Monte Cassino

  A Kubel pulled up before the monastery with squealing brakes. Five trucks followed close behind. Two platoons of MPs commanded by an Oberleutnant poured in through the gateway, their half-moon badges glinting. Hoarse commands echoed among the ancient walls.

  The head-hunters were grinning delightedly. This was something that just suited them.

  "Well, plundering are you, you shits? That'll cost you your heads! We're well practised in drumhead court martials. You won't see the sun go down!"

  We dived into cover behind some rose bushes.

  "Look what you're doing, you idiot," Porta hissed, as I fumbled getting the cartridge belt into the breech of my LMG. "Unless there's a miracle, we won't be alive in an hour's time."

  I loaded, shoved the safety catch forward, pressed the butt into my shoulder, and glanced across at the Old Man, who was lying behind a big stone with his SMG.

  "Shoot, bugger you," Porta whispered, screwing the cap off a hand grenade. "If we're going to peg out, we'll each take one of those bloodhounds with us. Sweep the yard clean from left to right."

  "I'm not shooting till the Old Man orders it," I said.

  "Bloody fool, you!" said Porta and gave me a kick in the side that sent me rolling away from my machine gun. Then he pressed the butt into his own shoulder. I scarcely dared breathe. At such short range he would have killed every one of them, including the white-tabbed soldiers.

  The Legionnaire was kneeling behind a tree clutching a panzerfaust. Its long high explosive rocket looked evilly out of its stovepipe-mouth. He was evidently quite prepared to send the devilish projectile into the huddle of MPs.

  In the monastery windows we could see the faces of nuns and monks anxiously watching what was going on.

  A Luftwaffe major appeared.

  "What's going on here?" he asked the MPs' officer. "Your blustering behaviour is making my men nervous. I have given orders that my people are to be on the alert for partisans."

  "Herr Major," the police oberleutnant's face glowed with enthusiasm. "I'm here on the direct orders of GOC South. The allies' transmitter is reporting that German troops are plundering the monastery and it is my duty to investigate. I must ask you, Herr Major, to come with me now to the GOC. Seeing what's going on here, I can only conclude that the Allies are right."

  "I have no time to go anywhere just now," said the major smiling. "Archbishop Diamare can assure you that there is no plundering. If any soldier pockets as much as a splinter, he'll be shot on the spot."

  Tiny nudged Porta.

  "Herr Oberleutnant," the Major went on. "You can tell them at HQ that I am assuring the safety of the monastery. Within the next few hours I shall make a detailed report in person. Now, get yourselves away from here, before your migration attracts the attention of the enemy's 'planes."

  The Oberleutnant withdrew with his men.

  We spent the next few hours sweating with heavy packing cases. Even before it was dark, the first column got under way and went to the monastery of Vulgata in San Girolamo. Shortly after dark a second column drove off, heading for Sao Paola.

  Then our peace was shattered by a whining in the air and a roar as the first Jabos came sweeping over the monastery. Bombs hailed round us.

  Porta who was sitting under a truck trying to empty a bottle of rice spirit, suddenly found himself without cover as the heavy vehicle was sent flying up into the air like a tennis ball and went rolling down the mountainside. A paratrooper who was asleep in the driver's seat was chucked through the roof and fell on to a stack of rifles, spitting himself.

  Then the next wave came roaring; they had their throttles wide open and tracer bullets spattered from their noses.

  A paratroop Oberfeldwebel was sawn in two as he ran across the open space in front of the monastery. The lower half ran on a few steps without its top.

  Porta sat in the middle of the space brandishing his empty bottle.

  "Good old Charlie, back again, are you?" he shouted at the attacking machines. "We've been missing you. We were afraid you'd suffocated in spaghetti."

  A Jabo swept past a few yards above his head. The slipstream sent him flying. He dusted his yellow top hat that had dropped off, got to his knees and shook his fist at the Jabos. Shells from the Jabo's guns were bursting round him, but nothing touched him.

  There he sat, all by himself, while flares turned night into day.

  "He's mad," one of the monks said to Leutnant Frick. "Get him away."

