MOVING BRISKLY on his crutches, Simon Telfer was walking along a high cliff-road in Sorrento with Angelo beside him. At the entrance to a large white villa, temporarily occupied by the military, stood a tall sentry, gravely still. As Simon approached he sprang to attention, with smart and sudden action clapped his rifle on to his left shoulder, and with a hard hand resounding on the small of the butt, saluted. At every movement a small thick cloud of dust rose from his clothing as though he were an ancient carpet that someone was beating with a cane.
From the cone of Vesuvius across the bay rose thick columns, densely spiralling, of purple smoke shot with a fierce flush or melting glow of pink. High into the tall and clouded sky they rose in oily whorls, until the upper wind caught and bent them suddenly, and sent them flying over the sea in a flat brown canopy from which descended the close volcanic dust. Oozing from the crater’s lip and trickling down the upper slope of the mountain came scarlet rivulets, thick and slow, of molten lava. Below them, under clouds of evil smoke, the glaciers of iron-dark cinders crawled down hill, filling the hollows, shirking heights and promontories, and crushing houses, tumbling pines and chestnut-trees in their sluggish flow.
Angelo coughed and blew his nose, and turning to shake his fist at Vesuvius exclaimed, ‘This is too much! It is really too much!’
‘I agree with you,’ said Simon. ‘Whatever else one may ask from a landscape, one does expect stability.’
Angelo smacked a puff of dust from either shoulder. ‘My poor Italy,’ he said. ‘Now your stuffing is coming out.’
They were on their way to visit two of Simon’s friends, brother-officers who were spending a few days’ leave with an Italian family which, before the war, had occasionally acquired an American stepmother, sometimes an English daughter-in-law. Their villa commanded a view of the clouded bay, and there were about twelve or fourteen people in a handsomely furnished but somewhat chilly drawing-room. A well preserved woman of fifty, with dark eyes and gleaming teeth, was loudly declaring as they went in that the eruption had been caused by a treacherous airman who had privily dropped into the crater of Vesuvius a bomb weighing two thousand kilogrammes, which had acted like a violent emetic.
A brisk debate on the weather followed, and everyone agreed that the exceptional severity of the winter, so unlike the temperate climate to which they were accustomed, was due to the air being shaken and battered by gunfire. A gentleman with a jaundiced eye said that the future of the world was dark indeed, for its atmosphere would be increasingly tormented by aeroplanes, ships in the stratosphere, and wireless; with appalling consequences.
‘Everywhere the climate will deteriorate,’ he said. ‘On five days out of seven there will be rain or sleet, and neither corn nor fruit will ripen.’
An English daughter-in-law – pretty, plump and petulant – was describing to a lieutenant of the Royal Navy the hardships of life in Sorrento during time of war. A saturnine young man, passing with a bottle of Italian vermouth in one hand, a bottle of Plymouth gin in the other, halted and turned his head to listen. ‘For many years to come,’ he said, ‘the world is going to be full of people competing for attention with stories of what they have suffered. And those who have suffered the least will have the most to say. It will be extremely boring.’
In a corner of the room Simon was looking at a replica, in bronze, of a whimsical piece of some ancient statuary’s work that one of his friends had recently bought in Herculaneum or Pompeii. It represented a satyr making satyric love to a briskly co-operating nymph.
‘Our follies,’ he said, ‘have such antiquity that it is almost impossible not to respect them.’
‘But our virtues,’ said his friend, ‘are like a litter of puppies untrained and delicate. Some are gun-shy, some will chase rabbits, and all require worming. Their noses cannot distinguish between a skylark and a grouse, their mouths are untaught, and most of them will be carried off by distemper.’ – With his forefinger he drew an arabesque on a dusty table-top, and added, ‘There’s brimstone in the air today. Oh, damn Vesuvius!’
Angelo took the bronze and looked at it with eyes that swam in unshed tears. ‘Does it not make you sad,’ he said, ‘to think of all the beautiful girls there have been, whom we never knew and could not enjoy? To have missed so much: I can hardly bear it! I imagine them turning their heads so neatly on their little white necks to look at me as I come in, and their voices when they are soft and husky, and their slim round arms – and then I remember they are dead, they are the dust that the wind blows round the corner, and I am overcome by the cruelty of life.’
