Thing to Love (20 page)

“But the Breakfast Tram was built by British engineers in the 1890's when men still believed that sound construction meant a life of a hundred years. There are no tunnels. The causeways through the marshes are still solid. The gradients are normal, but curves sharp.

“Gentlemen, on the night of D plus I when we shall all be digging in around Cruzada I propose to set out with Mario and the armor along the line of the Breakfast Tram.”

Colonel Mario Nicuesa, commanding the Armored Brigade, took off his glasses and polished them. He was in his late thirties, a lightly built man of gray skin and smooth black hair who looked more like an energetic accountant than a soldier.

“We shall move only at night, and laager in the forest during the day. The trees do not always meet over the track and I am taking no risks. We shall preserve radio silence but I shall be in continual touch with the Division by field telephone. We may even be able to use an existing line.

“On the night of D plus 2 or D plus 3 — that depends on what success Calixto has had — we shall be at Ventas where we can at last deploy. There will have been an enemy post here, probably taking it easy in the station warehouse. It won't be there any longer because Fifth Combat Group, which is preceding my cautious advance, has been thoroughly trained in forest fighting. I shall require this post wiped out at whatever cost before it can use its wireless intelligibly.

“There are passable tracks from Ventas to the edge of the forest. At dawn we shall be under cover behind the left flank of Fourth Division. That is why I shall not interfere with its advance. It has a high proportion of partly trained conscripts who
will not stand against this sort of thunderbolt in open country. And at last no aircraft in the sky to warn them it is coming! We shall undoubtedly overrun the Divisional Headquarters. I am promising you no more than that. But if I were Don Jesús-María I should command the battle from Juy. The squadron out on our right wing will go through Juy unopposed.

“We can now ignore Fourth Division. As for Third, Mario and the armor are making a clean sweep of their base area. Our own casualties will, I think, turn out to be fairly light. Now, your questions, please.”

“Have you got a tame witch-doctor, Chief?” asked Colonel Chaves.

“No, Rosalindo, why?”

“Because you need so much luck that he'd better sacrifice a white armadillo for you. Suppose they send fifty tons of Breakfast Express to block the line, and not a Sambo with a hand-trolley?”

“If they do, Fifth Combat Group will report it. I shall then request Major Ferrer, who will be with me, to take the brakes off and give it a push downhill to the nearest curve. There are also sidings and loading bays. If there weren't we should find this advance in single file impossible.”

“Well, if you're happy. And you're stripping the Citadel of everything that can move?”

“Everything.”

“What about Twentieth Cavalry up in the llanos? You said we could leave them out of consideration, but the capital is at their mercy.”

“Yes, it is,” Miro admitted. “But remember that this campaign will be over in a week one way or the other. If we are beaten we must surrender and Twentieth Cavalry may just arrive in time for the Victory Parade, though I doubt it. If we win, they will turn the horses round and pretend they were just out selling manure.”

“Twelfth Cavalry, now,” said Mario Nicuesa briskly. “I don't like it. If you're right there are Third and Sixth divisions trying to fall back on Cumana. Well, they can't. I am right-hooking
them again and again. I am always outside them, denying the road. But if Twelfth Cavalry comes up from Cumana with its guns I have to get out of there quick.”

“Possibly, Mario,” Miro agreed. “But not quick. Twelfth will only have horsed traction. Everything on wheels will have raced back to Lérida to chase Calixto off the airfield.”

“Ultimate objective, Chief!” Lieutenant Colonel Irigoyen suddenly exploded. “What's the ultimate objective?”

“To return the Army to civil life or to its allegiance as soon as possible.”

“How long is that going to take?”

“Up to the politicians,” Miro answered with a shrug.

“I only asked because my chaps may object to taking new wives and settling down in the Cordillera.”

Salvador Irala gave a too audible chuckle, and kept his eyes on his papers to avoid the look which he knew his commander would have fired at him.

“I'll see that the President demands safe-conduct for the Regiment in his first message.”

“Well, I hope Avellana accepts,” said Calixto, “because I see no way of ever getting out of Siete Dolores. Twelfth Cavalry is hot on my tail. Fourth Division, very angry, is bound to be all over the entrance to the Escala. Or shall I take Vergara for you and hold it until I run out of ammunition and am arrested by the police?”

“If you're bothered about morale,” Miro said, “there is no need to tell the regiment everything.”

“I'll tell them the whole story once we're away. By God, yes! There's nothing my uncles like so much as to be out in the blue on their own. It's just that I don't want to call you up at Headquarters and tell you I'm abandoning the Saracens, unless you're prepared for it.”

Miro was puzzled. There was a silence among his officers which generally indicated that they knew something which he did not. Lieutenant Colonel Irigoyen was clearly out of character. He was normally most respectful at a conference, and outside it could be
trusted to use his own initiative to a point of insubordination.

