A Soldier of the Great War (45 page)

 

T
HEY LOST
themselves on the high ridge for two days as they made their way through the greenery and over mountainsides of blond and yellow grasses, where all seemed safe and life had been made to stand still. They covered a broken front at least a kilometer wide, individually or in groups of two or three. They couldn't see each other unless they strained to pick out their fellow soldiers from the rocks and brush, and from the towns along the sea, and the coastal road, they were invisible as they crossed saddles and valleys, accompanied only by the wind. Were it not for the heavy steel they carried, they might have thought that they had escaped from history itself.

As he made his way across the hills Alessandro asked himself over and over again if it were not right for the deserters to have chosen refuge in God's peace. His only answer, though he strained for others, was yes.

Off Tunisia, Guariglia had said, "Some of these men have left the line not because they were cowards but because they couldn't bear never to see their children again. If that's so, how can we, in good conscience, chase them down?"

"It has nothing to do with conscience," Alessandro had answered. "The colonel wants to fight the Mafia, the generals have to keep their troops from running away, and we have to do as we're told. If we don't hunt, we'll be hunted."

"And what if everyone refuses?"

"The army would disintegrate and the Austrians would be in Rome within a fortnight."

"Is it worth dying to keep them out?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because you'll die anyway, sooner than you think. In addition to the incongruity of Austrians walking through Rome in swords and plumes, they would need us—you and me—to help them conquer France and Greece, and if we didn't want to help, they would chase us down and shoot us.

"In history, Guariglia, will is only an illusion and success does not last. You can only do your best in the short time you have. If you decide to remake the world you'll just end up killing people out of revolutionary impatience and triumphalism."

"So we kill the deserters."

"Yes. If we join them, we'll die with them."

 

D
AWN OF
the third day found them on a hilltop, looking across a precipitous valley cluttered with rocky ledges and banks of laurel and juniper. At the head of this valley, on a rise where trees had grown in a line that marked a stream, were half a hundred white tents.

As the sun came up behind them in the clear, binoculars were circulated and the squads of men lying flat on the ridge discovered that in the enemy camp were women, strings of mules, laundry hung out to dry, pits for roasting meat, a platform that looked like a stage, and sentries, of whom at least a dozen lined the dirt track that led up to their camp. A dozen more were around the camp itself. They had diverted the stream for their gardens, and they had a sweeping view of the valley.

"They're Italians," someone said of the men they were supposed to go against, but the morning wind carried away the thought.

When the camp was raised, the west wind carried the smell of freshly baked bread and cake up over the ridge, like water flowing over a stone, where the semi-starved River Guard lay amid rocks and thorns, waiting until noon for six sips of water, a tiny bit of meat, five crackers, and a single piece of dried fruit.

The lieutenants backed the men off the ridge into a forest of scrub where wild boar rested in their dens waiting for the night. Left on the ridge were three observers with binoculars and notebooks. They were spread far apart and instructed to keep low. Alessandro was one of them, a wiser choice than anyone knew, for he had grown up on the Gianicolo with a telescope in his room, periodically looting the city of Rome, the mountains beyond, and the high clouds, of the never-ending particulars and detail accessible only to a trained and patient eye.

When the three thirsty and sunburned soldiers gave their reports that evening it was apparent that they had done some counting, but then Alessandro spoke.

"At least two hundred and fifty men are in the camp," Alessandro began.

"How can you tell?" one of the other soldiers challenged. "They were all moving around, inside and out."

Alessandro looked disgusted. "I took a random sample of tents. I counted how many soldiers were in each one, and then I multiplied, allowing that the leaders would have tents for themselves."

"They were going in and out all the time. We found it impossible to determine how many men were in each one."

"I didn't."

"Why not?"

"I simply remembered who went in and who came out."

"How could you distinguish them?" one of the lieutenants asked.

"By dress, size, coloring, gait, and a thousand other signs."

"And you were able to keep all these things in mind?"

"Yes," Alessandro said. "There were only six men to a tent."

"Go on."

"Of the two hundred and fifty, two-thirds are former soldiers. A third has never been in the military."

"How can you tell!" one of the other two observers burst out jealously.