‘You must look forward, not back,’ said Simon. ‘Think about meeting and marrying Lucrezia –’
‘But there again I see the unfairness that rules the world!’ cried Angelo. ‘Because I am in love with Lucrezia I am faithful to her; or very nearly faithful. And therefore I am deprived of a hundred enjoyable experiences that a person less sincere, or not quite so sensitive as I, could quite easily obtain! It is wrong to suppose there are principles of natural justice in life, or that life is ever peaceful. Life is war, and we who are virtuous may well lose every battle but the last one.’
‘That,’ said Simon’s friend with noticeable stiffness, ‘is the prerogative of the English.’
‘Because you are good?’ asked Angelo.
‘It is an attractive hypothesis,’ said Simon.
‘There was a time when we aspired to goodness,’ said his friend, ‘and the world regarded us as hypocrites. Then we decided to pose as realists; and the world said we were effete.’
‘But why do you win your last battles?’ asked Angelo.
‘We are amateurs,’ said Simon’s friend with a noisy yawn, ‘and the amateur lasts longer than the professional.’
At night the molten lava, creeping slowly in blunt-headed streams, shone like wet silver, and the dark air smelt more strongly of sulphur. So long as the eruption continued Angelo was melancholy and given to superstitious fear or dubious philosophy, but as soon as the volcano recovered its equilibrium he regained his good spirits, and discovered the truth of the matter. Vesuvius had felt the need to purge itself, and having purged was better. There was the symbol. Now Italy must take heed of it, and would. And oh, the content, the relaxed and satisfied euphoria that follows a deferred and large purgation! Yes, he declared, the future was bright.
Some days later Simon received an official letter which informed him that he had now, as a result of his wound, been absent from duty for three weeks, and had in consequence been reduced in rank from captain to lieutenant. This was in accordance with an old-established regulation of the War Office which saved the taxpayer money and dissuaded junior officers from staying in hospital longer than was strictly necessary. It also discouraged unruly ambition; for the British War Office has always set its face against militarism.
Simon took a balanced view of his diminished status, made a hurried calculation, and thought it might save him a few pounds of income tax; but Angelo was deeply mortified and for several days refused to speak English, which, he said, was the language of injustice and ingratitude.
Simon was in no hurry to return to duty until he heard that some part of Force 69 was about to begin training for a new operation, when he at once presented himself for medical examination, was declared fit, and promptly set out for Benevento, whither his company had lately removed. An elaborate secrecy enclosed their training programme, and Angelo, to begin with, had no part in it. But the general preparation for large events could not wholly be concealed, and as April vanished from the calendar and May came in, expectancy grew large and taut like a balloon plumping for the ascent.
The battle began a little before midnight on May the eleventh. From the mountains beyond Cassino to the lighted water of Gaeta’s gulf a thunderstorm of gunfire bellowed among the hills and over the sea, and filled dark valleys with reverberant echoes. An army mustered from the five continents of the world advanced to the attack, to destroy the opposing army of Germany and its subject peoples, and to open the gates of Rome. On the Allied side there were Poles and Englishmen, Frenchmen and Scots, Irish and Welsh: that was the European contribution. There were New Zealanders who looked like Cromwell’s Ironsides and fought with pride and professional severity: that was the Antipodean levy. There were small and merry highlanders from the mountains of Nepal, tall ones from the passes of the Afghan frontier, bearded plainsmen from the Punjab, the heirs of Rajput chivalry and Shivaji’s Mahrattas: they were the voluntaries of Hindustan and High Asia. There was on the coast an American army enlisted from New England and California, from Oregon and Kansas and the Carolinas, and at the mountainous end of the line a Canadian corps: that was the New World’s share in the venture. From the fifth continent there came an armoured division, some of English stock and some of Boer descent, with black auxiliaries, and panting for the signal to start a wild and huge array of tribesmen from the Atlas mountains; and the latter, who were compendiously known as Goums, were the semper aliquid novi out of Africa.
