Monte Cassino (15 page)

The winch on Barcelona's truck unwound, and Gregor took hold of the thick wire. Porta went quite savage, when he discovered that Gregor was wearing gauntlets.

"Who the hell do you think you are? Take those bloody things off!"

Gregor answered back and lashed at Porta with a piece of broken wire. In a moment we were tumbling among the graves in a savage fight. A flare lit up the scene. A fighter came roaring out of the clouds. A paratrooper toppled off a truck with blood trickling from a line of holes in his chest. A monk doubled up like a pocket knife. The tarpaulin of our truck went up in flames. A monk tackled it with a fire extinguisher.

Leutnant Frick blew his whistle and threatened us with every sort of disaster: court martial, Torgau, execution.

I spat out two teeth that landed in Heide's lap. A bloody flap of skin was hanging over Porta's left eye. Heide had a long gash in a buttock, and Tiny's mouth was torn up to one ear. It had been a nasty fight. It took our medical orderly and Padre Emanuel, cursing us, an hour and a half to patch us up.

We got the steel hawser round the tired truck. Gregor and Porta righted each other's bandages and shared the contents of a field bottle.

"Now I'm going to start," Porta called from his cab. "Away from the wire. If it parts, it'll have your nuts off."

Slowly, incredibly slowly, the heavy truck began to move. The flares had gone out. Five maimed corpses remained. The fire in the truck had been put out and none of our precious cargo had suffered.

All hell was loose on the Via Appia. It appeared to be in flames for at least seventy miles.

The Old Man and Leutnant Frick drove first in the Kubel. Intently they studied the map to see if they could find a cross country way. At San Cesarea we had a fight with a group of partisans, in which we lost three men, including Frey, our medical orderly. A hand grenade blew both his legs off, and he bled to death in a moment.

The sun was about to rise as we reached Rome. A house standing on its own was burning merrily.

Two men in long greatcoats with machine pistols at the ready emerged from behind a halted car.

The Legionnaire began humming:

"Come now death, just come!"

He rested the barrel of his Russian machine pistol on the top of the door. A tongue of flame shot out into the darkness. A wicked rat-tat-tat echoed among the houses. The two men crumpled. One's steel helmet rolled cluttering into the gutter. A pool of blood formed quickly, mixing with the pouring rain.

"What was that?" one of the monks in the back asked.

"A couple of bandits wanted to talk to us."

The monk crossed himself.

As we were driving along the Tiber, we met a column of SS grenadiers. They were from the Moslem Division and wore red fezes with silver death's heads on them.

At Piazza di Roma Porta took a wrong turning and we ended up in Piazza Ragusa. An ordinary sentry stopped us. We exchanged cigarettes and schnaps. An infantry feldwebel, in command of the guard, warned us against partisans wearing German uniform. Some said they were in military police uniforms.

"Shoot at the least suspicion," he advised. "If you should make a mistake and shoot a few bloodhounds, it won't be all that of a disaster."

"We'll shoot as soon as we see a half-moon badge," Porta said with a grin. "I'd love to lay a few of them flat."

"Look out for the spaghetti-eaters," the feldwebel warned. "They're beginning to make life difficult for us. Shoot every one you meet. They're getting pretty bold these days. The other day we had to liquidate a village north of here. They had started celebrating the Allied victory!"

We drove on following the railway line. Again Porta went wrong and the whole column followed him. We drove round in circles, unable to find the way. We enlisted the help of a couple of tarts standing at the corner of Via La Spezia and Via Taranto. They got up into the cab beside us. The police turned them off in Via Noazional.

All at once we were in St. Peter's Square. Tiny gaped.

"This is a bit of something! Is this where the Pope has his cave?"

No one answered him.

"I don't like it," he went on thoughtfully. "Suppose he's got second sight, like God!"

"But you don't believe in God," said the Legionnaire smiling.

"I'm not going to discuss that, while we're anywhere near here."

We swung back again, drove down Borgo Vitterio to Via de Porta Anglica.

A broad gate was opened. We were evidently expected. We drove up a narrow street and through another gateway. A couple of Swiss guardsmen showed us the way. We were nervous. This was something new. Even Porta's flow of words dried up. You didn't hear an oath or a swear word, though normally we couldn't say three consecutive words without one. That was part of war.

