A Lesson of History
ALMOST TWO hundred and fifty B-17 Flying Fortresses, B-25 Mitchells, and B-26 Marauders, dropped over a thousand tons of high explosive and incendiary bombs on the Abbey that morning, in an operation so brutal it shocked everyone who watched it. After the first wave of bombs fell, some of the refugees left inside panicked, God only knows what hell we’d put them through, and stumbled out the ruins in broad daylight. They tried to lay white crosses on the mountainside to assure us there was no-one inside they need fear, but our ground troops presumed they were German soldiers, that’s who they’d been told were inside after all, and cut them down with small arms fire. Three dozen soldiers of the 4th Indian Division of Freyberg’s New Zealand Brigade were also killed or injured, as in their haste to finally rid themselves of the sight of the Abbey, no-one at Fifth Army had thought to make sure they knew when the bombing was commencing at all.
But worse was to come, for what had started as a demand to send in a wing of fighter bombers to soften up the Calvary Hill defenses, had now escalated to a heaven-sent opportunity, for the Allied Air Force to demonstrate to the world the effectiveness of strategic bombing in support of infantry ground attack. So for three days more and more bombers went in, as our artillery simultaneously threw everything they could at the place too. But then deep down maybe our Air Force, who didn’t suffer a single casualty in the whole operation, also knew what Freddie did, that our aim was never anywhere near as good in Italy as we liked bragging. Sure enough, word soon crept round the Press Corps that less than ten percent of the bombs we dropped actually hit the Abbey, the rest landing all over the south end of the Liri Valley, exploding on both Allied and German lines alike. Of course that never found its way into the newspapers either, nor did the fact that at least one bomb missed its target by so much it nearly hit General Clark’s caravan parked seventeen miles away at Presenzano. Of course why the general was sitting in it doing his paperwork, wasn’t very clear either. Some rumors said he so opposed the bombing that he couldn’t even watch it, and Landers, sensing the whole thing was fast-becoming a public relations nightmare, did his best to ensure that was the rumor that became accepted truth. Me, I knew he couldn’t watch it because he never stopped it when he could have. Maybe by then he had also read Mathew chapter twenty-five, the daily devotion in his Upper Room - ‘Verily I say unto you, that inasmuch as you have done something unto one of the least of my brethren, ye have also done it unto me.’
Karl however, an unreconstructed cynic to the end, well almost the end, suggested it was far too unbelievable that any bomb could have accidentally dropped quite so far from its target. So he suggested that it might have been intentional. Freddie countered though, that if it had been intentional it probably wouldn’t have landed anywhere near Presenzano either. We argued that out for a while the three of us did, but it was a little like Zeno’s Paradox, impeccable logic, pursued impeccably, but nevertheless taking you somewhere that was itself impeccably illogical.
The refugees we’d brought out meanwhile were fixed up as best as the Allied medics could manage, but declined all suggestions they be taken to hospital for a full check up. So soon they disappeared back into the Italian countryside, where no members of any Allied Army were likely to find them. I know they couldn’t because I tried to, but they were soon nowhere to be found, Carlotta included. And who could blame them for not wanting to have anything more to do with any of us?
***
A week after the bombardment, the Vatican’s Academy of Archaeology met, and its President Gaetano De Sanctis, who had himself been very helpful to me when I was writing my book on the antiquities of Rome, condemned the whole lot of us in the most unsubtle of terms. In a communiqué issued to the world he said:
‘Tacere di fronte a manifestazioni cosi orribili del furore bellico sarebbe rendersi meritevoli di fronte non solo ai viventi ma anche alle generazioni future dell’accusa di indifferenza o peggio di acquiscenza codorda. Non ènostro compito isolare e determinare le responsibilità particolarri d’un tale cumulo dir ovine ma questo deve dirsi-che l’averlo cagionato rimarrà vergogna perpetua dell’età nostro e della nostra civiltà.
Roughly translated, it declared that to remain silent in the face of such a dreadful manifestation of the horror of war implied complete apathy at best, and intentional complicity at worst, and not only in the eyes of this world but the future one too. Although it does not fall to this body to determine where the blame should lie for turning Monte Cassino into a ruin, it continued, to have in any way helped cause it, would endure as an eternal stigma on both our age and civilization.
Much to Landers disgust they broadcast the communiqué on Vatican Radio word for word in both Italian and English, and he was reported to have promised to close the station down for good the moment we liberated Rome. I’m sure though that someone pointed out to him the impracticability of such an act, suppressing the official voice of world Catholicism as a war strategy. Strangely though, the radio transmitter in Naples certainly did close down yet again the following day, and try as PBS might they just didn’t seem to be able to fix it for more than two weeks. So news of the Vatican’s statement was never widely circulated. I can’t prove it of course but I think the transmitter met the same fate as the Elmar 3.5 lens of my Leica camera, but this time not by my hand.
***
That evening I visited my first Neapolitan whorehouse. I wasn’t there for rest and relaxation, and I certainly wasn’t trying to earn any extra money to pay for life’s basic necessities. I’d gotten back to Bomb Cottage and found a message in an envelope for me pinned to my bedroom door. It was written in pidgin Italian with a large hint of Spanish about it, and asked that I met Norman of the unspeakably secret surname at an address on the seamier side of Naples. I hadn’t seen him since he’d left the cottage for more official accommodation, so I hadn’t a clue what it was about. And when I got to the address, I didn’t know what kind of place it was from the outside, that was my excuse anyway. But I was a bit more street-smart by then, and didn’t take long to work out the truth after I got inside. I found the reclusive Norman sitting by the side of a round elevated table with a bunch of Allied NCO types as a succession of young scantily dressed Italian girls paraded their wares for them. Everyone there seemed to know Norman, as if he spent a lot of time in the place. “It’s part of my cover,” he allowed apologetically, “Can’t stand these kind of dives myself, but most of the people I have to work with seem to love them.”
“So what is it you want?” I enquired, willing to give him the benefit of what stll appeared to me a very substantive doubt.
