Monte Cassino

  "Well, it's time for me to totter along and get that other ear," said Tiny with a broad grin. Jauntily he sauntered across to the hut, his English helmet on the back of his head, his carbine bumping on his back. He had his Kalashnikov hidden under his greatcoat.

  "J'ai peur," the Legionnaire muttered. "I'm going after him. He's bound to have forgotten the password."

  It was a good thing the Legionnaire had such foresight, because Tiny lost his temper when the relief guard began cursing him and forgetting everything shouted at him, in German:

  "Shut up, you striped pig. If you want to talk to me, speak German."

  The Englishman leaped back, scared, only to die in the steel grip of the Legionnaire's fingers.

  There wasn't a second to lose now. We all rushed forward, kicked the door of the hut open, knocked the window in. Our automatic pistols spat death. Porta and Heide seized a staff officer, flung him through the door and knocked him unconscious with the butt of a pistol. All the others in the hut were killed.

  We disappeared at a run.

  Two figures appeared ahead of me. I fired from the hip. They crumpled and fell over, dead, on the path.

  Tiny came racing up, still wearing his British greatcoat and helmet.

  "Get rid of that British muck," the Legionnaire called.

  "I got fourteen gold teeth," Tiny cried delightedly.

  Automatic weapons chattered away behind us. The Legionnaire pulled me down into a hollow beside the path. Porta and Heide appeared dragging the unconscious officer. Olle Karlsson came up, called something incomprehensible and turned towards the muzzle flashes we could see in the darkness. His automatic pistol barked angrily. Then he uttered a piercing screech, doubled up and rolled round and round on the path.

  "Milles diables," hissed the Legionnaire.

  Three of the others came running and disappeared into the darkness. Then Rudolph Kleber ran up. He kneeled down, sent short bursts into the darkness. All at once he let his automatic pistol drop, clapped his hands to his head and fell forward.

  The three others came back and tried to drag him along with them. I wanted to shoot, but the Legionnaire shook his head and put a warning finger to his lips.

  One of the three fell, almost cut in half by a burst of machine gun fire. The other two began to run, but one gave a sudden yell and put his hand to his eye: "I'm blind, b-1-i-n-d."

  An Englishman, bareheaded and in his shirtsleeves, came into view. He had a light machine gun clamped under his arm. Seven or eight others followed him. One of them was armed with a Mark IT jungle rifle, a thing we all coveted. The Legionnaire pointed to him and nodded. The blinded man was on his knees scrabbling round in circles. The Englishman in shirtsleeves put the muzzle of his gun to the back of his head and fired a burst. Then he grinned: "Damned Kraut!" he said.

  I pressed the butt of my PPSH into my shoulder. A whole flock of men appeared out of some bushes. They were panting and cursing and we kept hearing the word 'Kraut'. They kicked vengefully at the dead on the path. Rudolph groaned and a corporal raised his Sten gun and emptied the magazine into his quivering body. Then I saw red. We would show them. The Legionnaire began singing: "Come now death, come only death."

  The Englishmen on the path went rigid. Then deep from the Legionnaire's throat came the ringing Moroccan battlecry: "Allah-el akbar" and simultaneously he opened fire with his Kalashnikov. They went over like ninepins.

  We stood up and fired at any who still moved. The Legionnaire laughed shrilly. He dipped a finger into a pool of blood and drew a cross on the forehead of each of the dead. He flourished the jungle rifle. He pulled the body of the corporal who had killed Rudolph out of the heap of corpses and ground his ironshod heel into the dead man's face.

  We caught the others up. The officer, a lieutenant-colonel, had recovered consciousness. We placed a noose round his neck and explained that if he made any trouble, he would be instantly throttled.

  "Who is in command here?" he asked arrogantly.

  "What concern of yours is that?" Heide said. "Be careful we don't all get tired of you."

  "Shut up," snarled the Old Man, shoving Heide angrily aside. "Herr Oberleutnant, Feldwebel Willie Beier. I am in command of this special detachment."

  The officer nodded.

  "Then teach your men how to address an officer."

  "Oh, piss on the shit," Porta called. "Oberleutnant lousy prisoner-of-war. Bang him a couple on the knob. That's what we'll get if they catch us. What a bugger. Oberleutnant!"

