A Broken Land (9 page)

‘The mayor, a left socialist, was the first to die,’ said Florencia, who had been part of the questioning of the survivors, that carried out as the bodies were cut down and laid out with those shot or bayoneted. ‘Followed by anyone who had served on the local committees.’

She pointed to the other ubiquitous feature found in a Spanish village square, the
taberna
. ‘Once they had strung up the owner they drank his wine, every drop, and then the spirits.’

There was no need to say that fired up by that, the men who had done this would then have gone on the rampage – that was how it went, first the settling of perceived scores, followed by a celebration and inebriation, leading to outright sack, the fate of captured towns and villages since time immemorial; knowledge did not, however, make it acceptable.

‘They came from Barcelona, the pigs,’ she spat, ‘running away like the dogs they are.’

Cal was used to such mixed metaphors from Florencia, but he was tempted to say you could not fault them for that, and the evidence was on that wall they had passed this very morning; the anarchists were likewise shooting the Falangists out of hand, and not just them, if they were rooted out in Barcelona.

Cal asked instead, ‘Do they know where they went?’

‘West, towards Lérida.’

Cal nodded and they went over to Vince. ‘It’ll be dark soon and I expect we will bivvy here for the night.’ He looked at the sky, now clouding over, with an even darker mass coming in from the east, promising rain; warm as it was, the boys would need to be under cover. ‘I’m going to talk to Juan Luis.’

‘Burial party, guv?’

Cal pulled a face, coupled with a sharp indrawn breath. ‘Best leave that to their own, Vince.’

‘They don’t seem in much of a hurry.’

‘We have sent for a priest from one of the villages we passed through,’ Florencia replied, in a manner that implied such an action was obvious. ‘The relatives have requested it.’

‘There must have been a priest here, girl,’ Vince growled, pointing to the church.

‘There was,’ she replied sadly, ‘but it was he who first identified those to be killed.’

‘It’s dirty this, Vince,’ Cal said, ‘and I would think it’s about to get dirtier.’

His friend looked at the bodies, now in a line and covered over, his voice sad. ‘Can’t see how.’

Cal tapped him on the back. ‘Get the lads settled and fed if you can. Florencia, has Juan Luis asked about the strength of the people who did this?’ She shrugged, which left the possibility that such a basic set of questions had not been posed. ‘We need to question the survivors about more than victims. How many men came here, how were they armed, and more important, if the local Civil Guard joined them, what are their numbers and weapon strength now?’

The information that came back to him, an hour later, pointed to a potential total strength of eighty men, the majority blueshirts in the kind of cars the middle-class youths who made up the bulk of the Falange would own – fast and open-topped – their weapons rifles and pistols. The Civil Guard was more worrying, being more a military than a police force. They had both trucks and he knew from Barcelona they possessed automatic weapons including light machine guns.

The real question for the column was simple. Where were they now?

‘Don’t like that hilly forest,’ Vince said, when Cal discussed it with him.

‘Nor do I.’

‘It is not necessary,’ Laporta insisted, waving a hand at a sun that, in dying, rendered black and even more menacing the east side of the hill Vince had alluded to. ‘The swine are cowards who have run away. They could be in Lérida by now.’

Upset by the suggestion they needed to protect themselves, Laporta had been even more dismissive of the notion of digging a foxhole by the side of the road west and manning it with the sole machine gun he possessed, while covering the other exits with rifles and sentries.
Also, they had explosives, wire and the ability to make charges; they could cover the areas of dead ground with booby traps, and tripwires that would set them off and alert the defence.

That too was dismissed as unnecessary, with Cal’s impression of the man sinking as quickly as it had previously risen outside the telephone exchange; especially galling was the way he had obviously translated the concerns Cal expressed to those men who surrounded him, his senior lieutenants, seeking their approval for his negative responses, which was readily given. Never mind what was right and what was wrong; it was as if he needed to reassure himself he was popular.

