Swordpoint (2011)

by John Harris

  To Jago it sounded terrifying, and he felt his body turn cold at the thought of it. He’d already survived taking more chances than he deserved, and he didn’t fancy taking another. But he’d been with Warley a long time and anything was better than sitting in the dip all next day while the Germans dropped mortar bombs on them.

  ‘I dare bet the Teds’ positions are deeper than this bloody dip of Deacon’s,’ he said. ‘And I’ll bet also that they’re better proof against mortars. After all, they’ve been there long enough to make ’em strong.’

  ‘Right. We go in with the Baluchis right behind us. If they keep close we can swamp those Ted posts in front. They can’t be held all that heavily or they’d have set about us, wouldn’t they? The Baluchis are agreeable to us running the show.’

  ‘All right,’ Jago said uncertainly. ‘Let’s give it a go.’

  ‘Good. You take everybody to the right of here. I’ll take everybody to the left. The Baluchis follow up in support. You’d better get round and warn your men. We start when I fire a red Very light. Okay?’

  ‘Okay. Any special methods?’

  ‘No. Just go like the clappers.’

  ‘You can’t sprint eighty yards and hope to arrive in good shape,’ Jago said. ‘We shan’t be able to hit a bloody thing.’

  ‘We shan’t be doing that sort of shooting,’ Warley pointed out. ‘And the quicker across the safer we’ll be.’

  Jago nodded, aware that normally he was the one who advocated speed and dash.

  Warley grinned under his dirt. ‘See you back here in an hour,’ he said. ‘We start ten minutes afterwards.’

  Crawling flat against the earth along the lip of the hollow to the outlying positions, Warley and Jago readied their men. It was easier in the dark, though there were still a few machine-gun bursts to set their hearts beating faster. The ammunition and grenades the Baluchis had brought were distributed, and the men lit last fags, wiped their mouths with the backs of their hands, spat, cleared their throats and emptied their bladders; all the things they would have done if they’d been entering a race.

  ‘The safest place against enemy shelling’s always in the enemy positions,’ Jago told them.

  There were a few silly jokes in whispers, and cigarettes were passed round for a last drag.

  ‘Gie’s one of thi cigarettes, Gasky,’ Rich asked.

  Corporal Gask studied him in his expressionless way. ‘It’ll stunt your growth,’ he said.

  Rich looked up at Gask’s lean six-foot-three. ‘It doesn’t seem to have stunted thine,’ he pointed out.

  Deacon’s heart lifted as he heard them. Their spirits seemed to have revived at the prospect of moving forward.

  ‘We’re expecting big things from you, Frying,’ he told Syzling. ‘They might send tanks at us, so just let’s have a repetition of this morning.’

  ‘So long as you pass the bombs, sir,’ Syzling said and Deacon felt cock-a-hoop. Syzling seemed to have got hold of the ‘sir’ business at least. It was going to be all right in the future. No more curses. No more snarling. No more bad temper. No more sullenness.

  They were going to use every man they had. Only O’Mara, the doctor, the orderlies and the wounded were to hold the position in the hollow. If they failed, it would be God help them all, but Warley was hoping they wouldn’t fail.

  He got the remaining officers round him. ‘There’s only one order,’ he announced. ‘Get through those gaps and into the Ted positions before they wake up. They’re as tired as we are and I suspect they think they’ve got us pinned down. Let’s show ’em they haven’t. Information about the enemy: There isn’t any. They’re Nazis and that’s enough under the circumstances, I think. Any questions?’

  There weren’t, and Warley continued, ‘You have a quarter of an hour to get your men as far forward as you can. This bloody country’s full of dips, so you ought to be able to get up close. And see there’s no noise. Tell your people to tie handkerchiefs round the Bren mags and things like that, so they don’t clatter. I want you in their lines within half a minute of the whistle. Get cracking.’

  The order group broke up. It was the shortest and simplest briefing they’d ever experienced but by this time they all knew exactly where they were going and suspected that if they didn’t arrive quickly, they’d end up dead or prisoners of war.

  As they met again, Warley and Jago consulted their watches.

  ‘Ten minutes from now,’ Warley said. ‘You ready?’