  Porta got to his feet with a LMG in his arms. He fumbled a bit with the cartridge belt, put his top hat carefully down on the ground beside him and screwed his chipped monocle into his eye.

  "Select own targets," he ordered himself, "fire!" He swayed under the tremendous recoil from the LMG as it spat glowing steel at the attacking Jabos. Cursing and swearing because it was so hot and burned his fingers, he changed barrels. His eyes were laughing. He was crazy or drunk, or both. He had put in a new cartridge belt and now leaned back against the remains of a smashed driver's cab. A flare thrown by a Halifax flooded everything in brilliant white light, that surrounded the mountains like a halo.

  The open space was spattered with bullets and shells from the swooping, diving Jabos and Mustangs.

  "Porta," the Old Man shouted desperately. "They'll kill you."

  "Get him in," a Luftwaffe officer ordered. "Three days leave to the man who gets him in! He's mad."

  'A fresh flare burst out of the dark sky. To the north a 'Christmas tree' lit up.

  Porta took a pull at his field bottle, and lit a cigarette. Then he spread out the LMG's legs, adjusted the air sight and laughed a tipsy laugh.

  "Come on, Charlie, now I'm ready to ram you up the arse!"

  You would have thought that he and the enemy pilots were in direct communication, for the moment he had shouted the words, the first 'plane came swishing into the area of light. A bomb exploded with a thunderous roar. The 'plane wobbled, swung away. Long flames were streaming from its lefthand wing.

  Two machines came roaring in one after the other. Bombs crashed. A sea of flame hid Porta from us, but he emerged unscathed out of the smoke, doubled-up with laughter and his LMG in his arms.

  He swung round. In a few seconds the muzzle was pointing at an attacking Mustang. Porta blazed away at its fire-spewing exhaust. There was a gigantic explosion. Pieces of wreckage came hurtling down. Porta must have hit the bomb underneath the 'plane, which was pulverised into millions of pieces, literally turned to dust.

  "Good night, Charlie," he shouted. "I'll send your mother a postcard!"

  "This is fantastic," exclaimed a paratroop officer. "Who is he? A phantom?"

  A gigantic figure emerged from the pine trees dragging a searchlight, a job that usually calls for a crane. In the shadows were two men busy with the cables. It was Tiny come to help. Heedless of the shells exploding round them, the two saluted each other with outstretched hand and raised their hats.

  "They can't work that searchlight by themselves," Heide shouted. "I must go and help. Joseph! Mary! Holy Jesus, hold your hand over me!" Bent double he zigzagged across the brilliantly lit open space. He lay down under the searchlight to act as a live turntable. The beam of light shot into the sky, a beam that would burn out a pilot's eyes.

  "I've got him, the devil," Tiny jubilated. "He's staring into my fire. Now you're for it, Charlie."

  The first fighter died in a sea of spurting petrol flames. The searchlight went out. Tiny banged his fists on the ground exultantly.

  "It was me got him. I got him." The hair on his head suddenly caught fire. Heide put it out with his greatcoat.

  The searchlight's beam stabbed out again. Millions of candle-power pointing at the lowering clouds.

  A Mustang with shark's teeth painted on it dived.

  "I have him. I'll burn the peepers out of his ugly mug."

  The flying shark went into a spin as it tried to get out of the mortal beam.

  Tiny switched off and listened to the roar of the motor. Was
it chance or devilish calculation by a brain that had never been taught mathematics, that he switched on again at exactly the right instant, hitting the machine in its mad dive and blinding the pilot for the rest of his life? Heide was on all fours under the searchlight, thrusting his shoulder from one side to the other as the 'plane desperately attempted to escape the beam; then it struck the ground at 300 mph.

  Two Halifaxes and four Mustangs roared down across the open space. A string of bombs sent flames shooting up from the monastery. Phosphorus seemed to be bubbling and spluttering everywhere.

  The roar of aeroplane engines died away into the night. The Californian killers had dropped their load. Their ammunition was all used up. The last few gallons of petrol would just get them back to base.

  Just before the column moved off, the sound of pick and shovel could be heard from the flat ground below the monastery, where a couple of months later General Ander's Polish Division was to find a resting place. That was Porta, Tiny and Heide digging a grave for the burned-out remains of the Charlies.

