Thing to Love (36 page)

“Other way round mostly,” said Miro.

“Then I should not like my most distinguished son to think that his father —” Salvador could not keep up his pretense of lightheartedness. “My General, her position at Don Juan de Fonsagrada's house was open to misunderstanding.”

“That is one's usual position in his house, Salvador. Are you trying to tell me that this romance will last?”

“Forever, my General.”

“Well, if you with your far too extensive experience have a high opinion of her character, I am sure that Juan has too. So what would he do? Possibly arrange for her to be given away in the Cathedral by the Chilean Ambassador! And a Guard of Honor from the Medical Corps. After that, let them talk, my very dear Captain Irala!”

He noticed that Salvador's eyes were brilliant with unshed tears of affection, and to hide his embarrassment bent over the letter on his table. He signed, blotted it and handed it to his A.D.C.

“Here you are, then! My compliments to Doña Agueda!”

Already by the evening he knew that he should never have let Salvador go. It had not occurred to him before that the commander must look after the morale of the commander more subtly than by seeing that he was well fed and physically fit. For himself he needed a shadow, unobtrusive, disrespectful, with the power of clear analysis which only lack of responsibility could give.

As Hermosillo and Advanced HQ emptied he had a melancholy feeling of isolation which had no military or emotional justification. Salvador would have spotted it and peopled Headquarters with vivid and libelous character sketches of the absent. That could not be done on the telephone where, as Miro knew well, his own style compelled curtness and precision.

But there it was. In forty-eight hours Mario Nicuesa, his Armored Brigade on the road at the very minute Miro had ordered, had entered the Citadel. Trust him for that! His attention to detail would be invaluable to the future reorganization of the Army, so long as he never held high command. Rosalindo Chaves had thrown forward a Combat Group into Rubayo, cleared the northern half of the triangle, and crossed the Ica with assault boats to chase the enemy's scattered and ineffectual patrols far back into the llanos. The Siete Dolores troops were in the Quebradas Pass on rail and road. On Lérida Airfield, the aircraft of Guayanas were beautifully lined up ready to take off — those North American air crews certainly had a wicked sense of humor — and were guaranteed to collapse onto their bellies the moment they started to roll forwards.

It was the very success of his disengagement which increased his sense of loneliness. Instinct told him that the enemy, too, would be hypnotized by his apparent isolation; reconnaissance confirmed that they were excited. There was every sign that it was going to be difficult to get away without a last useless battle. Well, if Valdés felt it necessary to attack, heaven help him! His Intelligence was always inclined to judge the strength of Fifth Division not by its fire power and mobility but by the area it actually occupied.

It might, he thought, be the state of the Hermosillo-San Vicente road which was tempting Valdés. Vastly exaggerated by the triumphant reports of his spies in Hermosillo, the civilian traffic could sound like a chaos of refugees escaping from Germans. But there was nothing much wrong with it beyond the individual enterprise which had taken control of an orderly start — blaring of horns, frantic attempts to pass, impatient opening of new tracks
parallel to the road and equally impatient attempts to get back on to it. Where the devil they thought they were all going was their own business; but the police, the civil administration, the prominent Vidalistas and their families were probably wise to be out of Hermosillo for the first few days. Valdés's restraint of his angry, hungry horsemen would be uncertain and might be deliberately halfhearted. Communism always found it easiest to begin with a desert.

As contact with the enemy developed, Miro saw that he had guessed their intentions correctly; his rear guard was going to be pinned in its bridgehead. On the narrow causeway through the marshes would be a solid line of vehicles prevented from escaping by the jam on the San Vicente road; the cavalry, then at last on terms of equality with wheels, would fight or swim their way into the mess, with luck capture the bridge and in any case complete their work of destruction on both banks of the river. It was a beautiful, conventional picture. They would be allowed to achieve it, up to a point.