The Eighth Army had already won fame enough to make its story live, but none of its battles had been so fierce and hard as this, and the blood of many valiant men ran with the waters of the Rapido and the Garigliano to the Great Sea. In the mountains beyond Cassino the Poles were checked, and British troops and Canadians found the entrance to the Liri Valley held strongly against them. On the coast the Americans of the Fifth Army made progress, but slowly at first. Soon they would go like a river in spate, but to begin with their advance was hardly won. It was on the high hills near the middle of the line that the German defences were most decisively broken in the early days of the battle, and the troops who went through them, farther and faster than anyone else, were the wild men from Morocco: the Goums.
Quickly they created, not merely a salient pointing like a spearhead to the north, but a legend of fear and a fabulous renown. They worked in silence and by night, and terror was their ally. They killed with long steel blades, and in lonely farmhouses the women dreaded them for another reason. Many a German sentry lay headless behind their patrols, and many a woman, it was said, looking up to see the swart and narrow face of a Goum at the window, had miscarried on the spot. In the broad pathway of their advance German outposts betrayed themselves by the chattering of their teeth, and the contadine fled from evening shadows screaming ‘Gli Marocchini, gli Marocchini!’
When the battle had been raging for nearly a fortnight, Simon sent for Angelo and said to him in a casual way, ‘We are going to have a little party of our own. There is a rumour that the Germans are about to do something that we take a poor view of, and I’m going to see if I can put a stop to it. It will be quite a small party, but I’ve got permission to take you with us. You will be very useful, knowing your way about Rome as you do, and I thought you might like to come. We start tomorrow.’
‘And where is your party going to be?’ asked Angelo.
‘In Rome,’ said Simon. ‘Didn’t I make that clear?’
‘But Rome is still occupied by the Germans!’
‘That will add to the interest of it, don’t you think? – Why, what’s the matter?’
Before Simon could catch him, Angelo fell to the ground in a dead faint. Simon made haste to turn him over, to loosen his belt, to pour water on his face and chafe his hands. As soon as he showed signs of recovery, Simon gave him rum in an enamel mug, and Angelo sat up, pale and shivering.
‘What is the matter?’ Simon repeated with anxiety in his voice. ‘Are you ill?’
Angelo stared at him with wide-open, terrified eyes. Never in his life had he heard a more fearful proposal than this calm suggestion that he should join a party of desperadoes to break through the German lines, and enter by stealth the enemy’s citadel! The shock of hearing it had frightened the blood from his brain – and who, he thought with a passion of returning fear, who could blame it for retreating before so monstrous a prospect? Never, never would he consent to put himself in such agonizing jeopardy, and throw his life away to crown it! And yet, when he tried to speak, he could not find the words of refusal. He looked at Simon and thought: He and his friends are going, and they have asked me to join them because they regard me as a friend. They are very brave, they do not think deeply but they laugh a great deal, and in a careless way they are very kind: it is a good thing to have such friends, but Ο my God, what a price to pay! If I refuse to go, if I admit that I am too frightened, I shall lose their friendship for a certainty; and if I agree, and make myself one of them, I may very well lose my life, and how much good will friendship be then? What a choice for a May morning!
‘Give me some more rum,’ he said, and emptied the mug.
He gasped and shuddered slightly, but soon felt a warmth inside him like a great lusty visitor coming with a laugh and a heart-stirring greeting into a cold quiet house. That was excellent. The visitor was most welcome, and when he laughed again it sounded throughout the house, and lamps were lighted in every room. But then, surprisingly, the visitor took charge of the situation, and borrowing Angelo’s vocal chords, his palate and teeth and tongue, addressed Simon in quite unforgivable terms and offered an explanation of the fainting-fit that was wildly mendacious. – It was the idea of seeing Rome again, long before he had considered the possibility of such happiness, that had keeled him over, he said. An emotional type was Angelo, quite unlike the English, and his lack of self-control must be forgiven him. – So said the rum-bold swaggering visitor, and a moment later, to make things infinitely and irretrievably worse, declared: ‘And I shall, of course, be delighted to come with you. We are a band of brothers and nothing shall divide us!’
