Human Traces (56 page)

khaki skirts. "The Italians are greatly taken by the sight of our shire horses (which are used for pulling wagons), as they have never seen such beasts. We also use oxen at the tail of the column and when a man's feet are so bad from marching that it is thought dangerous for him to carry on, he is allowed to deposit his pack on an "oxo wagon" and continue thus lightened. I have fortunately never reached that stage, because I dread to think what the teasing would be like. "Now I have to tell you something rather odd. We arrived on the third day of marching at a town with a huge red sandstone clock tower and battlements at its entry joined to mediaeval walls. (This is Cittadella. I now remember I can tell you such things in a "green envelope".) I went to the church after lunch and saw the most beautiful paintings by Veronese and Giorgione. I cannot believe that this is "allowed" in time of war. I feel so fortunate to be alive. When I think of all the men in my section, only Jack and me still living (Mac, I heard was killed in the Salient); and not just living but able to go into this enchanted country and stare at the walls of its churches, while Billy lies in tiny pieces in the mud of Belgium. It made me want to cry, though whether with happiness or grief I could not say. I was sitting in a cafe, thinking about these things, when Capt Denniston comes up and says he wants to talk to me. "Capt D.: "Rebière, I have something to tell you." "DR: "Yes, sir." "CD: "We are going to have to make you an officer. There is simply no one else left. You are good at languages, you can read a map and although you are apparently still only about sixteen you count as a veteran now, God help us." "DR: "Thank you, sir. Do I have to go on a course?" "CD: "Good God, man. We are fighting a war. Do you think I am going to send you back to bloody Camberley? The reason I am promoting you is that you are the best I have left, God help us, not so I can send you home!" "DR:"I thought everyone had to go back to Sandhurst for training. Or I think maybe at Verona, there's "CD: "Don't think. You will take charge of a platoon as soon as we get to Montebelluna. The way things are going you may have command of the whole company before long." "DR: "Yes, sir, certainly, sir, etc." etc." "When the news reached the others, Jack Turney said I must be the first officer in the British Army who doesn't have to shave. This is not true, as you know, because I shave every day with the other men; but I have decided to grow a moustache to show him anyway, and to frighten the enemy. "We took up our positions on the west bank of the Piave, where we lived in caves like the 40 thieves. March is the wettest month in Italy, and the Piave was very full and rapid. It is about a hundred yards across and forms a compelling no man's land, not much wetter than that atYpres, but a lot less muddy! The object of our existence is a) to cross the river; b) in Denniston's words "to make a bloody nuisance of ourselves". The latter is surprisingly easy to achieve, the former rather difficult. "At ten o'clock sharp each morning, the Austrians send over about twenty shells, then stop. In the evening, they come down to the river to get water. I imagine those detailed to do so must be on some sort of charge or are voluntary members of the suicide squad, because they offer excellent sniper targets just agile and distant enough to be sporting. "Making a nuisance of ourselves means building boats and paddling over at night on raids, like a trench raid, except there are no trenches. As the company indeed battalion linguist, I am considered indispensable to all such operations and I am always chosen for any boat party. Do I imagine a gleeful look in Denniston's eye when he tells me, "First name on the team sheet, as ever, Lieutenant"? We paddle over using spades or trenching tools as paddles on rickety rafts knocked up by the RE. Sometimes the Austrians (the "Aussies" as my men call them) put up a flare, and then we dive into the water and swim like hell (very cold: to be avoided if possible). But if they do not hear us, we can get in amongst them and take a prisoner back for questioning. One of the men we brought back came from Villach and knew Herr Geissler, the railway engineer! He was delighted to have a chat about the old days and to be taken prisoner at last. "What does he say, Mr. Rebière?" Denniston kept asking, when we had been talking about how much we missed good Carinthian cooking. Anyway, he gave me the details of all the units in this part of the line. They included Poles, Ruthenes, Rumanians, Magyars and Serbians. He told us there was no major offensive planned here. So that put an end to "trench raids" for a time, rather to Denniston's disappointment. "All went very well for a bit until he hit on a better idea. If they were not going to attack us, we should build a bridge and attack them. I broke the news to Jack Turney. "What a ******g stupid idea! " "My