Mac wingate 10, p.15
Mac Wingate 10, page 15
Sure enough, the seven remaining men of the unit were standing amid a herd of sheep and mules at the very edge of the wadis. There were also Indian soldiers, armed with Mark I .303 inch rifles, standing at the front and rear of the line, keeping the reluctant, near-panicked animals together.
“We’re supposed to be demolitions men,” Samuels complained. “What’s the point of coming here if we’re only going to lead asses into the mountains?”
“It’s better than sitting on our asses,” Meyer retorted unconvincingly. Given the incredible ferocity of the previous month’s fighting, the half-day respite was like manna from heaven. If he closed his eyes and thought real hard, the corporal was almost able to make it seem like thirty days of R and R.
But with the return of night came the return of a vicious battle which had been waged by several different nationalities for several fruitless weeks. As Lieutenant Colonel Comstock had told Wingate, the French, British and Indians were flailing away at the mountain, but were failing to make it into a molehill. And Wingate’s company was about to attempt what Comstock had told him never to do: cross the Rapido River.
The Indians were nothing if not thorough. Several reconnaissance units had been emasculated getting the necessary geographical information for this operation. The shallowest, thinnest section of the river within reasonable distance had been located and the herd of farm animals had been collected. But while the sheep carried only wool, the mules had packs strapped to their sides.
The humans also had supplies attached to their backs, but their purposes were different. Wingate had lost his bag of Bender goodies back at Campomorta, but he had stashed one or two things from the Anzio shed in his pack—which he had carried onto the Northern Light along with his carbine. That material, like all the material in the other men’s packs, was to be used to get to Snake Head alive.
The mules and the humans were getting restless. They trembled at the mouth of the wadis that emptied out on the Rapido’s shore as the Indians passed orders quietly down the line. Not knowing the language, Wingate’s crew were placed at the very end of the company and left pretty much to their own devices. But Wingate made sure the Americans knew where they were going and what the situation was.
“As soon as the column starts moving, stay down and keep amid the sheep,” Wingate said. “They’ll serve as our mine detectors and machine gun cover. The whole point is to get up the opposite bank with the supply mules.”
“So we’re using sheep to cover our asses,” Meyer punned.
Wingate made a fist, trying to keep a straight face. He failed. “I’m going to floor you,” he warned the corporal, although he was actually glad Meyer was there to relieve the tension. “Once we get into the brush of Monte Trocchio, it won’t be so easy to shoot us. But watch out for antipersonnel mines. You saw what they did to Schwartz and Parker.”
Wingate’s reminder went a long way toward wiping the smiles off the men’s faces. Samuels didn’t like that situation very much, so he turned to the unit’s resident jester. “Hey, Meyer. You got any ones about sheep?”
“A ventriloquist was driving through the country when he stopped at a farm because of a storm,” the corporal said immediately, as if he had been waiting for someone to ask. “He gets a tour of the place by Tex, the hired hand, who brings him into the barn. Deciding to have some fun with the ignorant farm boy, the ventriloquist makes one of the horses talk. Instead of laughing, though, Tex runs screaming to the boss, saying, ‘If one of those sheep in there says anything about me, it’s a damn lie!’”
Samuels almost choked trying not to laugh out loud. Dodson and Conrad snorted, their shoulders hunching. Woolcott sniffed and turned away. Mergallo didn’t move, looking intently up the line. Wingate watched what were now his men and again felt an emotion inside him. But this time it was a realistic feeling of limited responsibility. He couldn’t watch over them like a protecting spirit. He could only wish them the best and do the best he could.
There were always two sides to every question, Wingate thought. One side might say that it was a shame to waste such men in this war. The other said that if this war had to be fought, only the best men should do it. Any less and we’d be inviting disaster.
Disaster was being invited all along the Allied Italian Line. The night air was braced with impending danger, hanging over the Anzio-Cassino connection like a thundercloud. This supply run was only a small part of the collective push the Allies seemed to be preparing for. It had to have something to do with the plans Erikson wouldn’t let him see, Wingate thought.