An hour later Angelo lay in his tent and felt his heart beating against his ribs like a funeral bell, with a slow and melancholy stroke. He had signed away his life, he was convinced of that, and in return for the indifferent friendship of a score or so of young men as callous as they were reckless – a friendship that would be long-lived if it lived for a week – he had done no more than ensure that his last week upon earth would be spent in a torment of gathering dread. Never a thought came into his mind that he could survive the adventure. Danger had always filled him with such awe that any danger had seemed allpowerful to destroy, and this was no common danger but stark peril for a hero to gamble with. He was self-doomed, there was no doubt of it, and he listened as he lay to his heart that beat a funeral-knell.
In the morning the face in his shaving-mirror looked at him so whitely, from such dark enormous eyes, that he was at first startled and then impressed by it. His cup of warm water grew cold while he studied it. It was the reflection, he thought, of a tragic but romantic figure. It was the face, he told himself, of a man of destiny. It had caught its pallor from the coldness of fate, and he could not avoid his allotted task however deeply his eyes might mourn the necessity. – This perception did not exactly give him courage, but lent him a kind of resignation, or hypnotized his wilder fears, and let him pass the next few days without drawing much attention to his utter unsuitability for service with Force 69.
Simon, quickly promoted to captain again, was to command the foray. His party consisted of two subalterns and a score of men. They were all heavily armed, and though Angelo knew most of them fairly well, and had seen photographs of their wives and sweethearts that made him feel very much at home with them, he was deeply impressed by their appearance in battle-array. How little, he thought, their wives and sweethearts really knew of them.
They went first to Naples, and there before nightfall embarked in a very small ship for the port of Anzio. Fortunately the sea was calm, and nothing interrupted their passage. The starlit darkness was warm as new milk, and Simon, sitting under the lee of the deckhouse in a mood of pleasant anticipation, told Angelo what they were proposing to do.
Allied sympathizers in Rome had reported that the Germans were preparing to blow-up the bridges over the Tiber. The Allies, who were looking forward to pursuing a defeated German army across the bridges, would be seriously hindered by their destruction, and Simon’s task was to prevent it. The circumstances, he said, would probably favour him, because the Germans would not explode the charges until they had withdrawn all but the last rearguard of their troops, and by then there might be some confusion in the city. There would be a period favourable for attack, and if he could strike in the very bull’s-eye of opportunity, they might well be successful. They would enter Rome from the north …
The canopy of the sky was wearing thin. The moths had been there, and through it in prickle-points shone the brilliant vacancy beyond. Nothing was real, thought Angelo. They were ghosts on a sterile sea, and there were holes in the sky. This mad adventure was certainly unreal, for only in the fantasy of a dream could he have embarked upon it. He listened to Simon with the accompaniment of a running prayer that he might wake up.
But in the morning, at Anzio, he had to admit the reality of the scene, though it was different from his expectation of it. The sun shone brightly on a calm sea and about fifty soldiers, stark naked and as brown as chestnuts, were noisily bathing in the clear boulder-strewn water on the outer side of the breakwater. The little harbour was full of strange craft, and men were shouting, working, hurrying to and fro, with unceasing busyness. Inland the view was screened by a wall of artificial smoke, and a rumble of gunfire came from the invisible hills beyond it. The tall painted buildings along the water front, scarred and torn by shellfire, looked calm and decorative among their companion-trees. Though vibrant with activity, the scene was unexpectedly peaceful.
Simon marched his little company up the cobbled wharf through part of the town, and into a scrubby wood. The wood was thickly populated and strewn like the floor of a gigantic customs-shed with military stores in great variety and vast abundance. Wherever they went they saw little dumps of oil and food and ammunition. Shells here, cheese and pickles over there. Elsewhere blankets and barbed wire, pick-helves and canned peaches and more ammunition, and grenades in wooden boxes. The air also was crowded, and full of odours. It smelt of a sickly vegetation, of sweat and leather, of acrid smoke and dung. There were soldiers everywhere, working or sleeping, smoking and brewing tea and eating ration beef out of the tin. Many wore nothing but khaki shorts, and the sun had burnt their shoulders to flaming red or polished brown. Their common expression was a tough indifference, and their language was shocking.