views exactly, Private. Ours not to reason why, however." I have become very swanky in the way I talk to the men and I must say I thoroughly enjoy it. I just wish they wouldn't still call me "Daniel". "The Engineers excelled themselves by building several concrete pillars which they somehow contrived to float out into the river at dead of night without being seen by the enemy. Do not ask me how, but I swear to you they did it. The idea was that on top of these pillars, they would erect a wooden pontoon which is the sort of thing the RE can do in about 20 minutes, putting up wooden pontoons being exactly what the RE does. Two companies were then to cross the bridge and attack. Our battalion occupies approx 3,000 yards of the river bank; it has three companies with one in reserve. The chances of my company (D) being chosen were what Billy Reader would have called "two-to-one on". But God He alone knows why was merciful, and B and C got chosen for the "stunt". Denniston utterly crestfallen since he claims the whole thing was his idea, but a bigger bloody fool than he, Col Tucker, is the battalion commander and he made the decision. Over they went one night. Huge firefight and unpleasant bayonet work at close quarters. Inadequate support and forward planning, however, meant that the considerable advance made by our troops could not be maintained, and they were obliged to withdraw to their previous line after severe loss of life. Does that pattern of events sound at all familiar to you? "The next week, the Piave flooded and the concrete pillars were swept away; I do not think that we will try to cross the river again in the foreseeable future. I mean, we had already established at considerable personal risk that no enemy attack was imminent, so what on earth were we doing? "Next day it was reported to me that several of my platoon were drunk on vino rosso, and I went to investigate. This local wine must be stronger than I had thought, as some of the men were quite ill. One of the sergeants was out of control, and mutinous. I got the worst of them locked up in the guard detention room and had a guard placed outside my billet. The sgt will be reduced to the ranks, which is a pity, as he was a good man and someone less worthy will have to be promoted corporal. I have a mind to make it Jack Turney. "Soon after that, we were told to prepare to move up into the mountains. It was said that German reinforcements had been spotted by one of our planes and that we expected an attack in the next few weeks. It was by now the end of April, and I was not sorry to see the back of the Piave. "I am writing this letter, therefore, in the pleasant town of Cittadella, my favourite of the cities of the plain. I am sitting in the restaurant where Denniston came to promote me, and I have just had a good lunch of spaghetti and chicken, with two dark black coffees to follow. I will be out of the "green envelope area" soon when we go up into the mountains and all I shall be able to send is some silly card on which I tick a box saying I am a) all right, b) suffering from venereal disease/wind/fallen arches, or c) dead. "I do miss you all very much. Please give my love to Aunt Kitty and to C and M, whom I miss most of all. I will see you all again soon, I know. Please also tell Ma not to worry, and that my next long letter will be to her and Pa. "I am sorry this letter is so long, but I only hope that it gives you half as much pleasure to read as it has given me to write. "The sun is out, my belly is full and the mountains are calling. I see a Fiat motor lorry in the square and I think it has my name on it. I embrace you all. Daniel." Lt. Rebière was told to march his men to their position in the line on the Asiago Plateau at 1000 metres above sea level. There was an adequate metal led road up the mountain over a long series of hairpin bends, but it was reserved to the gunners and their 15-hundred-weight lorries pulling six-inch howitzers, ammunition and other stores; the infantry were to scramble up the mule tracks in as straight a line as they could manage. To someone who had spent much of his childhood at exactly that altitude, the five-hour climb was not daunting, even with a full pack, though there were moments when he longed for Herr Geissler's cable-car. The men grumbled continually and he allowed them to stop for ten minutes each hour, if possible at a place where a mountain stream enabled them to fill their water bottles. As they moved up through the pine forests, Daniel felt his spirits rise; it was hard not to feel exhilarated by the thinning of the air, the chill that came with it and the sense of being removed from the flat lands below. They watched the convoy of lorries on the switchback road, pausing occasionally as it passed through huge draped camouflage curtains that had been suspended between the pines to fool the enemy spotter planes; some of the vehicles carried anti-skid barbed wire on their solid rubber tyres and the