‘And,’ Cal said, ‘they could be sitting up a tree watching us through binoculars. If you don’t put out guards they might come back.’

‘My men are tired,’ he snapped. ‘They will not be happy to stay up all night and they are far too weary to dig. Besides, it is not the Spanish way to fight from a hole in the ground.’

‘They will be a damned sight less happy if some of them die from a slit throat.’

Said with venom, it brought a predictable response. ‘I command here.’

‘Then I ask permission to do with my men what I deem prudent.’

That was greeted with an expressive shrug. The slow salute with which Cal responded was as much an insult as a mark of respect and was taken as the former, but by the time Laporta could react he was looking at the man’s back. It was only in walking away that Cal realised it was he who had been foolish, and it was far from pleasant to acknowledge the fact.

He had approached Laporta when men whose good opinion he craved surrounded him. As at the
Capitanía Marítima
, he took
umbrage automatically at what looked like a challenge to his authority when in their presence. Laporta alone, as they had been outside the besieged Ritz, had seemed a different fellow, and Cal was sure he had come to seek his help. He promised himself never again to make any suggestions unless they were out of both view and earshot.

‘I’ve told the boys we will sleep in the church,’ Vince said, ‘though there are a couple with Irish parents who have refused.’

‘Give them a week and they’ll sleep on the altar and drink the communion wine,’ Cal snapped, still angry with himself. ‘But we are going to have to take turns with them guarding the roads in. Our Spanish friends don’t think we need to.’

Vince looked at the cloud-covered sky. ‘There will be no moon, and they won’t fancy being stuck out in the pitch dark, so young and all.’

The implication was obvious; night guard duty with no moon was bad enough for the experienced soldier – you heard and saw things that were not there, but knew not to just shout or shoot. These keen but inexperienced boys would likely be trigger-happy and blasting off at threats more imagined than real. Being out in the open was a task for either himself or Vince, and much as he disliked the idea, Cal knew he would have to go out on his own.

‘A gunshot will do the trick.’ Cal jerked his head towards a group of Spaniards sitting outside the
taberna
, Florencia laughing and joking with them. ‘Even this lot will wake up to that.’

‘And shoot anything that moves,’ Vince growled. ‘So don’t you go rushing about or you’ll be their target.’

‘What I wouldn’t give for a box of flares.’

He got the eye from those worker-fighters as he went to talk to Florencia, not friendly either, with quiet ribald comments and stifled laughter. It was, he suspected, no more than a demonstration of stupid male pride, the same kind of thing he had experienced before in too many locations. It seemed the hotter the country, the more the menfolk felt the need to look and act with bravado, and that was doubled by what they had achieved so far in fighting the army.

He wanted to say to them that a healthy dose of fear and a bucketload of caution would serve them better, but he lacked both the language and the desire. At least Florencia rose and smiled at him, moving to take his arm, which did nothing to soften the looks he was getting, jealousy now thrown into the mix as, heads close, he explained his concerns.

‘We don’t want to give these poor village people any more grief, so it would be better if they moved to the centre of the village where they will be safer.’

As the last of the light was fading, Cal Jardine was out on the western edge of the village, a full water canteen over his shoulder, looking at the ground, eyeing those places where lay the kind of dead spaces into which a crawling man could move unseen, as well as the walled-off areas of planted crops, vines, olive trees and vegetable plots, which would help to cover a discreet approach. He used the remaining light to pick out a line of approach to the village, one he would use himself to get close unseen, then he selected a spot from which he could cover it.

That was a gnarled old olive tree, on a slight mound, that had probably been there since the Romans ruled. Being above ground was not comfortable – quite the reverse – but it gave him a better view if the cloud should break, and he knew from experience a crawling
intruder rarely looked skywards, too intent on avoiding noise by taking care with what lay in front of him. Clambering up and lodging himself between two branches, his mood, a far from happy one, was not improved as the first heavy drops of rain began to fall.

