About the Book
July 1943. With North Africa secured, the Allies launch an invasion of Sicily, and the 2nd Battalion, King’s Own Yorkshire Rangers are in the van of the assault on the Italian beaches.
Now B Company Commander, Tanner’s promotion has brought him fresh problems. Not only has his new Battalion Commander decided to make his life as difficult as possible, but he and his men soon find themselves battling against some of the toughest troops in the Wehrmacht.
In the bitter fighting that follows, Tanner witnesses a new kind of warfare where the end will justify the means. Erstwhile outlaws, the Sicilian mafia are supposedly on the side of the Allies but their real purpose is feathering their own nests. And it is not just the mafia who are playing dirty. It soon becomes clear that in the quest to force Italy out of the war, compromises and brutal choices need to be made – choices where the lines between right and wrong have become horribly blurred.
Forced to question the cause for which he has fought so long, Tanner and his trusted sidekick, Sykes, find themselves embroiled in a fight that has become deeply personal, where they have to use all their resolve, skill and experience if they are to have any chance of survival . . .
Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
Map
Glossary
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Historical Note
About the Author
Also by James Holland
Copyright
For my parents and for Ned, who accompanied me to Sicily.
Glossary
2 i/c
second-in-command
angel, angels two
1,000 feet, 2,000 feet
bandit
enemy (in the air)
basha
house
CP
command post
croaker
a wounded person
CSM
Company Sergeant-Major
cushy
easy
dekko, have a
take a look
DZ
drop zone
ENSA
Entertainment National Service Association
iggery
quick, hurry up
jaldi
quickly
KOYLI
King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry
LCA
Landing Craft Assault
LST
landing ship tank
MG
machine-gun
M/T
motor transport
OCTU
Officer Cadet Training Unit
O Group
Orders Group – group of key personnel gathered before an attack or operation
OP
observation post
OSS
Office of the Strategic Services
PIAT
Projective Infantry Anti-tank (like a bazooka)
Red Devils
British Airborne Forces (nickname)
Regia Aeronautica
Italian Royal Air Force
sitrep
situation report
SMLE
Short Magazine Lee Enfield .303 inch calibre rifle
Spandau
Allied term for any German machine-gun, dating back to the First World War when some Maxim guns were made in Spandau in the western suburbs of Berlin
stonk
sustained artillery fire, usually concentrated on one area
1
Friday, 28 May 1943, around one a.m. The Dakota droned on, a low, monotonous rumble, the pitch of the two engines changing only occasionally as the plane hit turbulence or the pilot adjusted course. Captain Jack Tanner, sometime of the King’s Own Yorkshire Rangers, but now, well, he wasn’t so sure, closed his eyes. The noise of the plane was so constant it had become a kind of silence. He opened his eyes again and glanced at his watch, the dials only faintly visible despite the luminosity of the face. Surely, he thought, it must be almost time. A flight of one hour and five minutes, they had been told, at a cruising speed of around 140 miles per hour. ‘It’s just a brief hop across the Med.’ The pilot had grinned. ‘Piece of cake.’
Tanner had not reciprocated the smile as they had left the briefing tent at La Marsa airfield, nausea already stirring in his stomach. If he had wanted to spend his life in the air, he would have joined the RAF a long time ago. While others had gazed enviously up at, first, biplanes, then Spitfires and other modern aircraft, Tanner had been grateful to have his two feet firmly on the ground. Fortunately, during the more than ten years he had been a soldier, he had not had much cause to find himself airborne. Once or twice, that was all. He understood the principles of flight, but it still seemed unnatural to him that a large mass of metal, oil and high-octane fuel should travel high up through the sky, and he did not like having to place his life in the hands of someone and something else. On the ground, he was confident he could handle himself as well as any man. In the air, it was a different matter.
Tanner shifted in his seat and felt the canvas safety strap dig into his waist. The Dakota, or C-47, as the Americans preferred to call it, belonged to the 51st Troop Carrier Wing, and would, Tanner had learned, be transporting British and American paratroopers over to Sicily when the invasion was eventually launched. Either side, running down the long fuselage, there was a row of fourteen metal seats, then a space towards the tail for stores and the jump hatch.
Tonight, however, the seats were largely empty – Tanner alone on one side, Major Charlie Wiseman and Colonel Max Spiro on the other. Tanner glanced across at them, the three-quarter moon casting a pale glow through the windows behind him. Spiro was playing with something – a rosary? – his lips moving faintly, perhaps muttering to himself. There was a wedding band on his left hand. How old was he? Late thirties, Tanner guessed, probably with a family back home in Washington or wherever he lived. He looked short and fleshy next to Wiseman, who sat with his back straight, head against the side of the fuselage, eyes closed, a faint smile across his face. Tanner cursed him for looking so relaxed, but rarely in the past few months had he ever seen Wiseman more than slightly ruffled. Spiro now caught his eye, then quickly looked away. At least he could speak Italian, Tanner thought. Spiro looked Italian too: dark hair, slightly greying, dark brows, dark eyes, dark skin. ‘He is Italian,’ Wiseman had told Tanner. ‘Leastways, his parents are. First-generation Sicilians.’ Spiro had grown up speaking Italian, Wiseman had said. ‘Half of all Americans speak some European lingo,’ he’d added. ‘Hell, about a quarter of us speak Kraut.’
