Monte Cassino (26 page)

Two figures appeared out of a dug-out. I put up my automatic pistol and shot from the hip. I saw Porta's arm go back and two grenades went hurtling through the air. There was a hollow bang inside the dug-out. Porta's yellow hat could be seen above the parapet, a challenge to fate. Two Americans came running. They were roused now. Things were exploding everywhere.

Heide landed beside me. A sergeant and three GIs ran straight into the bullets from our spitting machine guns. We trampled on the bodies. That was the dug-out One-Eye warned us about. Bluey-yellow flames were licking from its opening that was camouflaged with branches. Instinct made me turn to see a shadow leaping wildly at me. I bent forward and curled up like a ball. A heavy body crashed down beside me. I fired two bursts from my pistol into it. I fired without uncurling, parallel to the ground.

But he had not had enough. He leaped up like a steel spring. My kicking boots hit him twice in the face. I dropped my machine pistol, as his fingers closed on my throat. I jerked my knee into his groin. Momentarily his grip slackened, long enough for me to get my pistol from my flies and empty the whole magazine into him. I was frantic with fear. He was twice my size. Then he was over me again. I was smeared with blood. The point of a knife pierced the skin between my ribs. I rolled over, got hold of the handle of the knife in my boot and stabbed it again and again into the quivering body. The grip on my throat relaxed. I gasped for breath, kicked him in the belly, stamped on his face.

Two of the others tore past us. Olle Karlsson's flamethrower hissed down the length of the trench. I saw Tiny seize a man by the chest, fling him to the ground and trample him. I picked up my machine pistol, re-loaded, fired into a dug-out. Someone shouted. I tore the china ring from the handle of a grenade with my teeth, counted four and flung it hissing into the black space.

A green ball of light went soaring skywards. Barcelona's signal! Now our infantry would come, and under cover from them we would press ahead. Rocket projectors were hammering away at the positions on either side of us, smashing them. I saw some of the others leap out of a trench. There was Porta's yellow hat. Then Tiny's grey bowler appeared. I tore after them as hard as I could go. It was a race with death. Our splendid gunners were dropping their shells just behind us. I caught up the Old Man, who, panting, was breasting down the far side of the slope. It was wonderful that he could manage it at his age.

We came within sight of the river. Two Italian commandos, disguised as poor farmers, were waiting for us.

"Avanti, avanti!"
one snarled, producing a machine pistol from the reeds.

They rushed ahead like marathon runners and it was all we could do to keep up with them. The shells came closer. Then the Italians stopped and pointed to the river.

"This is where you cross. Others are waiting for you at the broken crucifix on the far side."

The Legionnaire stared down at the muddy water. He turned to the Italians:

"Are you sure? I cannot see anything."

With an oath, one of the Italians waded out into the river. The water only came up to his waist.

"We helped build your underwater bridge. Do you think we can make a mistake?"

The shells were coming closer and closer, like a sequence of dynamite explosions. In single column we waded out and over the underwater bridge. The water was whipped up by shell splinters. We hid in some reeds on the far bank, while Heide bandaged a long gash the Old Man had in his arm.

"That was all nice and easy," Porta remarked with a laugh.

"Do you think so?" the Old Man muttered. "Killing has never become a pleasure where I am concerned."

"Cardboard soldier," Tiny jeered.

The Old Man undid the safety catch of his machine pistol.

"A word more, you psychopathic murderer, and I'll shoot you like a dog!"

"What are you getting excited about?" the Legionnaire said placatingly. "You kill the other, or he kills you.
C'est la guerre!"

"I killed an elderly Unteroffizier, a father," the Old Man said in a thick voice. "I took his pocket book," he said and produced a worn old thing, opened it and held out a well-fingered photograph of a man in sergeant's uniform. He had three stripes on his sleeve. A woman was standing beside him and in front of them sat three

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little girls and a happy-faced boy of ten or twelve. Across the photograph was written in English: "Good luck, daddy!"

The Old Man was beside himself. He cursed us and the world in general. We let him work it off on us. It did happen sometimes that a man you had killed became a person to you and, when that happened, your nerves could play you tricks. There was nothing anyone could do except keep an eye open and make sure the Old Man did not do anything silly, such as desert or commit suicide, both things that could have the most unpleasant consequences for one's family.

