Lost Cause (17 page)

It's odd how the seven of us left in the squad handle the tension. We tried to leave Carl back up on the hill—he's obviously still in shock—but the commissar insisted he be brought down for the attack. He even threatened to shoot him for desertion if we left him. So we brought him, although there are times when he merely sits and stares wide-eyed at the ground between his feet, completely unaware of where he is.

I write in these pages to calm myself. Bob sings quietly. He has a good voice, but I think if I hear “Red River Valley” once more, I will shoot him myself. Christopher reads a small volume of poetry he carries everywhere with him. It's by an English poet called Keats. Marcel and Hugh argue about everything, from how incompetent the generals were in the Great War, to the subtleties of socialist philosophy. Tiny flits between us, asking how each of us is and checking that our weapons are clean and ready.

I am amazed that it is only six weeks since I crossed the mountains. I look back at the pages I wrote then and they seem to be by someone else. Someone much younger and more naïve. Would I still have come here had I known what was in store for me in those six weeks?

Yes, for two reasons. What I am fighting for is right. It is not as simple as I thought, but it is still right.

The second reason is the nurse in Barcelona. I cannot get her out of my mind. I only met her very briefly and we only exchanged a few words, but I dream of her eyes. Perhaps it is only the loneliness and the fear of the past few days, but I will find her when I return to Barcelona and tell her how I feel.

I must stop now, there is rumbling behind me. It must be our tanks. We are ordered to leave our packs, so I will carry this journal in my breast pocket. Its fate will be mine.

JULY 28, EVENING

The first word is the hardest to write, and I have sat and stared at this blank page for an age. Had I not promised to fill this book, I would write nothing. It is too painful. However, I did promise and I have begun, so I shall take a deep breath and continue.

Bob and I are in a gloomy barn filled with wounded men, awaiting an ambulance to take us to the train back to Barcelona. The place smells of blood and death, an odd, sweet smell. It is an antechamber to Hell. The wounded lie in rows along each wall, the lucky ones with some filthy straw between them and the hard ground. Some are missing arms or legs. The faces of others are hidden behind blood stained rags. One man with a stomach wound has died already, and his body was carried outside. Most are silent, although some whimper quietly, and I shudder at the occasional scream.

There is one man who calls himself a doctor, but he does nothing other than mumble a few words of comfort and offer water to drink. Not that there is much he could do since there are no medicines, bandages or nurses to help him.

Bob has a piece of shrapnel in his shoulder. The wound bled a lot—that is his blood on the cover of my journal—but it's not too serious. At first he lost the use of his left arm, but already the feeling is returning to his fingers. Unless some incompetent doctor causes more damage digging for the piece of metal that is still in there, he should heal.

I have a bruise the size of a basketball on the left side of my chest and, I suspect, several broken ribs. I can only breathe very shallow, and coughing is agony. One ambulance has been already, but it took the most serious cases. I suspect Bob and I will be here for some time.

Why are conditions so bad? Did they expect there to be a battle without casualties? Is there really nothing to give us, or is it simply bad organization? Hugh would say the latter. But then, Hugh will never say anything again. Bob and I are all that remain from our squad and I am searching for things to write about to postpone going back to tell the story of this terrible day.

The tanks arrived this morning, five squat things that rattled and clanked along between the trees. Orders were shouted, and they pushed on out into the open. We followed with high hopes, although Carl soon fell behind and I never saw him again.

At first all went well. The Fascist fire was not heavy, and the bullets either zinged overhead or pinged off the tanks' armor plate. Then the lead tank, off to my right, exploded. The turret cartwheeled off, and a ball of flame rose from the gaping hole.

I looked at Gandesa and saw that the barrel of the anti-aircraft gun that Hugh had pointed out earlier was now horizontal. I saw a flash, and a column of dust rose beside another tank. Not every shot counted, but the gun fired rapidly and every hit went through our tanks' armor plate like it was paper. It was like a training exercise for the German gunners. Marcel died when the tank near him blew and a heavy piece of metal caught him in the head.

The machine guns opened up when we were about halfway over and the last tank had been destroyed. Some men had bunched up behind the tanks, and they suffered badly. Our squad was more spread out, and we were three-quarters of the way over before we were targeted.

“Down!” Tiny yelled.

When the machine gun moved on, he ordered, “Up!”

Between his orders, I either lay still or moved forward in a stumbling run. Oddly, I was much less frightened with men being killed and wounded all around me than I had been waiting for the tanks to arrive. Rationally, I knew what was happening and that I was in great danger, yet it was as if I was watching everything from a distance. Even when Christopher was too slow getting down and a line of bullets caught him across the chest, my mind simply recorded the fact and I felt no sorrow. It was as if I had given up all responsibility for my existence to Tiny and, as long as I did what he told me, I would be all right.

We progressed like automatons, concentrating only on Tiny's orders and obeying them. Miraculously, we were suddenly at the buildings on the edge of Gandesa. I caught a glimpse of figures running through the streets ahead of me but didn't have time to get off a shot.

Tiny yelled at Hugh, who lobbed a grenade through the nearest open window while the rest of us crouched against the wall. The explosion shook the ground, and then Tiny kicked in the door and disappeared. Hugh, Bob and I followed. The room was filled with smoke and ruined furniture but otherwise empty. We cleared the other rooms and paused, listening to other brigaders working their way through the houses on either side of us.

“Well, we're in Gandesa,” Tiny said, peering out the doorway and down the street. “Anybody see what happened to Carl?” The three of us shook our heads.