  When the grave was ready, they laid them in it side by side, each with an American cap between the bones of their hands. Then the rest of No. 2 Squadron with Padre Emanuel arrived.

  The Old Man shovelled the first spadeful of earth, saying something that sounded stupid to us:

  "For your mothers and God!"

  Leutnant Frick was next. The last was our padre, Emanuel. He spoke about God. A whole lot of stuff we didn't understand. We sang an Ave Maria. The graves were quickly filled in and five minutes later, we drove off.

  It was the toughest trip we'd made. Two of us lay on the roof of each driver's cab with a machine gun on its air defence stand. Swarms of Jabos came sweeping up from behind us. The Via Appia was at times carpeted with light.

  Endless streams of trucks were coming towards us from the other direction: artillery. sappers, tanks, bridging material, ammunition trains and ambulances.

  Bombs struck the ammunition trucks which went up, flinging their loads in all directions.

  A big Mercedes with a general's banner in front and escorted by military police on motorcycles wound its way in and out among the heavy vehicles.

  "Keep to the right. Keep to the right," bellowed a military police major. He was the kind that would ruthlessly go for anyone who got in his way.

  At that moment four Jabos attacked. Tiny saw them as they appeared out of the clouds and came for us. I jumped down on to the bonnet to get better support. Tiny held on to me so that the recoil would not throw me off.

  Heide opened fire first. He was behind the machine gun on the truck just behind us.

  "Move over, damn you. I can't see anything," shouted Porta from the driver's seat.

  There was a scream, a crash and a bump, and the police major and his motorcycle were crushed beneath our heavy dual-wheeler.

  "To hell with him!" Tiny grinned. "We'll send Charlie a postcard of thanks."

  The general's car was in flames. A figure in furs rose up, tried to get out, but fell back into the sea of fire. The car skidded, turned a somersault and exploded. An ambulance went slap into a 28 cm cannon. Its rear door was flung open and eight stretchers went hurtling into the road.

  A wounded feldwebel tried to roll clear of the crushing wheels of the heavy trucks. He was wearing a muddied tunic. His midriff was covered with bandage. One foot had been amputated. A caterpillar tractor went over his head.

  A military policeman jumped forward and tried to halt the column, but collapsed as a salvo from a diving Jabo hit him.

  The whole Via Appia was bathed in brilliant light. Two marker 'Christmas trees' glowed over the middle of the column. A Halifax was spewing flames.

  "Hold tight," Porta called. "I'm going off the road into the fields." The heavy truck bumped down into the ditch, crushing a little amphibian into a shapeless crumple of iron.

  All the other four trucks followed Porta. The two monks we carried in each, kneeled on the floor praying. We battered our way through the wall of a graveyard, toppling gravestones and tearing up new graves with our mighty wheels. A little chapel was razed to the ground. We drove on with a crucifix dangling from the bumper.

  Then Barcelona's engine cut out. The first towing wire broke as if it had been thread. The next held for a couple of minutes. A twenty-ton truck with a tired engine is not easily hauled out of the soft earth of a graveyard. Porta jumped cursing from his cab, threw a steel helmet at Marlow and demanded a steel hawser.

  The winch on Barcelona's truck unwound, and Gregor took hold of the thick wire. Porta went quite savage, when he discovered that Gregor was wearing gauntlets.

  "Who the hell do you think you are? Take those bloody things off!"

  Gregor answered back and lashed at Porta with a piece of broken wire. In a moment we were tumbling among the graves in a savage fight. A flare lit up the scene. A fighter came roaring out of the clouds. A paratrooper toppled off a truck with blood trickling from a line of holes in his chest. A monk doubled up like a pocket knife. The tarpaulin of our truck went up in flames. A monk tackled it with a fire extinguisher.

  Leutnant Frick blew his whistle and threatened us with every sort of disaster: court martial, Torgau, execution.

  I spat out two teeth that landed in Heide's lap. A bloody flap of skin was hanging over Porta's left eye. Heide had a long gash in a buttock, and Tiny's mouth was torn up to one ear. It had been a nasty fight. It took our medical orderly and Padre Emanuel, cursing us, an hour and a half to patch us up.

