How I Won the War Page 14

  He screwed the head off an invisible hen.

  “Who is it, mon Capitan?”

  He clenched his fists to his chest and stiffened his lips to help face the words.

  “Isa Nicolo Pellochi. He steala the chianti. He hidea down there …”

  And followed by his midshipmen he set off down the rocks as the voice wailed into a last heart-breaking “God Savea” and applauded himself rapturously.

  “Und nun,” he boomed gutturally. “Musica for Tedeschi … Bella, bella Lili Marlene …”

  As the sad sweet song came lilting up, the rain lifted, the moon broke through the clouds and far away to our right we could see the brooding whiteness of Monte Cassino. Everyone suddenly thought of home and Twelve Platoon were softly, ruefully joining in the chorus when, just as he came underneath the lamplight for the third time, their soloist was abruptly stricken to silence. It was then, I judged, that his capitano caught up with Nicolo Pellochi.

  The Boche had beads on us from all angles and movement by day was strictly forbidden. The Solferino late-comers arrived the following evening and, together with equal portions of onions, raisins and coffee beans, were distributed around the positions.

  By the third night, we had everything shipshape and I was quietly engaged in making notes for my Memoirs when Captain Demoli, with his bodyguard of midshipmen, effervesced into the cave.

  “Scusi, tenente,” he panted. “Isa life and death. The Tedeschi! He crossa the Garigliano! He massa for the attack!”

  “Where? We’ve heard no gunfire.”

  With shaking hand he poured himself a drink, tossed it down and spat it straight out when he found he’d made free with my blood mixture.

  “Not attack yet, tenente. They come across the river. They hide up in the trees. My bravea Commando section do the nighta patrol, makea sure all clear on our front. Creepa like redskin…. Ssh! … No makea no sound …” He shuffled forward like Juniper in his Quasimodo period. “Lie quiet as puss-cat, listen like hawk…. They heara Tedeschi talking … Donner und blitzen … Komm’ hier, geh’ da … Jawohl, mein herr …”

  “How many Germans are there?”

  “Molto, molto Tedeschi.”

  “Where are they? Show me on the map.”

  He spread his hands apologetically.

  “I dunno know where on map. My Commando officer stay watcha the enemy. Send back with message the heart of the lion who found the Tedeschi, the ears of tiger who hear them talk, the bravea hero of the Solferino who will lead us there—Nicolo Pellochi!”

  “I thought he was your archenemy?”

  He wriggled his head sentimentally.

  “Ah! That Nicolo. In peace, the rascal. In war, the Garibaldi!”

  Urgent investigation was obviously necessary. Sergeant Transom was touring the positions. I left a message for him, put on my leather jerkin and set off with my faithful batman. It was a long and tortuous way through the woods that the Commando had patrolled. We twisted and turned all ways in the darkness, scrambling among rocks, crawling through scrub, wading knee-deep in streams.

  “The Solferino lot may be all right out on the Mare Nostrum,” whispered Gripweed after an hour of blind crosscountry, “but tonight they’ve either been playing Hampton Court Maze or getting plain lost.”

  I had tried to follow our route on the map but its convolutions soon defeated me. From the way we kept doubling back, Maigret might have been on our tail.

  “Psst!” hissed Captain Demoli as we burrowed a channel through a featherbed of compost. “We are near.”

  The Commando officer, who wore two pearl-handled pistols, a girdle of grenades, a dagger at his hip, and dirks in either sock, led us forward.

  “He’d have a knife in his moosh,” breathed Gripweed, “if he hadn’t got false teeth.”

  We stopped under a long overhang of rock and listened. For a minute all was silent. Then, right above us, I heard stealthy movements, the rustle of leaves and guttural Teutonic whispering…. It was the Boche, all right…. Maybe just a patrol … maybe lying up for a dawn attack…. First thing was to fix their position … If I could get a bearing on Cassino or some other land mark…. Carefully I lifted myself up under the rock until I could see the horizon.