“Put Lérida out of action, Calixto, and I don't care if you lose the lot. But I'd like my men back.”

Then he got it. Calixto had been at a party. Well, coming in late from the Armored Car Patrol in San Vicente he couldn't possibly have known that he would have more to do than listen, and he could listen more intelligently drunk than most men sober. Miro instantly decided to remain in ignorance.

“And about the wives, Calixto,” he added, breaking the tension. “Ask Salvador for some addresses in Siete Dolores.”

Under cover of the laughter, Colonel Nicuesa changed places and sat firmly down by his subordinate. There would be, Miro reckoned, a private interview next morning at Armored Brigade Headquarters. When all was quiet again, Major Ferrer said:

“I suppose, my General, you have considered the width of the narrow-gauge bridges?”

He sat alone in the last row of chairs. He was the junior officer present and, besides that, had been in disgrace when he entered the pavilion. He was a mulatto from up the coast, shapeless and indestructible as a black-and-gold nugget and with a deceptive air of melancholy. He had been a half-trained, common-sense engineer in charge of a gang on the construction of the Citadel when Miro, impressed by his energy, had suggested on a casual impulse that if Ferrer would like a cadetship at the School of Military Engineering it was his.

“I have, Basilio, with complete trust that you can do something about it” — it was the first time that Miro had used his Christian name — “the bridges are too narrow for safety and we shall have to lay down roadway as we go. Transoms of heavy timber chained down? Or can we bring up our own steel bridging? I shall want a couple of hours with you tomorrow morning. And once in the forest you're going to be a lot more important than Colonel Nicuesa and myself. So put up another pip on your shoulder.

“Well, brothers, I needn't impress on you the need for absolute secrecy. As far as Cumana, we follow Operation G for defense of the southern frontier. We all know it by heart, and should be
on road and rail in forty-eight hours. We have the Air Force transport in addition to our own. Half of it will be used for petrol only.”

“What's the chance of the Jaquiri Bridge being bombed?” Colonel Chaves asked.

“Nil, I should say, Rosalindo, unless our glorious Air Force hit it by mistake. Jesús-María must have it intact for his advance on the capital. Whatever the Air Force has will be delivered to us at Cumana.”

CHAPTER XI

[
December 10–12
]

C
ORPORAL
P
EPE
M
ENENDEZ
was disappointed. This beautiful weapon with its shiny hand-wheels and controls was as easy to handle as his father's muzzle-loader with which he had occasionally added something tasteless but nourishing to the family soup in the days before the Barracas and fish offal. But though these shrieking planes were such enormous targets that it seemed impossible to miss them he had not scored a hit.

The Army was at last supplying the animated life he had hoped for when he joined it. First they wanted to shoot you for spitting near the flag. Then they took away lance and trumpet and red horsehair and gave you to a Bofors gun; and the airplanes dived on the Citadel and when the gun crew stared at them you had a chance to point it. Then you got your rank back instead of being punished. Then they put you behind sandbags on the river bank at Cumana and something killed your sergeant and mangled the gun crew, but left you the gun to take revenge with. The Army was rich with inexplicable rewards. It was pleasant to kill for a Caudillo who gave such weapons to kill with, and even had you taught how to replace the pieces — most of them — when they were laid out on the ground.

He felt sure his orders, though well meant, were mistaken. You
couldn't shoot these things down when they came straight at you fast and low, sometimes firing, sometimes not. And there was the almost irresistible temptation to duck — unworthy of a personal friend of the Caudillo.

Pepe Menendez scooped up a string of No. I's bowels from the backsight and was about to drop it on the sand when it seemed to him vaguely discourteous. There was the resurrection of the body, and one didn't want to cause unnecessary difficulties. It was different from cleaning a cow or a horse. So he dropped his handful on top of the rest. Then he swiveled the Bofors to fire down-river at the planes going away.

It didn't work. The line of the tracer and the bursts of his Bofors shells had no connection at all with the rapidly diminishing horizontal streaks. He was astonished when the third fighter flew straight into the ground. There was no interval at all between the burst of the shell and the explosion of the plane. His gun had done it. No doubt about that.

Corporal Menendez looked round in vain for somebody with whom to share his triumph; the crew of the nearest gun were all facing the other way and the stretcher-bearers trotting out from the Regimental Aid Post had only just lifted their faces from the sand. On the side of the yellow hill overlooking Cumana Junction and the river he could see the pennant of the Captain General and half a dozen little figures black in the sun which blazed too fiercely to show color. That was the right place for the Caudillo to be, where he could see everything and be seen. But Corporal Menendez prayed — and this was so important that he chose God rather than his Mother, or any saints who might be fully occupied looking after the infantry — that the planes would not start coming upriver instead of down. If they did, that group on the hillside could hardly be missed. And that would be the end of rewards and excitement. Corporal Menendez had great hopes that if he killed enough of the Caudillo's enemies he might be allowed to learn to drive a tank.