  ‘Ready as I’ll ever be.’

  O’Mara joined them. ‘If this doesn’t come off, Padre,’ Warley told him, ‘try to go on holding this place until help comes. Or is that against your beliefs?’

  ‘I don’t think Almighty God’s going to count the whys and wherefores in an affair like this,’ O’Mara observed. ‘As they did at Pearl Harbour, let us praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.’

  ‘Say a prayer for us, Padre.’

  O’Mara moved his hand in a blessing. ‘God go with you,’ he murmured, an infinite sadness in his eyes.

  ‘Right,’ Warley said. ‘Here goes.’

  He hitched at his belt and climbed out of the dip.

  The Very light soared up, dragging a long tail of grey smoke, until it was out of sight in the darkness; then it burst into a red glow. As Warley’s whistle went, they clutched their weapons and followed him.

  In the light of the flare, Warley could see men already running for the gaps in the wire. His heart thudding, Jago leapt into the trench but Gask had arrived ahead of him and appeared to be beating up on his own the two or three Germans who were manning it. At home, the instructors had always insisted they should go into the attack yelling furiously and pulling fierce faces. Being an unimaginative type, however, Gask had been given up as a bad job and told he’d never be much good in an attack. The instructors couldn’t have been more wrong because he was using his rifle and bayonet in the best drill manner – up, two, three; six inches of sharp Sheffield and no more – but all still in his usual expressionless manner.

  Over on the left, a little behind Jago’s group, Warley’s foot caught in a looping strand as he passed through the wire and he did a nose-dive into a German machine-gun position. The top of his helmet crashed against a German helmet and slithered off into a German face and the two men collapsed in the bottom of the foxhole. Warley sat up to see CSM Farnsworth alongside him, clubbing the life out of the German, and as he struggled to his feet they caught in a charcoal brazier that had scattered hot coals. His trousers began to smoulder, and he slapped at the sparks to extinguish them.

  ‘Christ,’ Farnsworth panted. ‘A fire to keep you warm! That’s something our lot never think of.’

  ‘Come on!’ Warley sounded equally breathless. ‘This is only the beginning. The real position’s further on.’

  As they scrambled from the hole, another machine-gun started and someone screamed. Then the gun stopped abruptly and didn’t start again. Just in front of Warley, yet another one took its place, but it was firing to his right towards Jago’s men and he heard the bullets swishing through the undergrowth past him. The next moment, he and Farnsworth and a few more found themselves hard up against a concrete pill-box with the gun firing over their heads out of a slit.

  It was Henry White who moved first. He knew exactly what to do because he’d done it before in the mud at Passchendaele in 1917. Reaching for a grenade, he pulled the pin and slipped it silently through the aperture. The machine-gun still went on firing in short bursts; then, just when they were wondering what had gone wrong with the grenade, there was a tremendous crash and it stopped.

  ‘Round the back,’ Warley yelled.

  As they reached the rear of the pill-box, they saw a German soldier scrambling away up the slope, screaming, his clothes on fire. Grinning, McWatters shot him in the back. The inside was a shambles with a wrecked gun and four bleeding bodies. Running off to the right, they fell into a covered timber-lined trench, and Warley realised with surprise that there were
now twenty-odd men with him whereas originally there’d only been three or four.

  ‘Two of you stay here,’ he said. ‘The rest come with me.’

  They set off up the covered trench, and saw a torch coming towards them. Duff fired his Sten at it; it went out and they were in darkness. Somebody was moaning in front of them, ‘Mutter! Mutter! Hilfe mir!’

  ‘Got the bastards,’ Farnsworth said with satisfaction.

  He struck a match and just ahead they saw three men lying on the ground, one of them still alive. The Germans had been rushing down the trench to investigate what was happening. At the end was a door, and a German who looked about sixteen was just trying to jam it shut. Rich pushed his rifle in the gap but there was a burst of firing from inside and he fell away, crying out in pain, the flesh shredded from his calf. The German was still trying to push the rifle out so he could close the door when Henry White pulled the pin from another grenade and slipped it through. Then, dragging Rich clear, they flung themselves flat.

