Freefall

by Robert Radcliffe

‘What’s going to happen, Theo?’

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you.’ This was the end. The end of any pretence at honour or chivalry. And the end of all innocence. Now he was coming of age. The age of choice. Ahead lay the cliff edge of guilt and damnation, and he must choose to hang back in weakness and vacillation, or step forward and freefall into the abyss. War is a failure of reason, von Stauffenberg had said. In the end there is only conscience. And Erwin Rommel, who never left him in peace: Know who you are. And make your decision.

  ‘You’re not going to—’

  ‘You see that path behind you?’

  Emil turned to look.

  His hand slipped to his thigh. ‘The one down there, see?’ The leather flap was undone, his hand closed on steel. ‘It leads to the river. You then go upstream a short way, and there’s a footbridge which brings you to a road. From there you can walk back to the railway. Or maybe thumb a—’

  *

  It was the silence after that would forever stay in his memory. Parting from the others, burying the radio, discarding his partisan persona for a civilian one, making his slow way south and west – he had little recollection of these things. He spent a day on the riverbank, not moving, not eating or sleeping, just lying in the reeds listening to the chuckling water and watching the clouds gather like a flock. Other days were more energetic, hiking the valleys and hills of the Matese, fording icy waterfalls, or clinging to craggy limestone peaks, dizzy with vertigo. On one occasion he descended a valley to find himself at a huge lake, lying like quicksilver in the still air, perfectly reflecting the sky as though the world had turned upside down. On another day he hacked his way high into a dense forest of beech and chestnut trees dripping with rain. Breaking suddenly into a clearing he found a primitive dwelling of moss and stone. The clearing was empty, the lodging abandoned; all that remained were wide circles of black ash. Carbonari, Rosa had explained, strange woodland peoples who lived only in the forests, spoke their own language, and never settled, but forever wandered as though from a curse. Charcoal burners. Sinking to his knees amid the cinders, he dug deep into the damp with his fingers, then daubed his face and chest with harsh streaks of black, and wept tears of shame into the ashes.

  And all the while the sounds of far-off gunfire and a smoky smudge on the horizon spoke of the war he no longer felt part of, yet was drawn to as though by a thread. A week passed. One day he was marching beside a deserted railway when a procession of tramp-like figures appeared in the distance like a mirage. As they neared he realized they weren’t tramps but soldiers, Italians, hundreds of them, unfed, unled, disarmed and destitute, many in shabby home clothes, refugees from the conflict they once fought in but which had now disowned them. He stood aside as they drew near. Who are you? What unit? Where are you going? They shook their heads and stumbled on, like a company of ghosts.

  Later that same day he was on a road by a river drinking water from his bottle, when without warning an American Jeep roared up and squealed to a halt beside him.

  ‘You speak-a-de English, buddy?’ the gum-chewing driver demanded.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Great!’ He pulled out a map. ‘We’re looking for some place called Albanella.’

  Theo studied the map. The river he was looking at, to his astonishment, was the Sele. He was standing less than five miles from its mouth, and the point where his Colossus mission had ended so long ago. X-Troop. Tag Pritchard, Tony Deane-Drummond, Harry Boulter, poor Fortunato. The freezing drop from the Whitley, moonlight gleaming off icy mountains, the sound of rushing water when the aqueduct blew. The desperate march for freedom.

  ‘Albanella?’ The American’s thumb jabbed the map.

  ‘What’s at Albanella?’

  ‘5th Army headquarters. What else!’

  ‘I’ll take you. I’m supposed to report there.’

  *

  ‘Yale? Never heard of him. Was he at Massingham?’

  ‘Yes. Then Cairo.’

  ‘Ah. We were at Oran. Stuck with the Yanks, God help us.’

  ‘You work with 5th Army?’

  ‘That’s one way of putting it!’ Chuckles circled the room. ‘Strictly speaking we’re here to provide temporary intelligence support and liaison as required. But the Yanks rarely call on us; quite frankly we might as well not exist. Fancy a cuppa?’ The man eyed him doubtfully. ‘Looks like you could do with it.’

