Guns At Cassino (2 page)

‘L
inge ... Linge!
Linge!
... Wake up General Jodi and my military staff ... Tell them I want Kesselring on the phone at
once
.'

Two

The stocky ex-artilleryman who was now in command in Italy rose to his feet hastily as Hitler entered the salon followed by Jodl and his adjutants.

The
Führer seized the Field Marshal's right hand in both of his warmly.

`It
is good of you to come immediately, Kesselring. I know how difficult it is to get away from the front, especially under present circumstances.'

`It
is a great honour to be called here, my Führer,' Kesselring answered, a little embarrassed by the German Leader's hypnotic gaze.

Finally
Hitler released his grip.

‘B
ut let us sit down.' He waved his hand round the salon.

`Thank
you, my Führer.'

Kesselring
sat down beneath the picturesque reclining nude which was said to be by Titian himself while Hitler lowered himself into one of the red upholstered chairs near the fireplace so that the light from the picture window fell over his shoulder and he would not need to wear the gold-rimmed spectacles he abhorred.

`Good,
Kesselring, if you are ready?' Hitler threw a glance at his pale-faced clever Chief-of-Staff Colonel-General Jodl to ascertain if he were also ready. He was. 'Would you please fill us in quickly on the Italian situation?'

Kesselring,
known by his staff behind his back as 'smiling Albert', was optimistic as always:

`The
Tenth Army is well positioned, sir. We are blocking both the American Fifth Army and the Tommies' Eighth on both coastal routes leading to the capital and the north. I think we can safely say that General von Senger, the commander of the Tenth, has got the situation well in hand. Our positions are easily defensible - at least until the enemy can outnumber us three to one. Which is not the case at the moment. The only victory that they had been able to achieve is the capture of Peak 555 last week by the French.'

`Pea
k 555?' Hitler asked quickly. He prided himself on his intimate knowledge of all fronts; it annoyed him that he did not know immediately where the Peak was.

`It
is to the south-east of Cassino, my Führer,' Kesselring explained. 'The French threw in a whole Algerian division to capture it from a handful of our men. It cost them a great number of dead - and equipment.'

`But
it does cover the Cassino position, does it not, Field Marshal?' Jodi remarked quietly, speaking for the first time.

`One
might say that,' Kesselring mumbled. 'But Cassino will hold even with Peak 555 lost. It is the lynch-pin of our line, and virtually impregnable,' his voice rose proudly, as if he personally were responsible for the creation of the mountain chain, which barred the Allies' progress north.

`Even
if the Allies landed on the coast
behind
it?' Jodl persisted, playing the gadfly as usual, eager to provoke the self-important field commanders who came to the Führer's HQ full of themselves and the infallibility of their plans. Hitler held up his hand for peace.

`Please,
gentlemen, let us not go into that now. We shall face that possibility when it occurs. For the time being, let us look at the Cassino situation. Kesselring tell me a little more about it, please.'

Glad
to have had Jodl silenced, Kesselring continued: `It rises to five hundred and nineteen metres, my Führer, and commands the Liri valley to the south, the town of Cassino to the east and the Rapido valley running northwards towards S. Elia. It must be taken if the Allies are to use Route Six. On and around the Cassino position, we have the best troops available, the paratroop division - Heilmann's - and the Hermann Goering Panzer Grenadier Division, plus Colonel Geier's SS Battle Group Wotan in reserve.'

Hitler's
face lit up.

`Did
you hear that, Jodl? Geier's roughnecks from the SS are there too!'

Jodi
pulled a long face.

'Yes,
I heard, my Führer,' he said sourly. He knew the small ex-cavalryman Geier - the 'Vulture' as he was nick-named behind his back - well enough. Since 1939 he had had his battalion decimated time and time again on every battlefront in the ambitious drive for promotion. Admittedly Geier's SS Battlegroup was probably the best fighting unit on any front this winter of 1943 when the steam was running out of even the most elite outfits. But that quality had been purchased at a terrible price in blood and human suffering.

Neither
the Führer nor 'Smiling Albert' noticed his look, however. Kesselring eagerly hurried on with his exposé:

`Our
people are exceedingly well dug in, my Führer, and the Ami bombardment is largely ineffective. Their shelters are reinforced with steel and concrete so that they can get on with their business without interference from the enemy. Even when the bombers come in, they can safely sit there and play
Skat
.' (1)

Hitler
smiled.

`We
did the same in the Bavarian infantry in the trenches in the first war against the Tommies,' he remarked. 'Good, Kesselring. You seem to have everything very well under control. Now, I should like to make a suggestion. I want some of your paratroopers out of the bunkers and into the area of the monastery itself.'

Kesselring's
mouth dropped open with shock, as Hitler had expected it would. The German Leader flashed a look at Jodl. Jodl was watching the Field Marshal, his eyes full of undisguised cynical pleasure. As a devout Roman Catholic, Kesselring had consistently leaned over backwards not to offend the Italian Church; Jodl knew what he must be thinking at this moment.

`But,
my Führer,' he stuttered. 'The monastery - you know, of course, we have assured the Church authorities that nothing would happen to it diming the course of the fighting?'

Hitler
sighed wearily.

`It
has been our misfortune, Kesselring, that we have the wrong religion.'

Kesselring
flushed, but said nothing.