  We got the steel hawser round the tired truck. Gregor and Porta righted each other's bandages and shared the contents of a field bottle.

  "Now I'm going to start," Porta called from his cab. "Away from the wire. If it parts, it'll have your nuts off."

  Slowly, incredibly slowly, the heavy truck began to move. The flares had gone out. Five maimed corpses remained. The fire in the truck had been put out and none of our precious cargo had suffered.

  All hell was loose on the Via Appia. It appeared to be in flames for at least seventy miles.

  The Old Man and Leutnant Frick drove first in the Kubel. Intently they studied the map to see if they could find a cross country way. At San Cesarea we had a fight with a group of partisans, in which we lost three men, including Frey, our medical orderly. A hand grenade blew both his legs off, and he bled to death in a moment.

  The sun was about to rise as we reached Rome. A house standing on its own was burning merrily.

  Two men in long greatcoats with machine pistols at the ready emerged from behind a halted car.

  The Legionnaire began humming:

  "Come now death, just come!"

  He rested the barrel of his Russian machine pistol on the top of the door. A tongue of flame shot out into the darkness. A wicked rat-tat-tat echoed among the houses. The two men crumpled. One's steel helmet rolled cluttering into the gutter. A pool of blood formed quickly, mixing with the pouring rain.

  "What was that?" one of the monks in the back asked.

  "A couple of bandits wanted to talk to us."

  The monk crossed himself.

  As we were driving along the Tiber, we met a column of SS grenadiers. They were from the Moslem Division and wore red fezes with silver death's heads on them.

  At Piazza di Roma Porta took a wrong turning and we ended up in Piazza Ragusa. An ordinary sentry stopped us. We exchanged cigarettes and schnaps. An infantry feldwebel, in command of the guard, warned us against partisans wearing German uniform. Some said they were in military police uniforms.

  "Shoot at the least suspicion," he advised. "If you should make a mistake and shoot a few bloodhounds, it won't be all that of a disaster."

  "We'll shoot as soon as we see a half-moon badge," Porta said with a grin. "I'd love to lay a few of them flat."

  "Look out for the spaghetti-eaters," the feldwebel warned. "They're beginning to make life difficult for us. Shoot every one you meet. They're getting pretty bold these days. The other day we had to liquida
te a village north of here. They had started celebrating the Allied victory!"

  We drove on following the railway line. Again Porta went wrong and the whole column followed him. We drove round in circles, unable to find the way. We enlisted the help of a couple of tarts standing at the corner of Via La Spezia and Via Taranto. They got up into the cab beside us. The police turned them off in Via Noazional.

  All at once we were in St. Peter's Square. Tiny gaped.

  "This is a bit of something! Is this where the Pope has his cave?"

  No one answered him.

  "I don't like it," he went on thoughtfully. "Suppose he's got second sight, like God!"

  "But you don't believe in God," said the Legionnaire smiling.

  "I'm not going to discuss that, while we're anywhere near here."

  We swung back again, drove down Borgo Vitterio to Via de Porta Anglica.

  A broad gate was opened. We were evidently expected. We drove up a narrow street and through another gateway. A couple of Swiss guardsmen showed us the way. We were nervous. This was something new. Even Porta's flow of words dried up. You didn't hear an oath or a swear word, though normally we couldn't say three consecutive words without one. That was part of war.

  The tarpaulins were flung back. A few orders issued in quiet voices and we began unloading: swiftly and intently.

  We had breakfast in the Swiss guards' barracks. Porta and Tiny gaped, when they saw a guard come in with his halberd.

  "Is this the papal antitank weapon?" Tiny laughed.

  An officer hushed him, but there was no restraining him.

  "Are you proper soldiers?" Porta asked.

  Tiny was enchanted, when they allowed him to put on a helmet with a red plume and hold a halberd. He looked ridiculous in it. It hardly went with his modern camouflage uniform. He offered his machine pistol and steel helmet in exchange for the Swiss helmet, but it wasn't for sale.

  Porta held up a halberd.

  "The marines would goggle, if I hacked their heads with this."