The tarpaulins were flung back. A few orders issued in quiet voices and we began unloading: swiftly and intently.

We had breakfast in the Swiss guards' barracks. Porta and Tiny gaped, when they saw a guard come in with his halberd.

"Is this the papal antitank weapon?" Tiny laughed.

An officer hushed him, but there was no restraining him.

"Are you proper soldiers?" Porta asked.

Tiny was enchanted, when they allowed him to put on a helmet with a red plume and hold a halberd. He looked ridiculous in it. It hardly went with his modern camouflage uniform. He offered his machine pistol and steel helmet in exchange for the Swiss helmet, but it wasn't for sale.

Porta held up a halberd.

"The marines would goggle, if I hacked their heads with this."

On the way back, Porta and Tiny made another attempt to buy a helmet and halberd, but the Swiss just shook their heads.

Then Porta produced his trump: he held out a fistful of opium cigarettes. But the guard was incorruptible. Tiny added three gold teeth and a box of snow. No normal person could resist that, but the Pope's soldiers would not sell. Porta and Tiny were dumbfounded. They would have sold each other for that amount. Then Tiny pointed to his boots. American airman's boots. The loveliest soft leather. The Swiss was not interested.

When the trucks were unloaded, we sat down on the coping stones.

A Nobel officer had come for Padre Emanuel and Leutnant Frick. A quarter of an hour later, the Old Man was sent for. The best part of an hour passed.

"As long as they don't piddle on us," Porta growled. "Perhaps they're doing something to those three. If they don't turn up in an hour at the latest, we'll go and fetch them. All our irons are up in No. 5. We'll soon overrun the Guards."

"You must have been bitten by a blind ape," Marlow protested. "Suppose there really is a God. He'd never forgive it!"

"I'll take over command," Porta decided, "then you'll be out of it and can plead not guilty before God's court martial."

Marlow shook his head.

"If there is a God, he'll know I'm a feldwebel, and he'll know too that no normal feldwebel lets himself be ordered about by a rotten obergefreiter."

"Then pretend you're not," Tiny suggested facetiously.

"God won't go for that," Marlow shook his head. "When he sees all my metal, he'll give me short shrift. 'That won't do with us, Marlow,' he'll say, and I'll go tumbling into the Devil's lap. And I'm not keen on that. This has to be taken diplomatically. Let's send Tiny in to have a word with them."

"Not on your life," Tiny protested, edging away. "I'll roll up any American trench you like alone, but they're dangerous in there,"

Two hours passed, and we were jumpy and on edge. Most of us had already fetched our pistols from No. 5 and tucked them into our boots. Porta sat playing with an egg-shaped hand grenade.

"Let's do a bunk," Heide suggested, squinting up at the big library building.

"Shut up, you Nazi tough! Do you think we'd leave the Old Man here?"

"To say nothing of the padre," Barcelona put in. He had a tremendous respect for everything Roman Catholic, which dated from his time in the Tercio during the Civil War. We never discovered what was the cause of it all. He always brushed our questions aside, saying: "One doesn't talk about this! And, anyway, you wouldn't understand."

"Padre Emanuel can look after himself," Porta said. "He's in direct communication with the heavenly HQ group. But the outlook's not so good for the Old Man and Leutnant Frick."

"Tu as raison, camarade,"
said the little Legionnaire nodding assent. "You have to stand alone before God's court martial and have no one to defend you. Your files lie open there. Allah knows everything including the reason for one's damned escapades. Hard, clean justice is the only thing that matters. It's not easy to get an acquittal there."

"That's all a lot of shit," Tiny decided. "I'd never get an acquittal."

"You never know," the Legionnaire replied convincingly. "With Allah the most remarkable things turn out to one's advantage. Are you really so great a bandit?"

Tiny wagged his great head and shoved his cap onto the back of his head.

"I don't really know. But they have given me a sock on the jaw once or twice. I'm not one of the best. Most of us sitting here do so of our own free will. They've looked after us well here. But anyone who says I have shot anyone except on orders, is a bloody liar. I haven't enough grey matter. That's why we have officers to think for us. Is there any obergefreiter in the Prussian army with so much tin on him as I?" He thumped his chest. "Who was it saved the whole regiment at Stalino? Who got the fuses out at Kiev? Yours truly! Do you remember counting the seconds that time at Kertz, when I crawled through the hole. You cheered when I blew the whole tractor factory up."

