On the other side of the river, spirits are high. They’ve driven Franco’s forces from the steep hillsides outside Corbera. But everyone knows Fascist reinforcements will soon arrive and it’s no surprise when the crash and boom of bombardment steps up a day later. The men scan the skies, and wonder if the German and Italian planes have got the trick of breeding. Nat sees fear rising in the eyes of lads who have not fought before, and he does his best to steady their nerves.
These rocky slopes give little reassurance. Trench strategy is out the window. Where they find earth, they quickly meet rock face beneath the soil.
‘Stay with me when it starts, boys,’ he tells them that evening. ‘And don’t be tempted to return fire too quickly. You’ll be playing into their hands.’
Next day comes the order to take Hill 481.
‘We take this hill, we get Gandesa,’ says the captain, as they crouch in a barranco.
Orderly at first, they begin to crawl upward, darting from rock to rock, heads craned, ears cocked, listening, listening. There are too few trees. The terrain is scrubby, desperately exposed. Once Nat slips on scree. He hears the loose rock shift and start to roll and he holds his breath, imagining a cascade of stones falling on the next man, a kind of avalanche. He fears the fire it will draw and swears silently. He might just as well leap up and shout, ‘Here we are! Over here! Come and get us!’
But nothing. Just the crunch and slide of boots on stone, and the swish swish of cloth against cloth, as legs move swiftly, unevenly. Crouching, as low as he can without grinding to a halt, feeling every step in his thighs, Nat looks up at the sheer rock above. A precipice. Take that hill, he thought. No mention of the concrete bunkers at the top, the barbed wire tangled round them, four feet high, the trenches that must be there, too, unseen from where Nat and his strung-out line of comrades lurk below.
In fact the first fire comes from the town, Gandesa. Machine-gunners – high in the church tower perhaps? Nat can’t tell – firing from their flank, send up clods of earth and rock. Then he knows there must be Fascists holding fast to other heights around them. All at once, these other men, invisible in their bunkers, begin to fire in earnest. There’s no hope of retaliating.
‘Steve’s hit!’ Nat feels the cry in his chest. Steve is a Scouser, only a few months out of Liverpool. Nat likes him, though he hardly knows him. José, their first-aid man, is already inching his way towards Steve, bandages in a bag on his back. But Steve has been hit in the head, the back of his skull sliced off. He had no chance at all. He’s dead before José gets close.
The fire is almost continuous the next day too. Impossible to move forward, impossible to retreat. They dig where they can, build up feeble parapets of loose rock, and wait in these shallow shelters. The ground cracks and splinters around them and they burn in the summer sun.
Nat’s mouth is dry. Dry as dust, dry as sand, dry as bones. His limbs shake constantly. (Three or four a second, the shells fall.) Again and again, bile rises in his throat. He can’t choke its sourness back.
His mind is blank, paralysed for as long as the shelling lasts. But in the pauses between fire, his thoughts bring reinforcements.
What is the enemy doing? Waiting for guns to cool. Reloading now. It will start again soon. Not long now.
In this silence the whine of flies grows as loud as aviones. They settle on excrement and wounds. They settle on Nat’s face as though it is a corpse already. He twitches, shakes off the insects. Real planes are circling too. What are they doing? Why don’t they drop their bombs? Come on, come on. Get it over with. Now’s as good as later. No, the enemy must be too close. They don’t want to hit their own. There they go, flying east, back to pound the river and the boats and the bridges.
Other thoughts leak from bowels and guts. Just run away. Get out of here. Can’t do this any more. I can’t. I can’t. Too much fear. Creeping through my body. My fear will get me.
Night. They wait for news and hope for back-up. Men come, scrambling through the darkness. One has a vast reel of wire on his back, unspooling as he clambers up. With telephone contact, news filters through. Don’t move. We’ve got Gandesa almost surrounded. They’re waiting for us. Depending on us. Fresh ammunition? Food? Not much. The Fascists have opened the flood gates, you see. The Ebro is rising. Pontoons swept away, boats unmoored. Some mules on their way. A little water. Not enough. Cigarettes.
The wounded are dragged away.
Morning, almost. A fresh assault, their turn to lead. This is like running an abattoir, forcing these boys back up there, mute and passive as animals. A few try to turn and run. Nat sees one lad rooted to the spot with terror. The lieutenant brings out his pistol and the boy starts moving.
This time they get higher, close enough to meet grenades as well as machine-gun fire. The grenades come over the barbed wire in showers, rolling and bouncing down the hill like living creatures. One officer after another is wounded, and replaced. Nat frets, hoping his turn will not be soon. Talk about rising through the ranks. The attack comes to an abrupt end.
And once again, they are stuck. Nowhere to go till nightfall. Nat makes himself keep firing. Then he runs out of ammunition, and for an hour lies still.
Away from the stink of the trench, he smells the hillside herbs again. It brings back memories of Jarama, and the stilted letter he wrote to Bernie’s wife after the battle. He should have done a better job of that. He’d make amends though, go and see her when he could. Somewhere off the Mile End Road, wasn’t it? He would give her a picture he still has of Bernie.
He tries not to think about Felix. There’s such a thing as tempting fate.
The sun is directly overhead. Less shadow should make things safer. Nat pushes himself up, just a fraction, trying to get a sense of things, where everybody is, who is left. Ronnie Evesham is a little to Nat’s right. He’s found a hollow of sorts, below some scrub. Ronnie catches Nat’s eye, and gestures to him, mouthing the words: ‘It’s safer here. Come and join me.’
Stealthily, Nat begins to move. Like a baby who hasn’t learned to crawl, he drags himself towards Ronnie on his forearms. A rock fragment digging into his kneecap nearly makes him cry out loud. Others crossed the Ebro with sticks of wood on strings around their necks, to bite on rather than scream. Too late now for that. Ronnie is signalling again. What is it? What does he want?
A blow to his side throws Nat on his back. The ground here is too steep to resist the momentum. Feeling no pain, he begins to roll, slithering and turning across the loose earth that must have come from Ronnie’s hollow. Soil collects in his mouth. By the time a cluster of thorn bushes can halt Nat’s progress, he has blacked out.