Читать книгу Churchill's Hellraisers - Damien Lewis - Страница 14

Chapter 3

If anything, Mike Lees’ descent through the Italian mountains had been even more hair-raising than the snow-bound ascent. Sometime after cresting the high pass two-feet deep in wind-driven drifts, they had linked up with a reception party from the neighbouring band of partisans. They’d brought with them a battered truck, one recently captured off the enemy. It looked close to derelict, but at least it offered the promise of mobility and shelter.

Frozen stiff, Lees and his party had clambered aboard, looking forward to arriving in the partisan village in a degree of comfort and style. Instead, the onwards journey had turned into the wildest ride any of the men had ever known. Apparently, a German garrison based beyond Pigna – the partisan village to which they were heading – had learned that their force was on the move. The enemy had fanned out in an effort to catch them – hence the need to reach the village by the fastest means possible. The journey ahead was a race against time.

That appeared to be the explanation for what happened next: the driver of the truck gripped the wheel tightly, turned off the engine, took his feet off the pedals and down they went, freewheeling all the way. The truck just seemed to keep gaining speed, as it swung crazily from side to side, careering around hairpin bends in a death-defying fashion. Fear gripped the minds of those riding in it, until their hearts were in their very throats. Men became sick with fear. Soon the truck bed was slick with vomit.

There was little point trying to voice any objections, or of urging the driver to a greater degree of caution: the speed and the noise were so all-consuming, all they could do was hang on for dear life and mouth their prayers. Finally, miraculously, the truck gave a last series of death-defying lurches, before grinding to an uncertain halt in the village square. The driver practically fell out of the cabin door and lay on the ground, staring at the heavens.

He glanced at his sickly, pallid passengers. ‘No petrol.’ He shrugged, then guffawed. ‘No brakes!’

Whether the story about the German hunter force was true or not, or just a smoke screen to disguise the perilous nature of their conveyance, no one was entirely certain. But of one thing they could be sure: even now that they had reached Pigna village, there seemed little hope for their onwards journey. The leader of the partisans declared that any attempt to push further south towards the Gothic Line would be akin to suicide.

He had no contact with the Allied forces positioned on the far side, the commander explained, so no way to warn them that a friendly force was coming through. The front line kept shifting as the battle ebbed and flowed, making any close reconnaissance impossible. Moreover, the ground ahead was broken, impassable country, so Lees and his men would be forced to move on well-trodden paths and roads, all which would be closely guarded by the enemy.

Behind the front ran a main road, he warned, slicing through the mountains in a knife-cut cleft. It was heavily patrolled, and if Lees and his force tried to cross it they were bound to be seen. After much heated discussion, Lees finally managed to secure the offer of a guide who would take his party south as far as that road. After that, they would be on their own.

As Lees was painfully aware, it would be suicide to press on with his full party. As far as he could ascertain, the enemy fortifications stretched for miles either side of the Gothic Line. All of that terrain would have to be crossed by stealth and ideally under cover of darkness. He would need to lead a small, fit, fighting patrol, one able to travel fast and silently and primed to avoid contact with the enemy, or to fight ferociously should the need arise.

It was better to slip a few good men through successfully, than to get them all killed. The two Italian resistance leaders were in excellent physical shape, so would stand the march well. But the war artist, Long, was unfit to move, at least until he’d recovered from his fall. Lees and the reporter, Morton, had had their differences high on the mountain, and he reckoned Morton was best left behind. If Lees could establish an escape route, all the more chance that the both of them might make it through with their stories.

Lees decided to take two others only. The first was an escaped British POW called Fred Dobson, a fit and capable soldier who was keen as mustard to press on. The other was an Italian called Secondo Balestri, who had been serving with Temple’s partisans for some time. Balestri had one of the most incredible war stories that Lees had ever heard.

