Street Boys (33 page)

32

45TH THUNDERBIRD INFANTRY DIVISION HEADQUARTERS SALERNO

Captain Anders folded the paper in half and slipped it into an envelope. He held it in his hands and stared out the open flap of his tent. He had written so many of these letters in such a short period of time. He had grown weary of trying to explain to mothers and fathers why their sons would never come home again, their bodies lost in the fight for control of foreign soil. He glanced down at the box of dog tags resting next to his foot and tossed the envelope on top of the pile.

Anders looked up when he saw Higgins walk into the tent. “I only want good news,” he said to him. “And that’s an order.”

“Air command has agreed to send a plane to Naples, sir,” Higgins said. “A B-24. It should be there sometime today.”

“Just one?”

“It’s all they could spare, sir,” Higgins said. “They need the rest up north against the Nazis and down the coast to protect the Fifth Army.”

“One might be enough to do the job,” Anders said. “At the very least it’ll give us some idea of what we’re looking at down there.”

Anders walked over to the table in the center of the tent and gazed down at the large map. “Looks like Patton’s making his move,” he said. “You can always count on him to rattle the cages and get things rolling. This’ll force Monty’s hand. There’s no way he lets Patton get too far down that coast. He’ll want to make sure he can share in the glory and the headlines. Which means it won’t be long before we’re on the move, too.”

“Every city from Rome on up is in chaos,” Higgins said. “It’s a dog- fight anywhere you go. The Allies against the Germans with the Italians stuck in the middle. All our reports indicate that the Nazis are making the Italians pay a heavy price for switching over to our side. You can’t go a block on any street without finding a body.”

Anders looked away from the map and down at the box of dog tags next to his desk. “Everybody’s paid a heavy price,” he said.

THE FOURTH DAY

33

STAZIONE CENTRALE

Nazi soldiers walked in small groups along the empty tracks, following in the dusty wake of their tanks. They kept their eyes on the wooden slants in front of them, ever mindful of the mines that had been placed under the dark shiny rocks. Kunnalt was in the center tank, standing tall in the open mouth, his binoculars focused on the four wide entrances to the tunnels. “Fire into them,” he shouted to the tank commanders on either side of him. “If those boys are in there, I don’t just want them blocked in. I want them killed.”

It was eight o’clock in the morning, the first day of October in 1943 when the first of the Nazi shells exploded inside the train tunnels of Naples.

The dozen tanks moved in a semicircle, unleashing an arsenal of weapons inside the gaping mouths that once connected Naples to its sister cities in the north. The thick old brick sides of the ornate archways collapsed under the assault, landing in front and inside the tunnels, sending mounds of dust and rock cascading in all directions, falling at the fiery feet of the flames.

Kunnalt turned and waved his soldiers in ahead of the tanks, watching as they riddled the dark tunnels with machine-gun fire and the oppressive power of the flame throwers, some stopping to launch grenades deep into the misty craters. Kunnalt surveyed the scene and nodded his approval.

Kunnalt’s men stopped at the tunnel entrance. Their guns were poised, their flame throwers were in idle. The tanks were at their backs, turrets smoking and at rest, engulfed by dust and flames and specs of debris as the soldiers waited for any sound of life.

“Check for bodies, then seal the tunnels,” Kunnalt ordered the junior officer. “Then double back and meet up with us at the next location.”

“What of the wounded, sir?” the officer asked.

“There won’t be any wounded,” Kunnalt said. “At least none that you can find. Have I made myself understood?”

The junior officer snapped a salute, nodded and turned to watch as Kunnalt’s tank veered to its right, circling away from the tunnels and toward its next destination.

That was when they saw the catapults.

They were two hundred feet away, three of them lined up twenty feet apart. Cracked tower bells were jammed in the center of their mouths, large unexploded bombs planted inside their bases. They were built of rotting planks of wood, burned bricks and rusty chains, held in place by rods and gears pulled off the bodies of dead tanks. Vincenzo and Nunzia stood behind the catapults, heavy wooden mallets in their hands. Two boys were assigned to each one, looking to Vincenzo for the signal to fire. “Be patient,” Vincenzo told them. “Wait for the American and the boys to get in place and then for the Nazi to make his move.”

“What if he fires on us before we get a shot off?” one of the boys asked.

“Then you pray he misses,” Vincenzo said, his eyes looking beyond the boys and past the tanks and soldiers, into the mouth of the smoking tunnels.

They were crouched down inside the rodent-infested sewers under the train tunnels, fifty boys squeezed in a space suitable for half that number. The walls shook and dust came down at them like ocean waves. They could feel the heat of the fire and the collapse of the rooftop shingles crashing down on the tracks. Most of them had their eyes closed and their hands flat against the sides of their ears. “How much longer do we need to wait?” Dante asked Connors, his small body jammed in next to the soldier’s brawn.