‘What about you?’ Tanner had asked.
Wiseman had shrugged. ‘Un poco Italiano. Grazie tante, Signorina.’ He had grinned. ‘Put it this way, I know what a flautista is.’
‘What is it?’
Wiseman had laughed and slapped Tanner on the back. ‘Look, we’ll be just fine. Don’t you worry, Jack.’ Even Wiseman had a Mediterranean look about him: the same dark hair and eyes. Tanner supposed he did too.
Like Wiseman, he was tall – six foot and a bit – with almost raven dark hair and the kind of olive skin that looked out of place on Englishmen, even those brought up on the land as he had been. It was no wonder after two and a half years fighting in the Mediterranean and North Africa. The difference was his very pale blue eyes, but he had noticed a number of Arabs in Tunisia, especially, shared that feature. ‘You look a perfectly convincing Sicilian,’ Wiseman had told him.
‘Look like one maybe,’ Tanner had replied, ‘but I’ve got more in common with a bloody Jerry than an Eyetie. And I can speak more Arabic and Urdu than Italian.’
He wondered how he had ever got himself into this mad enterprise but, of course, as was so often the case in this war, he had had little choice in the matter. Since early March, after the débâcle of Kasserine, he had been attached to the US II Corps, assigned as a liaison officer on General Patton’s staff. In Charlie Wiseman, one of Patton’s senior aides, he had soon found a friend and ally. Together they had fought at El Guettar, at Hill 609, and at Bizerte, Tanner trying to pass on his experience to these green American troops fighting the Germans and Italians, while Wiseman had helped him to bridge the cultural gulf between the Americans and the British. And when General Patton had had his spat with Air Vice-Marshal Coningham, Wiseman had successfully kept Tanner out of it, saving him from finding himself horribly compromised. For this, especially, Tanner had been grateful. He was a soldier, not a politician. The argument, as most of Patton’s staff had realized, was about tactical differences and the use of air cover; Patton, however, had not seen it that way. As far as he had been concerned, the Limeys had once again been sneering down their noses at their American allies. No one on Patton’s staff had cared to mention that Coningham was a New Zealander.
Two weeks earlier, on 13 May, the fighting had ended. After what had sometimes seemed to Tanner like for ever, the Germans and Italians had been driven from North Africa. A quarter of a million troops and God only knew how many tanks, guns and aircraft had been captured. Tanner had seen them: long lines of dusty, exhausted enemy troops, tramping along in endless columns down sun-drenched roads into PoW cages. Defeat had been etched on their faces, expressions of despair and relief in equal measure. Briefly, as Tanner had beetled around in his Jeep, passing messages and liaising with various units and headquarters within II Corps and First Army, he had been sure that the war would soon be over.
Now he rubbed his eyes, then felt the cool metal of the Beretta on his lap. Two weeks! That was all it had been. But in that fortnight those moments of hope had gone. There would be no end to the war – not for a long while yet. The Germans were not about to throw in the towel: they were still deep inside Russia, and so what if North Africa had been lost? Fortress Europe was still theirs. The fighting would continue, first with an Allied invasion probably, he supposed, of Sicily and then – well, then, they would have to invade mainland Europe. Where was anyone’s guess, but it was as certain as day follows night. Christ, Tanner thought. All that fighting still to come. How could he ever have thought otherwise?
And an uncomfortable idea had crept in: that surely his luck was about to run out. The odds were massively against him, he knew. Jesus, it was something that he was still alive at all. Death was not a matter he liked to think about too much. One day at a time. That had been his philosophy ever since war had broken out. But now … Now he was about to jump out of an aircraft onto an enemy-occupied island. Bloody hell, he thought. He glanced at his watch again. By his reckoning there could not be more than five minutes to go. Five minutes. Were these, he wondered, his last moments? Was this finally, after all this time, the end of the road?
Just two weeks – two weeks and one day – since the end of the fighting in Tunisia. They had all got drunk, swum in the sea, and watched the parades in Tunis. For so long, they’d been fighting for this goal: the end of the war in Africa. Then, after the euphoria, had come the realization of what still lay ahead. Even so, Tanner had expected a lengthy spell of inactivity. He’d even wondered whether he and some of the other old-timers might be sent home to England. There had been a time when he would have baulked at such an idea, but not now. In truth, he’d been in England barely three months in the past ten years; he had no family, no home. Nothing. Yet England was still home. He’d saved a bit of money over the years. Maybe he’d buy into a farm tenancy, not in Wiltshire, where he’d grown up, but somewhere else. Dorset, perhaps. Devon, even. For the first time since he had left home as a sixteen-year-old and joined the Army, Tanner had begun to think of a life beyond that of a soldier. A quieter life. A life of peace.