"For the last time, now," Alessandro said severely, "by the way someone carries himself, the way he sits or moves in a group, by dress, mannerisms, colors, textures, equipment relics, the making of a fire, the tying of a knot ... For example, when someone who has been in the army for a while is addressed, he becomes slightly stiff, as you are now. The others drop their heads a little. Hill bandits don't shine their boots, they don't stack things in rows.... Look," he said, "take it or leave it."

"Go on
Dottore,
" Lieutenant Valtorta urged.

"All right. They're nervous, guilty. They may not be expecting us, but they're expecting someone. Their sentries overlook the road and are posted all around the camp. They're in the brush, halfway up the sides of the valley. One was below us about four hundred meters away. He was from Civitavecchia and he was singing
La Cincindella.'
"

This was too much for the other two. "We saw him," one of them said, "but no one could hear what he was singing. And how could you know he was from Civitavecchia?"

Alessandro glared at them. "I couldn't hear him, but I read his lips and watched him move his shoulders." Insulted, he turned abruptly and walked away.

"Come back," the lieutenant ordered. "Don't pay attention to these idiots. What else?"

Alessandro began again. "They're armed with Mannlichers, and they have plenty of ammunition, but neither mines nor wire. They're organized for the watch, that's all, they have no defensive plan. The half dozen women in the camp are prostitutes from
Palermo. No children. The mules bray continually because of the wild boar moving in the brush. In the late evening and early morning hours the boar crash through the vegetation. No one will notice the sound of our approach unless we knock our rifles against the rocks."

"Who's the leader?"

"I don't know. He may be in a villa in Messina."

"The numerical ratio is not in our favor, and the country is vast and intricate," the lieutenant stated.

"I have one other thing to note, sir. They're short on timepieces, because the sentries don't trust their relief to keep the time—they don't want to sit on a rock singing
'La Cincindella'
while their replacements are sleeping, or swimming in the stream, hours after they should be at their posts—so they take the watches with them. Each post is a separate system, and no one cooperates, which is, I assume, what happens when you draw entirely from a pool of disciplinary failures. They repeatedly pull the watches from their pockets and look at them toward the end of the shift. Because the relief doesn't know what time it is, the sentries leave their posts and come into camp to get them, which is very stupid, especially if we're waiting on the route back."

That evening the River Guard ate the rest of their food, intending to fight for bread the next morning. The sentries would be captured, or struck in the back of the head with rifle butts, whichever would be quieter, after which the River Guard would enter the camp, cutting the tent stays with their bayonets. Most everyone would be inside, and most everyone would be trapped. As they crawled from the collapsed tents, one by one, their first act would be to look into a rifle barrel.

No one thought the plan would work with so few River Guard and so many deserters. It would be hard to eliminate all of the sentries without noise, not everyone would be inside the tents, and, if even one man escaped, all Sicily would know of the operation.

Guariglia suggested putting a block across the road and stationing men along the ridges, but the lieutenants had already detailed ten men for this, and said that once the prisoners were grouped together a hundred of the River Guard would sweep the valley to flush out stragglers.

During the night they positioned themselves near the sentry posts in a riot of noise that did not betray them, for the boar, much disturbed, ran close to the sentries and even through the camp. The valley came alive with rifle fire. Bullets whined, cutting leaves off at the stem and shattering rocks.

By the end of this, the River Guard had taken position, with fifty of them poised to eliminate the sentries and eighty more ready to rush the camp if anyone managed to sound an alert. During the shooting, shouting, and abandonment of posts as pigs were dragged through the brush by groups of unarmed men, everyone wanted to start the attack, and everyone knew that everyone else wanted to as well, but because they were spread out they had no way to confirm it, and though darkness favored assault it did not favor either taking or holding prisoners, so they waited until dawn, bayonets fixed in case they were charged by the pigs.

"It doesn't matter," the puppet soldier said to Guariglia and Alessandro as they fixed bayonets. "If a boar charges, I'll shoot him. Then I'll scream, 'I killed a pig! I killed a pig!' That's all." Even so, he fixed his bayonet—for the little pigs, who, though not as fearsome as their elders, were very aggressive and somewhat quicker.