Twenty-four hours later we reached the bridge. Two infantrymen were guarding it. They were Canadians. Tiny and Barcelona killed them. It was done like lightning. We left two of our own at the bridge. The JU52 that was to make the drop was there to the second, but it had scarcely dropped the container before two Mustangs appeared out of the moonlight and the JU went hurtling down in flames. A body came tumbling from it. Its parachute did not open.

"Amen," whispered Heide.

We toiled up and across some hills and then lay up in cover, while a battalion of Scots marched past. They were training and kept practicing machine gun drill and individual forward rushes, and Tiny took a dislike to a sergeant with a large, red walrus moustache who, he said, maltreated his men, and announced that he was going to kill him. We had the greatest difficulty in pacifying him.

The next day we reached the tanks. We decided to rest before we got going and went into a thicket of pines. There we quarrelled savagely about the distribution of tinned rations. Heide was knocked unconscious with a hand grenade and Barcelona received a great gash across the whole of one side of his face. Then the Old Man discovered that Porta and Tiny had collected gold teeth despite One-Eye's prohibition. That would have meant death for the lot of us, if we were captured. The discovery led to a battle royal. The Legionnaire did one of his famous somersaults and planted his boots firmly in Tiny's face. Then we sat down to drinking. We emptied our field bottles. Quarrelling broke out again when the Legionnaire said that we were just toy-soldiers, refuse from the Prussian midden.

"You French, syphilitic legionary snout," Porta shouted at the top of his voice, forgetting where we were. "You say they castrated you. Nobody believes it, you prickless owl. It was the Turkish music that has eaten it away."

"Tu me fais chier,"
the Legionnaire shouted and flung his knife at Porta. It pierced the crown of Porta's top hat. Porta was furious. "May God strike all French cunts with syphilis," he yelled, seized up his machine pistol and emptied the magazine into the ground at the Legionnaire's feet. We ran for cover from the richochetting bullets, and our two guards came running up thoroughly scared. Porta shot at them and cursed them wildly. He almost killed Olle Karlsson.

Shortly afterwards peace was restored and we began playing "land" with our close-combat weapons. This was the only game in which it was impossible to cheat, so we quickly tired and took to dicing instead. A fresh fight started. Tiny tried to strangle Heide with his steel sling and it took us a quarter of an hour to get him on his feet again. Then Barcelona kicked Olle Karlsson.

After this intermezzo we began playing pontoon, but then we began to droop. We covered ourselves with branches and leaves and tried to go to sleep. We longed to sleep, but the Cola chocolate made that impossible.

A large column of trucks appeared in the distance.

"We'll deal with that lot in a jiffy," Porta said. "They're just service corps oafs. Carpet slipper soldiers with lace up their arses. Let's wipe them out, and bugger off. There's no end of powder in those carts. The bang they'll make will be heard in Rome and make the old Pope wiggle his ears."

But the Old Man would not hear of it. He was always the steady, unimaginative craftsman. He could not appreciate a stunt. He had been given an order and it had to be carried out regardless. They knew what they were doing when they made people like him feldwebels. We others did not go in so much for details. More than once we had put in a fake report involving millions, while we sat in a shell hole laughing.

Then another squabble broke out:

"You're the most chicken-hearted bugger I know," Por-ta shouted at the Old Man. "Not even the most avid homosexual ape would have anything to do with you. You can think yourself lucky we happen to like you, but we warn you, even our patience can come to an end. One day we'll carry you out feet first."

The transport column passed us. It would have been a good harvest. We glared at it hungrily. But, as usual, the Old Man had his way. They did well to make him feldwebel and section leader. No one else would have survived with us. The Old Man did not even realise that he went about with a lighted dynamite cartridge in his pocket.

When the sun went down, we set out again. Mosquitoes buzzed round us. We kept our lighted cigarettes hidden in our mouths. A company marched past, as we stood among trees snuffing the smell of their Camels.

"We could lay those footsloggers flat. Every one of them," Porta muttered.

"What a lot of gold teeth," Tiny said dreamily.