  The Englishman did not even bother to look at Porta.

  "You must maintain discipline, feldwebel, or I'll complain when I meet your commander."

  Porta gave his top hat a flourish worthy of a seventeenth century French aristocrat, put his chipped monocle in his eye with a foppish gesture, produced a snuff box and took a pinch. He blinked at the British officer.

  "Sir Lieutenant-Colonel, may I introduce myself." He took another pinch of snuff and went on speaking through his nose. "I am the famous Obergefreiter by God's grace Joseph Porta of Weding. Perhaps I may be of assistance to you, for example with a kick up the backside." Porta walked round the man, inspecting him curiously through his chipped monocle. "Feldwebel Beier, where the devil did you get this sardine? A comical figure, I must say!"

  The British officer turned furiously to the Old Man:

  "I will not stand for this."

  "I'm afraid you will bloody well have to," grinned Barcelona.

  Porta again stepped up to the British officer, who was jawing away, and began to count aloud:

  "One, two, three."

  The officer looked at him uncomprehendingly.

  "How many gold teeth have you, Sir? I got up to three."

  The lieutenant-colonel's voice rose to a high squeak of fury and he threatened the Old Man with all sorts of disasters.

  "Let him alone. He'll only make things unpleasant for us, if we get him back," the Old Man said irritably.

  Despite Tiny's violent protests, the noose was taken from our prisoner's neck. The Legionnaire stuck close to him.

  "Mon Lieutenant-Colonel, one squeak and I'll slit your belly open" and with a smile he produced his Moorish knife.

  We could hear the guns firing up at the front. Day had come and things were on the move, long transport columns and marching infantry. For a while we marched alongside a battalion of Moroccan troops, who took us in our camouflage suits for some kind of Special Unit. One leap and the British officer would have been safe, but the point of the Legionnaire's knife was pressing into his left side and in his back he could feel the muzzle of Barcelona's automatic pistol. In front of him was Tiny's huge back. It would have been certain death to have made the attempt.

  We went into cover behind the American lines and waited for the night. The front was disturbed. As far as we could see were lines of tracer.

  We fought our way through shortly after midnight, leaping from shell hole to shell hole. Two Indians, who were in our way got mown down and we lost three men in our own infantry's fire.

  Exhausted, we collapsed in the battalion commander's dug-out. One-Eye came across to us, gave each of us a hug and Mike offered us his big cigars. Padre Emanuel shook our hands. People from the other sectors came and welcomed us back. We had lost half our number, among them Rudolph and Olle Karlsson.

  We were given five days leave. As we walked along towards the rear, a big field-grey Mercedes swept past us. In the back seat sat our British prisoner beside a German general. We were spattered with mud.

  We spat at the great luxurious car. Then we began envisaging what we should do when we got to Palid Ida's whore-house, and at the thought of her girls all else was forgotten.

  XII

  The mountain was trembling like a dying animal. A thick yellow cloud of fumes and dust hung above the monastery, which was slowly being coloured red by the licking tongues of flame. We knew that there were still some monks up there; but we did not know that at that moment they were celebrating mass b
elow the basilica.

  "They must have been pulverised," Barcelona muttered as he looked, appalled, at the smoking ruins.

  Major Mike emerged from a great pool of mud. The padre was with him.

  "Volunteers to go to the monastery."

  We stacked our rifles. The mortars stood silent. We ran up the slope, and the Americans, English and French watched us intently. We ran across the remains of the walls. Padre Emanuel was in front and just behind him the MO. We put on gas masks as we entered the monastery and gathered those we could find in what until recently had been the central courtyard.

  In silence they filed out of the monastery, carrying a large wooden crucifix at the head of the long line of them. We went with them as far as the bend. There they began chanting a psalm. The sun came out. It was as though God for a moment had looked down from his heaven.

  The Americans were standing on the parapets of their positions staring at the strange procession. On our side, paratroopers and tank gunners rose out of their positions. Someone ordered: "Remove helmets!" Was the voice English or German? We all removed our helmets and stood with heads reverently bowed.

  The last we saw was the crucifix, seemingly gliding through the air.