  “Hände hoch!” rasped a voice behind us…. Bayonets pushed out from the bushes ahead…. Machine gun muzzles poked down from the rock above…. There was a scurrying among the trees where Pellochi and the midshipmen had waited and then our hiding place was surrounded by a dozen soldiers with woollen hats, blackened faces, and wearing camouflage jerkins.

  “Gawd!” said Gripweed. “We’re in the bag.”

  Demoli and his lieutenant burst into fountains of placatory Italian.

  “Steady, chaps,” I said. “Remember, name, rank, and number only.”

  Resistance was clearly useless and I led them out from under the rock. I don’t speak German but I had consigned to memory a few phrases suitable to such a situation.

  “Ich bin ein Owzier. Bitte, nehem mir an dein Kommandant.”

  “Hände hoch,” repeated the enemy in reply.

  They closed around us, jabbing their guns in our backs and marched us up a goat track. I decided as we clambered towards captivity that I would study law while in prison camp. After making every possible effort to escape, of course. After ten minutes we came to a farmhouse built into the mountainside. They pushed us through a door and into a candle-lit room where a giant of a close-cropped Prussian sat at a map-strewn table. He was wearing a brown sweater and the flickering wax-light threw up the sabre-scar on his cheek.

  I took off my jerkin to show the pips on my shoulders. The Boche respect strength of character so I decided to show my mettle from the start.

  “My name,” I snapped, “is Ernest Goodbody, my rank is substantive Lieutenant, my number is 131313.”

  “And I,” said the Prussian in purest Oxford, “am Major Jan Kapolowski of the Warsaw Regiment, the Third Carpathian Division of the Second Polish Corps. Sorry my men mistook you but few of them speak English, and these two chaps with you are in very strange uniforms. And if you really want to bring your patrols back through our lines, it would be safer to let us know.”

  The Poles had not been in Africa and I’d never met one face to face before. I had no call to be doing so now since, according to the map, there were one company of the Musketeers and half a battalion of Black Watch between my right flank and the nearest clump of Carpathians.

  I quickly explained that my inexperienced Italian foot-sailors had lost themselves on patrol and that, on locating them, I found that the only practicable way back was to lead them through the Polish lines. The major was utterly charming about the whole affair and ran us as far towards home as his jeep could make it.

  As we plodded back up our approach track, Captain Demoli steadily cursed the name of Nicolo Pellochi.

  “… Why that dam-a-fool not listen? He singa Lili Marlene, don’t he? He know when Tedeschi talking…. Is nota imbecile, is nota baby in arms…. Then why he come back say Polish soldiers speak like Tedeschi? … I tella you why … because he wanna make big fool out of his capitano, thatsa why. He wanna revenge, that Nicolo Pellochi, for when I choppa him down at sing-song…. Thisa time, that lousy sonofabitch, he go too far. Thisa time with my bare hands …”

  He broke off as small-arms fire burst out on our front. We were still half a mile away but could see the bright swoop of tracer beating down from the machine guns of the central Italian position.

  “To battle stations!” I commanded. “At the double. We’re being attacked after all.”

  We made all speed the mud would allow and as we came in the back door of the stone barn, Sergeant Transom dropped through a side window. All the Italians, urged on by their officer with drawn cutlass were lining the forward wall and blazing away for dear life.

  “Stop!” yelled Sergeant Transom. “Cease fire! Niente tiro! Silenzio!”

  I wondered at first, as he lay about the defenders, pulling them bac
k from the loopholes and kicking their guns to the floor, whether he had gone over to Hitler.

  “Steady, Sergeant,” I said. “You’ll have us overrun.”

  He wrenched our last firing defender from his post and now the only gun fire to be heard was coming from the attackers. It was a solitary machine gun firing half-hearted bursts.

  “Listen to that,” said Sergeant Transom. “A bloody Bren. One of ours, I’ll lay a dollar. We’re fighting among our flamingselves…. Come here, Captain Demoli, and yell out through this loophole who you are …”

  As the captain shouted the Bren stopped firing and answering cries of liquid Italian relief came up from the enemy.

  “Madonna mia! Isa my own Commando section coming back. The firsta bullets we fire, we shoot ourselves. Idiot! Traditori! Why you not usa your brains?”

