenth Army in Burma.

  When the ENSA show finally got going, it consisted of a tenor whose voice was so embarrassingly high it provoked wolf whistles from the back; an ageing soubrette with arms like thighs and breasts like buttocks, who worked through her numbers wearing a death’s head grin to show she was enjoying it; and a pianist who also played a fiddle, a piano accordion, cymbals, a penny whistle and a set of motor horns, eventually placing them in a frame and playing them all at once. ‘Why not sho
ve one up your arse, mate,’ Private Parkin yelled, ‘and fart “God Save The King”?’ Finally, there was a pub comic who seemed to be suffering from a hangover because he obviously couldn’t have cared less whether they enjoyed his efforts or not.

  It wasn’t a very inspired affair and, deciding they could do better than the falsetto tenor, they pushed up Evans the Bomb who gave them ‘Rose Marie’, ‘The Desert Song’ and ‘The Song of the Vagabonds’, and they enjoyed it so much they wouldn’t let him go until he’d sung everything else he knew and finally retired breathless. Encouraged by his success, Private Parkin gave them a tap dance, a few jokes that fell like lead balloons, and a few dubious ballads. Then, to Lieutenant Deacon’s shame, Private Syzling – of all people! – appeared blinking and dazzled in front of the footlights that had been rigged up by Vivian’s Yeomanry.

  Seeing him, they all settled back for some fun. Syzling had already found his way into the bell tent that had been erected as a dressing-room for the concert party and lifted the bottle of whisky Colonel Yuell had provided. Climbing on to the stage, half-shot and stinking of booze, he proceeded to go through his repertoire. It was the only original thing he’d ever done in his life, and even then it wasn’t all that original because he’d seen it done first by a South African medical orderly in a Cape Town bar when his troopship had docked there on its way to the Middle East. It wasn’t very extensive either and consisted of only two items.

  First of all he stood with his back to the audience with his arms wrapped round himself so that his hands appeared to belong to someone out of sight beyond him. Then, waggling his behind, he put on his act of a sailor in a shop doorway with a girl.

  Everybody hooted with delight and waited with baited breath for his pièce de résistance, even though most of them had seen it before. It was known as ‘The One-Armed Fiddler’, and Syzling never missed an opportunity of presenting it whether he was asked to or not.

  The routine began with his donning his battledress blouse with the right sleeve empty and his right arm and hand out of sight and tucked into his trousers. Usually all the props he had were two sticks, one for a bow and one for a fiddle, but tonight realism was added by the loan of the pianist’s violin. Holding the instrument in place with his chin, Syzling used his left hand to pass the bow lightly over the strings, imitating the high-pitched sound of the violin with the side of his mouth until, suddenly, he stopped short with a raucously discordant squawk of a note. Keeping the violin clamped firmly under his chin, and still grasping the bow with his free hand, he then began to pluck at the strings to the accompaniment of suitably pizzicato noises until he found the one that was supposed to be out of tune. Syzling was no comedian and it was all done with a straight face – not the straight face of the professional actor but the dogged stare of a stupid man who’d learned one party piece by heart and was struggling not to forget it. It was perfect.

  The grand finale consisted of tuning up the fiddle. Since he had only the one arm and hand free, Syzling needed this to turn the pegs that held the strings and had to dispose of the bow while he worked. Gazing blankly around him, he first seemed to be about to put it on the floor, then on the piano. Finally, with a shrug of despair, he held it in front of his trousers where through the flies appeared a fat white finger to hold the bow against his groin.

  There was a shriek like an engine whistle from the nursing sister Jago had brought along from the hospital at Calimero and she hid her face in Jago’s sleeve, weeping with laughter, while the tank men and the newcomers who’d never seen it before clutched each other and howled. It was so blatantly vulgar, it wasn’t even offensive, and the pub comedian had nothing in his repertoire half as good.

  Colonel Yuell had been too busy to attend the show. He was trying to make sure everything was prepared, because Division appeared to be having difficulty producing the boats they needed. It was going to be difficult in any event but they’d get nowhere at all unless someone produced some soon.

  There was one thing he could do, however, and that was make sure that there was a proper supply of mortar bombs and hand grenades. When they’d attacked at Sant’ Agata, they’d found themselves obliged to suffer the German mortar bombardment without being able to retaliate and when they’d gone in, they’d had to use bayonets.

  ‘There’s a whole lorry-load of them,’ Tallemach insisted when he telephoned. ‘Mortar ammunition, too. It was a point I raised myself and Brigadier Heathfield said he’d handle it. And so that you won’t be short when the build-up begins, he’s promised to send a second lorry-load down with it. They’ll be leaving Ordnance today and they’ll be in San Bartolomeo ready to move up with your people.’

