Thing to Love (24 page)

CHAPTER XIII

[
December 15–16
]

T
HE STATION OF
V
ENTAS
and its clearing were quite still in the paling darkness. Behind it, to the west, was the black wall of the forest reinforcing night; to the east was little vegetation, and that crushed and mangled by the tracks of the Armored Brigade. The station smelled like a butcher's shop, for the still air preceding the dawn had made no move to cleanse it. A man was sobbing. Another coughed, the blood and tissue of his lung gurgling in his throat.

The young commander of Fifth Combat Group, a green man still decked with leaves though the dance was over, saluted.

“I am sorry, my General, but I could not risk it. They ran for cover instead of surrendering, and in another minute . . .”

“The wounded?” Miro asked.

“Brigade has seen to them and left two orderlies. The medical officer thought it best that they should wait here until we can get them forward.”

“Very well. I shall want Fifth Combat Group to follow up the armor. You should have no difficulty in finding transport. You yourself will accompany the two troops on the right flank into Juy. It is possible that you will find yourself guarding Don Jesús-María de Hoyos and his staff. I require from you the utmost courtesy.”

“Understood, my General. Anything better afterwards?”

“More than you're likely to enjoy. Provost will relieve you before midday.”

The Captain General climbed into the command vehicle where Salvador Irala, his orderly and his personal radio operator were waiting for him, and went forward out of the bush into gray dawn. At the head of a wide valley, sweeping round and down into open country with the generous curves of a great river, was the gray armor. With not a plane in the sky it could not yet have been discovered. Fifth Combat Group reported that the enemy had no posts up on the divide. No reason why they should. There was nothing for them to see. Fifth Division could not move parallel to the forest against the lie of the land, and the detachment at Ventas was amply sufficient to give warning of any patrol working up the line of the Breakfast Tram.

Complete surprise was just possible. The shattering roar of the Armored Brigade could certainly be heard once it was round the first curve of the valley, with six or seven minutes still to go before it hit the left flank of Fourth Division. But heavy gunfire — probably the Division's gun-howitzers in their first action — was fairly close. If, added to that, there were plenty of transport on the move, the enemy might not have more than five minutes in which to wonder what on earth was happening.

They were off. Miro, watching from an open turret, followed close behind the ostrich plumes of thundering dust. As they swept out of the mouth of the valley the sight was unbelievable. Fourth Division, out of range of Chaves's guns, was bivouacked in the open, beginning to be busy with the cookhouses and latrines and morning parades, refueling transport, maintaining vehicles, and in all likelihood — though nothing could be heard — roaring their engines with the heartiness of any Guayanas driver greeting the dawn. It was plain that Jesús-María was holding the Division's infantry in reserve, or never intended to use it at all.

After their first terrorizing bursts of fire, the squadron had little need to waste ammunition at all. Where the enemy bunched in panic they killed with their tracks. Where the enemy ran, they let them run. Miro at first was conventionally shocked by this
utter humiliation of military dignity, though he had planned it and foreseen it. But he could not call it cowardice. No troops on earth, without even a full sun to give them courage, would have faced these sudden monsters from the Pacific.

The Armored Brigade hurtled on towards the brilliant red and gold of the eastern sky, now meeting with determined pockets of hopeless resistance but more often with mass surrender. Two troops were away on the right roaring over easy country to Juy, followed by a detachment of Fifth Combat Group in looted vehicles. Miro, Nicuesa and the Brigade wheeled left over the rolling ridges in search of the Divisional Artillery, which as yet could have received no coherent report of the disaster if indeed it had received any at all. He took with him the rest of Fifth Combat Group, to exploit and hold whatever unexpected gifts might be offered. He was ready to change his plans. Instead of a hard-fought breakout across country at the speed of the infantry, it was becoming conceivable that Chaves could launch at least half his force straight down the Cruzada road on wheels.