  He turned on his expostulating platoon commander and cuffed him out of the barn with the flat of his own cutlass.

  “All-a-ways the mistakes. Never no gloria d’Italia. Why nobody tell him the Commando go out on patrol? Why don’t he say halta-who-goes before shooting everybody? Why don’t I killa myself like a Japanese? …”

  The Commando section came straggling out of the darkness and paired off in voluble debate with the defenders.

  “Scusi, tenente,” said the two-gun commander. “Isa that Nicolo Pellochi. He say I leada you back shortcut same way as capitano. I trusta him. I takea his word … and he damned nearly getta me killed!”

  He held out his beret to show where a bullet had snipped a foot off his scarlet plume. The fatal name turned the captain purple.

  “Nicolo Pellochi!” he groaned, reaching out his hands for a throat to strangle. “Where isa that Judas-a-snake-in-the-grass? Where isa that Nicolo Pellochi?”

  He looked fruitlessly around the barn and then ran out into the darkness and down the hill in search of high noon with Nicolo.

  “It’s a good job,” said Sergeant Transom as we walked back to our command post, “that those Ities can’t shoot straight. There wasn’t one of them got scratched even. If you leave out nancy-boy’s ostrich feather.”

  I had barely started breakfast next morning when Major Arkdust came on the field-telephone.

  “What the hell are you doing up there?” he demanded. “Trooping the Colour? The whole line from here to Cassino has been on the blower. If you don’t call off your blasted church parade, they reckon you’ll have the Boche getting jumpy and stonking all along the line. Didn’t I make it plain enough to you? Absolutely no movement whatsoever by day.”

  “You did, sir. I’ll investigate right away.”

  Sergeant Transom came down from the O.P.

  “It’s the Ities again, sir. Half of ’em, I reckon, parading down in the valley. We’ll have to take a chance and get back there.”

  It was one of the more amazing sights of my war. Two hundred yards back from the front line, some hundred and fifty foot-sailors were drawn up in a hollow square. In its centre, on a catafalque made of a barn door raised on massed sacks of onions, lay a coffin draped by the red, white, and green of the Italian flag. Highly coloured officers formed a guard of honour at each corner of the bier, heads bowed in melancholy, hands folded reverently over cutlasses pointed in the ground. Four drummers rolled a requiem rataplan on muffled raisin barrels. A trio of bugles, muted as bagpipes, played a doleful threnody. The body of the troops stood with arms reversed, eyes downcast, and were keening a long, thin dirge.

  “Gawd Strewth!” said Sergeant Transom. “A full-dress military funeral! And under the eyeballs of Cassino.”

  Captain Demoli came towards me from the head of the parade. He was wearing a purple sash, a black band on either arm and carrying a missal.

  “Isa good of you, tenente, to come paya your last respects. We bury our comrade. The firsta hero of the Solferino. The heart-of-a-lion who lay down his lifebloods for the gloria d’Italia. We make for him the military funeral.”

  “But you’re in full view of the Germans. They’ll shell us to bits.”

  He drew himself proudly up to his full rotundity.

  “The Italian Navy must honour its dead. The Tedeschi see we make funeral parade. They respecta the dead. And we are at the end. You will salute the hero of the Solferino? … Please? …”

  I looked at Sergeant Transom. He shrugged.

  “They’ve gone to a lot of trouble,” he said. “And if one does come over at least there’ll be a grave handy.”

  We marched with Captain Demoli to the grave already dug beside the catafalque. As they lowered the flag-covered coffin into the pit, the bugles whispered a sad Italian Last Post and we whipped up salutes fit for the passing of a queen. The Boche never fired a shot. He probably couldn’t believe his eyes.

  “When was the poor chap killed?” I asked as the parade dispersed, leaving the sextons erecting the headstone.

  “Last night, tenente,” replied Captain Demoli. “With the gallanta Commando.”

  “Who was he?”

  The tears came to his eyes and his voice broke like puberty.

