Young Lions Roar (8 page)

“Delighted to meet you, Hauptwachtmeister Bratge,” Borghese said as he shook the MP’s hand.

“The pleasure’s all mine, sir,” the Sergeant Major replied with a firm handshake as he waved Borghese and Ramirez through.

“Maybe we’ll see each other again,” Borghese said over his shoulder as he waved goodbye.

“I guarantee that, sir.”

“Do you think that he suspects anything, Jefe?” Ramirez asked with concern as he put his hand on his holster under his leather jacket.

“I don’t know, Carlos,” Borghese said as he chewed his lip. “If the Virgin Mary is smiling on us then we may have gotten away with it by the skin of our teeth. If
not…?”

“Madre Dios!” Ramirez swore. “Now I know why I hate cops so much!”

“But I tell you what, Carlos,” Borghese continued. “Even if we’ve gotten away with it, they certainly won’t.” He pointed outside to the other two members of
the assassination squad who were swiftly approaching the front of the queue where the Sergeant Major was waiting. “I don’t mean to be rude; the boys are born killers and I’d
sooner have them beside me in a fight than anyone else, but they’re hardly the sharpest knives in the drawer. That bloody cop will have them confessing to being Spanish hitmen before they
have time to sing ‘The song of the Legiónary.’” Borghese shook his head. “Two pairs of South Americans on the same night are too much of a coincidence.”

Borghese walked outside, where he swiftly caught the eye of his other two hitmen. Borghese shook his head from side to side, and the two would-be assassins immediately left the queue and
wandered off as if they were looking for a less busy venue.

Borghese breathed a giant sigh of relief and walked back in to rendezvous with Ramirez.

“It’s just you and me now, Carlos,” Borghese said grimly. “Are you ready for this?”

“I was born ready, Jefe,” Ramirez said brazenly.

Borghese laughed and clapped Ramirez on the shoulder. “I knew that I could count on you, Carlos!”

Ramirez flashed his set of pearly whites. “Two’s company and four’s a crowd, Jefe. Besides, Antonio and Enrique are rotten shots. They’d just slow us down.”

Borghese was too busy laughing to notice Hauptwachtmeister Bratge turn around and stare after them as they walked towards the bar.

The Battle of the Ebro River, Catalonia, Spain, August 1938.

El Bonito lowered his binoculars and spoke in a low voice to his Runner. “Bob, pass the word along: stand to, the Fascists are massing for a new attack, everyone is to
open fire with everything that we’ve got when I give the order by whistle blast, and not a moment before. Understood?”

“Yes, boss. Understood,” Bob replied with a smile, before he took off as fast as his young legs could carry him, running down the zigzag network of trenches.

Captain Juan Mendoza shouted at the top of his voice “Viva España! Viva la Legión!” He blew his whistle and clambered out of his foxhole with his
pistol in his hand. Three companies of the XVIIth Bandera of the Spanish Foreign Legión followed Mendoza over the top and repeated the slogan that echoed around the valley. The Moorish
troops advancing on the Bandera’s left flank joined in the general cacophony with high-pitched battle cries that were designed to unnerve and intimidate their Republican opponents. The
Legiónaries advanced rapidly up Dead Man’s Hill, that had been given its nick name as a result of the Nationalist’s repeated failed attempts to capture the hill from their
Republican enemies. The hill was literally strewn with a carpet of Legiónary and Moor corpses and it was almost possible to walk all the way to the top on bodies without one’s feet
touching the stony ground.

“Right on cue,” Mendoza said, as he heard a barrage of shells fired by a German Condor Legión Artillery Battery fly over head to crash onto the Republican trenches.

“Take cover!” El Bonito shouted as the shells landed on the Republican position. He dived to the ground of the trench and covered his head with his hands as a shell
exploded a dozen yards away, collapsing a bunker and burying its occupants alive inside. Shells continued to land in front of, behind and on top of the Republican position, until the artillery
barrage suddenly stopped. El Bonito heard another whistle blast and loud cheering from nearby, which could only mean one thing.

“Stand to!” El Bonito rushed to the trench firing step, hoisted himself up, and shouted “Battalion! One hundred! To the front! Rapid fire!”

