Freefall

by Robert Radcliffe

  ‘Citizens of Naples!’ The loudspeaker blared. ‘You have been warned repeatedly to respect the forces of law and order...’

  Timing his moment, he sprinted from cover and plunged headlong into the crowd, which enveloped him like a protective blanket. ‘This way, giovane. Keep your head down. Stay down, we’ve got you.’

  ‘... However, these two criminals chose to disregard these forces of law and order and were caught looting German army stores of food.’

  He struggled forward, steered this way and that by thighs and elbows, his head repeatedly pressed down by unseen hands. Eventually he neared the front and gingerly straightened. As he did so someone dropped a cap on his head.

  The condemned men had hoods over theirs.

  ‘Is that Schöll talking?’ he murmured.

  ‘That’s the bastardo.’

  ‘... The penalty for looting is death. Therefore, in accordance with published ordinance and by my authority, they will suffer public execution, as a warning and deterrent to any who transgress the law.’

  It happened very fast. The victims were shoved up against the wall, four Germans with rifles took aim, the hoods came off, Schöll raised his arm, and then dropped it. The volley rang shockingly loud, the two men slumped, a sigh rose from the crowd, and then a single shout came from far back:

  ‘Viva Napoli! Viva la rivoluzione!’

  *

  ‘It wasn’t Guercio.’

  ‘He must have been rounded up.’

  ‘Then he’ll be at the sports stadium.’

  ‘I hear there’s tanks and heavy machine guns.’

  ‘We’ll need more weapons.’

  They set out once more. By mid-morning there were more insurgents on the streets than on any previous day, more skirmishes with the enemy, and more casualties. Gunfire and explosions could be heard everywhere, with bands of rebels springing up in all directions. For their part the Germans set up roadblocks and gun emplacements, mounted motorized patrols and tried to contain each encounter as it arose. But they were fighting bushfires: no sooner was one under control than another broke out. Italian disorder was their enemy; no command structure existed among the rebels, the fighting was uncoordinated and spontaneous. And spreading, with other districts of the city joining by the hour. Rumours abounded of open warfare and mass executions, Allied salvation and even of German surrender, but nothing could be substantiated. The San Felices stayed together, making their way to a disused school used as a makeshift arsenal. The weaponry was Italian and in poor condition, but they restocked with grenades, and loaded their ammunition belts with fresh rounds. ‘We need to do better than this,’ Gennaro grumbled, checking his rifle. Then they set off for the stadium. Barely had they gone fifty yards when a huge explosion sent them scurrying for cover. ‘Tanks!’ someone yelled. ‘They’re shelling the houses!’

  The six piled into a doorway. As the dust settled they saw the mottled green turret showing above a shattered wall, its battle-scarred barrel roving from side to side. Infantrymen bearing machine pistols were clambering through the rubble behind it.

  ‘What do we do?’

  ‘Attack!’

  ‘A tank! Are you mad? And those lads are hefting Schmeissers!’

  ‘Horatio?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What do we do?’

  ‘Well, it’s your decision. But I’d, um, suggest you fall back.’

  ‘You mean retreat?’

  ‘Getting killed here won’t help Guercio.’

  They reached the stadium to find it in a state of siege. Surrounded by walls forty feet high, the interior was completely sealed off, although singing and chanting could be heard rising from the stands, as though a football match was going on. Armed Germans ringed the outside, and guarded the gates of the access tunnels. Above them, riflemen roamed the walls like archers on a battlement, while on the piazza below a single tank, squat and menacing, its hatches locked shut for action, stood solitary guard. All round the piazza, women and old men gathered in anxious clusters, the relatives of the young men imprisoned inside. Meanwhile, lurking beyond them in the bars and shops surrounding the stadium were groups of armed rebels.

  ‘It’s a stand-off,’ Nightjar reported half an hour later. ‘Tedeschi say that if anyone comes near, they’ll start shooting the boys inside.’

  ‘So what do we do?’

  ‘General consensus is wait until dark then storm the tunnels.’

  ‘What with?’

  ‘It’ll be a massacre.’

  ‘Yes, but we’ve got to do something. And if we all charge together...’