Simon was shown a small unoccupied area in which his party might bivouac, and after he had given some necessary orders he walked idly towards Angelo, who was standing deep in thought at the edge of a large hole. A German shell, falling by chance on a store of ammunition, had exploded it and opened an untidy crater; and now in the loose earth of its circumference a border of scarlet poppies bloomed.
‘After the last war,’ said Simon, ‘they took those flaming weeds for a symbol of remembrance. But the poppy is the flower of oblivion, and the poppy did its own work in its own way.’
‘There are always poppies at this time of year,’ said Angelo. ‘I wasn’t thinking about them, but about the Emperors Nero and Caligula, who were born here. In Anzio, I mean.’
‘Had they any voice in the matter? They could no more choose their landfall than the soldiers who are here today.’
‘Of course not. But in such a time as this it is refreshing to think about the lives of wicked Emperors. They sinned for their pleasure, and in good style.’
Ambulance-jeeps, laden with wounded men, came slowly down the road from the front of battle. The troops so long confined in the narrow acres of the bridgehead had now broken their perimeter and were fighting their way through a gap in the Alban hills to the Via Casilina. American soldiers from the main front, advancing through the flooded Pontine Marshes, had joined the beleaguered garrison in Latium, and both were striking tumultuously at the Germans’ seaward flank. For the next few days Simon spent most of his time observing the battle at close quarters, but Angelo put off several invitations to join him, and passed the time in wistful melancholy on the sea-shore.
North of Anzio there are low cliffs of a soft stone that breaks easily into caves. Some of the caves had been enlarged, and soldiers were living in them. They spread their washing on the rocks, and the shore had something of a domestic look. Lying on the warm sand or swimming in the mild sea there were always soldiers, free from duty for a little while, making a brief holiday of opportunity. Gunfire seemed no more than thunder in the hills, and Angelo would swim out to sea and wish that he might meet a friendly dolphin. In classical times, as he had learnt at school, it was no uncommon thing for a young man to win a dolphin’s regard and be carried on its back to some delectable island. But he wished in vain, and searched to no purpose the silver-sprinkled sea. The character of dolphins, like that of Emperors, had presumably suffered a change.
The day came when they must go forward with their adventure, for now the fall of Rome was imminent. For their transport Simon had procured two half-tracked German vehicles, captured from the enemy, and a sufficiency of soft, long-snouted caps, such as were worn by the Africa Korps, to give his party a rough disguise. At sunset they embarked with their vehicles aboard a sheer-sided ungainly craft with a blunt bow, and put to sea and headed to the north under the rising moon.
Their landfall was a point on the coast some twenty miles beyond the mouth of the Tiber, and they made it in the darkness between moonset and dawn. A pair of partisans, with two dim lanterns in line, guided them in. Their vessel grounded on a shelving beach, the door in the bow was lowered, and Simon’s party in their vehicles drove ashore. The partisans led them through a minefield and a wood. A couple of miles to the south there was much excitement on the beach, for the Germans had discovered what appeared to be an attempted landing. Two motor-gunboats had caused the alarm to divert attention from Simon’s invasion, and after manoeuvring off-shore at high speed and firing several thousand rounds of coloured ammunition, they drew away and set their course for Anzio again. Simon’s party, by this time, was motoring comfortably towards the farmhouse where he proposed to go into hiding.
The vehicles were concealed, the soldiers brewed-up and ate a hearty meal, then most of them lay down in a barn and went to sleep. A guard was inconspicuously posted, and Simon with one of the subalterns set off to an appointed rendezvous. They had not long to wait. Within half an hour two excited Italians appeared, who at once declared that the Germans were in full flight from Rome, and that Allied aircraft were now bombing their transport on the main roads north of the city.
They knew nothing about the bridges over the Tiber except that they were strongly guarded. The rumour was still current that they had been prepared for demolition, but now a counter-opinion declared that the Germans had no intention of destroying them. A story was also to be heard that some of the bridges had already been blown-up, and both the Italians said they had been alarmed during the night by loud noises that must have been demolitions of some kind. – So much they told, with great pleasure and volubility, constantly interrupting each other and repeatedly breaking their narrative to describe with animated and expressive gestures the weary, hang-dog, and shamefaced air of the retreating enemy. What a contrast, they exclaimed, to the arrogance with which the Tedeschi had entered Rome, their bands a brazen triumph, their great boots thumping the road, and their stupid faces starched with pride!