The hillside was also watching Corporal Menendez. As he hadn't any pennant — beyond his gun facing the wrong way — his identity would have to wait till later.

“That was the most colossal fluke!” Miro said. “The shell was only traveling three times faster than the plane.”

“About as difficult as doing a hole in one,” Captain Irala replied.

“I didn't think that was very difficult. I did it the second time you were teaching me and Felicia to play. All along the ground at what you called the short third.”

“You'll never do it again in your life, my General. . . . There's some petrol gone up behind the station.”

“The bombers are flying a lot higher now. It takes a few weeks of war before the pilots get used to AA fire. What's the score?”

“I make it one hundred and thirty-five bombs,” said Salvador, “give or take a dozen.”

“Then we're near the end, if Ledesma's stock agrees with his training manual.”

“I'm still surprised we didn't get some of it on the way up.”

“It was no use. With that limited stopping power the Air couldn't prevent us reaching Cumana. And I don't suppose Jesús-María wanted to use it even now. He'd know by instinct that it ought to be thrown into the battle in one decisive stroke against the armor. But I thought Ledesma would overrule him. Ledesma could never resist this target.”

Miro looked down with grim satisfaction on the burning station and the smashed or smoldering lorries. The roads and the railway yards were a shambles — more to the eye than as a matter of statistics, for a third of the crowded transport had been empty. The precious Armored Brigade, which had crossed at night and was now widely dispersed over the plain, had only lost a single tank.

“Vidal is going to hate paying compensation for all those civilian trucks,” he said. “I wonder what Jesús-María thought was in my enormous tail. He must have been told by Intelligence that I didn't need half of it. I must ask him when we meet again.”

A jeep roared up the track to Divisional HQ. Colonel Chaves jumped out and saluted. His gray-green uniform was filthy with black oil and brickdust, and a shallow cut ran up his cheek from the right-hand corner of his wide mouth. One wing of the pendulous mustache which framed it was matted with blood.

“Jesús!”
he said. “If this is just what Ledesma has for training, I'm not surprised the taxes are so high.”

“How are they behaving now, Rosalindo?”

“It stopped the rot when we all started to stroll about. God! Like a lot of tarts on a Sunday evening!”

“What did that?”

“Hip flask, when half a brick hit it.”

“I hope it was empty.”

“If you think anyone down there has a flask that's full . . . ! Well, you invited this, Chief, and you've got it!”

“Better now than later, Rosalindo. I'm not going to have the timing of the advance and retreat upset by young heroes of the Air. What's the bill?”

“No report from the gunners yet, but they've taken it hard. Otherwise about sixty killed and wounded. We've lost twelve of our own four-tonners. Rations mostly. Nothing essential. They've shot up two trains and scored one broken ankle. The requisitioned lorries have had it, just as you meant them to. Six of the Air Force trucks went up just now with their petrol. That's the worst. And two ambulances, which were out in the open clearly marked. One holed. One burnt out.”

“It's amazing how that always happens. Salvador, see if you can find any of those fellows from the press. Show them the ambulances and look shocked!”

“They were empty,” said Colonel Chaves suggestively.

“Thank God for it! . . . Oh, I see! The drivers of the petrol trucks?”

“Two.”

“Well, if you can, have them moved to the burnt-out ambulance discreetly. What I really wanted you for, Rosalindo, was to call a conference at fourteen-thirty hours. Company commanders and up. For the sake of their morale I must tell them that I mean to fall back at first contact with the enemy. If I start explaining when we reach Cruzada, they'll say the old son of a bitch is making excuses.”

“What about prisoners? This retreat is going to be tricky, and we might lose some.”

“Very few will talk. And anyway it will be perfectly plain next morning that we are retreating on Cruzada. The enemy won't pay much attention to a couple of privates who boast when they're beaten up that I meant it all along. I shan't keep the conference more than five minutes. The advance screen can start moving immediately afterwards. What are you leaving in Cumana?”

“Second Combat Group.”

“They are quite clear about their duty?”

“To give Twelfth Cavalry a warm reception and fall back at once on Cruzada. The reputation you're giving this Division, Chief! We might be back in the old days. Shoot off a rusty rifle, tuck up your pajamas and run like hell!”

No more fighters screamed down the valley of the Jaquiri. Far away to the southwest the last wave of bombers diminished to specks, turned, were transformed again into thin black lines which measured in inches the white-hot arc of sky and suddenly grew to their detestable insect shapes. Two planes dived beneath the formation and hurtled straight at the hillside.