Lying in fragrant herbs, they listened to the birds announce the sunrise, and their hearts began to beat fast. At six o'clock it was light, the sun shone hot against the mountains, and the valley was in shadow. The sentries began to walk in. One of them, his rifle slung, stumbled upon a group of ten River Guard, who thrust their bayonets close to his face. He put up his hands, closed his eyes, and held his breath.

The other sentries returned to camp, and long before their replacements stirred, the River Guard had taken up position and were waiting. Everyone was sweating, most were tense, some were terrified. They were used to trenches, wire, mine fields, and artillery. They expected whistles and flares as the signal for an attack. Though war in the line was much more dangerous than what they were doing now, they had become accustomed to it.

Newly aroused sentinels straggled out lazily, unevenly, carelessly. The minutes of their walk to their posts seemed very long, and when most were halfway there, they suddenly stopped. An instant later the River Guard looked up, and everyone cocked his head to listen. The sound of engines came roaring through the valley, echoing off its walls.

The plan collapsed as sentries ran back, unshouldering their weapons, and others came running from the tents. Two bi-planes appeared from beyond the ridge and flew right over Guariglia, who had been trying to wave them back with his hat. Then they cut across the valley, firing their machine guns at the tents.

When they banked to the east and disappeared, they left the camp in complete chaos. Wounded men, panicked sentries, and nude women clutching their clothes fled barefooted, hopping along the thorny ground until they had to sit down. Everyone was screaming. As the planes came back up the valley, guns firing, the River Guard stood up and shook their fists.

The bullets cut into the dirt, knocked down and shredded the tents, and slaughtered the hobbled, braying mules. The deep roar of the engines seemed to reset all the clocks and registers of the world.

Hundreds of half-dressed armed men had spread into the brush. "Who sent those planes? Who sent those planes!" Lieutenant Valtorta screamed over and over until he was hoarse, and then he started to shout, "Form ranks! Form ranks!" but this was impossible, because everyone was spread out in a circle. As they ap
proached for the third time, the planes released their bombs, which ripped down the tents before they detonated, and then made four enormous explosions.

Throughout the battle, the birds sang at a high pitch. If they had done so in ignoring the fighting, it was remarkable, and if they had done so because of the fighting, it was also remarkable. The combat took place in small groups or man to man, as the deserters fought like panicked horses. At first the River Guard were restrained, perhaps because they found it difficult to kill Italians. Only when their natural courtesy had cost some of them their lives did they begin to fight like men who had fought Austrians and Germans with bayonet and mace. They shot their enemy, gutted him alive, and swung the butts of their rifles to smash open his face.

When it ended, the sun was hot and the survivors thought they would die if they could not reach the stream. In many instances, they were right.

 

T
HOUGH WHEN
he sat on a campaign chair his legs didn't reach the floor, Colonel Pietro Insana was a man of great decisiveness. As soon as the River Guard returned with their wounded and the prisoners, he changed everything.

He raised the flag, put sentries at the gates, and sent men into town for provisions. So many had escaped from the cul de sac that everyone in Sicily now knew of the River Guard, who, rather than be poisoned, stopped buying food almost as soon as they had started, and relied upon their stores and the fish they caught. Now they patrolled the roads and hills, descending in long columns as far as Trapani, going east almost to Palermo, just to show that they were there.

The River Guard had been so secret that hardly anyone knew of their existence, much less that they were in Sicily. The bi-planes
had been sent by another branch, in a fatal coincidence, and had returned to the Veneto almost immediately. Their appearance exactly at the moment of attack caused word to spread that the Italian army was going to pacify Sicily with airplanes, machine guns, and artillery. Though no slaughter had been intended, the death of more than a hundred men sent a potent message. In Alpine trenches far to the north, where in the middle of July Italian soldiers still braced their rifles on banks of snow, the mishap in the cul de sac had come to be known as the Monte Sparagio Raid. Everyone who had taken part, it was generally asserted, was doomed, but that was not so. No one knew who was in the force headquartered at Capo San Vito, and no lists were kept anywhere, not even in the Ministry of War in Rome, where the lists had been destroyed.