Even with eyes well accustomed to the dark there was nothing to be seen; it was all about listening, getting accustomed to the sounds that occurred naturally – croaking frogs, barking dogs, as well as raindrops hitting leaves and the chirping insects hiding under them – making sure his thoughts, which were unavoidable, did not distract him from his purpose.

T
he looks he got when he came back in the morning were close to sneers; nothing had happened, no threat had appeared and every one of the Spaniards had enjoyed a good night’s sleep. Nor had any orders come to move on and by which route, which surprised him, given the supposed need to get to Saragossa quickly. Still, it was their fight, not his – the man in command, this Colonel Villabova, might have information not vouchsafed to Laporta; and if it was military incompetence, that was not something to which he was unaccustomed.

Years of training allowed Cal Jardine to get by on catnaps, one of which he took after a less-than-sustaining breakfast of unleavened bread and a fruit compote washed down with water; if there had been coffee, which he and his men had become accustomed to in Barcelona, the Falangists had pinched it. Then he spent twenty minutes lying dead flat on a warm stone, his hat
pulled down to keep the sun out of his eyes and out to the world.

By the time he came round, Vince had drawn from the well and heated some water, insisting that the boys should wash and shave, even if some of them barely had the necessary growth; it paid to stay clean when you could because, when it came to a fight, you could spend a long time between opportunities.

He had also been at them before they went to sleep, insisting they washed their socks and inspected their feet and also showing them that a properly stuffed knapsack made a good pillow. Then he had ensured that, while their rifles were loaded, the safety catches were set to off.

Next they were lined up in singlets and shorts for exercises, which actually produced outright laughter from the anarchist contingent, but there were no complaints from the boys doing the leaps, squats and press-ups; they all took their own fitness seriously, and one, called Bernard, a marathon runner, had actually set off to do his usual long wake-up jog before breakfast, heading, as advised by Vince, due east. After exercises, given there were still no orders to move, Cal got them dressed and took them out into the open for training in fire and movement, the former in dumbshow.

‘My friends think you are a mad Englishman,’ Florencia said, as she joined Cal, with an air that half indicated she agreed with them.

‘I hope you told them I am not either.’

‘They wonder how can a man spend the night lying in a ditch when he has a woman to keep him warm.’

‘I was up a tree, actually,’ Cal replied, rubbing an ache that came from the position he had been obliged to adopt and maintain, while wondering if the complaint was her own.

‘And now you want these boys to run around and play at soldiers?’

‘Before you become a soldier it helps to play, Florencia. You learn how to stay alive. Shall I explain what we are trying to do?’

She shrugged. ‘If you like.’

‘We have a body of young men who, in the parlance of the British army, do not know their arse from their elbow.’ There was a pause while Florencia filed that away; she was a keen collector of idioms in English, and in the past had made Cal write them down for her. ‘Now, when it comes to tactics, some of them will be clever and some of them will be idiots, and the first trick is to make sure in a battle it is the clever leading the idiots and not the other way round.’

He nearly added that in most armies, not least the one he had served in, you found out, especially after a long period of peace, that the reverse was generally the case, viz. that pompous idiot who had led his men out of the Parque Barracks. Putting that thought aside he pointed to a party moving along a drystone wall at a crouch.

‘What we are trying to do is to spot the natural leaders.’

‘You lead them, and your Vince.’

‘We can’t be everywhere, so we will break our group into five units of ten men, four of which will be rifle squads, each with a leader and an assistant, the rest we will use as a reserve under my personal supervision, also as messengers, medics and reinforcements. If we get machine guns, and I hope we do, each rifle squad will have a two-man gun team.’

The one leading the squad being put through its paces had reached a corner and peered round, his hand held up to stop his companions. They obeyed, but one of the lads could not resist raising his own
head to look, which occasioned a furious bark from Vince, who then walked over to the leader and spoke quietly.

‘Vince will be telling him that in such a situation he should have added a gesture to keep their heads down, not just signal to stay still. Come on, let’s get closer and listen in.’