He spoke to Salvador, who reported that the hospital convoy had started across country, avoiding Hermosillo, and that all was well. It would enter the main road at the staging point some seven kilometers south of the turning to the bridge. The medical staff would like to rest and refuel there, and be on their way again to San Vicente at first light.

Miro agreed. The ambulances would have the advantage of even, comfortable speed down an empty road. His own force, having crossed and blown the bridge, would be traveling some four hours behind them. He was a little ashamed of the certainty in his voice and touched wood, for the enemy had already overrun his forward positions. It was what he intended; and by this time the combat groups understood his tactics, the men grinning at each other as one section supported the skillful retreat of the next. But it was always an anxious moment.

The enemy still played the old game. They still thought that cavalry was faster than infantry. Well, if all those little strips and patches of green left on the baked plain had been impassable to vehicles, he would indeed have been forced into an old-fashioned
battle for the bridgehead. But there was nothing at all which a half-track could not cross at the expense of one stagger and a slide.

Never before had he been able to see for himself the whole of a battle. It was like a return to the days of Napoleon, or rather to days before there were any effective firearms — for even Napoleon and his marshals had to wait for the smoke to clear before they could see with any clarity the effect of their fire or what success their final assault had had. From the highest of the low ridges which ran parallel to the river he could follow the action as precisely — except for short-lived eddies of dust — as if the troops were toy soldiers. But it was not a healthy spot; and his staff seemed inattentive. He wished Salvador had been there to share his enthusiasm at the unique experience.

The enemy had brought up Sixth Division infantry on such wheels as were available and were boldly pushing home a frontal attack. Far out over the plain were futile hordes of horsemen protecting the flanks, some of them llaneros, some — to judge by their slower and more effective movements — squadrons of Twentieth Cavalry. As his center retired, they began to close in for the kill.

He was astonished at the inefficiency of the arm in a set attack. A third of them were far back holding horses while the rest operated as infantry. And the horse-holders were by no means out of range. The bunches seemed satisfactory targets for the troop of Bofors guns which he had kept with him as an insurance against air attack. He was not yet revealing the full strength of his regiment of howitzers.

From the enemy's point of view, as the defenders' bridgehead contracted, the battle was developing like a lecture in a cavalry school. It was surprising that they did not suspect anything fishy in the halfhearted resistance and the lack of any determined counterattacks. They probably reckoned that in the absence of Rosalindo Chaves something scientific, without glory, and comparatively bloodless would be attempted by General Kucera. Well, they were quite right, though how far it was bloodless depended on how quickly they surrendered.

He watched the rays shoot out from his formless, pulsating center
continually in movement. The troop carriers, the jeeps, the few armored cars would not be recognizable yet to the enemy as the oldest and most deadly form of attack, the arms of the horn. The cavalry themselves were being enveloped and they did not know it. Envelopment to them meant a line of bodies, not little points appearing on their rear, each one three or four hundred meters from the next. He could see here and there a change of pattern as units turned to clean up the momentary annoyance and to lose touch with the victorious but now uncertain Sixth Division infantry. Instead of co-operating in a well-supported classic attack, the enemy was being forced to accept a puzzle picture of strongpoints fed and connected by elusive gray-green vehicles.

With an hour to go before sunset the Avellanistas realized that the mouth of the pocket was still open and that nothing else offered a sure road back to the llanos. They began to fall back and fight for it. And then at last the barrage from that unsuspected, unharrassed regiment of artillery came down and closed it.

The infantry broke up into stunned and disorganized groups clinging to the ground or waving their shirts in attempts to surrender. On their right flank those of the cavalry who could still reach their horses got away; on the left Avellana's llaneros, who were not accustomed to separate themselves from their horses and had taken little part in the action beyond wild firing, were hopelessly caught. With the blind instinct of cattle they tried to get out by the one route free of elusive troop carriers and jeeps, straight for Miro's main position where the troops were wiping off the sweat and thanking God that casualties had been small.