Italian and British drivers pushed them hard through the bends, close to the edge. It was bizarre how uplifting it was after the brown and saturated plains of Belgium, thought Daniel. On a few steep sections there was a 'teleferica', an aerial ropeway of endless steel cable attached to electrically driven steel drums; these, however, carried only small cars, about six feet by two, clamped to the cable and held on by their own weight. They transported light stores, though had been used to ferry down the seriously wounded, a hazardous journey since they were unstable in the wind and the up-car passed close to the down-car, dislodging any load that stuck out. The men begged to stop at Granezza, where an ugly modern osteria promised food and warmth, but it had been requisitioned as the battalion headquarters by some other brigade, and Daniel's company followed A and C on through the woods. When they had pushed up through the mist and low cloud, he made his men pause and look behind them: there, just visible on the south-east horizon, floating in its misty lagoon, was the city of Venice. "I am Captain Gregorio, but if you take my position you may call me Luca," said the officer who handed over his trench on the plateau. He was a man of about thirty, dark and quick of movement. He spoke in English, and was amazed when Daniel introduced himself in Italian. "My Italian is not good," he said, "but I try. Do you speak German?" "I try not to," said Gregorio. "We are fighting for the ownership of these mountains and the right to speak our own language, but I was brought up near Arabba, and many people in my village spoke German. So... A little." "Then we will get on very well," said Daniel, in Carinthian-accented German. Gregorio smiled widely. "I think so. We are going into reserve near Castelfranco, but some of my company will stay halfway up the mountain at Granezza. You must come and visit me. Come and have dinner." "I will. I must settle in first. Then I will see what I can do with some lorry-hopping." Good You collect water from the reservoir. It is pumped up from the plain. There is more than enough for your men unless the pipeline is hit. Then you will have to drink wine." "Do they bomb it?" "Yes, they do. But we have hidden it well. We are quite good engineers, you know. Good luck, Daniele." "Thank you, Luca. I will see you as soon as I can get down." "We shall have pasta with wild boar. I shall shoot it myself. With a mortar if necessary' He disappeared, laughing loudly, and Daniel could see how relieved he was to be out of the line. The Italian trenches they took over had been blasted out of the rock because the earth covering was not deep enough to be dug into a defence. For the first four days the men set to work to extend and improve the system; they had to punch a cold drill into the rock with a sledgehammer to make a hole for the charge. The noise of the explosions was the only sound of warfare. From on top of a promontory, Daniel surveyed the entire plateau of Asiago. The allied line ran in and out of pine woods on the west and southern edges; the Austrians and their allies were mostly in open country in front of the small town of Asiago itself and were thus easily observed by aeroplane. The entire plateau was about eight miles from east to west and two or three miles in breadth, ringed with higher mountains. There was the occasional flash of an artillery piece from the enemy line, followed long afterwards by a rumbling report; but after the Western Front, it hardly looked like war at all. The company cook baked polenta from the local maize flour, which made a change from the pork and beans and tins of stew, though somehow did not taste as good as when the men had had it made by the farmers' wives in the villages of the plain. Accommodation for the officers was not in dug-outs but in various wooden huts concealed in the pine forests, and on the first evening Daniel was invited, with the other platoon commanders, to dinner with Captain Denniston. "I don't want your men thinking this is a cushy billet," said Denniston, pouring himself a glass of whisky. "We expect an attack, and meanwhile the time we have must be spent profitably. Do you understand?" His servant, a silent, unsmiling man called Rampton, brought in the food, which included Italian sausages he had bought in Cittadella. "Wine, Lieutenant?" "Thank you, sir. Just a little." Daniel had hardly ever drunk wine before and had seen its effects on his men, but he wanted to get used to it before he had dinner with Luca. It is quite odd, he mused, as the alcohol loosened his thoughts: last month alone I bayoneted three men to death on the Piave and a few days ago I marched a platoon for five hours up a mountain to the exact spot marked on a map; but I have never made love to a woman and I do not know if I can manage to drink wine. In the course of the next week, the men continued to improve their living conditions, though their first duty, Daniel was happy to