The British Battalion’s six surviving Maxim machine guns and five hundred assorted rifles opened fire at virtually point-blank range into the shocked and surprised Legiónaries and
Moors, who had optimistically expected the German artillery barrage to have destroyed the British Battalion’s trenches and to have swept their Republican enemies from the summit of the hill.
The machine guns cut huge swathes through the ranks of the advancing Nationalists, and the Legiónaries and Moors fell as if a giant scythe wielded by the Grim Reaper himself had cut them
down. Within a few minutes the six hundred attacking Nationalists had been reduced to half that number and fled in a confused rabble like rabbits with their tails between their legs, abandoning
their weapons and their wounded in their desperation to get back to their lines and find safety. The Republican machine guns offered no mercy and continued to fire at the retreating troops without
respite, with rounds striking the Nationalists at ranges of up to eight hundred yards.

“Come on, boys! We’ve got them on the run! After them!” a British volunteer shouted.

He was answered with a ragged cheer as dozens of volunteers climbed out of their trenches and poured over the top, pursuing the fleeing Nationalist troops.

“No! Come back, you idiots!” El Bonito shouted desperately. “You’ll be caught out in the open with no cover!”

“Come on, boss!” Bob his young runner urged, “We’ve got them on the run! We can chase them back to Morocco!”

“No, Bob!” El Bonito shouted in vain. “Come back!”

But Bob had already disappeared. Bob Robinson was only sixteen and had run away from home in Liverpool to join the International Brigade. He was frequently teased for his useful exuberance and
impulsive behaviour, and was acting true to form.

“It’s no use, Jefe. You’re wasting your breath.” Ramón, the British Battalion’s Spanish Republican liaison officer said. “Your men smell victory and
they think that the battle is won.”

El Bonito shook his head in despair. “The bloody fools. Once the Fascists get back to their foxholes they’ll be able to open fire on them with their machine guns and their
artillery.”

Mendoza had only just managed to reach the relative safety of the Nationalist lines and had barely caught his breath when he saw dozens of Republican soldiers streaming over No
Man’s Land in hot pursuit.

“Legiónaries! One hundred metres! To your front! Rapid fire!” Mendoza ordered.

His surviving Legiónaries fired a ragged salvo that succeeded in dropping a dozen or so Republican soldiers. The remaining volunteers took cover and started to open fire on the
Nationalist positions. However, most of the Legiónaries had managed to find fox-holes, and the Republicans were sheltered from fire and from view by the stony ground, covered in thick
cactus, which concealed many dips and ditches. The fire fight was threatening to settle into an inconclusive stalemate when the guns of the German Condor Legión decided to join in and began
to fire shells into No Man’s Land. The artillery intervention tipped the balance and the volunteers started to rise up and retreat back to their positions at the top of the hill. The
Legiónaries stood up in their fox hills and cheered whenever an artillery shell found its target and blew up a band of Republican soldiers.

A volunteer scrambled over the top of the trench and landed in a tangled heap on the bottom of the trench.

“Paddy, did you see Bob?” El Bonito asked.

“No, boss,” a soldier answered in a broad Irish brogue. “I didn’t see him.”

Another soldier appeared over the parapet and plummeted to the bottom of the trench.

“Fred, have you seen Bob?” El Bonito asked anxiously.

“No, boss, I…” Fred began to answer, when a terrible wailing sound began to echo from the Nationalist position at the bottom of the valley to the Republican position at the
summit of the hill. The hair on the back of El Bonito’s neck stood on end and he felt a cold hand squeeze his heart as he listened to the tortured sound of a soul in agony.

“What the… what the hell is that?” Fred asked, as the blood drained from his face.

El Bonito carefully climbed the firing step, raised his binoculars to his eyes and looked over the edge of the trench.

A figure stumbled across No Man’s Land with his arms stretched in front of him, crying and sobbing inconsolably. The man turned and for a fleeting moment, El Bonito saw his face. The
man’s face was covered in blood and he gave a yelp of pain as he tripped and fell into a shell crater.

“What… who is it, boss?” Fred asked, with his hand to his mouth.

El Bonito answered as if he was in a trance. “It’s… it’s Bob…” he answered as tears streamed down his face. “They’ve blinded him...”

“What?”

“They’ve gouged out his eyes…”

Fred gave a cry of horror. He rushed over to El Bonito, snatched the binoculars from his hand and leaped onto the firing step. He searched No Man’s Land and found Bob as he finally managed
to scramble out of the shell crater. A mop of gore-matted hair hung down over Bob’s eyeless sockets that were still leaking blood which ran in streams down his blood and dirt-encrusted
face.