Barcelona laughed scornfully. "You pale-arsed lot! Three days ago you used a roadside crucifix as a target. Now your blubber's trembling because you're in His Holiness's city."

The Old Man returned. He was strangely quiet.

"I've met the Pope."

"Have you seen him?" Tiny whispered, awestruck. The Old Man nodded and lit his pipe.

"Did you touch him?" Barcelona asked, looking at the Old Man with a new respect.

"I didn't touch him, but I was so close to him that I could have."

"What uniform was he wearing?" Porta asked, unwilling to capitulate. "Did he have the knight's cross?"

"He was magnificent," the Old Man muttered still under the influence of his tremendous experience.

"What did he say?" Heide asked.

"That I was to salute you. He blessed me."

"Did he, by Jove?" Heide exclaimed. "Blessed you, did he?"

"Did you see a real cardinal?" Rudolph Kleber asked. "In a red hat?"

Questions rained over the Old Man.

"Had he been told about me?" Tiny asked.

"Not specially about you or any of us individually, but he had been told about No. 2 Squadron as a whole. He gave me a ring." The Old Man raised his hand out for us to see.

"Is the ring for the Squadron?" Barcelona asked.

"Yes, he gave it to me, as a general is given the knight's cross. I wear it for the squadron."

"Can I try it?" Heide asked, a strange look in his eye that ought to have warned the Old Man, but he had not yet fully returned to our brutal reality. Trustingly he gave Heide the ring.

Heide held his finger out for us to admire the ring. When Tiny tried to touch it, he got a smack on his finger from Heide's bayonet.

The Old Man held out his hand:

"Give it back."

"To you?" Heide smiled slyly. "Why should you have it?"

The Old Man was so astounded he just opened and shut his mouth.

"It's my ring. I was given it. The Pope gave it to me."

"Gave
you
it? He gave it to the Squadron. The ring belongs to No. 2 Squadron, like the American boots Tiny's wearing for the time being. You aren't the squadron, any more than Tiny is. I, Sven, Porta, our pistols, our 8.8s, the No. 5 and all the rest of it, that's the squadron."

Heide rubbed the ring on his sleeve, breathed on it, rubbed it again, held it up to his eyes and regarded it proudly.

"Now that I've seen this gift from His Holiness Pius the Twelfth, I'm not sure I don't believe in God."

"Give me that ring," the Old Man said, his voice quivering with indignation, and took a step towards Heide.

"Keep your paws away," Heide snarled, "or you'll get one on the skull. I shall wear it for the squadron. But if I kick the bucket, you can be ring-wearer instead of me. We can draw up a document as we did over Tiny's boots."

"Not on your life," Porta cried. "When you get your deserts, it will be my turn to wear it. The Old Man's seen the Pope. That must do him. He isn't entitled to any more."

Barcelona pulled his close-combat knife from his boot and began cleaning his nails with it. It was not because his dirty nails worried him, but more as emphasis to what he now said:

"Take care, Julius, that you don't die young."

Heide scowled and stuck the hand with the ring into his pocket.

"Who do you think you are, you ersatz Spaniard?"

The Old Man was puce in the face with anger. He tried to threaten Heide into giving the ring back, but Heide paid no attention to him. He was not handing it over.

He went into the Swiss guards and proudly showed them the ring. It was while he was there the first attack came. A halberd blade swished past his head only an inch away. No one saw where it came from, but Tiny was under strong suspicion.

Heide dashed to the truck and thrust two pistols, safety catches undone, into his belt. The holy ring had caused bad blood between us. It was dangerous to have it, yet everyone wanted it.

The second attack came twenty minutes later. Heide was lying out in the middle of the yard with two paratroopers admiring the ring. Something made him turn his head, the next moment a 20-ton truck rolled across the exact spot where he and the two paratroopers had been lying, and pulled up with a bump against a tree. Muffled laughter sounded from the corner of Via Pio and Via di Belvedere, where the rest of the squadron sat dicing.

"Queer, how a truck can drive off on its own like that," Porta said thoughtfully.

Heide mopped his brow and shoved his cap onto the back of his head. With both hands deep in his pockets, he sauntered across to us.