"Old Man," they wheedled, "let us bonk them on the head. We'll swear you've done it all on your own, when we get back. They'll give you the knight's cross. I'll bet they will. Think of your wife, Old Man, she'd get a pension for life. It's worth thinking about."

But the Old Man was not to be persuaded. He would not even answer. Glumly we glowered after the disappearing column.

"There was enough gold there to start a whore-shop," Tiny said, raising his eyes to heaven.

Porta and I were in front and we almost ran into the tents. We dived into the cover of a couple of pine trees and halted the others. There were three tents. We could hear them snoring.

At a signal from Barcelona we tore the tent pegs out, capturing the occupants, as in a sack. We stabbed and hit. In the course of a few minutes all was quiet. There had only been a couple of stifled cries to show there had been a fight. They had died before they were properly awake. We crept across to the tanks. We strangled the guards with our slings and threw their bodies into the bushes. We inspected the tanks with interest. They were M4's and M36's, Jacksons's with comical rollers like railway waggons. We began laying booby charges. Some were to blow the tank up when the engine started, others when the hatch was opened. The Legionnaire had the best imagination: he arranged a shell case seemingly casually on the fore hatch. If it fell off or was picked off, it set off a charge. We buried S-mines that were connected to charges under the tanks.

Tiny who was searching for bodies with gold teeth stumbled across their petrol depot. It was buried in the ground and camouflaged with branches. It was so well done that it roused Tiny's suspicions. We fixed a couple of panzerfausts in a tree with an ingenious arrangement of cords that would set them off and blow down into the petrol, if one moved one of the drums. We built three other panzerfausts into the crossroads.

Porta wailed:

"It's damned undemocratic all the gold that's going to be lying round here doing nobody any good. What do you say, Old Man, suppose Tiny and I stay behind and do a bit of collecting? You can give a true report of what happened here. We'll catch you up all right. I guarantee that."

"Shut up," snarled the Old Man.

We tossed a French helmet in among the bushes, and put a tin of spaghetti and a pocket book with an Italian soldier's letters in a reasonably visible place. That would make them rack their brains, we thought. We hoped they'd think it was Italian partisans and deserters had done it. That would make them hunt for the perpetrators in the hills to the south and leave us in peace to finish the rest of our assignment.

It was late in the afternoon, when we reached the bridge. Nothing is such fun as blowing up a bridge and we were looking forward to it. We fought for the detonator, for each of us wanted to be the one to ram the handle home. The Old Man cursed us. Barcelona made a great fuss, swearing that this was his job, he was explosives expert having been with the engineers in Spain. In the end we decided to dice for it.

A heavy truck appeared up the road leading to the bridge and behind it we saw a jeep.

"Stop that nonsense and get a move on," the Old Man scolded. He wanted to take the detonator, but Tiny hit him on the fingers with his pistol. "Keep your claws off it, you bloody carpenter. Your pissing bridge stays where it is till the dice have said who is to blow it up."

Julius Heide kept count. I was the first out with a throw of only seven. Porta was luckier with eighteen. Tiny went wild when he got 28. No one paid any attention to the Old Man, he only had 14, Rudolph Kleber had 19. Then Heide threw 28 and we thought Tiny would kill him.

"You repulsive Jew-hater, you cheated. May you become valet to a Jew. Twice I've tried to inform on you, you trickster!"

"So. . . ." Heide said thoughtfully. "It was you set the Security Police on to me, was it?"

"That's right," Tiny yelled, "and I shan't give up before you're dangling from a butcher's hook in Torgau. The day they condemn you to the block, I'll apply for the job of executioner. I promise you I'll make at least three bosh shots. The first chop you'll get right up the arse."

But no one bothered to listen. We were too preoccupied throwing our dice. But no one beat 28 so Heide and Tiny had to throw again. The truck entered a steep curve and changed whining into first gear. Tiny shook the shaker high above his head. He did not care about the truck. He pranced round the detonator three times, rubbed his nose against a kilometer stone, which he thought would bring him luck; then he gave the dice a last shake like a professional barman and with an expert sweeping movement threw them onto Porta's green cloth. Six sixes. Incredible. But there they were. Tiny was beside himself with delight