notice, was towards their officers, and he was invited to sleep in a sort of cave, dug into the side of the hill with a smart opening made of white stone fragments left from trench detonations and a lintel of sawn pine. A wooden bed was provided inside and, since there was room for three, Daniel insisted that the newly promoted Corporal Turney join him there along with Sergeant Shields, when they were not on duty elsewhere. When he himself was resting, Daniel admired the view across the plateau. He took out a notebook to write down the names of all the flora that he knew his father would be interested to know about on his return. On the lower slopes were wild rhododendron or Alpenrosen, though the red bushes, lovely as they were, did not look like roses to him. Near his own 'cottage', as he secretly called it, was a pink plant; he thought perhaps it was 'thrift', but he had never paid much attention to botany. The blue flowers, he was sure, were harebells, and they grew profusely. When a parcel arrived from home containing not only some of his mother's cake but, from his Uncle Thomas, the works of Shelley with the note "See "Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills'", a happy solution came to him: he would take specimens of all these wild flowers and press them between the pages of Shelley as a gift for Charlotte and Martha. He thought of their blonde heads leaning over the book together, and was a little anxious that they would laugh at him. There were no animals in the mountains though lower down there must be wild boar or he sincerely hoped there were for his dinner's sake; nor were there any birds, which was disappointing, as he had somehow expected buzzards or eagles; but at least there were no rats. Odder and odder, he thought, as he laid a small pink flower carefully between the pages of' Ode to the West Wind', breathed deeply on the Alpine air and rested his eyes on the long view over the plateau: seldom have I felt so tranquil as now I do, at war; seldom have I felt more at ease with the world, or more content. He saw Luca Gregorio whenever he could get down the mountain. The wild boar proved elusive, but there was always something good to eat at Granezza and Daniel invited him back to his 'cottage', where he served him Maconochie's stew and polenta, with oranges, which were now a staple of the ration. Luca asked to see the company cook, and explained to him that he needed to put olive oil and herbs with the polenta next time; luckily he had brought plenty of wine, so they could wash down the glutinous mixture. They sat up till late, while Luca told him about his family in Arabba and his work in Verona, and his wife and two daughters. He seemed fascinated by the fact that Daniel could speak even a little of his language and wanted to know more about his family. Luca was the first person Daniel had told since joining up that his father was a psychiatrist. In late May, by dint of some fortunate 'lorry-hopping', Daniel was able to profit from the day off that Denniston had given him. He met Luca at nine, and they set off down the mountain in a Fiat lorry that was bound for Vicenza Daniel wanted to buy some boots better suited to the mountains and an electric torch to replace the one blown off him at Passchendaele, so that he could more easily read Shelley; Luca told him that the modern town of Schio, the other side ofThiene, would be able to help. In return, Daniel planned to spend the first instalment of his extra officer's pay on buying them the best lunch that Schio could provide. "Don't be too hopeful," said Luca. In Thiene, they were deposited at Mario's bar, where any passing traffic stopped for an exchange of news on road conditions and the progress of the war. Luca persuaded a post office van to take them on up the narrow roads of the mountain again, through the green meadows, to Schio, which they reached at noon. Luca made some enquiries at the post office, and by lunchtime Daniel had his new boots and a bicycle lamp, which was the nearest thing to a torch that Schio could manage; the shopkeeper allowed him a spare bulb, but had no extra batteries, so Daniel conceded that Shelley's longer poems would have to be read by day. The restaurant that had been recommended to Luca entailed a walk through the centre of the modern town. As well as a large textile works, Schio was famous for its hospital, which they stopped briefly to admire. It was a large three-storey white building, with tall cypresses in its gardens. It was only as they were about to move off that Daniel noticed that the place proclaimed itself, in large letters beneath the pediment, to be a Hospital for Neurasthenics. He smiled to himself. Where English asylums invariably had an Italian ate design, the Schio madhouse had a bell tower with a spire that might have come from rural Sussex. There was no wild boar at the restaurant, but there were ribbon strips of pasta with hare, which Luca told him were the next best thing; there