The battle for Anzio along the road to Rome didn’t seem to have any real military value. Victory or defeat wouldn’t tip the scales irreversibly one way or the other. It seemed as if the two armies were viciously clashing on the Mediterranean shores to prove something intangible to each other. Whoever won was trying to say that he was the stronger, the more dedicated and obsessed. He was the more determined to win. Was that any reason for good men to die?
Wingate didn’t have to ruminate on the question. Of course it was.
Suddenly his attention was refocused on the river’s shores as the mass of animals started to move. As the sheep and mules shuddered and pivoted, feeling the ones in front of them surge forward, the stonk attacks around the location seemed to grow in severity and volume. The shells’ explosions almost made a drumroll sound—adding to the dramatic insanity of the moment.
“This is it,” Wingate told the others. “Keep low and I’ll see you on the other side.”
The crossing was horrible. It was a jumbled, messy, painful, floundering swim across a frighteningly fast waterway. The trouble started immediately after the men and animals emerged from the wadis. Given a choice, the sheep decided to try and spread out along the Rapido shore rather than charge right into the freezing, rushing water. The men in front suddenly found themselves running toward the river without cover, pulling mules who were just as reluctant to dive into the drink.
The men behind the first few were quick enough to move to the outside rank of sheep to keep them in a bunch, but that belied the use of the animals as cover from gunfire. Suddenly all the Indian soldiers were protecting the sheep while herding them toward the river. Finally a large enough number of the animals were struggling in the water, but the soldiers hadn’t counted on the current being as strong as it was.
The sheep that weren’t swept downstream by the rushing water were killed two other ways. First, the water soaked into their wool. The extra weight of the freezing water pulled them down, until their heads were under the surface, drowning them. Second, the German guns opened bloody holes in them as they fought across the thirty-foot expanse.
By the time Wingate’s men emerged from the gulley the area was awash with dying animals and terrified men. They had only taken one step toward the river when the first artillery shell blasted against the opposite shore. Lieutenant Woolcott instinctively turned toward safety, only to feel Wingate’s fingers wrapped around his collar. His way was further blocked by another shell falling right into the wadis where they had been.
“There’s no going back,” Wingate shouted, throwing him forward. The captain kept pushing until they were both in the water. “Forget the sheep!” Woolcott heard Wingate call at the top of his lungs. “Use the mules! Save the supplies if you can!”
This wasn’t what Major Bender would have done, the rear part of Woolcott’s petrified mind said. He would have saved the supplies at all costs. Then again, the front part of the lieutenant’s brain answered, the major never would have gone into the water. He would have been directing it all from a safe vantage point.
Wingate flailed through the stunningly cold river, hanging on to the rear of a mule. He never would have done such a thing back in Wisconsin, knowing how hard one of those things could kick, but the ass wouldn’t be able to do much damage immersed in the water. He looked over the donkey’s torso to see the tell-tale eruptions of machine gun bullets entering the water in a line heading straight for him.
As the bullets slashed across the mule’s back, Mac pushed himself forward with his hands and feet and dove into the river. He could feel the closest slug sending a ripple against his rear. He tried to make his feet go faster, only to trip on something on the river bottom and topple forward.
The sight that greeted him under the water was seared into his memory. It was a vista of horror he would never forget. He had tripped over an Indian’s corpse heading downstream. He saw the man’s puffed face sliding by, his arms out, his back just over the river bottom. To his infinite regret, Wingate looked back the way the body had come.
It was a weird, floating graveyard. Men and parts of men billowed in the inky greenness, animal corpses interspersed with their bodies. Little whirlpools of streaming blood added the only color to the scene, which flashed in and out of Mac’s vision whenever a shell burst overhead.
Wingate’s head blasted above the surface, his mouth gasping for breath. A shell smashed into the river fifty yards up from him, most of its destructive power swallowed by the rushing water. Realizing that the enemy was getting their range, Mac pushed himself to new speeds. He reached out, fingers clutching for the opposite bank. He finally pulled himself out of the water, jumping as high as his soaked uniform would let him. He clawed his way up the deep bank, his limbs sinking in the mud. It was like trying to climb up chocolate pudding.