  “Wasa my friend,” he said sadly. “He was here in my heart allaways … wasa Nicolo Pellochi.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Every time any of us went home to England we were struck by the intensity of the hatred of the enemy … the people were under a daily barrage of propaganda. Since they had no direct physical contact with the Germans, the German soldier was little by little invested with a monstrosity and savagery that was almost inhuman…. The experiences of the soldier in the field up to this point were, in the main, quite different. As soon as he met a German prisoner he observed that to all outward appearances he was a normal human being. A bit pompous, perhaps, and wooden, but still just another man. After the fight was over the reaction of the average soldier on seeing the prisoners was to think: “Well, the poor dumb beggars, they certainly bought it. They’ve had it.” And he would hand out his cigarettes.

  ALAN MOOREHEAD Eclipse

  DOWN IN CASSINO IT was a private war. Your whole world was the Liri valley and the grey mountains bounding it were the ends of the earth. Reality was totally enclosed and no one was fighting anywhere else. The object of life was to conquer the Kafka symbol of Monte Cassino and put out the omniscient eyes of the Monastery.

  In March 1944, Twelve Platoon crouched in the rubble of the station, while five hundred aircraft dropped a thousand tons of bombs in three and a half hours, many of them, fortunately, on the abbey and the enemy over the way. So battered was Cassino before they started that the best O.P. in the station looked out through the skirting ventilator of the ex-ladies’ lavatory. After the bombers were done, the earth was so gouged by craters and precipices that Hillary and Tensing would have wanted a leg-up to get through. With the tanks stuck uselessly outside, beaten by our own devastation, the rain returned in torrents and the March attack fizzled out. The infantry settled down again in April to the intimate, troglodyte combat which was the accepted Cassino way of life.

  The Musketeers took their turn with everybody else to live cheek by jowl with the Germans in sewers, cellars, and fortified ruins; which places we shared with stagnant water and attendant rats, grateful to hide ourselves in the first and down with the second to escape from the oppression of the Monastery and the snipers in the Continental Hotel.

  It was a curious type of warfare, skirmishing yard by yard along tunnels and culverts, mouseholing hopefully from house to house, and it was really better fitted to night-sighted ferrets than twentieth-century man. Nobody came out of their warren except by night, and by day an endless smoke screen drifted gloomily up the mountainside. There was always something rather improper about having the enemy as your next door neighbour. It was a real military embarrassment to be burrowing forward yourself on one side of the fireplace and to hear him start picking his way through on the other. Positive slum warfare ensued when the overcrowding got so bad that both sides had rooms in the same house. And we had to adapt ourselves to fighting in three
dimensions when Twelve Platoon was residing in a comfortable basement flat off the approach road to Castle Hill, and the Germans found a way through the upper story remnants to occupy the floor above.

  They made a lot of noise upstairs and Sergeant Transom banged on our ceiling with a rifle butt to let them know there were people trying to sleep down below.

  “Bloody lodgers,” he said. “All the same, you’d think they’d keep it a bit quiet seeing they know we’re all in night work.”

  We tried shooting through the ceiling and they tried shooting through the floor but there was about three feet of rockwork between us and all we got for our troubles was a basement buzzing alive with ricochets. They started pouring petrol down to soak through our stucco preparatory to baking us in our jackets, but Private Drogue got a match to it first, and, from the ensuing hullabaloo overhead, they caught the blowback and for half an hour or so enjoyed under-floor heating fit for fire walkers. We finished up with a lampblack, soot-icicled ceiling. It not only looked right contemporary, but it also helped us to see better the whites of the rats’ eyes.

  Next, they tried to put the bailiffs in by digging down through to us. But every time they started in with the pick-axe, we began digging up from our end in exactly the same place. There’s nothing so upsets a man digging down as to find someone from below cutting the ground from under his feet, and they soon gave up excavating.

  We tried smoking them out through the rubble by building rag fires in chandeliers of M & V tins. Although we raised some heavy churchyard coughing overhead, we had to abandon the attack because the down draught turned our basement into a suffocation chamber.

  “You’ll have to give over fumigation, sir,” choked Corporal Dooley, “or you’ll finish up with a platoon of two-legged kippers.”