“A lot of use the tanks were,” Hugh said. “Those eighty-eight shells didn't even slow down when they hit them.”

“Glad I wasn't inside one,” Bob offered.

“They wouldn't be much use in these narrow streets anyway,” Tiny added. “I wonder how many of us made it across those open fields.”

“Not enough,” Hugh said.

“Well, some did,” Tiny pointed out. “Hear all that fighting around us? I guess we'd better press on as far as we can. Take a drink and make sure you've got a full clip in your rifle.”

At the mention of taking a drink, I suddenly realized how dry my mouth was. I drank greedily. Then I checked my rifle and was surprised to find I hadn't fired a shot on the way over. The safety clip was still on. Sheepishly, I flicked it off.

“Good idea,” Bob said quietly.

“Come on then, you lazy lot,” Tiny said, heading for the door. “There's work to be done.”

I was just passing the window when I saw the building across the street collapse with a deafening roar. It felt as if a huge hand picked me up and flung me against the wall on the other side of the room. “What happened?” I asked, getting unsteadily to my feet and checking that nothing was broken.

“Artillery shell,” Tiny explained.

“Ours or theirs?” Hugh asked.

Tiny shrugged. “Doesn't matter. What matters is that we get moving before the next one comes over. You all right?” he asked me. I nodded. Tiny headed for the door. “At least the smoke will give us a bit of cover. Hugh and I'll go up this side of the street. You two go up the other. Keep pace with us, keep your eyes open and hug the wall like you love it.”

Tiny looked up and down the street and slipped out, followed quickly by Hugh. “I guess we'd better go,” Bob said. “You up for it?”

“Yes,” I said as he, too, slipped out the door and sprinted across the street. I followed, avoiding the rubble from the collapsed house. We progressed slowly, carefully checking every door and window as we went. It was nerve-racking work and our progress was painfully slow. Rifle and machine-gun fire and the crump of grenades echoed from the streets round about us, becoming heavier as we advanced.

We had checked three houses when a group of figures burst out of a side alley. Instinctively, we raised our weapons, but they were brigaders. An officer approached Tiny. “They're counterattacking on both sides,” he explained. “There's not enough of us to hold. We're withdrawing.”

“Withdrawing?” Tiny said, looking down the street in front of us. “There's no resistance here. We can keep going.”

“If we do that, we'll be cut off. Not enough of us made it across the open, and some of my men are running out of ammunition already. We've no grenades.”

Tiny hesitated, gave one last glance down the empty street leading into town, and turned back. He looked across at Bob and me and opened his mouth. Then he hesitated. A puzzled frown crossed his face and he slowly sank to his knees. A bullet chipped the wall behind him and whined off into the air.

“Sniper!” the officer yelled, pointing up the street. Bob and I followed the line of his arm. “In that church bell tower.”

I couldn't see anything, but I loosed off a couple of shots at the tower. So did Bob. Already, Hugh had his hands under Tiny's arms and was dragging him back down the street. Firing as we went to keep the sniper's head down, we retreated to the first house we had cleared.

Breathing heavily, Hugh leaned Tiny against a wall. The big man was breathing irregularly through his mouth and looked frighteningly pale. “I can't feel my legs,” he said weakly.

“They're coming down the street,” a man at the window shouted. I peered out the doorway. Figures in red hats were working slowly down either side of the street. The soldier in the window and I got off a couple of shots. One figure crumpled to the ground, and the others disappeared into doorways. Bullets began to chip the walls around us.

“We can't stay here,” the officer shouted. Hugh began to lift Tiny.

“Leave him.”

“No way,” Hugh replied. “You know what the Fascists do to prisoners.”

“He's too big. He'll slow us down. You can't carry him.”

“Yes, we can,” Bob said, slinging his rifle over his shoulder. He helped Hugh lift Tiny.

“Suit yourselves,” the officer said. “Come on.” He and his men disappeared onto the street, firing as they went.

Bob and Hugh had Tiny between them. “Keep the Fascist heads down,” Hugh told me as they headed for the door.

That's how we progressed, changing places frequently, but always two of us hauling Tiny and one firing back. Tiny grunted at first at the manhandling but soon just gritted his teeth in silence.

The open fields were filled with men stumbling back from the town. At first the fire on our backs from the town wasn't heavy as the Fascists advanced carefully, checking the buildings as they went, but it increased as we stumbled along.

Bob and I were hauling Tiny when the artillery opened up and shells began exploding around us. Suddenly I was carrying Tiny on my own. His weight was too much and we collapsed in a heap, Tiny grunting with the pain.

Bob was crouched nearby, his knees drawn up to his chest and his arms crossed on his chest, his fists balled tightly. I crawled over. “Where are you hit?” I asked. Bob simply whimpered. I checked him over as best I could but could find nothing. I shook him. “Bob, what happened?”

He looked over at me, his eyes wide and snot running from his nose. “I can't go on,” he whimpered.

“Of course you can,” I said, trying to haul him to his feet.

He resisted. “I can't,” he repeated. “It's too much. Don't make me.”

Hugh appeared beside us. “What's happening? Is he hit?”

“I don't think so. He just won't move.”

“Then leave him. We've got to get Tiny back.”

“No,” I said. “You go on if you want, but I'm not leaving Bob.”

I turned to my friend. “It's okay, Bob, but it's not just you and me. It's Tiny—he's badly hurt, and I can't get him back on my own. I need you to help me.”