Monte Cassino (4 page)

"Shut up and listen. The first two tanks drive straight through the gap and close the door, so to speak, at the far end. You can see from the map that there's no emergency exit; then it's about turn, muzzles pointing the other way. The troop commander fires off a red Verey light, when he's slammed the door. Then four other tanks pound up as well. With eight Panthers we should be able to clear up that pisspot all right. Leutnant Herbert," he turned to the new leutnant, who had joined us only three days before, and let a fat, dirty finger travel across the map, "you'll remain here on the fringe of the woods with the remaining eight Panthers and you'll follow us only, note this, only if and when you see a yellow three stars." He seized the young leutnant by his tunic--"And God have mercy on you, if you move from here before you see that triple star decorating God's heaven. Do that, and I'll pull your arsehole over the top of your head and you'll look like a tired monk at midnight."

Major Mike spat out the stump of his cigar, pulled a rusty tin out of his pocket, drew a deep breath through his nose, hawked, spat, opened the tin and nulled out a two-foot roll of juicy chewing tobacco. Curling his lips back, he bit off a piece, then handed the roll to the Old Man.

They were the only two of us who chewed tobacco. The major always placed his quid between his lower lip and his teeth; while the Old Man preferred his against his right cheek, where it looked as if he had an enormous gumboil.

"This is good stuff," was the Old Man's laudatory comment.

Leutnant Herbert shook his head. Here was a major, a Prussian officer, sharing chewing tobacco with a feldwebel, a common joiner from the slums of Berlin. What next, in Heaven's name! If he told his father, he would refuse to believe him.

"As I said, we're going into that gap as fast as we can and as soon as the two leading tanks send up their red light, we'll liquidate the bastards in a couple of shakes. Anything that moves, wipe it out." He stuck a finger into his ear and stirred it round. "Oberfeldwebel Brandt, you'll take up position with your wireless tank in that dried out stream. Glue yourself to the fourth Panther. Camouflage yourself at once and up with your prick. You'll listen until your eardrums get inflamed. Put your pornographic magazine away so you don't forget to alternate. If I have to wait even a second to come in, you'll have me to deal with--and the longest part of your life behind you. A red Verey light starts the ball. Yellow triple star, general attack. Eight tanks in reserve. We have no need of a withdrawal signal. Either we liquidate the cowboys or they wipe us out. Any questions?" Porta stepped forward and the major frowned. "Joseph Porta, I'll tell you here and now, if you try to make a fool of me ..."

Porta pretended to be embarrassed, wiping the palm of his hands on the seat of his trousers. "Herr Major, does a weak heart exempt a chap from this picnic?"

"I should bloody well think not. Neither weak heart nor bad prick. Any more?"

Tiny put up a finger from the back row.

"What is it now?" Mike growled. "Anyway, you don't understand any of this."

"Herr Major, according to the Military Service Act of 1925, that General Blomberg made, a soldier who has served for more than seven years, does not have to take part in action. Herr Major, I have nine years service. May I have permission to step out by the back way?" Tiny then made as if to produce his army book to prove his point, but Major Mike waved him away.

"Even if you had served for 109 years, you'll park your broad arse on the gunner's seat in 523, and you can wipe that same arse with General Blomberg's Military Service Act. If anyone else has a question, keep it till Christmas, and hang it on the tree."

"Amen," Porta murmured, turning up his eyes.

"Get aboard. Start engines."

As Tiny swung his leg over the reserve tank and let himself slide down in through the right turret hatch, he called:

"Porta, we're off to the wars again! To think we volunteered for this shit. I must have had inflammation of the speculanium that day." He bent over the shell locker inside the turret, stuffed his black panzer tunic behind the battery, pulled his shirt over his head and stowed it in the same place; then he knotted round his neck the pink chemise he had got from broad-bummed Luisa the last time we patronised Palid Ida's whorehouse. He caught a couple of lice in the thick hair on his chest and smeared them across the range finder. "And this sort of war, Porta, is dangerous. You can get your prick and balls shot off. You can be most horribly maimed, Porta, but war can also lead to undreamed of wealth. Have you got your dental forceps, Porta?"