A former Italian Navy wireless operator turned partisan, he had been captured by the Germans. Under Gestapo torture he’d acted as if he had broken, professing his willingness to transmit false intelligence to the Allies. Instead, Balestri, who was gifted with an extraordinary mathematical memory, had altered a coded signal which read ‘I am in good hands’, to ‘I am in German hands’. He’d also managed to insert further warnings into the radio messages the Gestapo forced him to send. Because he could do so ‘live’ – during the process of encoding the signal – the Gestapo had never suspected what he was up to.

Balestri had subsequently escaped from the enemy and made it back to partisan lines. He, like Fred Dobson, was keen to continue despite the dangers. That, Lees decided, would make up his escape party. He’d leave William McClelland, the Royal Scots private turned piratical raider, to shepherd the remaining men through – but only once they had received word from Lees of what was the best route, or, conversely, that he and his party had failed.

It was some twenty-four hours after reaching Pigna that Lees called his party together. Once he had outlined his intentions to split them into two groups, neither Morton nor Long appeared particularly upset. On the contrary, they could see the sense – not to mention the sheer courage – in Lees trying to forge a path for the rest to follow.

‘He was twenty-one, tough, brave as the British are brave; born, as they say, to command,’ Morton would write of Lees. In that there was perhaps a tacit admission that he had been wrong to rebel against Lees’ orders, high on the snow-swept mountain. As for Lees, he’d realised by now that the Canadian press man had a certain grit and spirit: indeed, enough of each to place him in formal command of those left behind.

Lees eyed the reporter, searchingly. ‘You, Morton, seem to think everything is a big joke . . . You fraternise too easily with the Commos; with everyone for that matter.’ By ‘the Commos’ Lees meant the communists, for a good proportion of the Italian partisans professed to communist leanings. ‘Still, I’m putting you in charge.’

Morton, amply assisted by McClelland, would lead the second escape party, Lees explained. ‘You’re loaded down with money. That’s better than guns or brains in a situation like this. Use the money to get the rest of this crowd through to France . . . And Morton, that’s an order.’

‘He never called me Paul whenever he was giving orders,’ Morton reflected wryly of Lees, ‘and he seemed, mostly, to be giving orders.’ Morton – like Lees – had parachuted in on the present mission carrying a slush-fund provided by the SOE: cash, with which to oil the wheels of guerrilla warfare. Now, he was to use that money to buy their way out again.

Lees shook hands with all, speaking a few last words to the Canadian reporter and the South African war artist. ‘Well, goodbye. We’ll tell the Americans you’re coming through. Perhaps they’ll polish their bayonets, so you give them a good write up.’

Morton snorted. ‘That’ll be the day. They might be a million miles away, for all the use they are at the moment.’

‘You’ll get through all right,’ Lees reassured him.

‘Well, thank God I’m not going today,’ Morton confessed. ‘I couldn’t walk another step.’

‘That’s the worst of you correspondents,’ Lees needled him. ‘You don’t do enough PT.’

Morton laughed. ‘Oh, shut up and push off, you bloody thug.’

With those final words ringing in his ears, Lees and his fellows departed Pigna, mounting up the death trap of the partisan truck for the initial stage of the journey. It would take them as far as the first major obstacle, a road bridge that the partisans had blown up to prevent the Germans from raiding their valley stronghold, not far beyond which lay the first of the massive defences of the Gothic Line.

The Gotenstellung – the Gothic Line – was Nazi Germany’s last line of defence in northern Italy, running coast to coast in essentially an east – west direction. Positioned on the slopes of the Apennine mountains, it consisted of a series of massive fortifications strung between the natural defences of the high ridges and snowbound peaks. Concerned about whether the Gotenstellung would hold, Hitler had ordered 15,000 slave labourers shipped in, to extend the defences in strength and depth. Working under the Todt Organisation – Nazi Germany’s forced labour ministry – they consisted of prisoners of war, concentration camp internees, plus conscripted Italian civilians.