The mob sorted itself out into formations which might or might not correspond to the original squadrons. It was impossible to estimate the number of horsemen in the charge — anything from twelve to fifteen hundred, halved as they reached the incredulous infantry, halved again as they galloped on. It was evident that this thundering mass riding stirrup to stirrup with the low sun glinting on the little points of the lowered lances was so terrifying that firing from the front was wild; but any man with an automatic
weapon, not on the direct line of the charge, could do appalling execution.

Reduced now to three or four hundred, the llaneros swept over the troop of Bofors guns, who had only time to cut parallel lanes in them, and reached the cover of the broad belt of scrub and forest along the river. Miro looked at his watch — seven minutes from the time when the mob had cohered and charged. Well, it did at last show a use for cavalry. Assuming that the commander was prepared to lose 80 per cent, the remaining 20 per cent stood a good chance of arriving on the objective. What good they could ever do there was more than doubtful. These last poor devils with the charmed lives would now presumably gallop in column — if there was still a gallop left in their horses — down the causeway for the river. But Basilio Ferrer's field company commanded the approaches with their light machine-guns well dug in on each side of the bridge. There wasn't a ghost of a chance of even a single horseman crossing it.

He drove over to the Bofors troop. The gunners, sheltering behind and under their guns, had suffered remarkably little damage. Out in front of the guns were three bodies, trampled and smashed. The farthest out, still just conscious, was that superb and primitive fighting man, Corporal Menendez. As Miro knelt down by his side, the Corporal smiled as if he had seen God. Such worship was always hard to bear. Miro prayed that Pepe Menendez, with both worlds within his vision, was muddling the two of them.

“Why?” he asked the troop sergeant. “Why in front of the guns?”

“They charged him, my General. So he grabbed a Sten gun and charged them.”

The last firing had moved away to the west. With half an ear he listened for the bursts of Basilio's machine guns putting an end to the llaneros. All was silent in the dark clumps and belts of palms which hid the river and its backwaters. The panic-stricken riders must have suddenly and too sanely halted on the causeway and dispersed on foot into cover to wait for a chance of swimming
the river after dark. It was not unlikely, but it seemed somehow unnatural.

The position worried him. He didn't want a bunch of wild animals, most of them wounded, crawling about at night, sniping at Basilio's cooking fires and possibly setting off the bridge charges by accident. He took his command vehicle down to the bridge with a Saracen for escort.

He expected at least to hear the
ping
of a rifle shot against the plating of so tempting a target, but there was no sign at all of the enemy beyond three dead horses a little beyond the point where the survivors of the charge would have ridden on to the causeway. The bridge was empty. Basilio's men were standing up behind the sandbags of their positions. There seemed to be something wrong with discipline. Too much excitement. Too much gesticulation. He found Basilio sitting like a deserted tramp by the side of the road, and jumped out.

“Where are they?”

“I let them go, my General.”

“You — what?”

“I let them go. What did it matter? I cannot kill any more. Ever since the Escala . . . and Avellana thought I did not care. No, I am not a soldier! You should have seen them. They were harmless. And packed like that on the causeway — it was murder. I ordered the company to let them go.”

Miro said nothing. He was too astonished to be angry. And Basilio's revelation of himself was true. His melancholy, long-suffering face was not and had never been that of a soldier. What had been so deceptive was the reserve of energy, the extraordinary tireless ability to get the best out of his men — at bottom nothing more than the drive of a highly respected foreman bricklayer in an emergency. What Basilio had done was unthinkable. Yet he had not disobeyed any definite order. He simply had not the instinct to attack an unexpected target. Avellana's accusation of cruelty only drove home the accusations he had already made against himself. Both were wholly unjustified.

“Didn't you think where they might go?”

“The road is empty, my General. They can go where they please. They are finished.”

“Basilio, you are now a civilian again,” Miro said, still using the Christian name quite unconsciously, since the whole affair was clean out of the world of reprimands and courts-martial. “Without honor, without dishonor. Here is an order for a staff car. Dress yourself as best you can from the dead llaneros, and get out of the country. You should just have time.”