And No Birds Sang (21 page)

Next day the Germans began reprisals in a classic example of the Teutonic terror—the
furor Germanicus
—which was visited on almost every country the Germans occupied during World War II but which, except insofar as it affected the Jews, we have largely chosen to forget now that the Germans have become our valued allies.

It will not so easily be expunged from the memories of those who still dwell in the bleak ranges where the Sangro takes its birth. And if I were among the hordes of wealthy German tourists who overrun Italy each summer, this is one region I would take pains to avoid.

Having heard and verified the story from other sources, I tried to discover the identity of the partisans, but this no one could tell me. All that was known was that five mutilated bodies were dumped down in the tiny town square of San Pietro before an enforced audience consisting of all the townsfolk including the youngest children. Then the Germans doused the corpses with gasoline and incinerated them; and so they vanished out of memory.

But I remember Giovanni, and I wonder.

Still wept the rain, roared guns,

Still swooped into the swamps of flesh and blood,

All to the drabness of uncreation sunk,

And all thought dwindled to a moan...

EDMUND BLUNDEN “Third Ypres”

BECAUSE OF THE CONDITIONS under
which we had been existing for so many weeks, disease had taken a heavy toll. Epidemic jaundice in particular caused many casualties. Among its victims, all evacuated to North Africa, were Alex Campbell and John Tweedsmuir. Both went unwillingly (Alex had to be ordered into hospital) and both were sorely missed. With Tweedsmuir’s departure, Ack Ack Kennedy again took over as commanding officer.

On November 25 Kennedy and I attended a divisional briefing in Campobasso. A fiery brigadier from Eighth Army Headquarters, backed by an immense map, gave us “the form” from the stage of a warm and well-lit theatre.

“As you may have guessed, gentlemen, our objective remains Rome. Can’t let the Hun spend the rest of the winter there all nice and comfy-cosy. So we shall jolly well turf him out. Over on the left... here... the Yanks will burst through the Bernhard Line and streak up the Liri Valley past Cassino and pop into Rome from the south. Our chaps... over here... will smash across the Sangro and gallop up the coast to Pescara, then make a left hook into the mountains and pounce on Rome from the east. Our part of the show will open with a colossal crack at the mouth of the Sangro River... 1st Canadian Division will spearhead the advance after the breakthrough has been made. We’ve bags of tanks and guns so it should be plain sailing, what?”

There are some phrases which can chill the veteran soldier’s blood more effectively than any polar blizzard—and “spearhead the advance” is one such. Kennedy and I had nothing much to say to one another as our open jeep jounced back to Castropigface through driving sleet. There was no joy in me as I contemplated the prospects. There was even less joy when, two days later, I accompanied Kennedy on reconnaissance, prior to moving the battalion to the Adriatic coast.

Winter had preceded us. The snow that had been steadily building on the inland peaks had been falling just as heavily into the grey valleys of the coastal plains, but melting as it fell. The
torrentes
were bearing eloquent witness to their name, racing and roaring to the sea. Heavy with saffron-coloured muck, they sucked at the shaking supports of the prefabricated Bailey spans with which our sappers had replaced the demolished Italian bridges. From the distant coast of Yugoslavia the infamous
bora
gale drove black clouds in from seaward almost at ground level, enveloping the wetlands in dark and deathly mist. Everything that was not solid rock seemed to be turning fluid. Lines of olive trees gnarled by a hundred winters stood gaunt as gibbets on dripping ridges above vineyards that had become slimy swamps. In the villages the sad stone houses seemed to have shrunk even closer to one another under the burden of unrelenting rain and sleet.

It was a time for plants to die, for birds to flee, for small animals to burrow deep into the earth, and for human beings to huddle by charcoal braziers and wait the winter out. It was assuredly neither the time nor place for waging war.

Kennedy’s disgusted comment as we headed back to rejoin the Regiment was prophetic.

“
Gallop
up the coast to Pescara, will we? Gallop like a goddamn snail more like!”

The first day of December, 1943, found a great convoy of trucks rolling eastward out of the mountains carrying 1st Division toward the visceral rumble of a singularly savage battle which had then been in progress for three days as two British and one Indian Division delivered the “colossal crack” against the Bernhard Line. The Sangro was crossed and a bridgehead established, but at fearsome cost. A liaison officer from the British 78th Division told me about it with tears—not of sorrow, but of rage—in his eyes.