  Then we ran back to our positions and the muzzles of our machine guns again pointed forward.

  Gefreiter Schenck suddenly collapsed at my side. Two hundred yards in front of us an American flame-thrower team died. A French lieutenant went charging down the serpentine road. He had gone off his head.

  For a few brief minutes we had been human. Now that was forgotten.

  DEATH OF THE MONASTERY

  The monastery was a heap of ruins. It was being shelled without intermission. There were fires everywhere.

  One at a time we ran across the open space in front of the gate and slithered head over heels down into a cellar. Some paratroopers, who were digging themselves in, made fun of us.

  "Have you sold your tanks?" they jeered.

  The flames lit up the word PAX carved over the gateway. The central courtyard, the one with the statues of St. Benedict and St. Scholastica, was piled with broken masonry. We dug ourselves in.

  That night 200 heavy bombers attacked the monastery. In the course of a couple of hours they unloaded 2500 tons of bombs on top of us. Our fox-holes were levelled with the ground.

  Porta and I were lying side by side. We saw an enormous piece of masonry being sent soaring into the air. We watched it.

  "Run," shouted Porta.

  We scrambled to our feet and bolted. With a thunderous crash the masonry struck the exact place where we had all been lying. One third of the company was buried under it. It was hopeless to think of digging them out.

  When day broke, we hauled our machine guns out of the earth and slime, arranged their tripods, loaded up, checked the belts. All was in order.

  "They'll be coming soon," Porta predicted.

  Mike crawled across to us. He had lost his helmet. One eye was covered by a loose flap of skin.

  "How're things?" he asked, puffing at his fat cigar.

  "Hellish."

  "And there's worse to come."

  Mike was right. Things got much worse. The holy mountain quivered like a dying bull in the ring. Colossal lumps of stone flew in all directions. Tiles that were hundreds of years old were ground to powder. Fierce fires broke out.

  We abandoned our position and withdrew to the crypt. Nobody could have remained out there and lived. We found room behind the altar and stretched out there. The yard-thick ceiling was beginning to give. It was going up and down like a stormy sea. Some of the paratroopers tried to shore it up. It was no good. With a crash the ceiling collapsed, burying the paratroopers.

  Our new minstrel, Gefreiter Brans, got shell-shock. He seized his trumpet and began playing jazz. Then he got it into his head that he ought to blow us all up. Tiny managed to wrest the T-mine from him and flung it out into the yard, where the roar of its explosion was drowned in the thunder of bursting shells.

  A paratrooper who had had both legs crushed by falling masonry lay in a pool of blood in the middle of the floor.

  "Shoot me, shoot me! Oh God, let me die!"

  The ever-ready Heide raised his P.38, but the Old Man knocked it out of his hand. Medical Orderly Glaser bent over the shrieking man, jabbed his morphine syringe through his uniform and emptied it into the pain-racked body.

  "That's all I can do for you, chum. If you'd been a horse, we'd have shot you. God is merciful." Glaser spat viciously at a crucifix.

  Padre Emanuel laboriously made his way through the piles of masonry, white with dust. He bent over the wounded paratrooper, held the crucifix to his lips, clasped his hands and prayed. His face was gashed by a shell splinter. Glaser wanted to bandage him, but the padre thrust him angrily aside and went across to a SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer, who was in a bad way, having had his belly torn by an incendiary.

  "Bugger off, padre," the dying officer hissed. "And take your God with you." He poured oaths and curses over all and sundry.

  Padre Emanuel was deaf to it all. There was no putting him off. He held the holy cross over the cursing Hauptsturmfuhrer. The man's guts welled up out of his ripped-up belly.

  Glaser rushed across and tried to restore the bloody mass to its place. The wounded man bellowed. Porta toyed thoughtfully with his pistol. Tiny picked up a club. If the man did not die soon, we'd kill him. His screams chilled even us to the marrow.

  Glaser had no more morphine.

  "Gag that bugger," Porta called, desperately.

  Padre Emanuel moved on to the others who were dying. There were many. As soon as they were dead, we chucked them outside. It wasn't a pretty sight, when the rats started on them.

  A ten-ton bomb hit the crypt, and there was a hail of beams and masonry. We were imprisoned behind the altar, which was built in a cloister.