  The German hadn’t noticed the grenade and he threw out the rifle and slammed the door just as it went off. In the enclosed space the sound was like a firework in a tin can, a metallic roar that seemed to combine the crash of an explosion with the striking of a gong. There was no further movement from inside and they kicked open the door. The boy who’d finally closed it lay in bloody rags, and two other men were sprawled at the far side. The bunker smelled of smoke, cordite, charred wood, blood and fresh excreta.

  Coming up for air, Warley realised they were now in a series of connecting trenches. The sky was full of flares as the Germans further up the slope tried to make out what was happening, and they could see everything about them in the trenches quite clearly.

  They seemed to have gone as far as they safely could; to go any further would take them out into the open again. As they waited, getting their breath back, setting up the Brens and swinging the sandbags into a new position that would protect them against fire from the slopes, another group of men stumbled round the corner. Jumpy as a cat since the death of his namesake, 000 Bawden almost hit the first one with a spade, holding his hand just in time as he saw it was Deacon, closely followed by Syzling.

  ‘We knocked out a couple of machine-gun posts,’ Deacon said gleefully. ‘And old Frying hit one of the Teds with the Piat tube.’

  They seemed to have control of the situation and became quite certain of their victory when they began to bump into men of the Baluchis who had followed up. They were all grinning but Warley set them to work at once, turning the defences to face the other way. Among the prisoners they had taken was an effeminate-looking young officer clutching a violin case. He handed over his pistol without fuss.

  ‘Thiergartner,’ he said. ‘Maximilian Thiergartner. Lieutenant.’

  ‘What are you going to do with that?’ Deacon asked, pointing at the violin.

  Thiergartner smiled. ‘I think I shall need it to while away the long hours in a prison camp,’ he said. ‘Don’t you?’

  As they crowded together in the trench, the first mortar bomb came down. The Germans higher up the slope had evidently made up their minds at last where they were. As the second bomb dropped, a wounded man appeared on the lip of the trench, hobbling frantically for shelter. They were just reaching up to help him when there was another crash and he slid sideways and crumpled up at their feet, his face torn open by a splinter.

  Farnsworth fumbled for his field dressing but Thiergartner was quicker. Laying down the violin case, he was already producing bandages and lint. Without a word, they knelt beside the injured man and dressed the wound together. As they straightened up, Farnsworth eyed the German; then he reached into his battledress blouse and produced a packet of cigarettes.

  ‘Have a fag,’ he said.

  They had seen Warley’s Very light go up from the other side of the river and heard the renewed fighting after the lull.

  The wounded were coming back in a trickle now, first the stretcher-bearers and then the walking wounded, pale with shock and pain, their bandages bright with blood. One or two of the leg and arm injuries were able to say what Warley was doing, and immediately Tallemach pushed the Engineers forward.

  ‘Footbridges,’ he insisted. ‘Footbridges only for the time being! Let’s get the men across!’

  The footbridges were flung over the river, rickety swaying affairs on boats, pontoons and kapok bales that allowed only one man at a time to pass. The Engineers had also put a girder across the broken span of the road bridge, and here Rankin sent over most of his Punjabis, balancing precariously, clutching their weapons, in mortal terror of falling into the river below.

  But Tallemach had thought of that one, too, and he had the remaining assault boats in the water ready to pluck out anybody who did fall in.

  ‘You can take your pick, Johnny,’ the Engineer sergeants were yelling at the Indians. ‘It’s either Blondin crossing Niagara Falls on a tight wire or Oxford and Cambridge at Putney Bridge. And when you go at that bloody girder, run at it, and you’ll be across before you know it.’

  Most of the Punjabis made it across the girder. Out of those who missed their footing and fell, only one vanished from sight under the weight of his equipment before he could be rescued.

  Meanwhile, Fletcher-Smith was one of the first to reach the other bank and was already directing the major in command of the first company towards the ditch he’d previously used to approach the river.

  ‘Keep moving, Johnny,’ the Engineers were yelling. ‘Keep moving! If you stand still, you’re dead!’