“We’ve had five hundred casualties crossing this one flaming river! And for what? Haven’t any of the high mucky-mucks looked at their frigging maps? There’ll be half a dozen Sangros before we get to Pescara...
if
we get to Pescara. Thank God you’re taking over, Canada. We’ve
had
this show!”

The coastal plain north of the Sangro is a narrow shelf between the towering Maiella Mountains and the sea. At intervals of a mile or so, it is deeply gashed from mountains to tidewater by steep-sided ravines and river valleys. In summertime this constrained ribbon of lowland presents a singularly formidable obstacle to an attacking army. Once the winter floods have set in, it becomes almost impassable.

If our high command seemed blind to the nature of the ground and its defensive possibilities, the German staff was not. Even while the Bernhard Line was being breached, the Germans were preparing a new line along the Moro River, a scant nine miles north of the Sangro. And they had already manned it with fresh troops, including another of their more famous formations, the 90th Light Panzer-Grenadier Division which also had been part of Rommel’s army.

By the morning of December 5, 78th Division’s Royal Irish Fusiliers had reached the near bank of the Moro. That afternoon we were ordered to relieve them and become the “spearhead of the advance.”

It was pelting rain when I went forward with the Fusiliers’ intelligence officer to see what he could show me. Long files of soaked and muddy Fusiliers wound their way past us, moving to the rear. Their faces were as colourless as paper pulp and they were so exhausted they hardly seemed to notice the intense shelling the coastal road was getting as they straggled down it.

But
I
noticed, as I never had before. The rancid taint of cordite seemed to work on me like some powerful and alien drug. My heart was thumping to no regular rhythm. It was hard to draw breath, and I was shivering spasmodically though I was not cold. Worst of all, I had to wrestle with an almost irresistible compulsion to stop, to turn about, to join those deathly visaged men who were escaping from the battle that awaited me.

I paused, fumbled for a cigarette and offered one to the Irish lieutenant trudging at my side. He lit a match and held it in cupped hands for me... but I turned my face away, for in that instant I realized what was happening to me. I was sickening with the most virulent and deadly of all apprehensions... the fear of fear itself.

At length the Irishman and I reached the edge of the plateau forming the south wall of the valley. We lay on our bellies behind some dripping bushes and I raised my binoculars and hid my face behind them. There was nothing to see through the haze of rain and mist.

“’Fraid there’s not much I can show you.” The voice of the man beside me was strained, almost impatient. “Been thick as soup ever since we got here so we’ve not seen what the far bank looks like, and my chaps were too done in to go patrolling. Just the same, you can stake your soul old Jerry’s over there, and good and ready, I’ll be bound.”

“Well,” he added when I did not reply, “nothing more I can do here, eh? Best be catching up to my regiment. Cheer-oh... and best of luck.”

He scrambled to his feet and vanished into the rain scud with what seemed like indecent haste. I had an almost overwhelming urge to run after him, but fought it down. High-flying shells droned their dirge overhead while I lay on the wet earth, trying to pull myself together.

It was almost dusk when I reached BHQ, which was in a
casa
half a mile south of the river mouth. Kennedy was fuming with impatience.

“Where the hell have
you
been? Goddamn it, we’re to cross the Moro right away. No preparation. No support. What’ve you found out?”

“Sorry, sir, not much. The Irish couldn’t tell me anything and there’s nothing to be seen from our side of the valley.”

He grunted angrily.

“Can you get scouts out there and find a crossing place? And get them back inside an hour?”

“Don’t know, sir. I can try.”

“
Try?
Goddamn you,
do it!
”

Oh Christ, I thought, I’ll have to go myself... I’ll have to go... No!... I’ll send Langstaff... He’s far the best man for the job... I’ll send him out...

The scouts were brewing tea in a nearby cow byre. They watched me without expression as I briefed George Langstaff and two other men. They knew I had at least glimpsed the valley in daylight and so was the logical one to lead the patrol. What they did not know was that the mere prospect of descending into that ominously shrouded valley was paralyzing me. I was convinced that death or ghastly mutilation awaited me there. The certainty was absolute! The Worm that was growing in my gut had told me so.

Four months earlier I would have welcomed the chance to make a patrol like this. Two months past and I would have accepted it as a risky job that had to be done. But on this December day I would have given everything I was, or ever hoped to be, for a way out.

There was none.