  His name was Lewis and he was a captain of something called 312 FSS, which stood for Field Security Service. As such he was 5th Army’s British Intelligence Liaison Officer and the authority to which Theo was to report. His department comprised six men billeted in an abandoned villa in the town of Albanella, where 5th Army was currently based.

  ‘... although we’re due to move up to Naples any day.’ Lewis poured water into a teapot. ‘I say, did you hear about Mussolini?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Got rescued by Jerry paratroopers. Pinched from right under Badoglio’s nose. Hitler’s personal orders apparently.’

  ‘Where did they take him?’

  ‘Up north, to Salo on Lake Garda. Hitler’s set him up as puppet ruler of something called Reppublica Sociale Italiana. Rommel’s there too somewhere, rumour has it. Milk and sugar?’

  He was told to wait a few days while Lewis made contact with Yale, checked Theo’s bona fides and found out what to do with him. Lewis gave him vouchers for the American canteen, a chit for fresh clothes and told him to relax and enjoy the sights. ‘Perhaps get a shave and haircut too? You look like a bloody partisan!’

  Albanella was a small hilltop town with an old church tower, a pleasant view of the distant sea, but little else. It was also swarming with Americans who strode about in their hip-hugging uniforms shouting loudly at one another and monopolizing all the spaces at cafés and bars. After two days of enormous meals in the canteen, a swim in the municipal lido, and watching a Betty Grable film in an outdoor cinema, he returned to Lewis’s office for news.

  ‘Nothing yet, I’m afraid.’ Lewis hefted a box. ‘But there’s a ton of signals coming and going and we’re bottom priority. Airfields – all anyone wants to know about is bloody airfields!’

  Theo looked around. Cigarette smoke filled the room. Men were bent over desks, while cardboard boxes of files and stacks of papers were piled on every available surface. It reminded him of Grant’s office in Baker Street.

  ‘I should go.’

  ‘Go where, old chap?’

  ‘I don’t know. Back to the Volturno. Or south. Try and find 8th Army...’

  ‘You wouldn’t get five miles. Anyway, I can’t let you, I’m afraid. Not till Massingham gets back to me.’

  ‘I don’t know why they ordered me here.’

  ‘Any good at filing?’

  Two more days went by. He was given a corner desk, and piles of signals to sort through. All were to do with the Americans, mainly the air force which was setting up bases in Italy from which to launch bombing raids on southern Germany. Abbreviations, acronyms and code words peppered the signals, which rendered them mostly meaningless. In any case his job wasn’t to decipher them but merely put them in order and file them. Late on the second afternoon, one did catch his eye.

  ‘“Crossbow”?’ he queried with one of the others.

  ‘No idea.’ The man waved at a filing cabinet. ‘Try in there.’

  The next morning he finally heard from Yale.

  ‘Congratulations, Theodor Victor Trickey!’ Lewis brandished a page. ‘You’ve been Mentioned in Dispatches – again.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Some operation in Sicily. Taking a bridge, er… Primosole, it says.’

  ‘That was hardly, um...’

  ‘And your unit’s in Taranto!’

  ‘2nd Battalion? In Italy?’

  ‘The whole division, including 2nd Battalion. You’re free to join them, assuming we can work out how.’

  ‘What are they doing?’

  ‘Not much, it seems.’ Lewis studied the sheet. ‘Ki
cking their heels waiting for a troopship home, lucky beggars.’

  Home. A room in a boarding house occupied by someone else. A mother who had no time for him. A father who only wanted money. A country that wasn’t his. As for the battalion...

  ‘I’d rather not.’

  ‘Taranto...’ Lewis was studying a wall map. ‘It won’t be easy.’

  ‘I’d rather stay. Keep working.’

  ‘What’s that, old thing?’

  ‘If you can find a use for me.’

  ‘What, an experienced SOE operative with fluent languages, an impeccable record and a gallantry award?’

  *

  Something was happening in Naples, Lewis explained. Monty was closing from the south, his advance units already linking up with 5th Army. The drive now was to smash the Volturno Line: ‘... but only after we reach Naples and that’s going to take time.

  ‘Meanwhile we’re getting reports of a revolution there, or popular uprising or something, and also of horrific reprisals. Kesselring’s put a hothead called Schöll in charge and apparently he’s laying about him like a lunatic. Everything’s confused, accurate gen is badly needed, especially by Monty who’s likely to get there first.’