“My General,” said Salvador, “I fear Ledesma has found someone who can interpret an air photo.”

As a string of five small bombs left the plane, the group around the jeeps exploded outwards and lay flat. The aim was accurate, but the only casualty was the Headquarters pennant. The star of officers was spread out between the third and fourth bursts.

“New, those little things!” said Colonel Chaves, removing a tuft of grass from the back of his collar.

“Bottom of the barrel?” Miro suggested. “I think it's over.”

He raised his field glasses and found himself the target of a dozen others. He saw the officers reporting to their units that he was all right. Open mouths and waved rifles showed that they were cheering, but not a sound could be heard above the crackle of flames.

“We will return to normal routine,” he said sharply. “There is no point in pretending any longer that they are all under my eye.”

Miro toured the bridgehead and the junction. The troops were in good heart, though too obviously welcoming his assurance that there would be no more air attacks of any importance. They had
behaved fairly but not exaggeratedly well under their baptism of fire. Well, any feeling of inactivity and frustration could be cured remarkably quickly with Lieutenant Colonel Ferrer crying out for labor to restore the roads and at least one line of railway.

The hard-hit Bofors gunners received his special attention. Their score was only two bombers and Corporal Menendez's hole in one. But heaven only knew what destruction they had prevented by their spirited defense. If that was how the rest of the Division was going to fight, it could take on anything of its size in either hemisphere. He congratulated Menendez, who thanked him with stammered courtesy and made a gesture towards his gun as if exhorting it to listen and take credit. His veiled, hot eyes suddenly reminded Miro of Felicia. The priestess in her. That was it. Menendez was like a priest with his intimate god, both satisfied to be stained with the blood of sacrifice. Miro said nothing of his disobedience to orders in turning the gun to fire downstream. That could and would be dealt with by the corporal's commanding officer. There was never any need to preach discipline to the Division. What he hoped was that discipline had not suppressed the native quality of reckless violence.

He swallowed a pannikin of stew from Ferrer's field kitchen — surprised as always that so natural and time-economizing an act should arouse devotion — and then addressed the officers' conference in the paved square outside what was left of Cumana Station. A one-horse cab had come back to its stand. Evidently the driver, half asleep, had unthinkingly followed his normal routine. Or did he believe that the fourteen-twenty-five Vergara express was likely to arrive?

For the sake of security, the Provost Section removed the driver, though he was too old and pickled in alcohol to understand anything but the name of a street. His cab, however, was useful, providing on the spot the extra height for a speaker. The peaceful smell of straw exasperated Miro by its lack of urgency. Also he found his audience unintelligent. The officers took the news that he intended to fight at Cruzada and not before as if the casual information were enough. Well, after all it wasn't the business of company commanders to question the tactics of the Captain
General. But he would have liked to notice a whisper, a raised eyebrow. They knew or ought to know that he would be surrounded.

Meanwhile the Headquarters vehicles were rolling in from their wide dispersal. When Miro had stepped down from his cab — and the remarkably unstartled driver, crowned with a string of sausages, had been replaced upon the box — the move of Fifth Division began. There was no more need for heroics, and indeed little for the commander to do while his small staff dealt with a routine so familiar to them from paper and maneuvers that even the forced and complicated improvisations upon the general theme flowed without dead stop or too excited conflict.

By the middle of the afternoon Signals had restored the land line to San Vicente. Miro's orders and requests to the Citadel were broken off by the military exchange, at the command of President Vidal.

He oozed nobility — a viceroy commiserating after defeat with the shattered commander of his troops. The tone was that of one of his better funeral orations. The disaster was, he supposed, irreparable. He begged Miro, for the sake of old friendship, to tell him the real truth. Some time in years to come they would again be collaborators.

The Captain General, after a moment or two of blank incomprehension, perceived that Don Gregorio's reaction was quite natural. From the villages down the line, from civil police across the bridge, perhaps from some triumphant radio announcement of Avellana or Ledesma, the reported devastation, exaggerated by a wildly imaginative people, must have sounded like a cataclysm; and Cumana Junction, rumor apart, looked to the nonmilitary eye as irrecoverable a mess as an antheap thrown out by the spade.

Yet the picture in his own mind was orderly, one of movement from a purposeful center. Already the lorries, empty or carrying wounded, were heading back to San Vicente over the Jaquiri Bridge. On the main road to Los Milagros was a column of lorried infantry with Calixto Irigoyen's Saracens moving into position on its left flank. The railway yards were dead, but Ferrer had managed to nurse a train of flatcars round Cumana and on to
the main line. The Armored Brigade was entraining. One troop was already away over open country on the right flank off the advance.