But even that problem could be surmounted with the knowledge that certain death was waiting to claim him if he slowed down. He leaped across the muck, which seemed to cling to him like a blobby hand. By the time he reached the top, the stuff had taken on the consistency of quicksand, seemingly wanting to claim him for its own. Wingate rolled into the foliage, completely oblivious of any booby traps that might be there. At this point, an antipersonnel mine would give him a much needed rest.
Only after a few moments could he even bear to think again. Then, rising to his hands and knees, he tried to take stock of the situation. In the intermittent flashes of shell light he could make out several bodies and the braying forms of a few mules. Moving forward, he nearly collided with an equally exhausted Sergeant Mergallo.
Both men tried to speak, but both were still too winded. Mergallo was only able to lead Wingate to the remaining pocket of men. There were half a dozen Indians left, their people having gotten the worst of it. Of the Americans, only the pretty boy, Andrew Samuels, was missing. No one knew what happened to him and no one saw him again. Like so many here, he simply ceased to exist—carried away by a blood-filled river.
The real tragedy was that no one felt for him, there on the bank of the Rapido River. Wingate would occasionally recall the face and name in later months, but soon the memory drifted away. Wingate forgot what his voice sounded like, and like a picture that slowly faded, his features became a blur in Mac’s mind. His life was relegated to his family in the form of a letter Wingate wrote them. His death was swept away by the Rapido.
Wingate could only assume that the mountain wasn’t heavily mined because the enemy used it for regular infiltration. There was nothing quite as embarrassing as getting blown up by one of your own mines, so he assumed the Nazis kept the way clear. The rest of the trip was tense, but nothing compared to the experience of crossing the river. He should have taken Comstock’s advice, Mac realized.
They had to walk two and a half miles across the steep, bramble-filled face of Monte Trocchio, deterred only by the mules’ obstinance and their own coldness. Wingate could scarcely believe there could be cold like this. He had been in Norway and had Norse blood, but that still didn’t prepare him for the kind of cold that came from a combination of freezing air and being soaked. The chill went down to the bone, and he lost all feeling in his fingers and toes.
He was forced to team the men up when one of the animals died and he felt himself getting sleepy. That feeling was the first sign of being frozen to death, he reminded himself. He let Conrad tend to them quickly, then matched the corpsman with Woolcott, Meyer with Dodson, and himself with Mergallo. They each made sure the other didn’t lose consciousness.
It was lucky they met no opposition, since they probably would have dropped when the first gun bolt was pulled back. The weather would have saved the enemy from executing them. And the higher they went, the worse it got. The air got colder and thinner while they got weaker and sicker. It was the biggest miracle of the campaign that they arrived at their destination at all. As it was, Wingate was impressed that they didn’t turn up outside the Monastery for morning mass. When they finally arrived at Point 593, he wasn’t sure whether they led the mules or the mules led them.
Nine
When Wingate woke up he was afraid that he had been moved to Hell’s Half Acre. He opened his eyes to see a tent top and heard the distant sounds of groans. But as his consciousness grew clearer, the sound of gunfire and artillery attacks—the unceasing soundtrack for this whole mission—drowned out all the other noises.
When he turned his stiff neck, he could see that he was in a makeshift hospital, consisting of a small tent erected around an oil-drum stove. The six beds were placed in a pattern around the heater so their skin could thaw out. Mac’s men lay around him in the small sanctuary, in varying degrees of sleep.
Looking under the covers at himself, Wingate saw that someone had done a needed emergency number on him. His original uniform was completely gone, replaced by a special winter outfit he didn’t completely recognize. All he knew for sure was that he was now wearing a pale set of long johns which felt wonderfully warm, covered by a heavy woolen shirt and pants.