‘OK,’ Vince said, loud enough to be heard even before they got close. ‘All have a shufti and tell me, once you leave the protection of this wall, where would you go?’

Cal pointed to the low rise on which he had spent the previous night, talking quietly. ‘For the purposes of this, we have said that is where the enemy is and the task is to take possession of it. That’s part of the basics whichever side you’re on, always seek to dominate the ground.’

Ask a question of those without experience, as Vince was doing now, and not everyone will answer. The ones who do, at the most basic level, are the lads you want to sort out, as long as their answer isn’t downright stupid, which is what came from one of Vince’s boxers, a spotty-faced kid called Sid, who picked out an area of sparse trees with gnarled but thin trunks in an open field. The response took Cal back to his own basic training.

‘A million sperm,’ Vince sighed, with a shake of the head, ‘and the egg got you.’

‘What aboot that wee gully o’er there?’ suggested a youngster who had been sent to the Olympiad by his local East Lothian mining branch.

Vince nodded. ‘And how, Jock, would you get from where you are to where you need to be?’

‘Am’ no sure, Vince, ’cause I think if we just rushed we aw’ get shot.’

‘You’re right, so let’s sort out how to do it.’

Vince got them back behind the wall, with the kid called Jock at the apex, where he crouched down himself to speak to him. ‘What you do, as the squad leader, is stay still and select the pair you’re goin’ to send ahead first. The squad will go two at a time. The rest you tell to give covering fire, but you must say where the target is and how many rounds to fire, understand?’

Young Jock nodded nervously as Vince demonstrated the necessary hand signals and verbal commands, adding, ‘Look, son, this is an exercise, not the real thing. Nobody gets killed if you get it wrong. OK?’ Another nervous nod followed. ‘You send two men at a run, with four selected to give covering fire. Nobody moves till everybody knows what’s happenin’ and has made it plain they understand. On your command they move and at speed. Now, who would you select to go first?’

There was a pause, before Jock replied, ‘Tommy and Ed are hundred-yard sprinters.’

That got an upraised thumb. ‘Covering fire?’

That occasioned another pause before he tapped the last line of stones and Vince was patient. ‘The last four in the group, ’cause the buggers will be watching the corner.’

A nod. ‘Then let’s try it.’

‘How many rounds, Vince?’

‘Three rapid, but you have to tell them the target and where it is.’

Vince addressed them all, his hand, jabbing like an axe, pointing in the direction of the mound, with Jock watching him intently.

‘It’s a small hill and you’ve got to keep the heads down of anybody up there; a kill is a bonus, so you’re aimin’ for the line where the
earth joins the sky. Furthest left takes furthest left and so on across to the right, which falls to the last man. Tommy, Ed, once you are in position stay in sight of your squad leader if possible, and when he signals the movement of the next pair of runners, your task is to split the defensive fire. Everybody clear?’

The nodding was less than hearty, and if what followed in dumbshow looked impressive to Florencia – especially the speed at which the boys moved over about twenty-five yards of ground – it was less so to Cal and Vince, who knew that much of what they were saying and seeking to impart was massively oversimplified.

Tactics were things you worked on again and again, not once or twice. It took months to properly train an infantryman, not a morning or a few days, and then they had to learn to work as part of a single unit, before combining to become an element of an effective company, going through the various stages of dumbshow – firing blanks and harmless explosions – to the actual experience of the sound of live fire. This lot would have, he suspected, to learn on the job, but at least they were fit, which was not the case with any new recruit he had ever encountered.

Young Jock did a reasonable job of orchestrating the supposed firefight, a bit messy but promising. He had to be told to order an immediate reload, never just leave it, never to assume, to always give the necessary orders even to trained men, to keep a check on your ammunition levels because the worst thing you can do is to get into a situation where you find you are in peril and running low.

‘Right,’ Vince called to the other groups of ten, who had been watching. ‘Let’s see how you do.’