were also numerous dried and cured meats to start with and, after the pasta, veal from the mountain pastures cooked in sage and butter. Luca tried to pay, but Daniel insisted. "I wouldn't have ordered all that wine if I had known," said Luca. "Too bad," said Daniel. "You are the best friend I have had since... Well, since Billy Reader, a man who was with me in France. And before that, Freddy, who is now alas the Enemy' When they had drunk coffee, Luca said he had some private business to attend to, and that he would meet Daniel at the post office at four, when the van would take them back to Thiene. With red wine and coffee competing in his system, Daniel felt a little disorientated, especially without his companion. He sat down on a bench opposite the hospital for neurasthenics and tried to gather his thoughts. He had believed himself settled in his 'cottage' in the mountains; he had found a role for himself in the army and the respect not only of his men but perhaps even of his commanding officer. It was very beautiful at that altitude, it was serene, and the Austrian guns held no fear for him. Yet as he watched the patients shuffle out from a side door of the hospital, he had an uneasy feeling. In another life, or in a part of this one that he no longer remembered, he had been one of them. Perhaps after Passchendaele, his 'shell shock' had turned to madness and his hospital had been for the insane. Or maybe it was merely that having spent his life with lunatics, he knew too well that bitter world that lay across reality at its awkward, unforgiving angle, where voices were true and memory was false. It was not that he had himself been mad, it was just that he could too easily imagine the lives of the patients. That must be it... In any event, he was pleased to see Luca again and to be on the way home. That evening, at the osteria in Granezza, where Luca was billeted for the time being, Daniel met a young woman called Laura, who lived in Padua but was helping the Italian war effort because she spoke French and enjoyed being in the mountains. She worked in the battalion commander's office as a secretary, but sometimes joined the other officers for dinner, where she was treated with exaggerated courtesy. Daniel sat next to her and stared into her dark brown eyes, fascinated. She wore a tailored army jacket and a blue scarf with her black hair loose to her shoulders; she spoke French to him and occasionally placed her hand on his for emphasis. She laughed a good deal and seemed pleased to talk to someone new, as though the good manners of the Italian officers had become wearisome to her and she wanted to confide in someone the powerful secret feelings that living so close to death had stirred in her heart. Daniel returned in a dream to his cottage by lorry at midnight, to find Jack Turney in his bed complaining that he had caught flu. One morning in mid-June Daniel was awoken by the loud crash of an Austrian gun. He sat up in the darkness and knocked his head against the roof of his cave. The Austrian artillery never started up this early and they never shelled his part of the line. A moment later, there was another crash and bits of earth tumbled from the ceiling of his cottage. He put on his helmet and went outside. Shells were crashing into the mountainside all round and the reverberations were magnified by the rocks, so that they echoed from one peak to another, making a continuous roar. He picked up a rifle and ran to the trench where his platoon were hastily assembling, cramming on helmets and peering forward into the mist of the plateau that prolonged the darkness of the night. A number of his men were off sick with influenza and had been sent into a reserve position; many of those remaining were weakened and feverish. The noise of the bombardment made it impossible for him to gain any sense of what was going on, but in the comparative quiet between shell explosions he began to hear the rattle of machine-gun fire and rifles coming from the French part of the line. "Christ, Christ, Christ," he said, suddenly seeing through the yellow mist a line of Austrian infantry coming towards the line. "Fire! Fire!" His depleted platoon, sweating and surprised, had hardly had time to reload before they were fighting with bayonets against the Austrians who piled through the thin defence of wire, then set up machine guns with which to enfilade the British position. With no chance of communicating with Denniston and no idea of what was happening in other parts of the line, Daniel signalled to his men to withdraw at once to a prepared position about ninety yards further back in the woods. The Austrians had broken through so quickly that their own artillery barrage had not stopped but was still piling shells into the forest, so that Daniel's progress was impeded by crashing pines and the shrapnel of exploding rocks. They joined a company of Fusiliers in the reserve trench and managed to hold the line for half an hour with