Those slave labourers had constructed hundreds of reinforced-concrete gun pits, deep trenches, 2,376 machine-gun nests boasting interlocking arcs of fire, 479 anti-tank, mortar and artillery positions, plus observation posts with interconnecting tunnels burrowed deep beneath the ground. Miles of anti-tank barriers had been dug, plus 130,000 yards of barbed wire strung between key positions. As a result, Field Marshal Kesselring had declared himself satisfied, contemplating any Allied assault on the Gotenstellung ‘with a certain confidence’.

Sure enough, by the autumn of 1944 Allied forces had fought themselves to a standstill on the Gotenstellung. With combat losses mounting and the harsh winter weather setting in, General Harold Alexander, Kesselring’s opposite number, had accepted that the Allied push through Italy had hit a major stumbling block. ‘The last battles in Italy were just as fierce as any we had experienced . . .’ General Alexander remarked. ‘I was not faced with a broken and disintegrating Army . . .’ No breakthrough was going to be possible, at least not before the spring.

The partisans’ decrepit truck coughed and backfired spasmodically, but after an hour’s tortuous drive it made it to that first obstacle. There, Lees and his four-man party dismounted and clambered across what remained of the demolished bridge. They pushed ahead on a road cut into the sheer side of the mountain, one that had been built to service the rearmost defences of the Gotenstellung.

The first massive bunkers hove into view. Lees was astounded at the sheer impregnability of those fortifications. The last line of defence, they looked to be deserted at present, but once manned by German troops they would constitute a veritable mountain fortress. As the partisan leader had warned, the only possible route ahead lay along a thin ribbon of road, and they were forced to pass below the giant, gaping, eyeless sockets of those concrete bunkers.

It was an eerie, shadowed place and Lees was hugely relieved to reach the ridge that lay on the far side. It was midday by now and their partisan guide pointed out the main road that cut through the valley below. Lees gazed upon that highway: what he saw was not encouraging. To either side of the twisting ribbon of black rose grey-walled mountains, slashed through by precipitous ravines. The terrain looked utterly daunting.

Here and there tiny white puffs of smoke revealed where Allied shells were bursting amid the hidden defences. The noise of battle drifted across to them, echoing confusingly around the rocky slopes.

‘It’s going to be difficult,’ Salvi, one of the resistance leaders, ventured.

‘Very,’ Lees confirmed, grimly.

Salvi found a cleft in the rock-face via which he assured Lees they could descend. The Italians led the way, Lees and Dobson following. Big, heavy and ungainly at heights, Lees found the next hour or so hellish, as he clung to the rock with aching fingertips and with his Sten slung across his shoulders. Each glance down was rewarded by a fresh surge of nausea, and by the time he reached the bottom his legs were shaking uncontrollably.

From there, they followed a faint track that led to a small patch of woodland, lying just above the road. It was late afternoon by now, and Lees reckoned dusk was no more than two hours away. Already the highway was busy with trucks motoring to and fro. Come nightfall, it would become packed with traffic, for the enemy tended to use the cloak of darkness to shield their convoys from marauding Allied warplanes.

The guide from Pigna village was still with them, but he would go no further than the road. He was dressed like a local villager and carried ID papers, which meant that he should be able to pass freely through enemy positions. Lees persuaded him to press on to the nearest village, a small place called Fanghetto, which lay just before the road.

An hour later he was back. What he reported underscored the futility of trying to make it across anywhere hereabouts. The village was full of enemy troops whose job it was to patrol the road. Even if Lees and his men did sneak through undetected, on the far side lay a fierce mountain river. It was fast, deep and treacherous, and only one bridge spanned its breadth, which was under permanent guard. Beyond that lay a road snaking into the high-ground, but it was a heavily used supply route for German front-line troops.

In short, there was no way through.