The next sermon, given by Cal, was about the need when moving forward to use cover, and if that was sparse, to seek to avoid
standing upright, making a particular point about the excellent protection afforded by the seemingly ubiquitous drystone walls. Using them was not always possible, nor was it always the case that you knew you had an enemy to root out, so it was essential if you had to move quickly over open ground not to bunch up, but to advance in extended order.

In another situation – broken ground, woods or approaching a building – two men should scout forward covered by their mates. If a threat developed, think about what support you can call on, like heavier weaponry, before advancing. Was it essential that the position be taken? What about going round, which could be as good as going through?

Sat in a circle they listened as it was drummed home that a good squad commander never left anything to chance, supervised every move and issued continuous hand and verbal instructions, while always looking for ways to use his men to maximum effect, as well as seeking to minimise casualties when attempting to take an enemy position. Cal did not say that sometimes it was not possible; you don’t.

Regardless of what he had said to Florencia, still watching and listening, he had no intention of letting these kids operate on their own in squads – in time, yes, if they were granted that and it was necessary, but not immediately; yet the purpose of the training was the hope that it might produce leaders who would grow quickly into the role and to minimise losses from any sudden contact. More importantly, and the key to effectiveness, was to accustom the boys they led to obey orders unquestioningly.

‘Right,’ he said finally, looking skywards at the sun, now well risen and approaching its zenith. ‘Time to get in the shade.’

‘And eat,’ Vince added. ‘Can we use some of the rations we brought with us, guv? There’s not much spare left in the town.’

As they made their way back to the main square, the truth of Vince’s words was on the faces of those whom they passed, the folk who had survived the recent terror; true, the approach of the anarchist column had driven the murderers away and saved the town from further torture and death, but now they were finding that their liberators, not having moved on and needing to be fed, watered and accommodated, were as much of a burden as the fascists.

Their attitude did not help either: Laporta’s men had a swagger about them, the confidence of the victors of Barcelona. Added to that they were urban workers, atheists to a man, many of them seriously uncouth, now occupying a rural settlement where their city manners, political beliefs and their disdain for religion were anathema. Also, if the area surrounding was well watered and fertile, following on from the previous depredations and the subsequent loss of livestock and grain, it was not so blessed as to accommodate the needs of five hundred hungry souls.

Cal Jardine was awoken from another snooze by the sound of roaring engines, opening his eyes to observe a new unit arriving in a quartet of trucks and a cloud of road dust. The bright-red flags, above the cabs, with the hammer and sickle, identified them as members of the
Partido Comunista de España
. As they swung to in front of the church, and for all his dislike of Bolsheviks – which was nothing as compared to the way they were viewed by the anarchists – Cal was impressed by their discipline, as well as the fact that each vehicle carried drums of precious fuel, enough for the whole column,
without which they would struggle to continue the advance.

Ten men to a truck, clean-shaven and dressed in the same garb of black – jackets, berets, trousers and high boots, each with a bandolier of bullets over their shoulder – they sat upright with their rifles between their knees and did not disembark until ordered to do so. When on the ground they immediately formed up in a proper military fashion, dressing their lines, all eyes turned to the man who had emerged from the lead truck and barked the requisite commands.

Tall, unsmiling and hard-looking, with a tight belt around his waist and a pistol at his hip, a machine pistol in his hand, he was dressed in the same clothing as his men, except, instead of a beret, he wore a short-brimmed cap with a red star at the front over blond hair cut very short. Three others, obviously section leaders, had already emerged from the other cabs carrying rifles, which they slung over the shoulder as they took up station before their squads. There was no noise, no talking and no looking about; with the exception of their leader it was all eyes front.

They paid no attention to the shuffling mass of Laporta’s men made curious by their arrival, who came to look them over, or to the remarks being made, which Cal suspected to be well-worn insults, every one of which the communists had heard before. They had no effect on the commander either, who, satisfied that his men were behaving properly, gave a sharp order that saw them fall out and begin to unload their personal kit, before lighting a excessively long cigarette, which he held in a curious fashion between his second and third fingers.