two Lewis guns and as many rifle rounds as they could get off through the woods. Soon, however, they found themselves under fire from behind and higher up the slope. A messenger came weaving through the trees and shouted in Daniel's ear: "They've broken through on the right for half a mile. The flank of the company is being held by cooks and orderlies. You have to retire again. General's orders. A and C are behind that ridge." "Is Denniston alive?" "Yes, he sent me." "All right. Let's go." In the second withdrawal they met mustard gas curling through the tree trunks and the men became disorientated as they fought for their respirators. There were now Austrian snipers in the woods and it was difficult to know which way they were meant to be going, as machine-gun fire pursued them and rifle bullets ricocheted off the pines. The Austrians must have got word back that they had broken through because their artillery barrage ceased, but not before a final shell buried a British gun emplacement beneath a rockfall. Daniel heard the screaming of the men inside, but could not stop. He thought he saw where his company had regrouped and was shouting to his men to run for it. When he dived down into his third position of the morning, he recognised only one man there, a private called Addison. "Where are the rest of the men, Addison?" "Don't know, sir. We was well and truly fucked. Couldn't see the bastards coming in the mist. I saw the corporal with his head blown off." "Corporal who?" "Turney, sir. Apparently they're through our line for half a mile, but the Frogs have held off the Magyars in their sector." "All right. This is where we hold the line. Get firing." By noon, the ferocity of the assault had died down, though there were still pockets of the Austrian Landwehr behind them as well as in full occupation of the two forward British trenches. At two o'clock a company was despatched to clear the rear, and at four the first counter-attack was begun on Daniel's right. By five it had been fully rebuffed. An hour later, word was sent from Denniston that D company was to be part of the next counter-attack, due in fifteen minutes. Daniel went along the line and urged his men to prepare to go over the top, back through the woods; but the flu-stricken troops were exhausted and pleading for water. "You can have all you want to drink when we're back in our own trench," he said. "Now get up and get ready for the whistle." As they moved forward, the fire came from so many angles that it seemed the trees themselves were shooting at them. None of them had fought in the mountains before, and while it was harder for the guns to find them, the sense of being fired on from all sides was somehow more nerve-testing than the slow plod into death on the plains of Picardy. Daniel saw his men hiding behind trees only to find themselves shot at from the side they had thought safe; some just kept running forward, though few of them made it back to their own support trench. Within an hour the counter-attack was called off and they crept back to their reserve position in the rocks, where they flopped down exhausted on the pine needles. At eight o'clock another section of the British line was stirred into action and charged forward to regain the ground it had lost twelve hours ago. Once more the woods and mountains echoed to the sound of the enemy machine guns, now well em placed in their new positions. Daniel wondered vaguely who had his cottage and if his bed and books were now being used by a man from Vienna or Linz. When night fell, the shooting stopped and they tried to get the wounded down the mountain to the regimental aid post. Daniel despatched stretcher parties and went with them into the woods to bring back as many men as they could. In the course of the night it became clear that the Austrian success had been limited to a section of the Allied line no more than a mile long, where they had pushed through to a depth of about half a mile and entrenched. It was curious, Daniel thought, that although they were more or less encircled by the enemy, there was something about the summer night at altitude that made it possible to rest; perhaps the men were simply too drained by loss, by fear and illness, and by the physical strain of battle to stay awake. At any rate, soon after midnight, Daniel, lying huddled with the remaining men of his platoon, also fell asleep. He dreamed of Laura, the girl at the Italian base. Someone was shaking his shoulder. It was Denniston. "Wake up, Lieutenant. We are to launch another counter-attack at 04.30 hours. Having missed out on the last one, D company will be at the front of this show. It is now three. Have your men stand to at four and be ready to go." "Sir." Daniel dragged himself up into a sitting position, then stood and went to find the NCOs, shining his new torch, which had survived the day, among the sleeping bodies, looking for a stripe. In the course of the next hour, the men were readied: grumbling,