  ‘I’ll go.’

  ‘Should only be for a few days. Then we’ll get you to Taranto.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, I’ll go.’

  ‘Thank you. Only problem is how. Roads are blocked, Jerry patrols everywhere, trains and buses at a standstill. We could try for an air drop, I suppose, although cross-country might be safer.’

  ‘Do you have any bicycles?’

  He left next morning. Deliberately carrying no identity papers or tags, he wore a shabby Italian suit and plain shirt like the men he’d seen at the railway, and his dirty LRDG boots using string for laces. He asked Lewis to drive him up the coast as far as possible, and somewhere near Gragnano, a dozen miles or so south of Naples, he unloaded his bike and prepared to set off.

  ‘Sure you’ll be all right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Food? Money? A Webley?’

  ‘Nothing. It’s best this way.’

  ‘Good luck, then. And take care!’

  He pedalled off, soon passing Pompeii on his right with the towering cone of Vesuvius beyond. Thin plumes of smoke had been seen recently, as if a portent, but today the volcano looked quiet. He kept going, battling against a stiff breeze. To his left rain clouds scudded low over the Gulf of Naples, whipping the waters into foaming brown waves. At Portici he met his first roadblock.

  ‘Documenti.’ The German on the barrier snapped his fingers.

  ‘I have none. Everything was taken when I was demobbed.’

  ‘What unit?’

  ‘11o Alpini. At Foggia. We were told to hand everything in. I was given nothing but these clothes and told to go home.’

  ‘Napoli?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I’m to report to the district police. Excuse me, do you have a few lire...’

  ‘Fuck off. Which district?’

  ‘Pendino.’

  ‘Then you’d better get on with it. There’s a curfew, you know, and stay away from protesters.’

  He arrived at the harbour an hour later. Naples was unfamiliar to him; he knew it only from newspapers and school books as a sprawling giant, Italy’s third city, a vital port and a hotbed of political intrigue and unrest. The harbour was strangely deserted, only a few ships lying at anchor, even fewer people out on the streets. Several areas showed bomb damage, with shops abandoned and once-stylish hotels ruined, while checkpoints and roadblocks lay everywhere, many of them unmanned.

  ‘Are you mad?’ A woman scurried by. ‘Harbour is off limits, unless you want to get shot!’

  He pedalled swiftly away, making for the centre and the distant sounds of clamour. On the way he passed barricades of furniture and rubble, a burned-out car with bodies inside, groups of men, many of them young, dashing from alley to alley, carrying weapons and bandoliers of ammunition across their chests. Periodic bursts of gunfire could be heard, the crack of a grenade, and warning notices were posted everywhere. People of Naples! proclaimed a poster bearing the swastika. Beneath was a pronouncement from Schöll declaring martial law, instituting a night-long curfew, banning all assemblies, and warning of dire consequences for transgressors. Anyone acting against German forces will be executed! His home will be destroyed! Every German killed will be avenged a hundred times! Keep calm and act reasonably!

  He rounded a corner to find another barricade, this one manned entirely by children, all boys. Some as young as seven or eight, and variously armed with knives, clubs and one ancient-looking carbine, they were dirty-faced and poorly dressed and spoke in a coarse city slang.

  ‘Give me that!’ In seconds his bicycle had been seized and thrown atop the barricade.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Tedeschi weapons store, in that building. We’re going to blow it up, and take the weapons.’

  ‘What with?’

  ‘These!’ The boy gestured to a basket of petrol bombs.

  ‘Are there Germans in there?’

  ‘I hope so. We’ll blow them up too!’

  ‘What if they come out shooting?’

  ‘Piss off, we know what we’re doing.’

  ‘As you wish. Which way’s Vomero district?’

  The youth pointed.

  ‘Thanks. And push in the wicks on your Molotovs. Like the stoppers in wine bottles. It’s safer when you throw them.’