"You bet," Porta grinned and produced the ghastly instrument from the leg of his boot. Then he bent over his instrument panel, tested petrol and oil gauges, tried the clutch, checked the brakes, swung the heavy tank round in a circle.

Major Mike climbed into the command tank and swinging his right hand above his head as a signal to start engines, he called to the Old Man: "Beier, you stick to my tail. Legionnaire and Barcelona follow him. The rest in arrowhead formation P-a-n-z-ers March!" He pumped his fist up and down several times: the signal for full speed ahead.

The many thousands of horsepower roared. The ground quivered. The whole wood shook with the tremendous vibration, as tank after tank swung out. A tree that was in the way fell with a crash. The Major waved encouragingly from the turret of 005. He took another bite of his rope of tobacco. The Legionnaire waved back from his turret, lit a cigarette and tied his blue-red-white scarf round his neck. Barcelona moved his dried-up talisman orange from Valencia from his right to his left pocket. Porta bent over and spat on the accelerator, and with his finger drew a cross in the dust on the instrument panel. I tied a garter round the rangefinder. Tiny placed Luisa Broad-bum's lipstick firmly above the fuse lamp. Heide, our super-soldier, checked to see that the feed pipe to the flamethrower was in order, undid the safety catch of his forward machine gun, arranged its long cartridge belt. Then he tied a small blue cloth elephant round his neck.

All our radios were checked. They were important and had to be working perfectly, for much depended on them. The loaders climbed out to remove the muzzle-covers of the cannon as we drove along and tank after tank reported itself ready for action.

"Rhinoceros ready for action," Mike's voice said on the wireless.

Then we were out of the wood that until then had hidden us safely and we could see the Americans who were guarding the northern exit from the village with three tanks.

As we tore across the open telltale stretch as fast as we could make the tracks turn, Porta sang in a carefree voice:

"Eine kleine Reise im Fruhling mit Dir, Sag'mir, bitte, leise, Was gibst du dafur ..."

He was standing on the accelerator and we expected any moment that the pistons would jump from their bearings. None of the others could keep up with us. On the radio we could hear Barcelona's stream of curses:

"Caramba, crucifix, sacramento! How the hell does he get it to go like that?"

"That only Allah knows," answered the little Legionnaire, cursing his own driver to the uttermost pit of hell.

Everything now depended on speed. At first, the three Shermans on the fringe of the village failed to react at all. God knows what they thought, but they were certainly inexperienced. Not one shot was fired.

We made the centre of the village first, closely followed by Major Mike. The Legionnaire who was a hundred yards behind us saw that the Sherman's turrets were beginning to swing, stopped, swung his cannon round like lightning and in ten seconds it was all over. The three Shermans in flames.

The rest all happened as quickly. We tore round in the narrow streets shooting at anything with a cockade or a white star on it, the range point blank so we couldn't miss.

An M.5. mounted flamethrower came round the corner of a house, spitting out a flame many yards long, but a shell drilled into it and it splintered into a thousand pieces.

A 42-ton T.I4. came waddling out from an orange grove, its turret swinging wildly.

"Fire," the Old Man shouted.

I pressed the trigger and in the next instant the enemy tank was on fire, oily black smoke welling out from its hatches brightened by the sharp tongues of red flames. An officer tried desperately to get out of the turret, but the turret hatch fell forward and he remained hanging there. The flames leaped across his uniform, caught in his hair and he half rose up, screaming, desperately trying to put the flames out with his bare hands. More flames shot up through the turret; he held his hands to his face, where they slowly charred. Then he disappeared into the glowing interior of his tank.

A suffocating smell of burned flesh reached us. Someone swung a mine to throw it at us--but he never did. He was crushed beneath the tracks.

A group of infantry squeezed back against a wall in the naive hope we might not see them. Heide laughed wickedly. His forward machine gun chattered and they collapsed one on top of the other with perforated stomachs.

A soldier cook was running across the open space of the square, hoping to hide behind one of the four burning Shermans, but a short spatter from the turret MG stopped him as though he had run into a wall. He clapped his hands to his head and gave a loud, piercing shriek, his helmet rolled on across the dusty square; he spun half round, then collapsed with a kick or two. A Sherman came bursting out from some bushes. Two 8.8 armour-piercing shells bored into it and it blew up with an ear-splitting explosion. Its turret was flung high into the air to descend with a whine to bury the long muzzle of its gun deep into the ground.