His feet were covered by a heavy pair of socks which matched the underwear and he saw that all their boots encircled the drum stove like an Indian attack around a wagon train. Wingate forced himself to a sitting position in bed, against the screaming wishes of the rest of his body. The very tips of his toes and fingers were tingling, which he thought was a good sign until almost all his nerves at once started to jangle pain messages to his brain.
He tried to feel the flesh of his wrist, but his fingers were like uncontrollable little sausages and the flesh and bone just beneath his hand looked and felt like a beanbag. The overall feeling was one of caressing agony. Something seemed to be trying to rip his nerves apart from the inside. It was not a feeling that washed over him, but one that seemed to be trying to break out.
It was an incredible feeling. Everything hurt but his bones. Getting himself to a sitting position was like trying to single-handedly get the Statue of Liberty to lie down. As soon as he succeeded, however, the flap of the tent drew back and a small Indian man in a green and black uniform strode in.
“Oh, no, no, no,” he said with a tiny smile. “Not a very good idea, I think.” Unlike the commander at the Rapido—who spoke with a learned English accent—this small soldier had the classic Indian dialect. The little man moved right up to Mac and easily returned him to a prone position, as if the muscular American had been a Raggedy Andy doll.
“Listen now,” he said affably, tucking Wingate in. “I work very hard to make sure none of your feet fall off, so you be sure to get all better. Hmm?”
“Where are we?” Wingate asked, hearing a froglike grating come out of his throat. He swallowed, trying to get the hunk of white paste that seemed to be lodged there out of the way. “What happened?”
“Oh, you come staggering into camp last night, like zombies,” the man explained. “Two of the donkeys die right after you arrive. We hurry you in here and work very quickly, oh yes. You are very, very lucky you come directly to us, and not to the Germans.”
“Where are they?” Wingate managed to ask clearly. The man thought about it, turned toward the tent flap and pointed. “Oh, about seventy-five, one hundred yards in that direction,” he said matter-of-factly.
Wingate tried to jerk upright, only to have his muscles deliver him an ultimatum. You do that again, they told him in no uncertain terms, and we’re leaving. He immediately dropped back onto the blanket-covered cot. “That ... that close?” he gasped.
“This is Snake Head, sahib,” the Indian said. “The enemy is only as far away as its fangs. The Monastery watches over us all. The Gods laugh at our pitiful struggles.” The man continued to fuss over Wingate as he spoke sociably. Then he rose to see to the other five men.
“It doesn’t sound good,” Wingate said to the ceiling, getting used to his voice again. “What are our chances?” As far as Mac was concerned, he had returned from the dead and he wanted to stay that way.
“Oh, fine, oh yes,” the Indian countered, not looking over. “Do not worry yourself about that. We are dug in very well. We have ample supplies, with thanks to you. All will change tomorrow. You shall see.”
“What happens tomorrow?” Wingate croaked.
Now the man rose from Woolcott’s bed to look at Wingate and smile. “Tomorrow we bomb the Monastery. The Germans can no longer use it for attack or observation. Tomorrow it will all be different.”
“What day is it?” Wingate asked, not knowing how long he had slept.
“The morning of February 15th,” the Indian replied. “Twenty-four hours from now the might of Allied High Command will reduce the Monastery to worthless rubble.” He came back to the captain’s bed and leaned over. “I take good care of you. Do not worry. Just rest now and get better. We will wake you for the evacuation. Do not fear. We will take you to safety. Just rest now. Rest.”
The man’s soothing tones lulled Wingate back toward sleep, his conscious mind finally admitting how rotten he felt and how much he needed to recuperate. He let his worries and concerns float away, his head rolling to the side. He had blinked just before losing consciousness again, as the Indian pulled back the flap to leave.
Over the man’s shoulder, Wingate could see the building in question. The Monastery was a huge, sprawling structure on the very apex of Monte Cassino. It covered the summit with proud columns and solemn spires. It stood out against the dawn sky, some rays of sun beaming off its stained glass windows. It was a magnificent, deeply religious structure.