With heavy hearts Lees and his men retraced their steps, arriving back at the cliff-face that they had descended earlier. Too exhausted to attempt the ascent, they found a deserted shepherd’s hut in which to spend the night. At dawn the following morning, the climb up the sheer rock-face proved even more terrifying than the descent had done.

Once at the top, an exhausted Lees and Salvi took stock. They were all out of water and running low on food. They questioned the guide, but he had few viable suggestions. As Lees gazed out over the enemy-infested terrain, he felt utterly spent and close to beaten. His eyes drifted further south, to the beguiling shimmer of the Mediterranean. It was little more than a couple of miles away.

A British warship was steaming up the coast, shelling what had to be the Gotenstellung’s defences. A thought suddenly struck Lees: the sea. Why not use the sea? The sea was owned by the Allies, British warships keeping up a steady barrage of fire against the enemy. Surely, crossing the lines would be far easier if attempted by sea. In essence, if they rowed across they could outflank the enemy’s defences. Surely, there lay the answer?

Lees turned to the guide. Did he know any fishermen, he demanded, ones who were friendly to the partisan cause? He did, the guide replied, but the Germans had confiscated all of their oars. Could any be found, Lees asked. The guide thought they could, with the right kind of incentive. A plan was hatched. The guide would get a letter through to his fisherman friend, offering a bundle of cash if he could get a boat ready and meet with Lees and his men that afternoon. The letter would have to be bicycled through to the fisherman, to make it into his hands in time.

‘What if he fails to show or gives us away?’ Salvi asked Lees.

Lees shrugged. ‘We’ll have to take our chances . . . If he fails to make it, we can’t wait another night. We’ll just have to risk trying to get across near the coast.’

The plan set, Lees felt a surge of renewed energy. They set off, keeping to the cover of woodland and descending by a gentler slope. By midday, they were in sight of the fisherman’s village. With little food remaining, they gorged on bunches of juicy black grapes plucked from a nearby vineyard.

The meeting point was a small quarry, set in a patch of woodland about two miles from the beckoning sea. They approached it with caution. As luck would have it, the place was occupied. A gypsy family were using it as a site for making charcoal. Typically no friends to the enemy – along with the Jews, Slavic peoples, the disabled and others, gypsies were also classed as Untermensch (subhuman) by the Nazis – they proved decidedly welcoming, once they understood who Lees and his party were.

They offered food and wine, but Lees was more interested in what intelligence they might furnish. The elder of the family led Lees to a small knoll on the fringes of the woodland. He pointed out two steep-sided hills that lay before them, each like a mini-volcano and covered in dense scrub. Each was fortified by hidden German positions, he explained.

Beneath their vantage point the road was busy with horse-drawn carts, laden with artillery shells: to one side of the woodland lay a camouflaged gun battery. Every now and then Lees heard the whine of a passing shell, followed shortly by the crack of the gun firing. He realised then that some of the enemy artillery was positioned behind them, lobbing shells high into the air at the Allied lines. Somehow, unwittingly, Lees and his men must have slipped through the rearmost enemy defences that morning.

Lees sketched out all the positions the gypsy could identify. If they did make it across the lines this would constitute priceless intelligence for planning bombing raids with pinpoint accuracy. They returned to the quarry. By four o’clock there was still no sign of the fisherman, and Lees was getting worried. With the approach of dusk no one doubted that he wasn’t coming. Something had gone wrong. Maybe the message hadn’t even reached him.

Lees turned to the gypsy. Was he able to guide them at all, he demanded? The man said that he could, but only as far as the road. Beyond that, he knew little if anything of the terrain. Lees figured if they could reach the scrub that cloaked the first of the two fortified hillocks, from there they might spy a route ahead and try to sneak onwards in the gathering darkness.

‘Our objective after that?’ Salvi queried.

Good question. Lees eyed the distant wall of mountains. Somewhere among those towering peaks lay the Allied front line. Even via his binoculars, it was impossible to make out any obvious route through. Lees chose a particular peak, unmistakeable due to its pyramidal shape, and picked it out on the map.

