Tanner nodded and felt his spirits soar. This time I’m going to nail that bastard.
20
In Motta Sant’Anastasia, Francesca Falcone was queuing at the bakery. School had finished, and she had Cara with her, holding onto her skirt. Guns still boomed from time to time, but the battle seemed to have calmed. She could not understand it: Nico had told her that the Allies had overwhelming numbers of aircraft, guns and men, and the way they had swept up the coast from the south had certainly seemed to support that. What was more, there was no doubt that most of the planes in the sky were Allied, not Italian or German. So what was holding them up? She had asked Kranz, who had smiled and said, ‘They’re a bunch of cowards and we are better soldiers than them.’ She had felt that could hardly be true. If only she could have talked to Nico about it. He would have been able to explain.
Some of the townspeople had left, taking bundles of clothes up to the higher slopes of Etna, but Francesca had never considered taking such action. It was true that bombs had fallen on the town, but not many, and she had felt it was better to stay where they were, with the cellar and the sheds, and hope nothing would land directly on them. In any case, where would they go? Allied soldiers were swarming all over the plain, shells were hitting the towns along the lower slopes of the mountain and Catania was even more dangerous. And what would they eat? Where would they sleep? At least by staying in the town they could eat.
Not that there was much food. The Germans took most of the eggs, and the vegetables and fruit she had been growing. They were most scrupulous about paying her, but what did she need money for? One could only buy what was on offer in the shops and that was not very much. The official ration was just 150 grams of bread per day and sixty grams of pasta, but they had not had anything like that amount for weeks. The bombing had stopped all that; there was no fuel, no means of moving the flour around, except by cart, and the Germans and the Allies had taken most of the mules for their own use.
Francesca had lost weight. When she washed, she could see her breastbone and ribs; her breasts, once so ample, were smaller. She worried for Cara, but then every mother was worrying for her children; she was not alone.
She had just received her bread ration – less than seventy grams – and was walking towards her home, when Camprese drew alongside her and took her arm.
‘What do you think you’re doing, Salvatore?’
‘I’ve been hearing things,’ he said, ‘about you and your German admirer.’
‘You think I like having Germans in my house?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe you do.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ She shook her arm free.
‘I’ve heard he’s been buying you flowers, that he gives you extra rations. Apparently you’ve been having dinner together.’
‘What rubbish! He disgusts me. But what can I do? He and his men are in my house.’
‘Then come to my house instead. Live with an Italian, as an Italian woman should. Prove to me you have no feelings for this German officer.’
She stopped and slapped his face hard. ‘Don’t you ever talk to me like that again. I despise him! But it is my house. My house, do you hear?’
Camprese held his hand to his burning face. ‘So, you humiliate me, the mayor of this town. You would strike me in public.’
‘You deserved it, Salvatore! I don’t need to prove anything to you.’
Cara began to cry. ‘Now look!’ said Francesca. ‘Go away, Salvatore, leave me alone.’
‘Be careful, Francesca,’ said Camprese. ‘Your German friends will be gone soon. You know what people can be like. If they thought you’d been sleeping with a German officer …’
Francesca felt tears pricking her eyes. ‘Don’t you dare! Isn’t it enough that I have lost my father, my brother, that I have to try and survive in this – this Godforsaken place? Just leave me alone, Salvatore. Leave us alone.’
Palermo, Thursday, 22 July. It was evening as Wiseman’s small column entered the city alongside another from the 3rd Division. Beside him in the Jeep, Don Calogero Vizzini sat grinning from ear to ear. Behind, in the back, were Bartolomeo and Domiano Lumia, both clutching Berettas.
A long, narrow street, lined with people cheering, ‘Abasso Mussolini! Viva l’America!’ Down with Mussolini, long live America. Women were throwing flowers, handing them lemons and even watermelons. The column inched forward through the surge of people. In every town they had been greeted enthusiastically, but this was something different. This was like liberation.