  Food was found and circulated, arguments flared between factions, a priest arrived and held mass among the waiting relatives. And as the afternoon wore on the singing and chanting inside the stadium faded to weary silence. Theo found an empty corner and sat down against the wall, resting his head on his knees.

  ‘Horatio.’ A murmur stirred him.

  ‘Hello, Nightjar.’

  ‘How are you doing, old friend?’

  ‘I’ll be fine.’

  He felt a nudge. ‘Remember old Tolomei’s place? That was a night, eh!’

  ‘It certainly was. You did very well. You and Francesco, and...’

  ‘Starling?’

  ‘Starling, that’s right. It seems a long time ago.’

  ‘It was.’ He hesitated. ‘Is everything all right with you, Horatio? You seem… not your usual self.’

  He raised his head. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Ever since—’

  ‘I’m done with it.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The war, the fighting and the killing. I can’t go on with it. I won’t.’

  ‘But you’re our leader.’

  ‘Not any more. You’re the leader now. And a fine one.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Armando. Listen to me. Don’t storm the stadium.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Renzo’s right. It will be a massacre, and a needless one. Don’t do it. Stay back and keep the siege going. Persuade the other groups to do the same. Keep the pressure up but be clever. The Allies are coming; the Germans are losing, and they know it. They won’t risk getting caught here. A day or two more and they’ll pull out.’

  ‘Yes. All right. I’ll try. But what are you going to do?’

  ‘I’ll get Guercio.’

  *

  At dusk a solitary figure was seen to emerge from a shop on the piazza and, holding a white flag on a stick, walk out to the tank, where it paused, apparently to speak to the occupants. A few minutes passed while an exchange took place on the radio, then two soldiers marched out to the tank and escorted the individual to an open car where an officer was sitting. Another conversation then took place between the officer and the individual, at the end of which the two soldiers were sent inside the stadium. A long interval then passed while nothing happened. Finally the tunnel gates reopened and the two soldiers emerged, with a smaller figure between them. They escorted this youth as far as the tank, he then proceeded alone across the piazza to join his friends outside the shop. The first individual then got into the car beside the officer and was driven off.

  CHAPTER 14

  A week or so after the air raid that Trudi and I get caught up in, I make my first house call to an Ulm resident. Second, I suppose, if you count Lucie Rommel, but this is different. It’s to an old man dying of congestive heart failure, and though unremarkable in itself and ultimately unfortunate, the visit nevertheless heralds a new phase of my Ulm experience, and the beginning of an extraordinary few days.

  What happens is an elderly woman comes to the drop-in centre one day and asks me to visit her neighbour. ‘Can he not come here?’ I say. ‘No, he is too ill,’ she replies. ‘But I have no time,’ I plead. ‘He only lives two minutes away,’ she insists. So without really thinking I agree to stop by on my way back to the Revier. His house is a tiny two-roomed affair, undamaged by bombs but without heating or water because the mains are still out.
Consequently it is dim and dank, rather unsanitary and freezing cold. She leads me up narrow wooden stairs to the one bedroom where I find the old man on the bed. The room has a grate but the fire is out. ‘Nobody has coal,’ she explains. I examine the poor fellow, who looks about eighty and exhibits all the signs: pulmonary oedema, respiratory distress, swollen legs, crackling noises down the stethoscope and the rest. The prognosis is poor.

  ‘Does he not have relatives?’

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘He should be in the hospital.’

  ‘The hospital is under military administration.’

  ‘Says who?’

  ‘Der Direktor.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘How should I know?’

  Back at the Revier that evening I discuss the matter with Erik. ‘He’s completely alone, poor soul. Too sick even to feed himself or make a fire.’

  ‘What about the neighbour?’

  ‘He’s not her problem. She made that clear.’

  ‘I too am asked to visit patients at home.’ He shakes his head. ‘But I always refuse, because we haven’t the time. Our movements are so strictly controlled. Also...’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Where will it end?’

  ‘True. But what about the hospital being under military control?’

  He shrugs. ‘I doubt it is Vorst’s decision. This comes from higher up.’