He pushed a typewritten report over the table at me, so only I could see what was on it. It was a memorandum from Fifth Army’s counter-intelligence agents, of which apparently Norman was occasionally one, confirming to General Clark that there was not a single piece of evidence, based on witness statements, that any German soldier had been in the abbey when it was bombed. Nor was there any that they had been inside for many months before. “What do you think they’ll do with it?” I asked him evasively, having at that time no intention of letting him know that I was maybe the best witness of all to that fact.
“Landers will bury it,” he answered, “And see that every copy of the report is destroyed.”
“Every copy except this one?” I asked hopefully.
“Including this one,” he said taking a lighter, setting fire to it, and letting it smolder in the ashtray.
“So why’d you even show me it?”
“Would you have preferred it if I hadn’t?”
“But how can they bury something like that?
“Ever heard of the Salerno Mutiny?”
“Should I have?”
“Everybody should have, but I doubt that’ll make it into the official military histories either.”
“What was it then?”
“A mutiny by six hundred men of the British X Corps, who refused assignment to new units as replacements during the early days out here.”
“Were they too scared?”
“A lot of them were veterans of the war in North Africa.”
“Then what was their problem?”
“They had sailed from Tripoli on the understanding they were to join the rest of their units based in Sicily. But once aboard ship, they learned they were actually being taken to Salerno to join U.S. Fifth Army. A lot of them felt they’d been deliberately misled, which they had, and got even more frustrated when they saw the mess Salerno was. So they went off and sat in a field and refused to move. Two hundred of them were charged under the Army Act. I’m told by people who know such things it’s the largest number of men accused at any one time in all of British military history.”
“What happened to them?
“They were shipped to Algeria, tried, and all found guilty. Three of their sergeants, the presumed ringleaders, were sentenced to death, though that was subsequently commuted to 12 years forced labor.”
“So your point is?”
“If they can brush something like that under the mat, they can brush the fact Monte Cassino Abbey had absolutely no Germans inside it under too,” he said as he made quite sure the report was reduced to charred embers.
I’d of course learned long before this, that obtuseness was one of the important weapons Norman delighted in using in fulfilling the responsibilities of his job, whatever those responsibilities were. But I have to say that evening he seemed to be taking obscurity to previously unplumbed depths. “Why are you telling me all this,” I asked him.
“Because you were in there.”
“In where?”
“You know where, you, Freddie and Karl.”
“And if we were?”
“Let me tell you a story,” whispered Norman shuffling over a little closer.
“Another one?”
“There was a girl once, name of Dorothy, Dorothy Lawrence. She worked for a London newspaper, and when the First World War broke out she wanted to be a war reporter too, just like you seem to want to be.”
“Do I?”
“She didn’t have the qualifications of course, certainly not the education and connections you have, that’s what her newspaper said anyway, and they told her no. So she said to hell with them, and borrowed a British soldier’s uniform, and then got someone to cut her hair military style.” I couldn’t resist fingering my own hair and Norman couldn’t resist an ‘I told you so’ look as I did. “And just to make sure she looked as much like a soldier as she could, she also dyed her skin a bronze sun-beaten color.”
“Dyed it with what?” I asked.
“Diluted furniture stain,” Norman said. “Then she also somehow forged some identity papers, and headed for the Western Front. She was pretty smart was our Dorothy, and slept in an abandoned cottage at night so none of the real privates would discover she was a girl.”
“Where’s all this going, Norman?”
“Where this is going is that she kept a journal of her experiences too. At night anyway, as she spent the day digging tunnels for explosives. But then she got into a few scary scrapes, and started to worry that if she was killed digging those tunnels her true sex would be discovered, and everyone who had helped her, and it seems over the course of times a lot of folk had, would be in deep, deep trouble. Ring a bell yet, any of this?”
“I’m listening.”
“So she turned herself in did Dorothy, and they sent her back to London, but only after she signed an affidavit that she wouldn’t write anything more about her experiences. But then after the War she did write a memoir based on her journal, and the British War Office seized it and buried it deep down in the vaults.”
“And what happened to her?”
“They buried her too, in an asylum in North London.”
“For how long?”
“Last time I checked, she was still there.”
“And just for the record, why are you telling me about her?”
“Because if I were you I’d never ever let anyone at Fifth Army Command know about that journal of yours. And just to make sure they don’t, I’d scratch that devious mind you so clearly have, and come up with somewhere a lot smarter to hide it than your Musette bag. Either that or destroy it. And any photos you took of the inside of the Abbey.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“I’d do more than just think about it, I’d do it.” He stood up, “I’ll walk you out.” And on our way out the establishment’s madam said, “See you same time tomorrow night, Mr. Lewis.” I found myself wondering whether this apparent slip meant Norman would have to shoot himself, or maybe her, or maybe me, or God forbid maybe all three of us.
Apparently not though, at least not that evening, and when we got to my jeep he said, “You’ll be glad to hear we also learned that Abbot Diamare and the few monks left inside survived the bombing. How anyone made it was little short of miraculous if you ask me. Some Italian civilians told us that at first light the morning after they saw him holding a cross and leading a procession of them all down Calvary Hill on the German side. I guess they thought walking towards the German lines was safer.”
“Wouldn’t you if you were them?
“The last anyone saw of the Abbot, he was being driven off in a German General’s staff car.”
“What about the refugees?” I asked. “There was over a hundred of them still left inside?”
“So you were in there?”
“What about them, Norman?”
“Still buried there, I guess. I’m sorry.”
***
When I got back to Bomb Cottage I found some scissors. “What exactly are you going to do with those, young lady. Nothing stupid, I hope?” said Freddie.
“Cut my copy of Clausewitz into little pieces and throw it all into Naples Bay.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s wrong, that’s why.”
“Wrong about what?” Karl asked.
“War isn’t the pursuit of diplomatic objectives by other means at all. War is a cruel, filthy, imprecise instrument that punishes the wicked and the innocent alike. There’s nothing logical or philosophical about it all. It’s just an acknowledgement that you’ve run out of ideas about how to get what you want by honorable means, so you’re going to suspend all notions of decency while you take them anyway.”
“Strong words,” said Freddie.
And I wasn’t lying to them, and later that night I did walk out and throw the pages I’d cut out into the sea. Why? Well let’s just say that for once something Norman had said actually made some sense to me.