‘We’ll make for Mount Grammondo. There’s a full moon tonight, and we can’t miss it.’

They’d set out as soon as it got dark, knowing they had to make safe territory by daybreak. Before departure, Lees penned a short letter to Morton. He outlined the route they planned to take, but advised the press man to explore the sea-borne option, if a suitable boat could be found. That done, he sent someone to carry the note back to Pigna village.

Lees and his men prepared for the off, checking kit and weaponry to ensure nothing was loose or clanked as they moved. Apart from Lees’ Sten, Salvi and Piva also carried sub-machine guns, and Balestri had a rifle, while Dobson hefted two grenades. It was scant weaponry if they ran into any trouble. Just then the gypsy man’s wife emerged from their tent, pressing a hip flask of cognac into Lees’ hands, with murmurs of good luck.

Lees thanked her, before turning to his men. ‘No talk,’ he warned them. ‘We get through without a fight if possible. No one fires unless I give the order. Keep closed-up all the way. We are few enough to avoid being seen and we can’t afford to get separated.’

They set out. The moon was not due to rise until nine, and Lees wanted to get as far as possible under the cloak of night. Below, he could just make out the phosphorescent shimmer of the river. Their gypsy-guide led them forwards until he dared go no further. Lees pressed a bundle of Lire gratefully into his hands. That done, they flitted onwards, hugging a hedge until the road melted out of the darkness.

Lees signalled a halt. From up ahead came the tread of boots on tarmac. Lees crept on a few paces, until he spied a sentry. He paced slowly past, so close that Lees could almost reach out and touch his boots. Fifty yards further on the sentry stopped to exchange a few words in German, before turning and pacing slowly back again. It looked as if there was a guard in place for every hundred yards or so.

From his right Lees heard a new noise, cutting the still night air. The thud of hooves and the rumble of wagons, bearing a heavy load. He signalled to his party. ‘Dash across just as soon as the wagon column has passed,’ he hissed.

The noise grew to a deafening roar, as the line of wooden carts thundered closer, the horses’ manes flowing and their harnesses jingling rhythmically. Just as soon as the last was past, Lees dashed across, keeping as low as he could. Four figures flitted after him. They made the open field on the far side without any cries of alarm, and sprinted across it in pairs. Moments later they scrambled down the riverbank and were lost from view.

Just as Lees had intended, the column of passing carts had masked any noise that they had made. The river was wide but mercifully shallow. They waded across one at a time and pressed onwards into a maize field. To their right the clank of steel on steel revealed the location of an artillery position. Moments later, the roar of a gun firing split the night, the flash of the muzzle throwing all into momentary stark relief.

Monte Pozzo, the first of the wooded hillocks, was revealed in that harsh pulse of light, just a few hundred yards ahead. Keeping to the shadowed edge of the maize crop, Lees led his men on. Every now and then the guns fired a further salvo, and with each Monte Pozzo drew noticeably closer. Finally, Lees slipped in among the trees that fringed its lower slopes.

It seemed as if only a few scant minutes had passed, but in reality they’d been on the move for two hours. In another hour the moon would rise, and before them lay a second river that they had to cross. Lees hurried on. A road snaked this way and that up the side of Monte Pozzo. As Lees tried to steer a straight course, their route kept crossing it.

All of a sudden there was a clatter in the darkness. A pair of German soldiers had been freewheeling down the road on bicycles. Spotting Lees and his party, they’d jumped off, the bikes falling to the ground. As Lees dashed ahead shots rang out in the darkness. Thankfully, the German troopers were armed only with rifles, but those shots had doubtless raised the alarm. From behind, Lees heard the soldiers remount their bicycles to pedal frantically onwards.