“You’ll know before I will,” Connors said to the frightened boy. “So when you give the signal, that’s when we’ll move.”

“How will I know what to look for?” Dante asked.

“You won’t need to look. You’ll hear it.”

The shelling had stopped and the soldiers had ceased their fire. The dust around them had settled and the crackling fires, only inches from their heads, were burning on their own. Dante looked up at Connors and shrugged his small shoulders. “Now?” he asked.

“Great call, Sergeant.” Connors patted the boy on the head and then clicked the chambers on his two machine guns.

Connors popped open the sewer cover and slid it across the grimy rails of the tunnel. He jumped out of the dark hole, checking the front and rear entrances. The Nazi soldiers were all on his left side, their focus on Vincenzo and the catapults. The tunnel was dark and blanketed from floor to ceiling in smoke and fire, giving the boys a difficult but perfect cover to walk through. Its farthest end was blocked off by the presence of a silent Nazi tank. “Let’s go,” Connors whispered down into the hole. “Cover your nose and mouth for as long as you can. Hold your breath if you have to. You’re going to make it through. Don’t worry. We’ll be coming up onto the soldiers who are on the outside end, with their backs to us.”

The line of boys streamed out of the tight sewer openings, emerging from both sides of the tunnel, each one slowly adjusting to the heavy veil of smoke, the crumbled mounds of stone and the thick burning wood that surrounded them. They held their rifles by their sides, feeling their way through the murkiness, occasionally pressing a hand against a scorched wall for guidance. Connors walked down the center of the tunnel, keeping an eye both on the line of boys and on the Nazi activity close to the entrance. The soldiers had by now retreated back to the cover of their tanks, firing heavy volleys in the direction of the catapults.

Connors stood by the tunnel entrance, the air clearer, the boys grouped behind him alongside each wall, his back to the Nazis less than fifty feet away. “Dante, you and your group move to the right,” he whispered, waving the boys out of the tunnel. “Claudio, you take your boys and move to the left. Stay low and don’t fire until you see me move out and wave to Vincenzo. And let’s hope they don’t see us first.”

“What if they do?” Claudio asked, talking in hushed tones.

“Shoot at them until you run out of bullets,” Connors said. “And after that, just run.”

“Your plans are much easier to follow than the ones Vincenzo thinks up,” Claudio said, too frightened even to venture a smile.

“I like to keep things simple,” Connors told him.

Connors stayed behind, his machine guns poised at the Nazi soldiers, watching as the boys made their way out of the tunnel and along the tracks, quietly closing ranks on the enemy. He looked to his left and to his right and signaled both Dante and Claudio to stop and hold their positions. The Nazis were moving forward, looking to get closer to Vincenzo and the catapults, the shells of their tanks falling short of their intended mark by a good fifty yards. Connors looked up at the clear sky and the sun drifting toward its center.

It was a horrible waste of a beautiful day.

He stepped toward the middle of the tracks, waved his hand, and then he and the boys opened fire. Nazi soldiers fell in a heap, caught unaware by the rear attack. Connors wrapped the two machine guns around his shoulders, yanked two grenades off his belt, pulled the pins out with his teeth and threw them toward the tanks and soldiers. He rolled to the ground, swung the guns back into his hands and resumed firing, targeting the Nazis closest to the tanks and leaving the easier targets for the boys on his flanks.

“Okay, Vincenzo,” he said to himself. “It’s time to ring those bells.”

Vincenzo and Nunzia were on their knees in front of the first catapult, legs scraping against sharp rocks wedged between the tracks, debris from the exploding tank shells dancing in the air around them. Each held a mallet and looked out past the tanks and soldiers at Connors and the street boys as they exchanged heavy fire with the Nazis outside the railroad tunnels. Vincenzo rubbed the sides of the old tower bell strapped to the center of the catapult and got to his feet, the mallet raised high above his head. He pounded down two blows to the left side as Nunzia did the same to the right and then both stepped back. The chain holding the bell in place snapped and released both the bell and the bomb it held in its well. They watched as the bomb arched high toward the sky, then sank down toward a Nazi tank, its engine revving hard, the driver anxiously shifting gears to avoid its impact.

The explosion rocked the terminal and flung the tank ten feet off the ground.

It bounced across the tracks, crushing several soldiers in its wake, and came to a fiery halt on the rocky slope near a concrete platform. Vincenzo pumped his fist. Nunzia and the boys jumped in the air and cheered with delight. The boys rushed toward the two remaining catapults, pounding down on the chains holding the bombs and bells, eager to release their havoc on the Nazis. “You did it, Vincenzo,” Nunzia said. “You really made it work.”

“It wasn’t me,” Vincenzo said, touching the side of her face and walking toward the others. “It was your father. If we win anything at all today, it will be because of what he did and what he showed us could be done.”