***
There were a lot of other stories doing the rounds of the Press’s favorite watering holes in the weeks after the bombing. For sure none of them proposed that the Abbey had been anything other than full of Germans though, and I for one wasn’t prepared to disabuse anyone of that. For isn’t that what the New York Times, the London Times, Life Magazine and just about any other newspaper said? So even I stayed quite silent about that, same as Karl and Freddie did. No, the rumors that did do the rounds were about other things. Some proposed that all the aircrew involved in bombing the Abbey were Catholic and every one had volunteered for the mission. God bless them most said, for gutting it up and doing a dreadful job that had to be done. But then others demurred, and said only the bomb-aimers were Catholic. Others however were adamant that both rumors were nonsense, and no Catholic crew went on the mission at all, only Protestant ones, and they were certainly volunteers. Only Freddie seemed less affected by any of these conspiratorial notions. “Utter pap,” he said in his best North British patois. “Given the number of aircrew involved in it, there isn’t a snowball’s chance in the Amazon that any of them could be volunteers.”
As neither General Clark nor Landers seemed to want me around after what had happened, Freddie said I’d been put on something called ‘gardening leave’, I decided to go and visit some of the flight crew that had been on the mission, and find out for myself why our aim was so bad. At the time I had been willing to accept what Freddie had said, that it had never been anywhere near as good as we liked people to think, but then Bob Capa came back from Anzio for a bit of leave, and told me he had once been inside an American B-17, and accidentally photographed the bomb sight they were all using. The Norden it was apparently called, and he said the Air Force had boasted to him it could drop a bomb in a pickle barrel. In fact they were so enthusiastic about it, when Capa’s photos of it were accidentally allowed to be printed in Illustrated Magazine, the Air Force got so shook up the Germans might see it and re-produce it, they made them pull their whole 400,000 copy issue rather than risk it.
Sure enough, one of the ,pilots told me he didn’t understand either why so much of the ordinance missed, as the Norden was considered so effective that they had all been made to take an oath in training to shoot it through and through with a pistol if they ever had to make an emergency landing in enemy territory. And if that didn’t destroy it, they had a thermite gun specially placed on board that would do the job properly. Rumor even had it, he told me, that in the Pacific they had intentionally taken out the emergency flotation devices on all American aircraft, on the theory that if they ditched it was better the Norden went to the bottom of the sea.
“Judging from what I saw at Monte Cassino it probably was,” I answered. But the pilot wasn’t buying it and said there was something else going on, something he couldn’t prove, but something that was nothing to do with the bombsite.
I didn’t understand quite what he was hinting at till I found a man named Walter, Walter Miller. He was a tail gunner, and he told me that bombing the Abbey was such a traumatic experience for so most people, including him, that many of the bomb-aimers missed it intentionally. “Why?” I asked him.
“It was like asking people to risk any chance they might have had of getting into heaven, and lots of them weren’t going to.”
“Did you think you were risking your chance of getting into heaven?” I asked him.
“Look at me,” he answered. “What heaven would want to take me?”
Only then did I realize what a state he was in, and how much his hands were still shaking. And all he could talk about was the devastation he saw from his tail-gunner’s turret. He said it looked to him like we were destroying our own world. I asked him how that made him feel, and he said that he for one had come out here with all sorts of romantic ideas about this being a just and right war, and how honorably we were going to fight it. And now he would be going home a wreck.
But regardless of what was the real explanation, and regardless of the inadequacies or not of the Norden bombsight, the bombs that did hit it were more than sufficient to reduce the Abbey to rubble, and after three days of near continuous sorties there was only a single exterior wall left standing. Even still though, anyone in the Allied Command who thought that would help them break through the Winter Line soon learned otherwise. For a start no-one seemed to have bothered coordinating the air and ground attacks in the first place. The air component was completely driven by the belief that there would be only a few days of good weather. But most of Freyberg’s New Zealand brigade had only replaced the U.S. II Corps a couple of days before, and given the flooding and incessantly waterlogged ground, hadn’t really been properly equipped for any surprise attack to quickly follow up the daylight bombing. To make matters worse, and not surprisingly either, Brother Frido’s paratroopers felt honor had been done and they were now morally free to occupy the Abbey ruins. So now it really became both the fortress and observation point it had never been before.
One after the other the various elements of the polyglot New Zealand Corps tried to move in, beginning with the British Royal Sussex regiment. Over the period of two nights they lost twelve out of their fifteen officers and over half their three hundred ‘other ranks’ as the British like calling them. Next night Freyberg’s Rajputanas and Ghurkas tried their luck. The Rajputanas lost almost two hundred men and the Ghurkas even more in their attack. At the same time Freyberg’s Maoris managed to take Cassino Station down below, but without armored support were soon forced to pull back. So very quickly the second attempt to penetrate the Liri Valley, they called it Operation Avenger, had ended like all the rest – attackers decimated, ground gained zero. And while all this was happening Anzio was becoming closer and closer to being over-run. So General Clark, now the proud commander of two very problematical battle fronts, and in an act of enlightened self-protection that surprised no-one, replaced General Lucas of the corn cob pipe with General Truscott of the carbolic vocal organs. Nobody was in any doubt that Lucas was just a scapegoat, including Lucas.
Somehow or other our third attack on Calvary Hill was meant to have a far better chance of success than the first two, though no-one I met seemed to think much of its prospects either. There were to be no more attempts to cross the Rapido to the west of Cassino Town, and no more to right hook it from the mountains in the north east. Instead we’d go straight through Cassino town itself, while simultaneously attacking straight up the hill. And it would fall to the New Zealanders, now augmented by the British 78th. infantry division, to do it. But to make it quite clear we had learned nothing from our previous attempt at using strategic bombing to support infantry ground attacks, four weeks after we obliterated Monte Cassino Abbey we used the same justification to launch another full scale saturation bombardment against what little was left of Cassino town. And just as when they attacked the Abbey, targets were misidentified and there were almost a hundred and fifty casualties, many of them dead, amongst the Allied troops near the town. Whoever it was that said the Allied Armies probably lost more men in Italy to their own air force than they ever did to the enemy’s, may have had a point. This time they even dropped bombs on Eighth Army Headquarters in Venafro ten miles to the west which they shared with the French. That snafu killed another fifty odd people there as well. The damage they did to Cassino town meanwhile caused few German casualties, and just made sure that any idea we had of running tanks through it was an idyllic one, given the ruins that now covered its streets. So it soon became clear that just as General Juin said, it was all a waste of time. In fact it was worse than that. A British regiment assigned to Freyberg’s New Zealanders Corps went up Calvary Hill first and were beaten off with over fifty percent casualties. Then Freyberg’s Rajputanas and Ghurkas were thrown in yet again and they too were cut to pieces. Finally Freyberg’s Maori’s were tossed back out of a small bridgehead they had achieved on the edge of Cassino Town. Freyberg, a brave soul if ever there was one, tried again a few weeks later and was rebuffed yet again and as their reward for all told losing almost five thousand men, his New Zealand Corps was disbanded and its elements, what was left of them, put under command of the British Eighth. Meanwhile as if a commentary on the futility of it all, just four weeks after the destruction of the Abbey, Mount Vesuvius erupted.