Speed was irresistible and luck was intoxicated by it. The two leading squadrons swept on to Fourth Division's Regiment of Medium Artillery, leisurely beginning a dawn bombardment of the Box. One troop had just time to begin to turn to face the tanks. The rest of the gun-howitzers remained in position, their gunners dead or running.

The Cruzada road was in full view. Beyond it, on gently rising ground, was spread the first-line transport of a brigade and most of its men at a range of a little over a thousand meters.

Miro jumped to the ground and waved up his detachment of Fifth Combat Group.

“Can you work the guns?”

“We can try,” answered the young captain in command.

“It's easy. Look! Depress until you have the enemy in open sights. You may need to come up a bit. No science to it at all. We'll see.”

With Salvador and a tank gunner, he gave a demonstration. The sixty-pound shell landed in a group unloading mortar bombs. There was a noticeable change of color in the tiny figures as the
odd two thousand men in view looked around. Their gestures suggested that half of them thought the gunners had been careless, half that the dump of bombs had gone up accidentally.

Fifth Combat Group, assisted by a sprinkling of the tank gunners, worked the howitzers insanely and raggedly but with devastating effect. The armor, out on both flanks hull-down, broke up the enemy's counterattack. In five minutes the road was empty except for burning dumps and transport, and two squadrons were over it and on the other side of the valley.

There was no effective enemy force in sight. The mass of Third Division was evidently concentrated much farther forward for the final assault on the Box. Miro launched Nicuesa down the Cruzada road and ordered him to hook right up the parallel valleys. Third Division was already cut off from its supply base without knowing it, and what would happen when the armor appeared on and behind their left flank was on the knees of the gods.

He set up his Headquarters where he was and started to talk to a wildly excited Chaves. Then the news began to trickle in. Mario Nicuesa had raced into trouble down the Cruzada road and lost four tanks before Chaves's right wing could roll forward to meet him. The combined force then pushed northward.

A breakout by the Cruzada road had become out-of-date by nine o'clock. For five minutes Miro anxiously paced his patch of high ground trying to compel the excited and sometimes contradictory reports into a concrete picture of the chaos. Then he perceived that if one ignored a pocket of enemy troops on the south of the Box, who could do little harm and might go and breakfast in the Cruzada cafés if they liked, the Box had ceased to exist. The mass of Fifth Division under Chaves had become the powerful left wing of a general advance. Third was at his mercy, cut off from its supplies, enfiladed, without time to find any new defensive position which could not be instantly turned by the armor.

But his lack of man power was quickly apparent. The Juy force reported triumphantly that it had picked up Don Jesús-María and his staff, and half an hour later was begging for orders about what on earth to do with the prisoners. The two troops of tanks and the detachment of Fifth Combat Group had cleared out of Juy
with a packed lorry of generals and colonels. The flying, disorganized units of Fourth Division, through which at first they had contemptuously shot their way, were showing signs of rallying; the sheer weight of their numbers was alarming, though they had only their rifles and automatic weapons. The armor was continually sealing off the more persistent packs of the enemy, but the speed of the column was slowed and it was unable to protect its prisoners from long-range, scattered fire. Don Jesús-María was protesting.

He would — loudly, and with all the compelling force of his ultra-military personality. In any other context the position would be comic. But it was not at all comic for the commander of Fifth Combat Group, who would be apologizing and saluting every time a stray bullet ripped through the canvas of the lorry.

Miro toyed with the idea of ordering the column to turn its prisoners loose. If there was any more fighting to do he much preferred that his opponent should be Jesús-María; and once the web of command had been utterly destroyed it didn't much matter what happened to the individual threads of it. That, however, wouldn't do. Professional dignity had to be considered. You could shell or bomb the enemy commander — if you didn't mind your own headquarters being disrupted in retaliation — but you could not insult him. Jesús-María and his officers represented the Army of Guayanas, past and future, and must be carefully treated with the military protocol so dear to his heart. Miro ordered the column to form a laager of armored vehicles within which the distinguished prisoners would be quite safe from small-arms fire, and to present his sincere and personal apologies. It would have to do for the moment. He hoped it would do until he could spare troops and armor to bring the prisoners in. That depended on whether Fourth Division had any artillery which had not been abandoned and any communication with the gunners.