  Fresh bombs kept exploding. We were almost suffocated with the dust. Hour after hour it went on. We lost our sense of time, had no idea whether it was day or night.

  Padre Emanuel was sitting in the middle of the floor, his uniform in tatters, his face bloody and begrimed. He looked round, searching for a place to try and laid hold of a great balk. He was as strong as an ox.

  We watched mockingly while he struggled with the balk. It would have taken a tractor to shift it.

  "God's servant is very keen to get out of the Master's house," said Heide, grinning. "Take a seat, Padre, and peg out with the rest of us. It's lovely in God's heaven. Or don't you believe your own bunkum?" This was Heide's favourite topic. He hated God, the same way as he hated the Jews.

  Padre Emanuel turned towards him. On his mouth a broad grin, but his eyes flashed dangerously. Slowly he walked towards Heide, who scurried nervously back against the altar and drew his knife.

  Emanuel landed a kick on his hand that sent the knife flying in a wide arc. He seized Heide by his tunic, pulled him from the altar and banged him against the wall by the side of the great crucifix.

  "Julius, mock God once again and I'll smear your brains over the wall. You won't be the first whose head I've bashed in. Don't get me wrong, even if I am a priest. If there's anyone here afraid to meet his God, it's you, Julius."

  The blast from a huge bomb flung us in a heap together. Padre Emanuel gave his head a shake, spat out some blood. The Old Man handed him his water bottle. The Padre smiled gratefully.

  A big stone whizzed past his head. Heide was standing with another stone ready in his hand.

  The Padre drew himself erect. He stuffed his crucifix into a breast pocket, tore off his stiff dog-collar and went towards Heide with the alert watchful movements of the practised wrestler.

  Heide hit at him with his stone, made a lightning dart to one side and landed a dirty kick. But the Padre was made of tough stuff. He seized Julius by the throat and flung him to the floor. The whole thing took only a few minutes. Then Heide had had enough.

  The Padre returned to his balk as if nothing had happened. Tiny spat
on his hands and went to his help. They set their feet against it, the two of them, the priest and the killer, each as strong as a horse, and the incredible happened: The balk gave. They grinned at each other proudly. No one else could have done it. We managed to dig a little tunnel and got out into the front chamber.

  The basilica had fallen in and there lay a colonel with arms stretched out, eyes wide open.

  "What the hell are you gaping at, Colonel?" Porta exclaimed. "If you're dead, chum, shut your peepers!"

  A flock of rats scurried across the floor. Furiously I flung my steel helmet at them. One of them dropped something it had been carrying off. It was half a hand. On one finger was a swastika ring. Gefreiter Brans, our minstrel, gave the hand a kick.

  Padre Emanuel bent over the wildly staring colonel. He had been killed by blast. His face was like a soft-shelled egg. Everything beneath the skin had been crushed. It was a thing we had often seen, when the big mines did their weeding out.

  "Put him over by the wall," ordered the Old Man.

  Tiny took the corpse by an arm and began pulling it along. All at once he found himself holding just the arm. For a moment he was at a loss. Then he gave the hand a shake: "Good luck, old fellow. Never meant to pull your paw off!" Then he flung the arm at a flock of squealing rats that were trying to clamber up the wall.

  Porta was gazing avidly at the corpse's long black officer's boots.

  "I rather think I'll acquire those two foot-warmers."

  A paratroop lieutenant looked the other way and mumbled something about plundering bodies. Porta pulled the boots off the colonel. They fitted as if they had been made for him. He caught sight of Eagle sitting in a corner and insisted that he salute the boots. As a Stabsfeldwebel reduced to the ranks it was his simple duty to salute a colonel's boots, said Porta.

  Eagle refused as always, but after being beaten about the head he gave in and saluted the boots.

  "You are and always will be a half-wit, Stahlschmidt! The next time you get up on your hind legs, you'll have your bum kicked by a pair of colonel's boots."

  The bombardment continued without pause. The monastery was swaying. We sat scattered about the place, hands clasped round our weapons. Time no longer existed. Porta tried telling a story, but no one could be bothered to listen. It was about a man in Bremen who traded in dogs. A certain Herr Schultze.