`Why
couldn't we have had the Japanese religion which regards sacrifice for the Fatherland as the highest good? Why must we have Christianity with all that damned meekness and flabbiness? But we have and so do our enemies – and our friends,
Christian
France and Spain. Now the point is this, Kesselring. A great change is taking place in the course of the war. The days of 1940 and 1941 are over – for the time being. Unfortunately we Germans cannot do as we wish, without considering the attitudes and feelings of the rest of the world. We must take such things into account now and play their foolish Christian games. We must attempt to win the hearts of our potential allies – the neutrals. Do you understand?'

`Yes,
my Führer.'

`Good,
then you must realize that we vitally need a propaganda victory this winter. We must show the neutrals that we are not barbarians, as the enemy propaganda makes us out to be, but the defenders of the true faith.' He smiled cynically at the devout Field Marshal. 'Which we are, are we not?'

`Yes,
yes,' Kesselring agreed hastily.

`There
are also those enemies within our own ranks,' Hitler's face darkened, 'who must be rendered impotent by such a propaganda victory – in due course, the Gestapo will take care of them properly. But for the time being, we must be content with taking the wind out of their sails - '

`But
Cassino?' Kesselring was provoked into interrupting. `The connection with Cassino?'

`I
was coming to that, my dear Field Marshal. Now what if the Allies thought we were using the monastery as an observation point?'

`But
we aren't, my Führer!'

`Yes,
but if
they
thought we were?'

`They
would attempt to destroy the position – perhaps.'

`Perhaps.
But because of the monastery's valuable antiquities, its venerability,' Hitler sneered, his contempt naked now, 'they might hesitate, eh?'

`Yes,'
Kesselring conceded lamely.

`But
if we provoked them into destroying that supposed observation post, Kesselring, and thus brought down the wrath of the so-called Christian world on their guilty heads?'

`How,
sir? We haven't the strength for any large-scale operation. The front is at a stalemate. As Jodl has indicated they are probably at this moment gathering their strength for an amphibious landing behind the Cassino position, somewhere higher up the coast. If that comes off, Cassino will lose in importance. There will be no need to - neutralize,' he coughed over the word, as if he could not bring himself to utter the word ‘destroy' - 'the Cassino line'

Politely
Hitler let him finish.

`All
very sound reasoning, Kesselring. But you are forgetting one thing.'

`And
that is, my Führer?'

`Colonel
Geier's SS Battle Group Wotan!' Hitler snapped, iron in his voice. We shall use his roughnecks to provoke the Allies into destroying that precious monastery of yours. Kesselring, I want you to give an immediate order to Tenth Army Commander that Colonel Geier's men recapture Peak 555.'

Three

Major von Dodenburg's eyes were beginning to get used to the darkness now. As the long attack column from the Wotan's Panzer Grenadier Battalion came closer to their start line, he was able to pick out the trenches abandoned by the original German defenders of Peak 555 when the French had struck them with such overwhelming weight. Here and there he could make out their dead, strung across the barbed wire like rag dolls.

Behind
him Schulze, the battalion's comedian from Hamburg, cursed softly and tugged at the mule's bridle.

`Come
on you bitch, move!'

`What's
the matter, Schulze?' he hissed at the man who had been with him now since the earliest days . of the Wotan SS Assault Battalion.

`It's
these mules, sir,' Schulze answered in his Waterfront sing-song. 'You toss a coin and takes yer choice - heads the bastards take a lump out of yer arse, tails, they kick it.'

He
tugged at the obstinate little animal again, whose hooves were muffled in sacking to cut down the noise.

`All
right,' von Dodenburg whispered, grinning. 'You've registered your protest, but keep the noise down. They tell me those Africans up there have sharp ears.'

`Yeah,
and sharp knives too,' Schulze said dourly. 'Those Goums cut the tails off a couple of paras last week and when a patrol found them, they had their tails stuck in their traps.'

`Can't
worry you, Schulze,' the handsome young SS Major commented, waving his hand for the column to continue up the steep, treacherous track. 'The way you've been abusing yours, it must have fallen off years ago.'

Behind
them in the darkness, the tough, rangy South Tyrolean farm boys who made up most of the First Company laughed softly and urged on their commandeered Italian mules, which carried the ammunition and rations they would need once they had captured the Peak and had dug in.

They
plodded on carefully, bodies held tense and expectant, waiting for the sudden dramatic hush of a flare which would indicate that they had been discovered by the French. But none came. As a thick cold mist began to roll down from the peak, they started to work their way through the abandoned trenches. Once von Dodenburg stopped and glanced down at a dead paratrooper, sprawled on his back, his legs spread apart, his jump-suit ripped open down the middle. Where his genitals had once been, there was now nothing but a bloody mess. Schulze's story had not been another of his macabre inventions. Von Dodenburg swallowed hard and straightening up hastily, urged the grenadiers on before they could get a proper look at the para's mutilated body.

They
passed between two miserable white-painted Italian cottages, their pathetic little gardens, littered with French and German equipment, both roofs gone. Kuno von Dodenburg, followed by Schulze carrying his Schmeisser machine pistol, gave them a quick examination. But they backed out hastily. They stank rankly of poverty, animals and human excreta - and in the second one, an old Italian woman lay huddled in a corner, one shoe gone, her black skirt thrown up over her head to reveal the obscenely naked flesh beneath.

`The
Frogs don't think much of putting out sentries, do they sir?' Schulze said after a while, as they left the huts behind them.

`No,
obviously not,' von Dodenburg answered softly, still trying to absorb the discovery of the mutilated para and the raped Italian crone. 'They're too confident they have beaten us for good, it seems.'