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THREE
4.00 p.m. Between Haret-el-Himeimat and Deir-el-Munassib Colonel Marescoff Ruspoli

‘Luigi. Tell me again. Why is it that you wear a spanner around your neck?’

Lieutenant-Colonel Marescotti Ruspoli had lost count of how many times he had asked the same question in the past few weeks. Of course he knew the answer. That was not the point. He looked at the six young men who stood before him, their uniforms as clean and fresh as their smiles. They smelt of Italy, of home and he envied them the fact that they had seen that blessed place such a short time ago.

The question was a ritual.

Ruspoli sat in his ‘office’: an unstable folding chair behind a table made from ammunition boxes in the command trench that lay a few metres behind the front line of his unit’s position. The Raggruppamento Ruspoli, made up from the VII/186th and the VIII Battalion of paratroops and several artillery batteries. Just under one and a half thousand men in all. Not that there were 186 regiments of paras of course. In fact there were just two. But they were the elite fighters of the Italian army and jealously proud of the fact.

As he prepared to listen to the familiar reply Ruspoli munched at what was left of a hunk of dried salami that the cook had been keeping for him specially. Having handed out a few slices to his battalion officers, he was now savouring every last mouthful. Ruspoli was a fine-featured man of fifty, younger-looking than his years, with a thin moustache as dark as his black hair and small yet kindly brown eyes.

His orderly, Luigi Santini, laughed and replied: ‘Well you know, Colonel, how long we’ve been waiting for those anti-tank guns?’ He held up the spanner: ‘I reckon that this is the only way we’re going to be able to fight the enemy tanks when the attack comes. We take them to bits bolt by bloody bolt.’

The young men laughed. Ruspoli too, although he had heard the joke more times than he could remember. The fact was that the men sitting around him now were mostly a new intake, there to replace the dead and wounded from the last attack. It was a habit of his, to invite them to meet him face to face when they joined the unit. He liked to think of them all as a family.

You could easily tell the new boys from the veterans, and boys they were, barely out of school. For one thing their uniforms were still the original colour and had not been faded by the sun. He cast his eye around the newcomers, and smiled as he saw that they still wore their tunics buttoned. Most of the old lags had their shirts forever undone to reveal their thin, sun-browned torsos. Their fatigue caps had long since lost any semblance of shape; most too had discarded the distinctive tropical topees. Helmets were more practical and the only effective defence against the redhot shards of shrapnel that at some point during the day were sure to make an appearance in the trench. These were not of course the usual low-sided Italian infantry helmets. For these men were paratroops, ‘Folgore’ and their hats were made to withstand a drop from a flying aeroplane. Ruspoli did not mind the lack of smartness. He was no stickler for dress. What did it matter on the battlefield as long as you fought well? But sometimes though, he longed for the old days, the parade grounds, the pomp and the marching bands.

Ruspoli turned to the new boys: ‘Any of you sing?’

One of them looked sheepish and coughed and said nothing. But another, lean and grinning pointed at him: ‘Of course, Marco is a great singer. He was studying at the conservatoire in Milan when he volunteered. Eh, Marco?’

The sheepish one smiled: ‘Si, Colonel.’

Ruspoli nodded: ‘Good. That’s very good. What can you sing then? Opera? Verdi, Puccini?’

‘Si, Colonel. All opera. Puccini best of all.’

‘Bene. Well then, you must sing for us some time. The general loves opera and since the gramophone got hit by a shell splinter we’ve missed our music here. Santini, remember that for me. I’ll hold you to it.’

Ruspoli brushed three flies off the salami, popped it into his mouth and looked across at Santini, still grinning at the new boys. They think that the spanner story really is a joke, he thought. But he knew that it was true. If the current situation held up then the only way they would be able to defeat the British tanks would be to undo them bolt by bolt. The long-promised guns had still not arrived and with every day Ruspoli could feel the attack building. He sensed it on the wind. He was quite sure that the British and their allies would come soon. Before the winter set in at least. Montgomery and his generals wanted to push them back to Tripoli and according to reports they had enough armour now and the men to do so.

And all that he and his men, his paratroops could do was sit and wait. The Germans were their masters. Gave them their orders, told them how to die. And all for what, he wondered. He and his men, like all the Italians in this accursed place, had come here to fight for their Duce, for the dream of the new Italy, and instead they now found themselves at the whim of another country. And who was to command them? Divisional HQ had told him that Rommel had flown home sick. So they were left with his deputy, the redfaced General Stumme.