***
Even the oldest inhabitants of Naples were shocked when it happened, as there hadn’t been a major eruption since 1906. Some of them suggested it was the disturbance under the ground caused by all the bombing of Cassino town and the Abbey that caused it, but others said no, it was divine punishment. But if it was, surely God would have selected some other victims to punish, than the very people who had been punished enough already.
It began in early March in the afternoon, but only became fully visible that evening when Naples black-out had begun, and then everyone could see the long rivulet of fire curving down from the volcano’s rim. The following morning everyone realized it was heading straight for the town of San Sebastiano, so the three of us went up the slope and ran into a friend of Freddie’s name of Eric who had some sort of Norwegian sounding surname I can’t quite remember. He worked for the Columbia Broadcasting System in New York, I remember Freddie telling me, and he’d just arrived in Naples. When we reached him he was dictating a description of the funicular up the side of the slope which was by now half buried in lava. He was already well on the way to tears when we got there, and just as we hunkered down beside him a boulder appeared out the mist above and flew narrowly past us. Soon after it began to rain, and hail started to cut our faces and we had to take cover. We couldn’t see anything or anyone for quite a while, and only when it cleared we realized how close we were to the rim, and maybe it was time to beat a prudent retreat.
On our way down they were already evacuating San Sebastiano and American Military Police in their white helmets were helping. Local priests meanwhile had placed statues of the Madonna across the line of the approaching lava, but even they couldn’t help. Building by building the place was crushed, as the inhabitants and what few possessions they could carry were trucked off by the British and Americans. Fifteen thousand people lost their homes, and all the while Eric was trying his best to dictate a commentary, until eventually he just broke apart. Finally a ball of black smoke then one of white, both massive in size rose thousands of feet up from the crater and obliterated half the sky. Then we realized that the whole area above, where we had hidden from the hail, had fallen into the void too. We heard later that the U.S. 340th Bombardment Group based at Pompeii Airfield just a few kilometers from the eastern base of the volcano lost eighty B-25 Mitchell medium bombers from the hot ash that fell on the runway. Odds are many of them participated in the bombing of the Abbey, so if that was divine punishment it was maybe a little better directed.
Maybe the Allied command took the eruption as some kind of an omen too, for only then did we do what Freddie said we should have a long time ago – quit attacking, hibernate and wait for better weather and firmer ground. General Clark must have thought so too, and went back to the States for some rest and relaxation, though when he eventually got back nothing about him looked very relaxed to me. Not surprising I suppose, because by then he probably knew the Italian Campaign was no longer about two different and separate advances up two different sides of the country by two different armies that didn’t speak to each other. Instead it was all about to become part of one battle including the forces still jammed up at Anzio. Most importantly, and just like General Clark wanted all along, it was to be run by one person. Except that one person didn’t turn out to be him.
We had all gone out to lunch, I remember, to celebrate my birthday, my thirtieth if you want to know the truth. Margaret had even sent me a congratulatory cable, though I was a little disappointed she didn’t confirm in it that I was now in charge of my own trust fund. Then we heard from some other correspondents that there was to be a press conference at Caserta later that afternoon. Strange I thought, that Landers hadn’t contacted me directly, and Freddie thought it rather odd that they were having it at Caserta too, which was now exclusively Alexander’s headquarters, and not nearer General Clark’s at Presenzano. All the same we duly sat there in the main ballroom and waited for the inevitable entry of Landers with his call of “attenshut’ followed quickly by General Clark marching up to the front, cutting his hand through the air as if this was yet another misunderstanding, and telling us to sit down. But then it didn’t happen that way at all, for instead General Alexander walked down the middle first followed by General Clark and General Oliver Leese who had taken over command of the British Eighth when Montgomery had left to get ready for the ‘Big One’. Everyone liked Alexander and he was the biggest player on campus, so everyone stood up voluntarily including all the correspondents, as his red hat appeared. But before he had even gotten to the front he had said, “Sit down if you will. We don’t need any of that kind of nonsense,” and sit down we happily all did.
You didn’t need to be an expert in body language to tell that General Clark was a long way short of being pleased about whatever direction things had all of a sudden taken, and an even longer way short of bothering to hide it. It was clearly Alexander’s show, not his, and it was Alexander not him who explained that this show was to be called Operation Diadem. And the proposed operation was indeed a showstopper, with even the correspondents whistling their amazed approval. Alexander told us that over the last few months, and unbeknownst to the Germans, they had secretly repositioned most of the British Eighth Army from the east of Italy over to our side. Shortly they would attack on a narrow twenty mile front from the sea to Cassino with U.S. II Corps pressing up the coast along Route 7, Juin’s French Corps moving from our bridgehead across the Garigliano into the Aurunci Mountains between the coastal plain and the Liri Valley, while British XIII Corps in the centre went up Route Six through the Liri itself. On the right meanwhile, Anders’ Polish Corps would go right around the monastery from the north to link with XIII Corps higher up the Liri and render any further notion of defending the rubble of Monte Cassino pointless. Larger numbers, better weather, drier ground, improved supply, and ensuring the Germans knew nothing of the deployment of the British Eighth, were the keys to success; that and bringing in the Canadian Armored Brigade too, to fight off the German panzer attacks that would necessarily follow. Meanwhile what was left of the poor U.S. 36th Texan Division after the Rapido debacle was sent on diversionary amphibious assault training, and road signposts and dummy radio signal traffic were created too, all to give the impression that a seaborne landing was being planned north of Rome, which of course it never was. At the same time, with the Germans caught in the middle, Truscott’s VI Corps would break out the Anzio bridge head and head straight east for the Alban Hills and cut off all the retreating Germans coming up the Liri Valley. Amidst great applause Alexander muttered something about hoping God was on our side this time, and walked off. As he passed by a stony-faced General Clark looked angrily at me and said. “I told you. It’s all just a way to make sure the British get to Rome first. But no, you didn’t believe me did you, any of you,” and he stalked off.