  Suddenly there was a confident sense of urgency about them, and it was a rewarding moment for Tallemach to realise they had their tails up again. You could feel it in the air. It was a battle-winning factor that only experience could gauge and, watching them, he began to feel better and really alive again.

  Hidden by smoke, the tanks rumbled out of San Bartolomeo once more, the snouts of their guns pointing towards the river. German flares kept going up, but the wind had dropped at last and this time the smoke was just right. In San Bartolomeo there finally seemed to be room to move, and up above the clouds had broken up so that beyond the smoke it was possible to pick out stars. At last the imponderables were in their favour.

  Fletcher-Smith was the first to fall into Deacon’s Dip.

  ‘The holy saints protect us!’ O’Mara’s accent grew broader in his excitement. ‘You made it, me brave bhoy!’

  ‘I was scared stiff, sir.’

  ‘Bravery’s being afraid of being afraid, my son. What have you brought?’

  ‘The Punjabis from 9th Indian Brigade, sir. There’s an air strike at dawn.’

  ‘Holy Mother of God! Then get ahead to Major Warley and tell him, boy.’

  The padre watched Fletcher-Smith go, humble at the courage he’d seen in the last forty-eight hours, never thinking in his humility that his personal calmness was its own kind of courage. He put it all down to Yuell. Yuell had a good battalion, and it showed not only in the way they behaved on parade but in the way they behaved in action. Most men were far too sensible for heroics, yet men who were brave in a body usually managed to be brave on their own as well.

  The Germans were beginning to put mortar stonks down on their own former positions now, but Fletcher-Smith made it from Deacon’s Dip. Pushing through the press of men huddling against the bank of the German trenches and fox-holes, he found Warley and Jago just as they were wondering if they could push their luck and try for San Eusebio at first light.

  ‘Fletcher-Smith!’ Warley’s reaction was the same as O’Mara’s. ‘So you got through!’

  ‘Yes, sir. And the Punjabis are coming up behind me. The padre said he’d send ’em on.’

  Warley grinned, haggard with tiredness and filthy with mud, but suddenly elated and optimistic.

  Fletcher-Smith’s words were still tumbling out. ‘The brigadier said to wait for an air strike, sir. It’s coming at first light. I heard him tell the CO of the Punjabis to let you kn
ow.’

  ‘Did you, by God?’ Warley grinned again. ‘Well, that’s wonderful news.’ He turned to Jago. ‘All right, Tony, we’ll let the fly boys have a crack at ’em for a change and go in as the dust settles.’

  The English colonel in command of the Punjabis arrived shortly afterwards. He was a thin languid man but he seemed to know his job and was in no hurry to take over from Warley.

  Warley produced a map and indicated the road up to San Eusebio. ‘I suggest we make a start up here, sir, but while they’re keeping their eye on us, there’s nothing to stop your lot going up the slope in front. It’ll be a stiff climb, hands and knees stuff, but it’ll shake ’em while they’re looking one way for us to find you coming from the other. Perhaps you’d better take over now, sir.’

  The colonel was an amenable man and, while he was willing to accept responsibility, he insisted on Warley running the show. ‘You know the ground better than I do,’ he said. ‘Natural hazards, bunkers and so on. Have you got anybody you can trust to direct the attack up the road?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Tony Jago here.’

  ‘Then he’d better have the Baluchis.’ The colonel turned to the captain commanding the Baluchis. ‘Keep in close touch with Captain Jago. Give him his head and support him.’

  As the first faint light began to appear, they could just pick out the spurs and peaks of the land in front. Then, against a clearing opal sky, they saw San Eusebio and the tower of the church emerge from the shadows and, soon afterwards, the bulk of Monte Cassino and the dark silhouette of the Monastery.

  Behind them, in the river valley, there was an incredible racket going on. The fields were covered with smoke because Tallemach had brought up every smoke shell he could get hold of and the thick haze was drifting down the river on the faintest of breezes, moving infinitely slowly, obscuring the valley from view.

  The Germans were dropping everything they could round the broken bridge, but Tallemach had sent the Engineers down the farm track from Capodozzi this time and a new bridge was going across near the disused ferry where Yuell’s B and C companies had started.