Читать книгу The Angel Of History - Bruno Arpaia - Страница 21

Chapter Thirteen

That evening Mariano told us to pitch the tents under the almond trees in a field near Falset. There were sixteen of us again, because they’d assigned us three new men: Jacque was French and had a pointy nose and pomade in his hair, Luigi was an Italian communist who instantly hated Alfonso for belonging to a different party. And then there was Sepúlveda – I never did learn his first name. He was CNT – anarchist union – from Maros, a little village in the province of Jaén. What a character: dark, hairy, outspoken, he ate priests for lunch. Just think, every morning he’d wake up and run down into the town to piss.Where? Against the church – the prelate would chase and curse him for centuries and he’d yell right back, ‘Homo! Go kiss a rich person’s ass! Parasite!’ We’d try to make a point of going to see the show before starting our exercises on the hill.We hunted rabbits in the afternoon. There were thousands of them and we ate a lot, and traded others with farmers for fruit, onions and tomatoes. I couldn’t say how long we were there.War’s like that.You live in the day and you don’t have much use for calendars. Until the moment when you’re forced to wrestle time again. That happened the day we saw the disinfection truck parked in the village square. They distributed the new uniforms. The day of the attack was getting closer.

The next day, July 24, I remember it well, we were heading up the road running alongside the Ebro. It was almost dark when we settled into a cane field south of Mora near Miravet. The order to cross the river came down at midnight. This time we were serious; we were attacking en masse. There were a hundred thousand men covering a ten-kilometre-long front. Our mission was to push through their lines, get on the road to Saragozza and cut the Moroccans off as they were retreating. Alfonso could barely stay in his skin. He was the one who had to carry the ropes over the river so that we could cross and mark the route for the boats coming in with the rest of our troops. It was a dark, moonless night.

‘I can’t see shit,’ he said and jumped in. Fifteen minutes later we got the signal. He’d tied the thick rope around a fig tree on the other shore and was waiting for us. The water was high, but not too cold.While the 11^th division was transferring boats, we got out of our wetsuits and put on Franco’s uniforms. The others were getting into position as we left and headed west toward Corbera.

‘Forward march,’ ordered Mariano. ‘And I’ll shoot the first person who talks.’

An hour later we were in our positions, grenades and machine guns ready in ditches by the side of the road. We were near a river. Orders were to shoot on sight anyone who tried to pass. It would be impossible to make any mistakes, our men would head north from the Ebro; the only people passing over our bridge would be enemies retreating. And they came. In groups and then in waves. We took them by surprise and sent them back in the same direction they came from. Pale, ragged, scattered: Guardia Civil, the Tercio de Extranjeros, Requetés, Italians and the Regulares. The only ones we had mercy on were the conscripted men, the Spanish, everyone else . . .Alfonso worked them over with the grenades and Lech the Pole mowed them down with the machine gun.

‘A hundred and eighteen, a hundred and twenty-five, a hundred and forty-six,’ he counted.

You couldn’t tell how he managed to count in the middle of all that smoke and the darkest dark.

‘What in the hell are you counting, you ass?’ yelled Sepúlveda.

‘That’s enough,’ said Mariano. ‘We have to get to the gates of Corbera now.’

We marched through the night Indian file, until dawn, and then we started seeing the houses of the village in the distance. There was a wet, humid haze hanging over the road. A motorcycle sentry arrived and told us that the orders were to take Corbera.

‘How? There are only sixteen of us,’ Luigi protested.

‘You’re a lowly turd, that’s what you are,’ said Alfonso.

We had to force the two Italians apart – and we barely managed. Luckily Mariano intervened, his fingers in his hair, his eye steely.

‘Finish it up, you two. We can do it. We just need to buy enough time so that the other units can get here to back us up.’

We went in two rows, marching down the pavements of the main street. Then they started shooting from a bakery window. Just two steps in front of me the English guy got hit from behind and he fell to the ground. I saw him leaning up against the wall, his chest bloody, his breath hoarse. He tried to cover the wound with his hand, maybe he was trying to block the blood getting into his throat. He didn’t make it. He died with his eyes open and we launched grenades into the bakery.When it was silent, we went in. It had been a woman shooting at us. Now she was lying dead on the ground, tattooed with shrapnel, the machine gun still in her hands. We found three pilots in the basement, Germans. We shot them there and then and resumed our advance, bullets whistling by our ears. I don’t know how we got to the other end of the town, to the cemetery. We’d lost the Andalusian, the black guy and the Galician. Luigi was wounded on his arm, not badly. It must have been ten in the morning when the planes arrived. They were sweeping the ground with machine-gun fire, like demons, they even hit their own soldiers as they ran. There were six planes, then ten, then six again. Luigi was happy. This was his specialty. He planted his weapon and began shooting. He waited until they drew near and then showered them with fire. He got two; they spiralled and exploded in mid-air.

‘There goes one, and two . . .’ he counted.

‘He knows how to count,’ Sepúlveda whispered to me as we squashed up against a wall.

At one o’clock under a deadly heat, our men took Corbera, but the battle wasn’t over for us. They gave us replacement soldiers and ammo and sent us south toward Gandesa.

‘We’re leaving immediately,’ Mariano announced.

‘Wait,’ argued Sepúlveda.

‘What’s the matter? Are you busy?’

‘I’ll be back in two minutes,’ he said, disappearing around the corner.

I knew what he was up to and so I followed him. There he was, motionless in front of the church steps, his trousers around his ankles. He was relieving himself and muttering curses like an old anarchist. But this time no priest emerged to yell at him and he seemed almost disappointed as he walked back toward me, buttoning up his trousers.

‘Sorry, Lieutenant,’ he said. ‘But I made a promise, a vow.’