  ‘There’ll be no mistakes, sir? We lost a lot of men at Sant’ Agata because we were short.’

  ‘You won’t be short this time,’ Tallemach said. ‘Two lorry-loads ought to be enough to bomb your way to Rome!’

  If they could have left the next day, everything would have been all right. But they didn’t. They waited another twenty-four hours, and during those twenty-four hours it seemed as if the last of the Italian winter did its damnedest to destroy every ounce of good spirit the concert had engendered. The rain lashed down with incredible ferocity so that it was impossible even to queue up for food without being soaked. It was impossible to go into the town, impossible to keep warm. During the afternoon the tramontane, the winter wind from the mountains, found all the cracks and holes in the billets and made them wretched.

  ‘In case of inclement weather,’ Fletcher-Smith said, ‘the battle will be held indoors.’

  Tempers grew frayed. CSM Farnsworth put Puddephatt on a charge which he knew he’d never press. McWatters shoved at Lofty Duff for getting in his way, and in return received a kick on the backside which was as much as the tiny Duff could manage.

  It was Wymark who got between them as McWatters, his vicious temper boiling over, reached for his bayonet. Martindale was sitting brooding in corners, sucking at an empty pipe as if it were a baby’s dummy. The two Bawdens, who had happily done their fighting, drinking and fornicating together for nearly three years, ended up in a punch-up for no other reason than that 766 Bawden had called 000 Bawden a snob and 000 Bawden had retorted that 766 Bawden was so bloody dim he’d never be in a position to be a snob.

  It was Gask who separated them, his pale face expressionless as usual, as if he regarded everybody who didn’t polish his buttons and go through a war in the same detached way he did as something considerably less than worthwhile. His large white bony hands flung them aside so that they sat glowering at each other until finally 000 Bawden sheepishly offered a cigarette and 766 Bawden came across with a light.

  Since it was their last day, Graziella Vanvitelli decided to give Warley, Jago, Deacon and Taylor a lunch party with a very special meal. Jago, Deacon and Taylor had a lot less to do with it than they realised and it was really put on for no one but Warley. She had ironed his shirts the night before, because she’d wished to, and when he’d thanked her she had suggested he might like to go to Mass with her.

  ‘I’m not a Catholic,’ he explained.

  ‘The Catholic Church will not mind,’ she said softly. ‘And I would like it. I shall pray for you.’

  Warley studied her. There was pride and possessiveness in her attitude, and a little more too.

  ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I’ll come with you.’

  She sighed. ‘Che brutta guerra. Quando finirà.’

  They said nothing as they walked to the church, but on the way back, surrounded by women in black wearing shawls on their heads, they saw one of Warley’s men with a girl in a doorway. Graziella sighed.

  ‘Wars are all the same,’ she said. ‘The men become animals and the girls become more willing.’

  ‘It’s worse in Naples,’ Warley pointed out gently.

  She gave him a sad smile. ‘Everything’s worse in Naples.’ She shrugged and became silent. ‘Do you have a girl, Uoli?’

  ‘Yes.’

&
nbsp; ‘A fidanzata? A fiancée?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you love her?’

  Warley considered. His fiancée was the daughter of a wealthy Manchester clothing manufacturer. She had a perfect figure and was always exquisitely turned out, but if he’d seen her at that moment her clothes could just as well have been draped round a garden roller.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said honestly. ‘I doubt it. I haven’t seen her for three years. I’ve almost forgotten what she looks like.’

  When they reached the house Graziella busied herself with pots and pans in the kitchen while her sister Francesca laid the table, and Jago – ridiculous in a frilled apron – used his enormous hands to cut up the pasta into long strips like tapeworms.

  With as much whispering and nodding as if the whole Provost Corps of Trepiazze were after them, Deacon produced two tins of bully and Taylor two tins of milk. Avvocato Vanvitelli, released unexpectedly from his duties with AMGOT to share the celebration with his daughters, contributed a bottle of Orvieto and a large flagon of rough wine. He was a plump, handsome smiling man who seemed quite happy to leave his elder daughter in the hands of Warley, though he appeared more doubtful of the fate of Francesca at the hands of Second-Lieutenant Taylor. He brought with him an elderly woman, whom he introduced as La Nonna and two well-scrubbed and cherubic small boys in suits of snow-white linen.

  ‘My cousins, Leonardo and Giovanni,’ Graziella said. Since Jago had provided chocolate, the two small boys regarded him as Christ come to earth again.

  As they gathered round the table, grace was said and the home-made tomato sauce was poured over the pasta.