  The afternoon waned; he continued on his way, picking through the wreckage towards the centre. Buildings stood gutted, vehicles lay on their backs like dead animals, telephone wires drooped, water poured from smashed mains, many streets were blocked by craters, debris and barricades, while choking smoke clogged the air from a hundred fires. No fire pumps attended those fires, no one took charge, nobody attempted to clear up or keep order. To him it was a city in the throes of death, like the torpedoed ship in Algiers harbour, collapsing in on itself before diving for the bottom. Vomero? he enquired as he went. Armando the baker’s son? The brothers Toni and Gennaro? No one knew or cared, answering only with shaking heads, too shocked or too frightened for speech. At one crossroads a fever of panic broke out suddenly. Men ducked from sight, old women ran inside, doors and shutters banged, and in seconds he was alone with the drifting smoke and litter. Then with a roar a convoy hove into view: sand-brown vehicles with ominous black crosses, scout cars, lorries carrying troops, machine-gun-toting motorcycles, at its head a staff car with officers in uniform. Their heads turned to him as they passed, he drew himself up and saluted, and the convoy drove on.

  ‘You trying to get yourself killed?’ An old man appeared. ‘Don’t you know they’re rounding up every male from eighteen to thirty?’

  ‘No, I didn’t. What for?’

  ‘Forced labour. Or the firing squad. They’re holding them at the sports stadium.’

  ‘Where’s Vomero?’

  ‘You’re in it.’

  Further on, he was in a shabby alley, still doggedly asking about Nightjar and the others, when a hand grabbed his arm and dragged him into a doorway. ‘Horatio!’

  ‘Renzo.’

  ‘Thank God.’

  ‘Are you alone?’

  The house was a wreck, the walls cracked, a gaping hole in the ceiling. Broken glass and fallen plaster crunched underfoot as Renzo led him to a kitchen at the back. There were six San Felices in Naples, he explained, Nightjar and the two brothers, who had relatives there, ‘and we three country boys who came along for the ride!’ Salvatore had gone home, he added, while Tito and the South Africans were trying to get through to British lines further south.

  ‘Where’s Nightjar and the others?’

  ‘On patrol. Which means scrounging for weapons, lobbing a few grenades, taking pot-shots at the Tedeschi when we can. Just like everyone.’

  ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘Anarchy! All the government officials deserted the city, the Italian
army too, leaving tons of guns and ammo. The Germans know the Allies are coming but are ordered to hold the city. They’re jumpy as hell. Schöll tried to impose martial law, and ordered the shooting of rioters. Now the whole city’s rising up in protest.’

  Renzo gave him bread and wine. Later, with the coming of dusk and the curfew, the others began to trickle in. Nightjar embraced him warmly; Toni and Gennaro nodded cautiously. Lucien was last to arrive.

  ‘Where’s Guercio?’ Renzo asked.

  ‘I thought he was with you.’

  ‘Not me. Last I saw he was heading east.’

  ‘He’ll show up, he always does.’

  But Guercio didn’t show up, and in the morning worrying news came.

  ‘There’s to be a public execution. Two lads. At the Palazzo Reale. They’ve rounded up all the local civilians and are forcing them to watch.’

  They hurried for their weapons. Theo was offered a rifle but declined.

  ‘We must approach carefully,’ Toni said, ‘it could be a trap.’

  They set off into the morning. An orange sun pierced the still-drifting smoke and women and children queued forlornly for food while dogs scavenged at rubbish. The former royal palace was a famous landmark, housing the city’s library and archive. As they drew near its cobbled piazza, chants and shouting could be heard, drowning the urgent squawk of a loudspeaker.

  ‘Stay back, boys.’ They ducked into a shop. ‘Tedeschi, look.’ As they watched, armed figures in grey were seen patrolling the crowd, which was mainly made up of elderly men and women, with small children darting in and out. Then two of the Germans lunged in and dragged out a youth, beating him with clubs, before throwing him into a lorry guarded by a machine gun.

  ‘They’re rounding up more for deportation.’

  ‘Or worse.’

  Then, as though on a signal, the crowd fell silent. An armed guard marched on to the palace steps, two figures in shirtsleeves and handcuffs in their midst. An officer followed, mounting the steps to stand before the microphone.

  ‘Is the shorter one Guercio?’

  ‘It’s too far! I can’t tell.’

  ‘I’ll go.’ Theo darted out, using the colonnade beside the piazza for cover, moving steadily forward until level with the crowd.