“So what did all that mean?” I asked Karl and Freddie.
“Your godfather has just lost control of his half of the Italian Campaign,” Freddie answered.
“If you’re not good enough to get the job done, Alexander has told him, then we’ll just have to bring the British Eighth in to help you, and do it all by British rules,” Karl added.
“British rules?”
“Beginning with a huge artillery barrage designed to shake the teeth out every German’s mouth. And who cares if they then know we’re on our way, so long as none of them know it’s all of us that are on our way.”
And British rules worked, and in the early morning of May 18, after taking more terrible losses, a reconnaissance party from Anders’ Polish Corps found the Abbey abandoned, and raised a Polish flag over its ruins. The last German paratroops had withdrawn the night before and were on the run north, like all the rest of Brother Frido’s army. Simultaneously the Allied forces at last broke out at Anzio, and duly headed straight for the Alban Hills between Brother Frido and his path of escape. It seemed the whole German Army was about to be encircled and destroyed. No, it wasn’t going to be forcing their surrender without firing a shot, for by the time we had broken through the battles around Monte Cassino had cost more than 350,000 casualties on both sides. And who knows how many civilians had died, as barely a single tree remained standing in the whole Liri Valley, and some say 95% of the towns and villages in and around it now lay in ruins. But it would still bring some military purpose to a campaign which no-one seemed certain really ever had one. That was Freddie’s theory anyway. But then I told you before, nothing about the Italian campaign ever happened quite the way it was meant to. But before it did, something else did happen, something that wasn’t meant to, something awful, something far worse than Vesuvius erupting. And because this dreadful something did happen, the word marocchinate first appeared in the Italian language.
Juin’s Goumiers, those strange men of the knife and the flowing striped burnoose, who had been crucial in helping break the Winter Line by travelling over terrain in the Aurunci Mountains hitherto thought impossible, decided to celebrate their tactical tour de force that had even general Clark in awe, by going on a pillage of mass rape throughout the Italian countryside. Was Juin complicit in it? Who knows? Some rumors said yes, more said no. Whatever was the case, when it was all finished, thousands of innocent women were violated and hundreds of men who tried to protect them were murdered. Oh dear god, why did we have to do such things?
***
Late in May, while there was a brief pause in our advance to re-supply and re-organize, Karl got a message from General Anders to tell him the Polish Brigade was being transferred over to the eastern side of Italy, and before they left they were planning a commemoration service at the Abbey for all the comrades they had lost trying to take it. General Anders wondered if Karl would care to handle the organ.
“What organ?” I remember asking him when he told us as there was no way the one in the Abbey sanctuary could have survived the shelling.
“Didn’t think to ask, he said. “But General Anders thought you and Freddie might fancy tagging along too.”
“I don’t know whether I could deal with seeing the state it will be in.”
“It’s possible you can’t ever be at peace with yourself, if you do. But it’s certain you can’t if you don’t.” He had a point I suppose, a convoluted one by his straightforward standards, but a point nevertheless. So for the first time since the bombing, Sapsovitch drove the three of us back to Monte Cassino Abbey.
The Abbey was gone of course, and where the magnificent structure had stood were now only the outside of some walls, and a pile of rubble in its centre. I wasn’t wearing a white dress and shawl, but I had put my skirt back on, whatever the consequences. And there was no Margaret and no Jack there either. But somehow Abbot Diamare and Friar Matronola had got back and some of the townsfolk, the now homeless townsfolk, had wended their way up the Serpentina with the help of the Polish Brigade, and they even brought Carlotta riding on the back of Wojtek.
I don’t care if there were no candles, no heavenly choirs and no Henry Wilcoxon. What was it he had said in that other bombed out church:
‘…this is not only a war of soldiers in uniform, it is the war of the people, of all the people. And it must be fought not only on the battlefield but in the cities and in the villages, in the factories and on the farms, in the home and in the heart of every man, woman and child who loves freedom.’
Okay, so there was no English country parson there who said that, and I’m not sure any wise one would have phrased it that way if they had been, but that day ay Monte Cassino was still the most beautiful service I have ever attended. High up on a rampart a Polish Sergeant held their red and white national flag as down below in the remains of the courtyard General Anders and the Polish Brigade, bedraggled but still proud and a lot fewer in number, stood in ranks. A Polish female singer, I think her name was Renata, though she said that was just a stage name, sang ‘I know that my Redeemer Liveth.’ She was accompanied by Karl at a portable bellows organ the Poles had brought up. It was powered by Wojtek, who on a prod from his handler stamped every so often on the blower. Then Renata and two Polish soldiers sang a song called ‘The Red Poppies of Monte Cassino.’ One soldier was called Alfred and the other Feliks. They were pals of Karl’s and he had helped transpose the music for them. Karl translated it for me later:
The red poppies on Monte Cassino drank Polish blood instead of dew….
O’er the poppes the soldiers did go ‘mid death, and to their anger stayed true!
Years will come and ages go, enshrining their strivings and toil!
And the poppies of Monte Cassino will be redder for Poles’ blood in their soil.
The service over, we said our goodbyes to General Anders, and Karl took a photo of Wojtek and I. Then he was lead off and that was the last we saw of any of them. Freddie, Karl and I stayed on a while, I don’t know why exactly, but I wanted to take some photos of the ruins. While I was doing that Karl and Freddie went for a wander round. I suppose in retrospect I should have realized they were up to something, Freddie had that wicked smile in his eyes, and Karl was even more circumspect than usual. But I didn’t realize right then perhaps because I was pre-occupied wondering why we’d done it, destroyed something that didn’t belong to just the Benedictines or even to Italy, it was something that had belonged to the whole civilized world, but by doing it maybe we were admitting that neither we nor our world were anywhere near as civilized as we liked thinking.