Ruspoli turned to his second-in-command, Captain Carlo Mautino de Servat, who was seated on an ammo box close behind him, and spoke quietly, ensuring that Santini and the others could not hear. ‘Carlo, did I tell you the latest casualty figures? Major D’Esposito told me yesterday, at HQ.’

‘No, Colonel.’

‘A thousand of our officers and fourteen thousand other ranks dead and wounded in all Divisions since the last push. Funny thing is the Germans have apparently lost roughly the same. So why do you think then that they still moan about us always running away, about us refusing to fight and expecting them, the Germans, to win back our colonies for us?’

Mautino shrugged: ‘I heard from a German officer last week, sir. Nice fellow, in the Fifteenth. He told me how well supplied we were. Assured me that we had better provisions than them. Plenty of wine, water, meat and bread.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I laughed and told him he was wrong. That we lived on a quarter-litre of water a day and that we hadn’t seen any fresh meat or fruit or vegetables for a month.’

‘What did he say to that?’

‘He laughed. He didn’t believe me. Asked me to remember him and send back a case of wine.’

Ruspoli shook his head. ‘No one believes anyone any more out here, Carlo. Nothing is real. Think about it and you start to see mirages. Like Morgana le Fay.’

He was referring to the wispy figure that appeared in front of you if you stared into the desert for a long time, as many of them did when on guard duty. It seemed to take the form of a woman, wrapped in a long robe and sometimes carrying water pitchers. He’d seen it once or twice. That’s when you knew you had been out in the sun too long. He wiped his forehead. Even under the camouflage netting the day was oppressively hot. He called to his orderly.

‘Santini. Direct those boys to their companies, will you. You, Marco. I look forward to hearing you sing.’ As the replacements were taken away he turned back to Mautino: ‘I suppose it’s occurred to you that we’re an embarrassment to the Germans?’

‘No. Not really. How, sir?’

‘Well, think about it. The great Colonel Ramcke and his paras teach us how to drop from the sky. How to act like proper Wehrmacht soldiers. We’re trained up for Operation Herkules. We’re told that we’re going to take Malta. Then what? The operation is called off. Cancelled by personal order of Hitler himself. Why? He doesn’t want to lose his precious Fallschirmjäger like he did in Crete. Of course he’s got other things for them to do. There’s Russia for one thing. But what about us? Good Italian troops? Impossible. The Germans can’t admit to that any more. We’re meant to be cannon fodder. So we’re sent here, to the bloody desert. We are paratroops, by God! Paratroops. Airborne. You know what Folgore means, Carlo? Of course you do. Lightning. We go in like a thunderbolt. We’re not bloody rats to fight and die in stinking trenches.’

Mautino, the youngest son of a family of Piedmontese aristocrats, looked down at his boots, concerned that his colonel had lost his temper, an increasing occurrence over the past few weeks. ‘I know, sir. I thought that they were going to drop us over the Suez Canal. We all did. That we would be the first into Cairo at the head of the advance. With the Duce on his white horse.’

‘Well, we all thought that, Carlo. Until they took our ’chutes away. Then we knew.’

Another voice joined in from behind them: ‘It was when they told us to take off our parachute flashes and wings, Colonel. That’s when we knew.’

Guido Visconti was smaller than Ruspoli but had the same fine features that marked him out as being descended from a line of aristocratic blue-bloods. He was from a small village near Vicenza and had volunteered for the army aged sixteen back in ’33. But that had been a lifetime ago. Now he passed the hours with his head buried in whatever reading matter he could find. Mostly he liked the Italian lyric poets. But when he couldn’t get them any popular magazine would do. Particularly Cinema, the new movie magazine. Film stars and directors were an especial passion. There was very little about Italian film that Visconti did not know.

Mautino nodded: ‘Right, Guido. You’re quite right. That was the end of it.’

Ruspoli added: ‘You know the reason for that though, don’t you? So that the Brits wouldn’t know we were here. That was fair enough. We have a reputation, boys. It was tough though for the lads after going through so much to earn them.’

‘Now they’re just exhausted, sir. Men are being relieved not from wounds but from sheer physical exhaustion.’

Ruspoli was reflective: ‘How long have you been here, Carlo?’

‘Same time as you, Colonel, since June.’

‘Since June, and tell me how much action have we seen since then?’

‘Enough, Colonel.’

‘Certainly enough. Do you remember our first time in action here?’

‘Could I forget it? July twenty-second. We’d only been disembarked for a few hours. We lost so many they had to make one battalion out of two. And we’ve been here ever since, waiting for the British to attack.’

Visconti looked up, tearing his concentration away from the torments of Dante’s second circle of hell. ‘Oh, I meant to tell you, sir. While you were on sick leave, Captain Camino had a direct hit on his dugout by a mortar bomb. He’s fine but was concussed for four days.’