Wiseman was shocked by the damage to the centre of the town. There were gaping holes where buildings had collapsed and piles of rubble strewn through the streets, yet crowds cheered them all the way. More narrow streets, of high terracotta buildings, until finally they emerged into a large piazza, at one end of which stood an imposing palace, glowing like burnished gold in the late evening sun.
‘Il palazzo dei re di Sicilia,’ said Don Calogero. ‘Ora siamo i re.’ Now we are the kings.
Wiseman glanced at him and smiled. Yes, you really are. Don Calogero had delivered all that he had promised. The morning after their arrival in Villalba, the Italian troops on Monte Cammarata had melted away, just as he had promised they would. In every town, they had been welcomed with open arms, Don Calogero especially. Only along the coast, between the town of Cerda and the capital, had he been more cautiously received. Here, Don Calogero and his entourage, accompanied by Wiseman, had entered more protracted talks with old contacts, with wavering Fascist officials, with the heads of the local carabinieri.
‘Many of the old chiefs are still in prison,’ Lumia had explained. ‘The governors and mayors here have become used to the Fascist regime. Don Calo needs a little more diplomacy.’
Wiseman had watched and listened to the discussions. Don Calogero never said much: his way had been to let Lumia and Bartolomeo do the talking, then interject at the end. A few choice words, a stare of those dark eyes, and a man who had been Fascist when he had woken that morning had become a pro-Mafia democrat once more. Charm, authority, the promise of reward and an ill-disguised threat: these were Don Calogero’s tools. It had been quite something to witness.
Now the undisputed leader of Sicily had arrived at the Norman palace, the seat of the kings of Sicily. So, too, had General Keyes and General Truscott, and so too, soon, would Patton. Wiseman smiled to himself. Patton would enjoy playing king here every bit as much as Don Calogero Vizzini did.
The following morning. Overnight, two Italian generals had been captured, as had some ten thousand Italian troops. The entire city was now in American hands. Wiseman had left Don Calogero and his entourage at the palace while he accompanied Patton on a tour of the city and the harbour. The damage was even worse than he had appreciated the previous evening. Most of the harbour front lay in ruins. The stench of sewage was appalling. The population, still apparently happy to see the conquering general, were thin and threadbare, half starved.
When they met a group of US engineers, they were told that at least forty-one ships had been sunk in the harbour.
‘Right now, General,’ said the colonel of engineers, as they stood amid the rubble and gazed out to sea, ‘the value of this port is nil.’
‘Then sort it out, Colonel,’ Patton told him. ‘We need it. In a week’s time I want it functioning at seventy-five per cent capacity. You get whatever machinery and engineers up here you need, but this place must be open within a few days.’
As they left in their cavalcade, they saw a number of prisoners standing at the edge of a piazza waiting to be moved. They all cheered and waved as they saw them pass.
‘Look at ’em,’ said Patton. ‘They’re like the civilians – they think we’re liberators.’
‘Don Calo says most Sicilians are not just anti-Fascist, General,’ said Wiseman, ‘but anti-Italian too.’
‘Your General Mafia has done well, Wiseman. I’ll admit I was sceptical, but both he and you have proved me wrong. You’re getting hi
m to help with the civil-affairs people?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Good, because looking at the flea-bitten skin-and-bone folk of Palermo we’re going to need every bit of help we can get. They might be cheering us now but they won’t be if they aren’t fed, and we don’t have time to get involved with that. We’ve got Nazis to kill first.’
‘We’ll be meeting with the civil-affairs officers as soon as they get here, General. And I’ve already asked Don Calo to draw up a list of potential new mayors in most of the island’s towns, including parts of the east still in Axis hands. That way, they can be installed just as soon as they come under our control.’
‘Good idea. Is Algiers OK with this?’
‘Yes, sir. All approved. I received a signal from Lord Rennell earlier this morning. He’s already established AMGOT at Syracuse.’
‘So Sicily will be run by the Allied Military Government and the Mafia.’ Patton looked out from the command car as they passed the remains of a bombed-out church. ‘As far as I’m concerned, they’re welcome to it.’