  ‘But he could protest or something. Refuse even, if he had any decency. It’s a civilian hospital.’

  ‘Not any more, it seems. He’s throwing them to the wolves. Hitler is, I mean, like he said he would.’

  ‘Throwing who to the wolves?’

  ‘The German people. That broadcast we hear on Prien’s radio, the totaler Krieg one Goebbels made. Hitler’s finished and knows it, but instead of ending the madness and surrendering, he’ll fight to the end, and take the civilian population with him.’

  Corporal Prien’s wireless is strictly off limits, but he often listens to it, the volume turned high just to annoy us, especially news broadcasts which are nothing but varnished lies and Nazi propaganda. The speech Erik refers to is often played, to our irritation, and we’ve become familiar with its message, delivered in Goebbels’ clipped exhortations. Do you believe in the final victory of the German people? he demands. Are you willing to give everything for victory? Do you want total war? Do you want a war more total and radical than anything ever imagined? As if they have any choice in the matter.

  ‘And the hospital?’

  ‘Taken over for the war effort, I am guessing, like everything. Fuel, food, clothes, factories, now medical facilities too, and their supplies. Speaking of which...’ He hands me a package. ‘This was delivered today.’

  I examine the parcel. ‘Garland & Henning’ is handwritten rather grandly on the front: ‘Doktoren der Medizin’. With no return address or sender details. ‘Sounds impressive,’ I joke. ‘We should set up in practice!’

  ‘Excellent idea. Open it.’

  I duly do, to find bottles and phials of medicines, specifically analgesics, anti-inflammatories, morphine and, most crucially of all, penicillin. Not a large amount, but more than we’ve seen in ages and hugely welcome.

  ‘These are German.’ I study the labels. ‘This isn’t Red Cross or Allied stuff, but German. See the trademarks? Bayer, look, and Merck.’

  ‘Which suggests...’

  The hand of Frau Lucie Rommel and her stepdaughter Gertrud Stemmer.

  We’re sitting in the bedsit, drinking acorn coffee and puffing on our pipes like two old stagers in a Piccadilly club. Supper was a curious concoction of rabbit leftovers courtesy of Fenton, mixed with Red Cross prunes and stale Sauerkraut pinched from the Jerry kitchen. Having completed a final ward round, we have repaired, as has become our custom, to the privacy of our room to write letters and notes, smoke a pipe, read, play chess and chat. Over the weeks, despite differences in character and temperament, we have inevitably grown close, intimate even, rather like two prisoners in a cell.

  ‘What I simply don’t understand,’ I say, ‘is why? I mean, I know nothing about Rommel, but he was a dyed-in-the-wool Nazi, wasn’t he? And certainly had no love for the Allies. So why would his widow go to all this trouble to help us? His sworn enemy.’

  ‘Did not the daughter say it is to do with his legacy? And securing the truth.’

  Much is falsely known about my father, Gertrud had written in her letter, not least questions surrounding his loyalty.

  ‘Yes, I suppose. Oh look, check!’

  ‘Verdomme, Garland, you’re too good! Anyway, if you ask me, Trickey’s the key to all this. If you want answers, you should keep questioning him.’

  Which I am. But it’s a mind-numbingly frustrating business. Theo is by now physically much improved. He’s on his feet and able to walk short distances with the aid of two sticks. He’s eating, and putting on weight, his vital organs all seem to be functioning, although he has a hacking cough and sallow pallor due to renal issues caused by months on his back. He gets breathless with the slightest exercise, tires very quickly and sleeps a lot, but in general has come on enormously since the dark days of Stalag XIB. He talks too, commenting on the weather, asking about Ulm, or complaining of itching where I drilled through his skull. And there’s an impatience about his conversation, as if he too is searching for answers. Sitting in our room Erik and I often hear him restlessly tap-tapping across the ceiling to chat with the other patients.