Wiseman had put paid to that three days ago – Wiseman and the brass with their unrelenting plans to grind the Axis into the dust. He’d been woken by Wiseman at II Corps headquarters in Bizerte and told they were both needed in Tunis. They’d driven down, reached one of the grand old hotels in the capital, now used by Eighteenth Army Group, and had been ushered in to see an American two-star heading up Allied intelligence in Tunisia.
It was a large, airy room on the first floor, with a view of the sea. A cool breeze floated in, while overhead, fans whirred. There were five of them: Wiseman and Tanner, Major General Carter, then another American, introduced as Colonel Simpson but wearing a neatly cut dove-grey civilian suit, and Lieutenant Colonel Max Spiro. Both Spiro and Simpson worked for the Office of Strategic Services.
‘That’s Washington-speak for secret intelligence,’ said General Carter, as he walked over to a sideboard and poured large Scotches with soda for Wiseman and Tanner. He had passed them their drinks, then returned to his desk. Either side of him, Simpson and Spiro sat in wicker chairs, but with no further seating, apart from an old chaise-longue at the far side of the room, Wiseman and Tanner had remained standing, clutching their glasses. Wiseman had told him almost nothing on the way down; a sudden summons was not unusual. In any case, Tanner was not one to press for information if it was not forthcoming, and especially not since he had assumed it would be some instruction about training or another administrative directive. He had hoped it might be a posting back to his regiment. He liked the Americans well enough, but he had missed his friends. Seeing Peploe and Sykes had reminded him of this.
But no. It had been nothing of the kind.
‘So,’ General Carter had said, leaning forward in his seat, ‘we need you two to accompany Colonel Spiro here on a little operation in Sicily.’
‘Sicily, sir?’ said Tanner, unable to keep the surprise out of his tone.
‘Yes,’ Carter replied. ‘You’ll be dropped by plane and then you’ll rendezvous with a certain Sicilian gentleman called Don Calogero Vizzini. Spiro and Colonel Simpson here have been, er, communicating with Signor Vizzini and others in Sicily for some time. I won’t trouble you with the ins and outs of it but, suffice to say, a large element on Sicily is sympathetic to the Allied cause or, rather, keen to see Mussolini and the Fascists thrown out – and that, gentlemen, is the Allies’ current number-one objective. See the back of Mussolini and his buddies and that’s Italy out of the war and a major headache for the Nazis. So Colonel Spiro is going to negotiate with Vizzini and you two are going to watch his back.’
Tanner cleared his throat. ‘Why me, sir?’
‘You’re a Brit. We’re the Allies, Captain, and we need to show Vizzini and his amicos that we stand together. You’ve served with us Americans, and you have a proven record – a most impressive one, if I might say so. And it’s also, let’s say, beneficial that you and Major Wiseman at the very least have a mutual trust and understanding. The major has already vouched for you, Captain.’
Tanner had shot a glance at Wiseman.
‘You don’t know Spiro, but he’s a first-class officer and ideally placed to conduct an operation of this kind.’
Carter leaned back, lit a cigarette, then eyed Tanner. ‘The hard work’s been done, Captain. Long months of patient negotiation. I’m sure you understand that communications between the US and Sicily are difficult to say
the least. Fortunately, the ties between certain elements of Sicilian society and those across the Atlantic in New York and elsewhere are still strong, war or no war.’
‘Excuse me, sir,’ said Tanner, ‘but assuming all goes well, how do we get back?’
‘You’re heading to a place called Villalba, Captain,’ Simpson now said. He was a neat-looking man, with oiled greying hair and a clean-shaven face. ‘It’s a small town in the mountainous interior, but only thirty miles or so from the northern Sicilian coast. We’ll drop you in at night. You’ll be given instructions as to where to go, but once you’re with Don Calo you’ll be quite safe. The next night, you’ll begin heading to the coast. The following evening, you should reach it. You will then signal to a British submarine that will be waiting off-shore. The crew will pick you up and take you home.’
‘How will they pick us up, sir? A submarine can’t approach the shore.’
‘In collapsible canoes called falbots.’
‘And what if the shore is mined, sir?’
‘We’re confident it’s not. The Italians do not expect an attack along their northern Sicilian shores for obvious reasons. In fact, there is a long stretch of beach in that area which is largely uninhabited. As General Carter has said, the hard work has already been done.’
‘So you see,’ said Carter, exhaling a cloud of cigarette smoke, ‘this is little more than an escort mission. I’m sure a man of your experience, Captain Tanner, has faced many more dangerous situations than this. Sicily is not overly populated. Most of the inhabitants live huddled together in towns and rarely venture out. You’ll be met by friends and will be travelling under cover of night guided by Vizzini’s men and away from any towns. Do you think we’d be sending you in if we thought there was a high risk of compromise?’
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