15th Brigade Headquarters, the Plain of Catania, Friday 23 July, around 4 p.m. Tanner waited outside the farmhouse, as instructed, smoking and chewing his fingers. For two days, ever since the attack had been called off and they’d been moved back a mile and a half to the northern banks of the Simeto, he had been waiting for this summons, the brigadier’s words ringing in his ears. He was only surprised it had taken so long, although the extra time had hardly helped. Hard evidence against Creer had been difficult to come by. Major Macdonald was gone, sweltering in some field hospital, as was Spiers, who had been struck down by malaria. It was ridiculous, Tanner thought, how they could be losing almost as many men to malaria as they had to the enemy. Sicily was a dry, mountainous country, yet they had managed to get bogged down in a stalemate in the one mosquito-infested corner of the entire island.
So two of his key witnesses had gone. He’d got Chalkie White to make a statement, but the written signals that he knew had been made that night by the wireless operators at the CP had vanished. And while they ‘vaguely’ remembered something of what had been said, none of them would testify to precisely what had been written down. They had received many signals that night; they just wrote them down and forgot about them; it wasn’t their job to question the decisions that were made. Yes, yes, yes, all right, I get the picture. Even Masters, the intelligence officer, had refused to get involved. ‘This is between you and the colonel, Jack,’ he’d told him. ‘I never saw those signals. The colonel took them. There was discussion about whether to reinforce, but I couldn’t say what motivated the decision process.’
So that was it. He had a pencil-scrawled note from Chalkie White and his own testimony. And that was all. It hardly amounted to the ‘hard evidence’ Rawstorne had demanded. Which left him in a quandary. Press his allegations, and he would be in potentially very hot water; back down, and he and the battalion would remain stuck with Croaker Creer.
He inhaled deeply, then breathed out, watching the smoke swirl above him. Bollocks to this. He flicked away the stub. He would stand by what he had said. His father had told him always to stick up for what he believed, and he always had done. He was not going to back down now. If they sacked him for it, so be it; at least he wouldn’t have to serve under that bastard a day longer.
‘Major Tanner?’
Tanner turned to see a young staff officer standing in the doorway.
‘Will you come this way?’
Tanner followed, walking through the farmhouse to a tented area at the rear. Camouflage netting covered them, the sun casting mottled shadows across the ground.
Brigadier Rawstorne was in his bell tent. There was no bed, just a trestle table, two canvas campaign chairs, a field telephone and an upturned wooden ammunition box, with a couple of bottles and several chipped glasses.
‘Major Tanner,’ said Rawstorne, ‘there you are.’ He stood up. ‘Drink?’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘Scotch all right?’
‘Perfectly.’
‘Take a seat, Tanner,’ said Rawstorne, passing him the glass.
Tanner thanked him again and sat down. It was hot in the tent, and his forehead was beading with sweat.
‘So,’ said Rawstorne, taking a sip, ‘what have you decided? You stand by what you said the other day?’
Tanner took a deep breath. ‘Yes, sir, I do. I’m not certain how much hard evidence I have for you because Colonel Creer has destroyed all the written messages that were logged that night, Major Macdonald has been evacuated and RSM Spiers has malaria, but I know what happened and I’m not prepared to—’
‘All right, Tanner, that’s enough.’
‘But, sir, I—’
‘Tanner, it’s enough because some interesting information has come to light.’
‘It has?’ Tanner’s mind raced.
‘It has. Furthermore, it’s what I would consider hard evidence too.’ He eyed Tanner, then leaned forward and picked up a piece of paper. ‘If I’m honest, Tanner, I’d decided to wait for you to come and see me. I felt that if you didn’t you would have decided to back down. But this morning this letter arrived. You’ll be pleased to know it’s from Major John Peploe.’
‘Peploe? Thank God. He’s alive.’
‘Very much so. He’s recovering on Malta and making good progress.’
Tanner breathed out heavily. ‘That’s tremendous news.’
‘Indeed. But to the point, Tanner, to the point. Peploe has done what you have conspicuously not done, and that is write a very detailed account of the attack at Sortino. I know Peploe to be utterly trustworthy. And I have to say I’m appalled by what he says. Here,’ he said passing the letter, ‘I’d like you to read it.’