  But chat about what, one wonders, because neurologically, cognitively, he’s a mess. Questioning him is like trying to read pages thrown from a moving train. Everything’s jumbled up and a lot is missing. At his bedside I have learned something of his place of birth, his childhood in the Tyrol, the political and ethnic tensions, and of his family which is bewilderingly extended. I know also he and his mother came to England where they lived ‘near a racecourse’. But anything more recent than that, of his life in Kingston, for example, or his military service and experiences, I know practically nothing except disjointed fragments. One day he tells me how he and a friend called ‘Percy’ climbed down from a ship to carry a drum of wire all night. The next day I ask him about it and he remembers nothing. Another time I get very excited when he mentions the name Frost.

  ‘Colonel John Frost?’ I repeat. ‘So you were in 2nd Battalion. In the Paras?’

  ‘No, the 2/6th Territorials... Wasn’t I?’

  And by evening he’s forgotten that too. Of Arnhem, unsurprisingly, and how he came to be lying among the dead outside the Schoonoord, he has no memory at all.

  *

  The next day, to our consternation, Erik and I are summoned to see Vorst. Both together, which is unusual and thus doubly worrying. Descending the stair, we nervously exchange theories. A Vorst summons is invariably bad news, usually involving a telling-off followed by punishments such as stoppage of privileges or confiscation of Red Cross supplies, or threats of transfer or even imprisonment. Lately these castigations have grown worse, probably because of Germany’s war situation, which even he knows is dire. The parcel of medicines, I’m thinking, is probably today’s bone of contention. ‘I hope it’s not about the drop-in,’ Erik frets.

  Neither, as it turns out. We march in, stamp to attention, and wait to be acknowledged. Normally this takes a while, but today Vorst, who is standing at the window, immediately turns at our entry and offers an obsequious smile. Which is even more unnerving.

  ‘Ah, Herren, there you are. Thank you for attending at such short notice. Do please come in.’

  We shuffle nervously forward.

  ‘I trust you are both in good health and spirits?’

  ‘Jawohl, Herr Oberstabsarzt!’

  ‘Good, good.’ He returns to his desk, upon which sits a large cardboard box. ‘I have asked you here today on a matter of some delicacy.’

  ‘Herr Oberstabsarzt?’ The box is clearly moving. Or something inside it is.

  ‘To do with an animal.’


  Fenton’s buck. He’s found the bloody rabbit, cottoned on to our scheme and now we’re for the chop.

  ‘A very dear friend of mine has recently acquired a dog. Ein Welpe.’

  A tiny nudge from Erik, who as usual is two steps ahead of me. ‘Have they, Herr Oberstabsarzt? How delightful. I hope it is not sick.’

  It isn’t. A Welpe is a puppy, the dog is a Dobermann, and what Vorst wants, it transpires, is for a trained surgeon to dock its tail. I don’t realize this immediately because he and Erik discuss it in high-speed German, but after a few minutes we are ushered from the office, me holding the box, and Erik holding two bottles of Schnapps, which is to be our payment. Once safely back in the bedsit, he explains the details.

  ‘It’s his mistress!’ he hisses excitedly. ‘The bit on the side he keeps across the river, it’s her puppy!’

  ‘I don’t care whose puppy it is, I’m not doing it!’

  ‘But, Dan.’ He grins, clinking the bottles. ‘Lovely Schnapps, look!’

  ‘Yes, but he’s the enemy! He’s a Nazi bastard, a crook, a tyrant and an appalling human being. Doing him this favour – doing him any favour in fact – it’s, well, it’s tantamount to treason!’

  Clink clink. ‘But who loses? Not one person. In fact everyone gains.’

  ‘I don’t see how!’

  ‘The mistress’ – he counts off – ‘gets a beautifully docked puppy. Vorst gets a pleased and grateful mistress. We get a pleased and grateful Vorst, and two bottles of Schnapps. And because Vorst is happy, everyone in the Revier gets an easier time, including the patients.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘And one more thing.’ His tone hardens. ‘We will have something to use. On him. Like a lever. If we ever need one.’

  ‘Blackmail, you mean.’

  ‘Because he will be in our debt.’

  The arrangements are strictly clandestine. We will perform the procedure in secret tonight, after finishing up for the day. In the meantime the dog stays out of sight in the bedsit, with each of us taking turns to check on it, feed and exercise it and so on. Tomorrow, assuming all is well, it will be returned to its owner, minus tail, and that will be that.