“Those bloody bastards!” Fred said with fury.

“He was the same age as my kid brother…” El Bonito said with tear-filled eyes.

There was a sudden shot, and Bob collapsed onto the ground for the last time with a bloody hole between his eyes.

“What the…?” Fred said in confusion. He turned around to see Ramón holding the battalion’s sole sniper rifle with the smoke still coming from the end of the
barrel.

“You bloody bastard, Ramón!” Fred was as angry as a berserker. “What did you do that for? You killed him! We could have saved him!”

“No, Fred, you could not have,” Ramón said slowly as he shook his head. “That’s what the Moors wanted. You would have gone out to save him and they would have
killed you, or they would have captured you and you would have suffered the same fate as poor Bob, or worse.”

“Worse? What could possibly be worse than being blinded?” Fred asked incredulously.

“Being castrated,” Ramón answered matter-of-factly. “Losing your manhood.” He shrugged. “I saw it in Morocco in 1921 when the Moorish rebels castrated some
of our men who were captured at the Battle of Anual.”

“That doesn’t change anything, Ramón, you’re still a murderer.” Fred raised his rifle, flicked off the safety catch and pulled the trigger, just as El Bonito rifle
butted him in the back of the head. Fred collapsed like a sack of potatoes and the round thudded harmlessly into the back of the trench wall.

“Thanks, Jefe,” Ramón said with relief.

“Don’t mention it,” El Bonito said graciously. “You’d do the same for me, Ramón. Besides, you did the right thing. Fred lost his head. So did I for a moment
back there… Hello? What’s going on?”

El Bonito mounted the firing step and peered over the edge as he heard the stirring lyrics of the Republican anthem the ‘Internationale’ floating over the valley.

“What is it? What can you see?” Ramón asked.

El Bonito’s brows furrowed in confusion. “There are about fifty or so volunteers walking up the valley towards our position, and they’re singing and waving their rifles above
their heads.”

“And the Fascists are not opening fire?” Ramón asked.

“No, they’re not,” El Bonito confirmed. “Maybe our boys have arranged a cease-fire with them in order to bury the dead; it’s not the first time that it’s
happened. The same thing happened at the Battle of Jarama last year.” El Bonito shrugged and scratched his head. “I don’t know: perhaps our men are returning to our lines to grab
stretchers to collect our wounded and spades to bury the dead…”

“Anyway, let’s welcome them back, Jefe!” Ramón said cheerfully. “God knows that we could do with some good news around here.”

“It’s working, Jefe.”

“Don’t count your chickens yet, Francisco,” Mendoza replied. “The Reds may still see through your cunning plan, and if that happens we’ll be cut to
pieces.”

“What should we do, Captain?” Corporal Borghese asked.

“Keep singing, Francisco!”

“They’re nearly here, Ramón.” El Bonito lowered his binoculars as the returning volunteers steadily approached the Republican trenches. “Have you
managed to gather up any stretchers or spades?”

“Yes, Jefe,” Ramón answered. “But it’s not much. It’s nearly dusk and we don’t have much time to collect our dead and wounded. How’s Fred?”
Ramón pointed with his chin.

El Bonito chuckled. “Well, put it this way: he’s going to wake up with one hell of a headache.”

Ramón laughed.

“One other thing, Ramón; if I were you I’d watch your back from now on when Fred’s around. He and Bob were close. Fred looked after him like a younger
brother.”

“And I’d advise you to grow a pair of eyes in the back of your head as well, Jefe,” Ramón advised. “Fred doesn’t particularly strike me as the forgiving
type.”

El Bonito nodded in agreement. “Hello? What’s this?” His brows furrowed in confusion. “They’ve stopped singing… what’s going on?”

“Grenades!” Mendoza shouted.

In a split second each of the fifty returning “volunteers” threw two grenades in quick succession into the Republican positions. The bombs exploded amongst the unsuspecting British
volunteers, who were caught completely unawares.

“Viva la Legión! Viva España!” Mendoza shouted, and jumped into the nearest trench with a pistol in one hand and a bayonet in another. He shot a dazed and confused
volunteer twice in the stomach before burying his bayonet in the chest of another other Republican soldier, who died with a look of utter surprise and confusion on his face.
“Legiónaries, spread out down the length of the trench!” Mendoza ordered. “Capture the machine guns! Kill all of the Reds!”