Lees was hyper-alert for any watchers now. They reached a vantage point, looking outwards across the valley. Before them nestled the town of Torri, cradled at the foot of a steep ravine. That precipitous crevice offered the only obvious route via which to scale the mountains beyond. To reach it Lees would have to lead his men across the river, which lay just this side of the town, via a bridge. There was no other way.

As Lees scrutinised the road, he detected several glowing pinpricks of light, rhythmically pulsing in the darkness: sentries enjoying a smoke. The moon rose, large and bright, bathing the river in its light. The main question in Lees’ mind was whether Torri was occupied by the enemy. In the moonlight, it looked like a mass of shattered, shell-blasted ruins. It was just possible that the ferocity of Allied bombardments had caused the town to be evacuated.

Lees pulled his men in close. ‘We’ve got to cross the bridge. If we try to wade the river they’ll see us. We’ll have to march openly, hoping they mistake us for one of their own patrols.’

There were silent nods in the darkness.

With Lees leading, five figures stole down the hillside, before stepping brazenly into the open. They formed up as a column, turned right and began to march towards the bridge. From behind Lees could hear figures talking and laughing in German. He tensed for a cry of challenge, but none came. After three minutes of utter spine-chilling tension, they made it across the bridge without a shot being fired or even a cry of alarm.

The war-blasted streets of Torri seemed utterly deserted. Once or twice a stray chicken or pig started at their presence, sending five pairs of hands to their weapons, but they reached the far side of the ghost town without facing a single challenge. Ahead rose the lower slopes of the mountain, terraced into vineyards like a gigantic ladder. They began to scramble up, scaling one terrace after another and tripping and stumbling over the wires which held up the vines. They were reluctant to seek out any paths in case they were mined.

Directly ahead lay the bulky form of Monte Grammondo, its peak grey and forbidding. A salvo of shells burst between them and the heights, setting a copse of pines ablaze. The fire scorched and crackled, throwing ghostly shadows across the dark heights. Now and again a machine gun rasped out a long burst of fire, but it was impossible to tell exactly who was shooting at whom, or if nervous German gunners were simply unleashing upon ghosts.

Finally, the vineyards came to an end. The slopes were more precipitous now, forcing Lees to take a path that snaked ever more steeply. It was around 0200 hours when Salvi tapped him on the shoulder. He sank to the path, doubled over and in pain.

‘I can’t go on,’ the resistance leader murmured.

‘What’s wrong?’ Lees hissed.

‘My stomach. I have an ulcer. The walking must have aggravated it.’

Lees considered their predicament. He reckoned they had climbed about halfway to the heights, beyond which he figured lay the Allied front line. It would get light at six and they had to make it across by then. He allowed the resistance leader half an hour to rest, before telling him they had to press on.

Reluctantly, Salvi clambered to his feet. Lees dropped the pace a little, as they recommenced the climb. They entered a knife-cut ravine, following a faint path strewn with mule droppings. As Lees led them through, Dobson, the escaped British POW, drew level with him.

‘There’s someone following us,’ he whispered, hoarsely.

Lees turned and listened. Sure enough he could detect the faint murmur of voices from further down the narrow cleft. He had no option but to up their pace. If their mystery pursuers cornered Lees and his small party in that ravine, it would be the end of them.

A few minutes later, panting hard as he climbed, Lees stumbled over a wire strung along the track. It looked like a communications cable and it had to lead to a field telephone. As Lees stared at it, trying to catch his breath, Salvi pointed excitedly. ‘That’s no German wire! Theirs is always black.’

He was right: the strand of cable was a bright red. Still, Lees remained doubtful. ‘The Americans can’t be this far advanced,’ he objected. ‘We’ve only recently passed through the enemy’s artillery. Ahead must lie their infantry.’

No matter how long they stared at that wire, glowing a faint red in the moonlight, there was no way of knowing. Lees ordered them on. The cable seemed to dog their every step. Twice they turned off the main path, only to run into that red strand of wire once more. Lees sensed they were about to stumble into trouble. They neared the crest of a ridge and crept into the cover of a small copse. The wire was there, running dead ahead. They followed it, rounded a bend and came upon a heap of equipment lying by the path.