We got to Gandesa too late. Our men had already occupied it just before dawn. Good. But our advance had been too quick. There were still troops behind us and those of us at the front – our unit, for example – had to wait for new orders. Exhausted, we rested up for three days in a grove. There were some bombers and a few tussles with scattered groups of Moroccans or Italians, and then one day a communications officer told us to head over to Sierra de Pandols, which Franco’s men had just taken back the day before.

We left right after dawn, at six thirty, and we walked for hours. To fight a war in those days you had to have strong legs. It was hot. Mariano had us drink a lot of water before we left, and then save water during the march. We moved slowly; we didn’t rush, the sun along the way practically made the rocks squeak.

‘What’s the point if we get there too late?’ I asked.

‘It’s better to arrive refreshed,’ answered Mariano. ‘A tired man is a dead man walking.’

‘I’ll write that down,’ I said, falling back. Lucky for me, he grinned.

We passed a battalion climbing up to the front and then we slid into a deep, walled ravine that opened onto ten caverns. It was like a ring of hell, I swear it was, with all those ambulances coming and going. The grottos were full of wounded men, and others were stuffed with corpses. They’d built a mess hall in one grotto down near the bottom. We filled up on hot soup and bread and then set off again. At the far end of the ravine, passing another clearing that was about two hundred metres long, carpeted with dead and wounded soldiers, we saw Sierra de Pandols. It was a tall, heavy-walled fortress, stippled with the scars of bombs and grenades. Up top there was a blockade where the enemy was positioned. At the base of the wall there were a couple of units, ready to attack. And another unit was hidden under the jutting cliffs about halfway up. Everywhere there was the stench of dead bodies left to rot.

It was sheer luck that the mortars didn’t get us as we crossed the plain and started climbing up the left side of the Sierra. Our orders were to get as close as we could to the top, observe the enemy and pass on instructions for the attack. But we stopped about halfway.

‘We can’t get any closer right now,’ said Mariano. ‘We’ll wait for nightfall and then go.’

It was brutal how slowly time passed under that unforgiving sun. There was nothing to drink. And the machine guns would start up in periodic angry bursts. Then our tanks arrived and there were more grenades. One by one our companies joined the formation. But it didn’t make any difference. It was a massacre. We were coming in from the front, out in the open, and they were positioned above us in the hundreds. We’d get close and they’d start shooting. They even shot at the guys trying to get the wounded off the field. Mariano sent Jimmie the Irishman up ahead. There had to be some other route to the top. In fact Jimmie came back in about an hour and told us to come and see.

It was incredible. From where we stood, even higher up, hiding in the shrubs, we could see out over the whole company. It was like an ant farm teaming with Moroccans and the Spanish Foreign Legion. Mariano looked at me and smiled.

‘We’ve got them now,’ he whispered.

I was the one who had to go back down and convince a major and a captain that we’d have to change our strategy that night. And I was right behind Mariano when at around two in the morning we launched our attack with grenades. Directly behind us, hidden, there were two units waiting for our signal. We took a nest of gunners by surprise, and Lech set up his own weapon to cover our descent into the barricade. They ran, shot, and fled in every direction. The Dutchman threw up a green flare and our men got within a few steps of the top. Poor Jan though. He still had the rest of the flare in his hand when the first bullet hit him, but he kept on shooting as if he weren’t feeling any pain, as if he’d never felt that bullet take a piece out of his lungs. He must have screamed when the second bullet got him, but his body didn’t settle down for an instant. He took the third one in the face and fell. He had red mush for a face by the time I got to him. I guess ever since then I’ve been afraid in some way, because it’s hard to erase the image of his face. But how can I explain something like that to you?

When we slowly filed down at dawn, there were only nine of us left: Mariano and me, Luigi, Alfonso, Jacque, Sepúlveda, Lech, Jimmie and the Swiss cook.

‘All things considered, it’s still going well for us,’ muttered Luigi.

‘Why don’t you ask the opinion of the other guys – the ones we left up there?’ answered Alfonso.

They were speaking Italian but Mariano and I could understand them.At least we got that sparks were about to start flying again. They calmed down instantly when a mortar shell landed just a few metres from us, reminding them we hadn’t reached safety yet.

‘Christ,’ they said almost in unison and lowered their heads.

We were heading back to the ravine but we were advancing slowly. The Fascists had figured out it was a camp and were pounding it from the air. The caverns were full of soldiers and we must have been drawing too much fire outside. Mariano ordered us into an overflowing grotto. We stood at the entrance, almost outside, when a downpour of grenades and mortar fell on us. And where do you think the shrapnel got me? Here, on my right butt cheek. I felt a little pang and then nothing. I thought that I hadn’t even been hit, but I fell down in pain as soon as I tried to get up. Alfonso, Lech and Jimmie were right near me and they looked bad too. Mariano saw I was wounded and squinted. I thought he was going to come at me twisting his hair, but instead he tore the sleeve off his shirt and started bandaging me. Later on, when they were loading us into the ambulance he put his mouth up to my ear, grinned and said, ‘So you found a way, right, you figured out how to weasel out of this. I always knew deep down that you were a bed wetter.’

He was teasing. But it’s true that my battle of Ebro ended there. I spent almost two months in the hospital after that, sharing a room with Jimmie and Alfonso. The shrapnel had gone all the way to the bone and had hit some nerves.

‘Amputate. Cut it off,’ said one French doctor, a blow-hard with a goatee. ‘If we don’t, we may risk total nerve damage.’

Lucky for me there was another doctor there, an Englishman who was convinced he could save my leg. He operated on me cold, no anaesthesia – medical supplies were low. Hurt like the devil but may the god of medicine always protect that English doctor because you see my leg? I still have it and it works pretty well, almost.’