Читать книгу An Affair of State - Harry Hart Frank - Страница 25

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He said, “Oh, nothing,” but he knew now that it was something. It was something he couldn’t speak of. He hadn’t learned until much later what it meant. He hadn’t known a military axiom—that the action of a junior officer can sometimes influence a skirmish, an engagement, a battle, a campaign, a war. History.

Nobody in the General’s War Room back in Florence—a War Room in a tent, but commodious and comfortable nevertheless—selected Jeff Baker to be the spearhead, the point, of the offensive against the Gothic Line in September of 1944. The General himself was not responsible for the offensive. It was ordered by the Combined Chiefs of Staff, who were worried. The Germans were planning to pull four divisions out of Italy and send them to the Western Front. If this happened the offensive in the West, already gasping for supplies, would certainly bog down. And if the logistics disease became worse, and the Germans counterattacked in the winter, those four extra divisions would become enormously important. So the General in Florence received a directive to attack the Apennines frontally from the south. If he pushed through to the plains of the Po beyond, that would be wonderful but most unlikely. In all history no army had ever successfully shoved upward through the shark jaws of the Apennines. That’s exactly the way it was—like pushing one’s naked hand through a shark’s clenched jaws. If the four German divisions could not leave Italy—if they could be contained—that would be enough.

Back in Florence the General selected the 91st Division to assault Futa Pass, and fight its way up Route 65, the only hard-surfaced, all-weather road across the mountains. But before Futa Pass could be stormed and held, it was necessary to capture the high ground which commanded the pass. For this task the General selected the 85th Division, which was fresh and rested.

The general commanding the 85th looked over his maps, and saw that there were two mountains—Altuzzo and Traponi—that he must take. Between them rose a hill, unnamed and with its exact height not given, which could be useful if captured. He assigned the 339th Infantry Regiment to Altuzzo, the taller of the two peaks.

The colonel commanding the 339th, a West Pointer immensely proud of his regiment, planned to assault Altuzzo with one battalion during the night, and send in another battalion at daybreak, and keep his third in reserve. From his command post in an abandoned villa in Scarperia, curtained from German observation and fire only by a row of willows, the colonel looked up at Altuzzo and knew he would need all three.

It happened that Jeff’s battalion was picked for the night attack, and his company was picked by the battalion commander as the spearhead, and his Old Man chose Baker’s platoon as the point. So it was just accident that Jeff Baker led the attack on the Gothic Line.

It turned out that Jeff Baker’s platoon did better than expected, and Futa Pass was stormed and held. They named a mountain after him. They called it Baker’s Peak. People said we might never have got Futa Pass except for Baker’s Peak. The four German divisions were contained according to plan, and final victory came in the spring.

Jeff never spoke of it, and indeed wished he could banish it entirely from his mind, for he felt more guilt than pride in his part in it. He had survived, but the crucible of fire had been too hot. It had altered the tensile strength of his inner metal.