I shook my head and walked slowly back out and passed under the lintel, one of the few things still standing and looked up at the sign ‘Pax.’ What a sick joke I remembered thinking. Then I looked down at the twisting, snaking Serpentina as it wound its way up from Cassino town. But it wasn’t the bare slopes of Calvary Hill I was looking at, it was row after row of crosses, thousands of them as far as the eyes could see, all with different national flags on them from all round the world, and all bearing the inscription - ‘Known only to God.’
I was still lost in my fantasy as Karl and Freddie came up behind me. “We’ve something for you, Karl said.
“A sort of souvenir you could call it,” added Freddie.
“Thought it might help you rescue something from all this,” Karl said as he showed me something wrapped in sack cloth. “Somehow it survived the carnage.”
I pulled off the sack cloth and saw my mother and father’s grave stone - “Ansel Hampton September 1, 1885 – May 10, 1939 & Maria Hampton February 6, 1891 – May, 10 1939.”
“Thank you,” I sniffled, and I was still sniffling shortly after when we heard the sound of the jeep’s horn, and saw Sapsovitch waving at us to come back down.
Back at the jeep he handed me the field telephone. “Guess who,” he said.
“Who?”
“Landers.”
“What’s he want?”
“You.”
I took the phone, told him it was me, listened, then said, “Yes I know exactly where that is,” listened some more then said “We’ll be there soon as we can,” and handed the phone back to Sapsovitch.
“Landers wants me in Rome.” “Rome? Why there?”
“He says that he and the General are on their way there. And I’ve to make sure to bring you pair along too, and any other members of the press we can round up.”
“Why us?” Karl asked.
“All he said was that it was very important you were there.”
“But Fifth Army’s not meant to be anywhere near Rome. It’s there for the taking any time we want since the Germans evacuated it. Though God only knows what state it’ll be in. Fifth Army’s meant to be linking up with our break-out from Anzio and cutting off the German line of retreat east of it.”
“All I can tell you is what he told me.”
“And did he happen to say exactly where in Rome? That’s a pretty big place,” Karl grunted.
“The Campidoglia.”
“And what’s that?” asked Sapsovitch.
“Rome’s town hall. It’s at the top of the Capitoline steps where their Senate once stood. The head of the world they called it.”
“So what’s the fastest way there?”
“Up the Via Casilina through the Liri Valley.”
“The Via Casilina?” Sapsovitch asked.
“It’s the old name for Route Six. It was laid down years before the birth of Christ to connect Naples with Rome. It runs on up past Rome Airport all the way to the Porta Maggiore, the eastern gate through the Aurelian walls into…” And I heard my voice peter out into silence.
“What’s the matter?” Karl asked.
“Nothing,” I said as I watched Sapsovitch sit down in the driver’s seat and switch the engine on. “Better let me drive,” I said in a voice that I still wasn’t sure sounded like mine, but for sure was mine. “I know these roads better than you. I lived here, remember.” Sapsovitch shook his head at Freddie just the way Margaret had that day at Jack, and Sapsovitch shrugged and accepted the inevitable and reluctantly got in the back with Freddie. Karl jumped up in front with me and I started to negotiate the twisty Serpentina down the bare crater-filled mountainside.
On the way through Cassino town we stopped amongst the few scores of refugees wandering hopelessly about trying to find where their houses had once stood. Carlotta handed me a small bunch of dandelions, that had probably been intended as her lunch. I was about to ask Sapsovitch to pull out all our K-rations, but he was wise to my ways by now and placed them in my hand without me having to say anything, and gave me all our water bottles too. Karl and Freddie added some chocolate bars, and I gave them all to Carlotta as a voice from my mouth unbidden by my mind said. “Torno presto volte, te lo prometto.” But truthfully I couldn’t really be sure I would ever be back, far less anytime soon, and I held her tightly for a moment, restrained a tear then drove off. “So what happens to them now?” I whispered to myself. “The ones who never wanted to be at war with anyone?”
But I didn’t get an answer from any of them, so I let my tear drip down my face and accelerated off pushing everyone back in their seats. And as I looked in the mirror I saw Sapsovitch shake his head at Freddie yet again and cross himself. But then maybe he was right too, as soon I had the clock at the max a jeep could go as we flew past the now bullet hole riddled sign that said ‘Roma – 130 Kms.’
I went to switch on the car radio I remember but pulled my hand back before I had. It couldn’t be, it just couldn’t. But scared as I was I had to switch it on, I just had to. And sure enough it was Beniamino Gigli singing that Neapolitan song called ‘Non ti scordar di me’ – ‘do not forget me’ it means. It was as if the Abbey itself knew I was gone and was singing to me again.
And right then I knew he had been right, not Gigli, but that other man who was at that recital that evening, that philosopher I told you about name of Jorge Agustin de Santayana, the one who said that those of us who ignore the lessons of history will find themselves relearning them. And I knew then exactly what I was going to be doing in Rome a little later that day.
Well maybe not a little later, because long before we had ever reached Zagarola just south of the city, we hit increasingly heavy traffic jams of Allied trucks and armor heading north, and it was pretty clear this wasn’t going to be quite as fast a drive as I’d thought. But then like I said, nothing in the Italian campaign happened very quickly, including the lessons you learned from it.
“There’s something very odd going on here.” Freddie shrugged as he eyed all the armor and troops on the jam-packed road.
“And what’s that?” I asked.
“Look at all our tanks. They’re all heading towards Rome, every damn one of them? They shouldn’t be. They should be heading east across the Valmontone Gap towards the Alban Hills, to cut off the German retreat.”
Just then we came across an American two-star command jeep with General Truscott sitting up front, and I pulled up beside him and saluted. “What’s going on, General?”
“We’ve been instructed to abort any move east and head straight for Rome.”
“Why?”
“As far as I can see it’s madness. We’re giving up the chance to cut the Germans off. Do you know how many of my Corps have given their lives and bodies for that. And now we’re just heading for Rome for no damn good reason.”