Simon put many questions without getting much more information, and after some thought he said to his subaltern, ‘I think we had better start.’
‘I believe you’re right,’ said the subaltern.
They returned to the farm and roused the soldiers. Simon said to them: ‘We’re going to start in half an hour. So far as I can learn, the Hun is pulling out of Rome as fast as he can, so we haven’t any time to lose. I think our two half-tracks, going as fast as they can in the opposite direction, will have a good chance of getting through. You look quite ugly enough, in those caps, to be mistaken for Germans, and till we get on the main road we’ll take turns in leading so that we can all get a good coating of dust. We shan’t fight unless we have to. If we’re held up, we’ll try to bluff and run. If we get separated, we’ll continue independently to our rendezvous on the outskirts of Rome. Then we’ll go to ground again until we’ve done a further reconnaissance. Is that quite clear?’
The soldiers briskly began to wash in the green water of a long stone trough. They propped-up fragments of mirror and shaved. They were quite calm, but their language, as they discussed their prospects and their commanding officer, was shocking. They themselves, it appeared, were shocked. Not by their language, but by Simon, who asked too shocking much from them, they said. But they took pride, as it seemed, in being so deeply shocked, and no one had a word to say against Simon himself. Not a shocking word. It was just the shocking demands he made.
‘Shock me,’ said a tall brown fellow with long hairy arms and a long lean jaw, screwing his mouth to tauten the skin for scraping, ‘shock me if that shocker gives a shock for any shocking Jerry that ever shocked. I’ll be shocked if he does.’
‘What about the shocking tea?’ shouted another. So they brewed-up again, and quickly ate another hearty meal, then climbing into their open vehicles sat there as primly upright as if they had indeed been Germans.
To begin with they drove along a country road where there was little chance of meeting traffic. Two of the partisans had volunteered to go with them. On the landward side the country was lightly wooded, but towards the sea it fell gradually in broad uncovered slopes. They could see where they were going, and drove with confidence. But the country road led to the main road, the Via Aurelia, and they must use that for some three or four miles. Then, if they were fortunate so far, they could turn inland on a vagrant lesser route that served a rural traffic only, where they might hope to avoid interference and circumvent such minor obstacles as they would encounter.
A little distance from the Via Aurelia they halted under cover, and Simon with a sergeant went forward to regard the scene. – A German convoy was moving northwards at high speed, with long intervals between the lorries, and a battalion of infantry, immensely elongated, was on the march. Two staff-cars came in sight, travelling fast, and in succession overtook a heavy-laden lorry. The footsoldiers made way for them. Then quite suddenly, as if they had that instant crystallized in the bright air, three white-starred aeroplanes appeared at no great height above the road, and sped along it in a swift assassin’s flight, and left behind them the roaring wash of their propellers, and dead men tumbling on the verges, and burning wreckage. Both staff-cars were hit, and leaping from the road turned somersaults into a field. The marching infantry scattered like minnows in a pool, save the sluggards who lay still. And a canvas-hooded lorry slewed sideways and stopped abruptly, then toppled over and palely flowered into shimmering grey-tipped flame.
Simon and the sergeant ran back to their vehicles, beckoned the drivers to start, and mounted quickly. The heat of the burning lorry scorched them as they passed it, and two soldiers bending over a wounded comrade looked up and shouted angrily. An officer who had belatedly brought a light anti-aircraft gun into action held up his hand against them, but Simon made a sweeping and dramatic gesture that persuaded him to stand clear. Half a mile farther on they passed three lorries, halted close together, and a corporal who stood on the road and abused the drivers. He also signalled them to stop, but Simon repeated his gesture with good effect.