Another Sherman appeared. A direct hit knocked its turret off and flung it into a house. We could see right into the tank. There was only the lower part of the commander's body left, for he had been shorn through the middle. The remains of the loader hung there caught between the breech and the shellracks.

Mike's tank, which had two heavy flamethrowers mounted on the turret, burned up a group of infantry. Though some put their hands up in surrender, they died beneath our tracks, for tanks can't take prisoners. The grinning death's-heads on our lapels were well suited to our arm.

And so it was all over and not one of them had escaped. We had surprised them as completely as a few hours before they had surprised our infantry. We had had our revenge.

Jumping out, we pushed our goggles up onto our foreheads, went to the drinking fountain in the square and drank and drank, tried to wipe some of the oil and powder off our faces. The acrid fumes in the air inside the tanks had made our eyes bloodshot; our throats and lungs smarted and breathing was painful.

Some terrified survivors emerged and stared at us. One of them knew a word or two of German.

"Nicht schiessen, Kamerad. Wir nicht Juden, nicht Japsen. Wir von Texas. Wir O.K."

A few minutes later we were chatting away, showing each other pictures, exchanging souvenirs, beginning to laugh together. We had lost one man: the gunner in Leutnant Herbert's tank. The hatches had been shut tight and it had not been noticed that the ventilator had shorted. The gasses had suffocated him. We also had two wounded: one was Feldwebel Schmidt, the commander of 531 tank who had bent down to pick his map off the bottom of the turret just as the gun recoiled smashing his right arm to pulp. A couple of needle-sharp bits of bone struck out from his shoulder.

One of the American prisoners, a medical orderly, gave him a blood transfusion beside the drinking fountain, while we stood round watching. It was most interesting. Feldwebel Schmidt was lucky; for him the war was over, but if the American had not been there with his transportable blood bank, Schmidt would have been dead.

The other wounded man was one of the loaders, who was relatively new. He had been hit in the lung by a pistol bullet. His tank commander, Oberfeldwebel Brett, had been loading his pistol, when it had gone off and hit the loader.

We hid the American who gave Schmidt the blood transfusion, a corporal from Lubbock, from the unit which came round collecting prisoners. Four days later we took him in a tank to within a few yards of the American position and let him jump out. Before that we gave him a black eye and knocked out one of his teeth, a gold one that, strangely enough, neither Porta nor Tiny would have. We also banged his shin with a belt buckle so that it swelled up enormously. He was half-Jewish. Looking like that, he told us when he asked us to do it, he would be sent home to the States and never see the front again. Only an idiot stayed at the front voluntarily, but of course there were some of those on either side. I won't say we despised them. Most of us had volunteered originally, so in our heart of hearts we had a sort of admiration for the tough guys who shrank from nothing and accepted all the consequences of their volunteering.

We laid the wounded out in rows along the side of the road and sent a wireless call for amphibians and SPWes,* which we filled with bloody, whimpering bodies.

* Troop-carrying tanks.

Porta and I lifted up a man and found that a bit of lung was bulging out from a gaping wound in his back; Tiny came up carrying a corporal, half of whose cranium had been shot away, baring the brain. Behind a midden, we found an officer, whose face had been shaved off by a shell splinter. We piled the dead in two great heaps. Many were little more than charred mummies. Thousands of flies buzzed round them. We dug a common grave. Not a deep one, just enough to make sure they were covered with earth. The sweet smell of corpse was nauseating.

One of the prisoners, a staff sergeant, who was sitting on the front of Major Mike's tank chatting, had been given schnaps and was half-drunk. He gave everything away, telling us that they had sent back the green signal that reported the area clear of the enemy. Some of his companions looked at him contemptuously. Then he saw the same contempt in our eyes and realised the ghastly thing he had done. He snatched Barcelona's pistol, shoved the muzzle into his mouth and pulled the trigger. We could have stopped him, but none of us moved.