“Hasn’t the general given you one?” asked Freddie.
“All of a sudden he can’t be reached, and I’ve been told by his staff to just do as I’m ordered.”
“I think I know what the reason is,” I said.
“Mind telling me then?” Truscott scowled.
“I’m afraid that if I’m right you really won’t like it. And respectfully I don’t want to be anywhere in your vicinity when you do learn,” and I saluted him, and we continued on up the road as fast as we could. “I’m going to take a right, go up into the hills and see if we can beat the traffic and enter Rome by the east.”
But we’d no sooner got on to the side roads when we went through a shell torn village and saw someone hiding behind a wall. It was a German soldier with a dirty face and helmet sitting reading a bible. He stood up and raised his hands above his head. “You got your gun, Freddie?” I asked.
“Yes. But… “
“Yes but what?”
“Didn’t I tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“I never actually load it.”
“Never load it? That’s just great,’ groaned Karl looking at him like he was an idiot.
“We got one in the jeep somewhere?” I said to Sapsovitch.
Sapsovitch pulled a metal box out, opened it, and sure enough there was an automatic rifle inside. I even recognized it as the infamous M1942 they had trained me in at Fort Des Moines. Unfortunately however the aforesaid weapon was an unassembled one, and you’ll recall that my competence at weapon assembly was little better than my competence at typing. “Anyone know how to put this thing together?” I asked of no-one in particular. Heads shook on our side but the German soldier put his hand out. “I do,” he said.
“You do?”
He nodded, took the rifle and put it together and handed it back to me. “How’d you load it?” I said to the others. But again they could only shake their heads and the German soldier put his hand out again, I gave him the rifle back and the clip of bullets, he loaded them in and gave them back to me. I pointed it back at him and started to say, “You have the right to remain silent and if you cannot afford a lawyer-”
“Hold it, hold it hold it,” Karl said as he stepped forward and took the helmet off the German soldier’s head.
“Feuerstak? What the hell are you doing here?” Karl asked.
“I got left behind when we closed the command centre at Castelmassimo.”
“But Brother Frido would never have let that happen?” I said.
“He didn’t know. He had so many other more important things to worry about.”
“So tell me, Mr. Feuerstak,” Freddie said as he eyed him, “Am I now the only person on the planet who doesn’t know who this Brother Frido is?”
I shrugged at Freddie and said, “So what do we do with him?”
“Take him into Rome and hand him over to the nearest M.P’s,” Freddie suggested.
“I suppose we have to, don’t we,” I said.
“You bet we do,” said Freddie,” and we sat him down in the back of the jeep between him and Sapsovitch.
***
A few hours later we could see an M.P. guarded checkpoint into Rome at the Porto Maggiore about a hundred yards ahead of us. “Stop the jeep,” said Karl.
“Why?” I asked.
“Just do what you’re asked for once in your damn life,” Karl said, and then looked at Feuerstak. “You said that the German High Command wouldn’t let any harm come to any cultural sites in Italy, didn’t you?”
“That’s what General Senger told me.”
“Does that include the bridges over the Tiber?”
“Of course the Germans will have destroyed the Tiber bridges,” Freddie interrupted. “They haven’t left a single bridge intact all the way back down to Salerno. Why should they start now?”
“What are you thinking, Karl?” I asked him.
“Are you willing to bet your freedom on being right?” Karl asked Feuerstak.
“I’m willing to bet my life,’ Feuerstak answered.”
“Take his helmet and army blouse off, cover his pants with a blanket, give him Freddie’s cravat and scarf,” he answered. “Your G.I. jacket too,” he said to Sapsovitch. “And did you keep Marie’s press pass?” he said to me.
“Of course I did.”
“Get it out and put it round his neck.” And I did. “Let’s hope they don’t check the photo on it,” Karl said.
“I don’t like the smell of this one bit,” said Freddie.
“Remember that nice German doctor who let you walk out his field hospital Scot free?” answered Karl.
“So?”
“So you’re just repaying the favor, okay?”
“Why not.”
Karl tapped me on the shoulder, “And turn the radio back on.”
“Why the radio?”
“It’ll maybe hide Feuerstak’s accent, in case they ask him any questions.”
I turned it on. It was not a good omen as they were now playing Lili Marlene. But after all it was about the most popular song in Italy, and with our side too. “If we get into trouble be prepared to throw your weight around,” Karl said to me.
“My weight around? What’s that mean?” I said.
“I don’t know. But if necessary think of something.”
“You mean stage a fight, like they do in the movies?”
“Something that would never work in the movies, but might in real life.”
I breathed in and we rolled up to the checkpoint beside a sign that said ‘Fifth Army Only. All Others Turn Back.’ As the M.P’s checked our papers Freddie looked suspiciously at the sign and asked, “Who’s all those others you have in mind, might I enquire.”
“The Brits,” the shiny helmeted M.P. answered.
“Why them?”
“Word is some of them are trying to sneak into Rome ahead of us, so they can say they liberated it.”
“And what’s your instructions if any British soldiers prefer to ignore this nice sign of yours, and don’t turn back.” I asked the M.P.
“We’ve been ordered by Fifth Army Command to shoot them.”
“Would that include shooting General Alexander as well? Freddie enquired.
“Your papers too,” the M.P. said to Feuerstak.
Karl gave me the ‘do something and do it now’ look. Well here goes nothing, I thought. “We haven’t time for this idiocy, soldier,” I said angrily. “This man’s with me, and we’re on a special mission for General Clark.”
“Oh yea the M.P. said. “And what kind of mission is that?”
“Don’t you know who I am?”
“Should I?”
“I’m the General’s… god-daughter?”
“God-daughter?”
“You do know what a general’s god-daughter is in this man’s army, don’t you?”
“I know what Patton’s was in Sicily.”
“And if General Clark finds out that you’ve been delaying her unnecessarily in the carrying out of her duties, then you’ll be back on booby trap detail in Cassino Town.”
“Good God, didn’t realize, miss. Sorry. Carry on through.”
I put the jeep back in gear, but just before I moved off I looked at the sign and said. “And if I were you I’d do myself a big favor and change that sign too.”