“He would have been pleased to hear that,” Nunzia managed to say.

Vincenzo turned and looked back at her and smiled. “I don’t think so,” he said. “It’s more likely he would have come up with something to be angry about.”

The Nazis were trapped.

Connors and the boys bore down on them, firing their rounds, tossing their grenades and cocktails. Vincenzo and Nunzia sent their heavy artillery hurtling, demolishing two tanks at a clip. Kunnalt surveyed the fiery scene and ordered his tanks and soldiers to swing to the right, leave the main station and head for the center of the city. There was one unobstructed road open to them and they moved straight for it, firing wildly at the boys at both ends of the tracks.

“All right,” Connors screamed out, “everybody move back. Take the wounded and put them in the tunnels. The rest of you get up those hills and out of sight.”

Dante stepped up next to Connors and stared at the retreating tanks and soldiers. Blood ran down the side of his face from a gash above his eye. “They should be coming up to the spot any second now. Unless we placed them wrong.”

“We’ll know soon enough,” Connors said. “How’d we do on casualties?”

“We lost four boys,” Dante said. “Six others are wounded. One of them could use a doctor.”

“Have Nunzia look at him,” Connors said. “See if she can patch him up and keep him together for a couple of days. We should have some help in here by then.”

Dante took a cigarette from out of his pants pocket and put it to his mouth. He snapped off a match and was close to lighting it when Connors reached over, pulled the cigarette from Dante’s lips and put it up to his own. He then lifted the boy’s hand that was holding the match, lit the cigarette with it and took in a deep drag. He shook Dante’s arm and put out the match. “That was the only one I had left,” Dante said.

“Good to hear,” Connors said, walking along the tracks, watching the Nazi tanks near the narrow road taking them out of the main station. “You’re not a sergeant just yet. When you are, then you can smoke.”

The loud series of explosions knocked both of them off their feet. The Nazi tanks had driven across the mine field set by the street boys. Dante’s machine gun bounced along the edges of the track. The heavy continuous blasts sent German soldiers sprawling and strewing armor parts in all directions. Connors got to his knees, watching the destruction taking place at the far end of the station as he wiped a hand across the reopened wound around his neck. He turned to check on Dante. The boy was on his hands and knees, his eyes lost in the massive spectacle that was unfolding. “How many did you and Franco lay down?” Connors asked.

“All that we had left,” Dante said in hushed tones. “There were about a dozen and we laid them in under the rocks about ten feet apart, just like you told us to do.”

“That should be enough to wipe out at least half those tanks,” Connors said. “And if more than twenty soldiers come out of that alive, I’d be surprised.”

“So I did a good job?” Dante asked.

“Yes,” Connors said to him, slowly getting to his feet and retrieving his weapons. “You did a very good job.”

“Now can I have a cigarette?” Dante asked, running to catch up to Connors.

“Wait until after the war,” Connors said, looking over his shoulder.

Nunzia poured red wine over her hands and dried them on a clean dishrag. She looked down at the wounded boy and smiled, moving a row of damp, thick strands of hair away from his eyes. They were inside one of the four tunnels, the boy resting on a soiled thin mattress, his head propped up on three folded shirts. There were a half dozen lit candles around them and in the shadows of the semidarkness, Nunzia could see the severity of the boy’s stomach wounds.

“
Come ti ciami?
” she asked the boy.

“Maurizio,” he said.

He was close to twelve, thin, with a sweet angular face and deep, rich black eyes. His hands rested quietly at his side and he moaned slightly with each sharp jolt of pain. He looked into her face and nodded. “
Non che niente da fare,
” he said in a low voice.

Nunzia rested two fingers across his lips and rubbed her hand along the sides of his face. She reached behind her and pulled out a sopping wet cloth from a small pot filled with brown water. She squeezed the water from the cloth and rested it on top of Maurizio’s warm forehead. Nunzia turned when she saw the shadow approach, pulling a pistol from her waistband. She lowered the gun when she spotted the familiar face.

“Thought you could use some help,” Connors said.

“The shrapnel wound is very deep,” she said. “I think I can stop the bleeding and bandage it up. But I don’t know what to do about the two bullets in his stomach.”

Connors looked down at the boy and then back up to Nunzia. “He’s losing too much blood. Those bullets need to come out.”

“I don’t know how,” Nunzia said.

“Please,” Maurizio said, running his tongue across dry lips, his words coming out in slow spurts. “Don’t touch them. I know you want to help. But I can’t take the pain. Just stay with me. Both of you. Don’t let me die alone.”

Nunzia wiped at the corners of her eyes and leaned in closer to the dying boy, holding on tight to both his hands. Maurizio stared up at Connors, his breath coming in tight hushes. Connors yanked his canteen off his hip and poured some water into his hand. He dipped two fingers into his wet palm and brushed them against Maurizio’s cracked lips.