By midday the surrenders of whole battalions from Third Division were becoming embarrassing. Miro toured the enemy dumps and petrol points, where his own armor was now filling up, and added his authority to that of the escorts, who had no cages for
their prisoners and were very thin on the ground. The officers and men of Third Division were still shocked and ashamed at the sudden reversal of their fortunes. Miro told them cheerfully that they would be home in a week. He obtained little response. The ranks of brown eyes which met his were veiled and resentful.

Sixth Division stood magnificently firm, fighting its own battle, passing the demoralized units of Third through its forward positions when that was possible, ruthlessly ignoring their existence when it was not. Its right slowly fell back along the line of the forest while its left fought off the continual attacks of the armor, imposing losses and caution on Colonel Nicuesa. If only Sixth had been in action against the Armored Brigade for the first time! Miro realized that he was now paying the price for his mistake on the second evening out from Cumana. He did not persist. One couldn't have it both ways. In difficult country there had been meticulous control of the squadrons in action and no serious mechanical failures. He broke off the assault on Sixth's left wing and sent the armor off on a far-ranging hook to the northwest, with orders to complete the encirclement of the enemy and to report any advance of Twelfth Cavalry from its positions at Cumana.

There was now time to clear up loose ends. The indefatigable Ferrer reported that he was at Ventas with the Field Company's troop carriers, one armored recovery vehicle and five tanks, abandoned along the line of the Breakfast Tram, now extracted and battleworthy. This was a handy force, and Miro had little doubt that his engineer would command it with enterprise and common sense. In any case there was nobody else. He launched Ferrer with orders to contact and escort out of danger the column with Jesús-María and his staff. After that, if he and his company had still any life in them, they were to drive for the Escala de los Ingleses, laager for the night and report early next day whether they could relieve the Saracens and, if not, what force was required.

The column arrived at Miro's Command Post in the late afternoon. He received Don Jesús-María with the proper military honors of convention, accepted his very beautiful sword and at once returned it. Jesús-María, still bewildered and astonished by a
journey which had ended not at Cruzada but at the
aldea
which had been the former Headquarters of Third Division, seemed to have forgotten all resentment at his unceremonious capture.

“What has happened?” he asked. “What has happened?”

Miro handed over the care of the enemy staff to Salvador Irala, took his former commander into the cottage where his pennant was now flying and showed him the map.

“Third and Fourth Divisions have ceased to exist. Sixth is more or less in my old position, but its right wing is ten kilometers farther north. It has only its first-line transport and supplies, and must surrender in two days at the most.”

“But what will you do to us? This is without precedent, without sense!”

“To you and your commanders, Don Jesús-María? On parole in the Citadel if that suits you. What I am to do with the rest of my prisoners, God knows. Perhaps you will be good enough to help us with your advice.”

“Have you all Fourth Division?”

“Very few,” Miro answered frankly. “Many are disarmed, but I have not the men to round them up.”

If it hadn't been for Basilio Ferrer, whose reports were just coming in, Fourth Division might have begun to forget that they had been defeated. When last seen, Ferrer had added a troop of Third's motorized eighteen-pounders to his force and for the first time in anyone's memory looked — according to the commander of Fifth Combat Group — as if he were really enjoying himself. After clearing the way home for the Juy column, he had perceived that his move to the Escala would be thoroughly unsafe until the organized groups of Fourth Division were disorganized again. So he had raided the plain far and wide, disarming the units, crushing rifles and automatic weapons under the tracks of his five tanks, and herding the defenseless troops along the roads to Los Milagros and their peacetime stations.

“You have won a remarkable battle, Captain General,” said Don Jesús-María. “For the sake of Guayanas, I only hope it is decisive.”