“Change it to what?” the M.P. said
“It’s not anyone’s Fifth Army. It’s my General Mark Clark’s Fifth Army.”
“Thanks for the tip, miss.” And as I accelerated off someone turned the radio up and we all sang Lili Marlene at the top of our voices.
“Where too, now?” I said to Karl.
“The most northerly bridge across the Tiber.”
“That’s probably the Ponte Milvio.”
“Then the Ponte Milvio it is.”
And we headed right up the Via Flaminia to the Ponte Milvio. You remember the Ponte Milvio, don’t you, where all those thousands of Romans died so two power-hungry Roman co-Emperors could decide which of them would be sole Emperor? Once we got there we found it deserted save for a few Italians wandering around the streets. And we also found it was completely intact, as was every other bridge in sight.
Karl insisted Feuerstak put his uniform back on and we dropped him at the south end of the bridge. “You be careful, Karl said.”
“Congratulations all of you, by the way,” Feuerstak answered.
“Why?” I asked.
“Look around you. You’ve just been the first Allies to enter Rome.”
And we did look around and who knows maybe we had. “This calls for a picture. You got a timer on that Elmar of yours, my dear. We should all be in it,” said Freddie, “Friend Feuerstak too.”
“I’ve got a remote wire, works just as well.”
“Then set it up with this lovely bridge behind it and we’ll take one for posterity.”
And we set the remote up and it took a photograph of me, Karl, Freddie, Sapsovitch and Feuerstak.
But then out revelryy was cut short as we saw some other American Army vehicles enter the area. “Get out of here Feuerstak, now,” Karl shouted.
And then we watched Feuerstak run safely over the Ponte Milvio till he found some other Wehrmacht soldiers on the other side and they drove him off. I looked at Karl. “Is something about hating every German in the world maybe softening under that cold Slavic exterior of yours?”
“Who knows, maybe,” he said with the slightest hint of a smirk.
***
An hour later all four of us were looking up the Capitoline Steps to the Campidoglio. At the top was General Clark with the whole rest of the Allied Press Corps gathered in front of him, and Landers’ oh-so-nattily dressed Press Relations Officers shepherding them about.
I parked the car at the foot of the steps just as I’d done that night in 1940 and eyed Landers at the foot of the steps. “So that’s what all this is about. What it was always about. Not just breaking through at Monte Cassino, but getting to Rome before the British could.”
“So?” asked Landers.
“So what about the plan to surround the Germans and destroy them south of Rome,” asked Freddie.
“Like Napoleon did to the Austrians at Űlm,” I intruded.
“Screw Űlm, wherever that is, and screw Napoleon. This is far more important than that.”
“I don’t believe this. Even Clark’s not that much of a-” But Karl stopped in mid sentence as we noticed M.P.’s already at work putting a sign that said ‘Roma’ in the back of a covered truck.
“You were saying?” I asked him.
“We need some really dramatic shots of the general up at the top of the steps, okay.”
“Don’t worry. I’ve had some practice at this one.”
I walked up the steps and framed the shot just as I was told to, took a series of pictures, and stepped back as General Clark moved in amongst the correspondents and fielded questions. “Didn’t expect all you Press folk here today,” he said. “I was just meeting with my Corps Commanders to assess the situation.” He laughed. “But seeing as you are here it’s quite a day for Fifth Army, eh.” I could see Eric and Wicker and Mauldin amongst them.
“Get those developed as quickly as possible,” Landers said. “I want them to go out on the wires tonight.”
“Why so big a rush?” Karl asked.
“None of your business,” Landers answered.
“And isn’t it meant to be a great day for the Italian People and the British Eighth Army too?” I asked.
“And be back here at noon tomorrow,” Landers said.
“Why then? I asked.”
“To photo the entry of Fifth Army into Rome,” Landers replied.
“Into Rome?” Freddie asked incredulously. “You’re surely not diverting the whole army into Rome?”
“And what about all the Italian partisans who’ve risen up north of here? They’ll get cut to pieces unless we’re up there to protect them?” said Karl.
“You heard me, noon tomorrow.” answered Landers. “Then I want all those photos disseminated to every western press Agency before midnight.”
Freddie looked round and saw Eric of the Norwegian surname. “In spite of the obvious wonder of this wonderful occasion,” Eric said, “Frankly, I for one feel like vomiting.”
I looked at Karl and before I could stop myself I said, “Tell me something, Colonel Landers. Given they eventually took Monte Cassino Abbey and got shot to pieces in the process, wouldn’t it have been a nice gesture for General Anders’ Polish Brigade to be given pride of place in the parade?”
“Don’t be so stupid. No-one’s having a bunch of bloody Polaks stealing an American show.” Landers replied.
“Somehow I knew you’d say that,” I said. I thought of Anders, I thought of Wotjeck, I thought of the red poppies of Monte Cassino, and I think I may even have thought of Boadicea. Then I walked over to Freddie and Karl and looked over at the man who had once been my godfather. “How much time do you get for slugging a three-star general?”
“As long as you plan on the rest of your life lasting,” said Freddie.
“Then if it’s too pricey to take on the organ grinder, I guess you just have to settle for his monkey.”
“You’re not going to do what I think you’re going to do?” said Karl.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because sometimes when the world appalls but your only response is a grand, useless gesture, you still have to take it.”
“No you don’t.”
“So be a dear and hold this,” I said, handed him my camera, walked over to Landers, gave a loud whistle so everyone in the Press corps would look over, closed my eyes, whispered ‘sorry Margaret but ‘tis a far, far better thing I do’ and slugged him on the chin. Then I looked over at Karl and Freddie and smiled weakly, and Karl said, “This time you really will swing for it.” And I sat down on the top of the steps hands locked behind my head prisoner-of-war style, and soon a pack of Landers goons had collared me and stuffed me in my jeep. I looked up at the man standing in front of the Campidoglio and didn’t recognize him. He wasn’t my godfather any more. He was just a man, full of dreadful, dreadful failings, and like Julius Caesar basking in the glare of the crowds.
But at least as Sapsovitch drove me off, I had the satisfaction of catching Karl’s eyes and he began to clap. Then Freddie joined him, and soon every part of the whole Press Corps broke out in loud applause.