They crossed a bridge that engineers were preparing for demolition. Red cakes of explosive lay on the parapet. Here they excited suspicion and three men pursued them for a few yards, one of them firing his revolver. Road and railway now ran side by side, and more engineers were tying small cutting charges to the rails. An officer stood at the roadside, in argument with another, pointing furiously at his watch. These also turned and stared with suspicious curiosity at Simon’s troop, but did nothing more than stare. Ahead of them, marching wearily, was another battalion of infantry, but before they reached the leading files the partisan who sat by Simon pointed to the left, and with barely moderated speed they turned into a side road. Three soldiers at the corner were laying mines in the verges.
For some distance ahead the lesser road was empty, and all of them felt in their muscles a small but pleasant relaxation. All but Angelo, that is. Angelo, sitting with his eyes tightly shut, was praying that he might die without pain. His refusal to observe the situation was due to his realization that in no other way could he endure it. He had not opened his eyes since leaving the farm, nor did he open them when, some few miles from the Via Aurelia, the two vehicles came abruptly to a halt.
They were on a curving road with a wood to the right of it and a high bank to the left. Round the corner towards them, moving faster than their custom, came a herd of thirty or forty cattle. They were the great white cattle of the Tiber valley, standing as high as a Guardsman at their tallest, and immensely horned. They filled the road, and within a few seconds the vehicles were two islands, close together, in a turbulent milky sea. The partisan beside Simon stood up and exclaimed, ‘They are being driven!’
Simon also stood up. ‘Germans,’ he said. ‘I can see eight of them, and there may be more behind.’
He gave his orders: ‘Two men and the driver stay in each truck. The rest of you get into the wood, quickly, and we’ll take them from the flank and rear.’
Nimbly the men leaped out, and Angelo, buffeted by their movement, but with his eyes still grimly closed, asked faintly what the matter was.
‘Just a little parcel of Jerries,’ said someone.
The word was too much for his resolution. He could not sit and wait for death, but while strength to run was in him, he would run. He laid his hand upon the rail, and scarcely looking where he might land, jumped out.
His descent was negligible, for he fell astride the tallest ox in the herd. He pitched forward, and to save himself grasped the loose hide over its withers. The ox in great alarm struck sideways with its mighty horns, goaded a cow into movement, and found a space ahead of it. It made a ponderous and futile attempt to buck, then broke into a lumbering trot. Angelo held tightly on.
Still driven by the Germans behind, and excited by the soldiers in its midst, all the herd was moving more quickly now. The great ox thrust its way to the front, and by example and contagion increased the general pace. The herd stampeded.
In comparison with the half-wild cattle of the South American pampas, or fighting bulls on a Spanish ranch, its speed might have been considered slow; but to Angelo it seemed a wild and furious progress. He was tossed and shaken as if he had been abroad on some wild ocean. On either side of him, like the billows of a stormy sea broken to white, were galloping shoulders and tumultuous pale haunches. Long gleaming horns were the naked spars of tall ships running before a gale. The broad beast under him rolled and plunged as though it were meeting confused and contrarious waves. He began to feel slightly sick, but as he was heaved further forward on the ox’s back, he took a new grip on a loose roll of skin, and grimly kept his seat.
The great ox began to outstrip the rest of the herd, and turning suddenly from the road it entered the wood by a narrow path. Low branches struck cruelly as they charged beneath, and brambles tore at Angelo’s legs. He lowered his head and shut his eyes again. All his muscles were aching with the effort to maintain his seat.
How long his ride had lasted, and how far he had travelled, he had no notion when at last the pace grew slower, the gallop became a trot, and the trot a walk. Angelo sat up and opened his eyes. They were approaching a farmyard, and in a cartshed two men and a woman were watching them. Spouting its steamy breath out of distended nostrils, foam dripping from its mouth and vast flanks heaving, the ox stood still. Angelo dismounted, and on failing knees tottered to the cartshed.
One of the men there was broadly built, with a fat unshaven face and a swollen paunch. He wore a soft black hat, black trousers, a white shirt fastened at the throat with a brass stud, and red braces. He carried his coat over his left arm. His voice was an over-ripe, husky bass.
‘So you have joined the cavalry?’ he said. ‘When you left us at Reggio I realized that we of the infantry were too slow for you. Have you had a good ride?’
Angelo wiped the sweat from his eyes and recognized him. ‘Sergeant Vespucci!’ he exclaimed.