Tanner did so. Peploe’s report had left nothing out: the Orders Group beforehand, the agreement of the plan, the late order arriving from Creer, the bombardment. Having finished reading, Tanner passed it back.
‘Do you have anything to add?’ Rawstorne asked.
‘Only that I spoke at length to Major Macdonald, who had ordered the FOO not to fire. He had been with the FOO when he’d spoken to Creer and had run back to tell him to countermand the order as soon as he realized what was going on. Creer overruled him. Macdonald is a major, Creer a half-colonel. The FOO did what Creer ordered him to do and that was continue the bombardment.’
Rawstorne scratched his head. ‘And why didn’t you tell me this?’
‘I tried to, sir.’
Rawstorne finished his drink. ‘Another? I think I need one.’ He poured two more shots. ‘Now tell me about the attack the other night. Detail, Tanner, I want detail. Tell me everything.’
When Tanner had finished, Rawstorne said, ‘But why, Tanner, why?’
‘It goes back to India, sir.’ He explained how, back then, Creer and Sergeant Blackstone had had many of the company in their pockets, but how he had refused to play ball. Corruption had been rife. ‘I made matters awkward for them, but they made my life hell. Eventually Creer was posted out of the battalion and I never saw him again until last month. It was immediately clear that he wanted me out of the way. He didn’t approve of men being commissioned from the ranks, thought I’d make trouble for him and that I’d show him up. I think he felt much the same about Major Peploe. You know, he’s not once gone into action. I don’t think he’s fired a shot since we landed. There’s always an excuse. He’s also been whoring in Melilli and got caught out – some of the men stole his clothes. Lots of men go whoring – these things can be overlooked. But the fact remains, he did his level best to have me and Major Peploe killed, wounded or taken prisoner, and in doing so, a lot of other people suffered. The other night, his actions cost the division an important victory.’
Rawstorne stared at him, then said, ‘Tanner, there’s always a lot of trust involved in the army. A commander can’t be everywhere at all times. They can’t be watching over each and every one of their men. One has to delegate and a
llow subordinates to get on with the job. Creer was a slightly unusual case, as he’d arrived from GHQ in Cairo with a decent report. Putting him in command of the battalion was not a decision taken lightly, but it was felt that Peploe, for all his many fine qualities, was still a little young. He has a fine service record, has been decorated several times, yet we felt he needed nurturing a little. I wasn’t convinced that adding the burden of command was necessarily a good idea.’ He leaned forward. ‘Of course I bitterly regret that now. I’m sure Peploe would have handled the pressure with his usual phlegm.’ He sighed.
‘So what happens now, sir?’
‘Creer will be arrested by the MPs and court-martialled. He’ll be taken from the island and, I would imagine, sent back to Cairo or Algiers. Once he’s gone, you won’t see him again. Even if he wriggles out of the trial, his career in the Army is finished.’
‘What a bloody mess, sir,’ said Tanner.
‘Yes, it is, and we can’t undo what’s happened. But we can improve the situation from now on. Tanner, you will become a permanent major and will take over temporary command of the battalion.’
‘Me, sir?’ He could hardly believe what he was hearing.
‘You’re the best man for the job. You’re a fine soldier and the men respect you. At the end of the campaign, who knows? I’d like to think Peploe will return.’
‘So would I, sir.’
‘But for now, Tanner, the battalion is yours. I know you won’t let me down.’
Tanner stood up, saluted and left. Outside, walking beneath the camouflage netting, he smiled to himself. No more Creer. That bastard had gone. But there was a knot in his stomach too. Commanding the battalion was an honour he had never imagined would be his. It would not be easy, but he would do all he could to repay the faith Rawstorne had shown in him. First of all, though, he needed a new RSM. A man he could trust and depend on, a man who would watch his back for him. Tanner grinned. RSM Sykes. It had a good ring to it.
The Devil's Pact (2013) Page 28