I took the patrol out... and nothing happened. The Worm had lied. The darkness was so opaque and the whip of wind and rain so masked our movements that we went and returned unseen and unmolested. We felt our way to the swollen river and waded along its overflowing banks until we found a ford. And we got back to our own lines just in time for Langstaff to become guide for Able Company as it moved into the attack.

After wading the river at the ford, Able, with my old platoon in the lead, had barely begun to climb the far bank when twenty or thirty German machine guns began stitching the darkness with vicious needles of tracer. Flares—some green, some red—burst overhead, and these SOS signals were instantly answered by the distant grumble of enemy guns. Within seconds roaring salvos of artillery and mortar shells were falling on Able Company, the explosions illuminating the bleak valley floor with fluctuating and hellish flames.

I was with Kennedy on the south escarpment when the Germans opened up, and we were appalled by the ferocity of the German reaction. After only a few minutes Kennedy yelled to the signaller manning the radio to call Able back.

As the survivors came straggling out of that inferno, we realized we had never before seen war in its full and dreadful magnitude. Seven Platoon in particular had suffered fearfully. The platoon commander who had succeeded me had been severely wounded, and Sergeant Bates and several other men I had known and led were dead or dying.

All through the rest of that long, wet night the forward troops manned their weapons while all of us tried to avoid thoughts of the morrow. At dawn we heard that 2nd Brigade had attacked at San Leonardo four miles upstream, and had also been bloodily repulsed.

Shortly thereafter we received orders to force a crossing on our front at whatever cost.

THE BATTLE THAT followed began at 1400 hours on December 6 and ended on December 15, barely a mile north of where it had begun. It was a ten-day blood bath that cost the Regiment over a hundred and fifty battle casualties.

The opening attack was made in broad daylight by Charley Company under cover of the strongest artillery support Division could muster. It was a devastating barrage... but the enemy replied with equal violence and within minutes Charley was being pounded into the saturated valley floor under a titanic upheaval of mud and steel. Dog, coming up behind, tried to avoid the worst of that holocaust and swung to the left into a smoke screen being laid by our own heavy mortars, and the entire company simply vanished from our ken. When, after nearly an hour, there was still no word from Dog, Kennedy became so distraught that he ordered me and a Battalion Headquarters runner to follow, then flung himself hell-bent down the slope.

My whole being screamed resistance. Three times we were pinned, grovelling in the mud, before we reached the river and struggled through its icy waters. On the far shore we fell into a slimy ditch with the survivors of one of Charley Company’s platoons. We tried to find out from them what was happening, but nobody knew. The German counter-barrage had by then become so heavy that platoons and even sections were isolated and out of communication with one another, cowering in the muck as almost continuous explosions leapt about them.

Kennedy led us on in search of Charley Company Headquarters, and we miraculously stumbled on it in a tiny cave at the foot of a steep cliff; but the company commander was missing and a terrified sergeant could tell us nothing. Kennedy realized the situation was hopeless and that we would have to withdraw, but he had no way of issuing the necessary order until he could get to his radio. So he led us back across the valley.

My memory of that return must be akin to what a drowning man feels during the endless, agonizing moments when he is sinking slowly into the depths. My chest felt crushed and I was gasping for air by the time we reached the road which climbed the south slope. There must have been a lull in the shelling then or else Kennedy was just so anxious to reach the radio that he did not care what the enemy might do, for he led us straight up the road in full view of the Germans opposite. We had not gone fifty feet when they bracketed us with a salvo of Eighty-eights.

Something struck my right foot a numbing blow and a stunning concussion flung me face down into the mud. I heard screaming close at hand and, struggling to my knees, saw Kennedy on his knees in the centre of the smoking road, shaking his head slowly from side to side like an old and tired dog, but the screaming was not his. Ten feet behind him the runner, a young lad whose name I never knew, was humping jerkily away from his own leg which had been severed at the thigh. In the instant that I saw him, he gave one final bubbling shriek, collapsed, and mercifully was still.

I heard Kennedy’s voice as from some distant mountain peak.

“Get up, Mowat! Goddamn you!
Up!
”

He was standing over me, swaying, but apparently unhurt.

“Can’t,” I said quite calmly. “Hit in the leg, I think.”

In a moment he had me by the shoulders and hoisted me to my feet. We stumbled over the crest and fell into the cover of a gully as another salvo of Eighty-eights ploughed into the road behind us.