Lees spied a pile of blankets, a distinctive metal helmet, a leather ammo belt and a Mauser rifle: German stuff. He bent to finger the nearest blanket: still warm. The enemy had to be close. As quietly as he could, Lees handed the ammo belt and rifle to Dobson. They paused as he checked and readied the weapon. Fortuitous. One more of them was now a little better armed.

Lees signalled them on – five figures creeping silently as wraiths through the trees. They reached an area where the cover thinned out, and all five of them seemed to spy the enemy at the same instant. Barely ten paces ahead stood half a dozen German soldiers, gazing further across the mountainside. To one side knelt a signaller, speaking quietly into a field telephone. It was obviously some kind of forward observation position.

Lees and his men sank into cover. The standing figures stared ahead at shells bursting on a ridgeline some distance away. They were checking and correcting the artillerymen’s fire, seemingly oblivious to the presence of Lees and his men. Their weapons and helmets lay beside them on the ground, their eyes fixed on the distant explosions.

Lees figured he’d seen enough. He stole to his feet, Sten levelled at the enemy. Four figures rose with him, their weapons likewise readied. As if warned by some sixth sense, one of the Germans turned towards them. Lees pressed his trigger. Half the figures fell in a matter of seconds, cut down by long bursts of fire unleashed at close range. As the survivors tried to flee, Dobson hurled a grenade in among them.

With the route ahead now clear Lees burst through, vaulting over the fallen enemy figures. The others followed. They tore out of the woodland, racing along a path snaking along the ground. The terrain here was open, the track leading to a final line of low, rocky cliffs, which delineated the high point.

As they sprinted for that escarpment, a machine gun opened up from behind. Bullets tore past, as Lees and his fellows slithered and dived into cover, then darted onwards. Salvi seemed to be fully recovered by now. A born mountaineer, he made a desperate dash for a crevice in the rock-face, one that seemed to offer a final route through. As they sprinted for its uncertain embrace, fierce bursts of machine-gun fire cut the night to all sides.

Salvi led the climb, shinning up the near-vertical cliff, with Lees and the others right behind. They were some fifty feet up when the first shell whistled out of the night and tore into the rocks below. Several more followed, splinters of steel cutting through the air on all sides. With zero shelter and a precipitous drop below, there was little option but to keep climbing.

The shells kept coming. Probing with his finger tips, Salvi steered them to the very top, before darting into the shelter of some rocks. Moments later, Lees had crawled in beside him, and shortly the others followed. They wormed their way further into cover, lying there in utter exhaustion. No one could believe that they had made it through thus far, and unscathed.

From behind, they could spy the baleful red flashes of the German artillery. Ahead, silhouetted against the moonlight glimmering off the sea, lay the ancient port town of Menton, which was held by the Allies. Lees reasoned it would be far safer to press on towards ‘friendly’ lines come daybreak. They rested for an hour, until the stars faded in the lightening sky.

All seemed eerily quiet as Lees led the small party off, moving cautiously through the dawn light. A path ran along the ridge, perpendicular to the way they needed to go. They crossed it, pushing due south, reaching a strand of wire running along the ground. Lees stepped towards it, mouthing silent prayers: if mines had been laid on this stretch of front, he figured the wire would delimit the borders of the safe ground.

He stepped gingerly across. No shattering explosion met his footfall. They made one hundred, two hundred, then three hundred yards without mishap, when finally a burst of fire tore apart the silence. Directly ahead a machine-gunner had opened up, unleashing a burst of warning shots above their heads.

Lees threw himself flat on the earth. ‘Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! We’re British!’

The voice that responded was the sweetest that he had ever heard.

‘Put that gun down,’ came a hard-edged, American-accented cry. ‘Advance one and be recognised.’