Mautino spoke again: ‘Sir, have you noticed anything?’

‘What?’

‘Well, it’s long after 4.15 and the British haven’t fired at us.’

He was right. Every day for the past two months at precisely 4.15 a salvo of four huge 88mm shells had arced their way across the sky and crashed into the Italian position.

Ruspoli looked at his watch: 4.45. ‘Something’s up. Guido, get Benezetti and radio Brigade HQ. Tell them that something’s not right. We haven’t been fired on. Ask them if they know anything.’

‘I read the intelligence reports, sir. Heavy movements of troops again on the Telegraph Track, the Red Track and the Water Track. Point is we’re in the centre of the line. We also know who we’re facing over there. The British Fiftieth Division. Mainly light infantry with a few Greeks and the Free French.’

Ruspoli stood up and peered down the trench at his men who were slouching, exhausted, against the sides. They may, he thought, be descended from Caesar and Scipio but these men have no resemblance to any ancient warriors. I know they can fight though. It’s just making sure their morale holds up. For once, he wondered whether new uniforms might help after all.

He turned to Mautino: ‘We’re fighting in rags, Carlo. No more than rags. Can’t we get on to Division and ask for more uniforms?’

‘We’ve tried, Colonel. But we just keep being told that they’re coming.’

Visconti smiled: ‘Like everything else in this damned war. It’s on its way. On its way. The reinforcements. The new tanks. The gasoline, the rations. It’s all on its way. But it just never gets here, sir.’

Ruspoli tried to inject a high note. ‘You know that when the Duce was out here in July, he stayed for three weeks longer than he needed to.’

‘Yes I know, sir. But he took his white horse with him when he went. We might have had a few nice steaks out of that.’

‘Very funny, Guido. But I know what you mean. I’m as loyal as anyone to the Duce but I’m fighting for Italy. We all are. And the men can see what’s going on. The Germans are using us as cannon fodder. Even the hardline fascisti are beginning to wonder.’ Ruspoli shook his head. ‘Look. I command the bravest men in the Italian army. Of that there’s no doubt. But how can we send them into battle unclothed and unfed? And seriously, Carlo, how do you think we can fight tanks? What weapons do we have?’

‘With the magnet bombs the Germans have given us?’

‘That’s it. And with Molotov cocktails. The only way to use either of them is to get close enough to a tank to attach the bomb or throw the bottle. What that means is that I’m expected to sacrifice one man for every tank.’

Visconti spoke: ‘You have to admit it’s a reasonable ratio. Montgomery’s only got five hundred tanks. We’ve got one and a half thousand men.’

Mautino grimaced: ‘Ever the realist, Guido.’

‘Cui exhibetis vos servos ad obediendum, servi estis eius.’

‘What?’

‘“When you obey someone like slaves, you become his slaves.” It’s a quote. Romans. The Bible. That’s what’s happened here with us and the Germans.’

‘Don’t exaggerate, Guido.’

Another voice spoke as they were joined by another officer, Captain Maurizio Polini, a tall thin man with a beak of a nose. He brushed sand from his clothes and unwound the scarf from his face then took a swig of precious water from his canteen. ‘Sir. Gentlemen. If you ask me you can forget our problems with the Germans. The desert’s our real enemy. More dangerous than the Brits even.’

Mautino looked at him: ‘Been out again, Maurizio?’

‘On patrol just short of the depression. Couldn’t see a thing. No sign of the British. But then again they come and go as they please. They’re like ghosts.’

Visconti, who had been reading his book looked up: ‘It’s the heat I can’t stand. Forty-three degrees. Non-stop all day. It just saps away your energy. How can we fight like that?’

Mautino spoke: ‘Then at night it’s freezing. Below zero. It’s the devil’s own country. Your Dante would know it.’

Caporale Santini had returned now from directing the new intake to their company commanders and joined in with the officers in the informal manner that they had become used to, particularly in the elite band of brothers that was the Folgore; the other ranks treating their superiors with just enough deference, the officers looking on the men as underprivileged younger siblings.

‘The water’s foul, sir. You must agree. We never have fruit or vegetables. Tinned food and biscuit, that’s it. And they might say it’s for safety, but you know the real reason the rations come up at night? So we can’t see the flies that are already inside them.’

‘It’s an old joke, Luigi.’

‘But seriously, sir. It’s no surprise that we all have dysentery or something worse.’

Ruspoli detected that perhaps they might have gone too far. ‘Think yourself lucky, boys, that we only have the shits. General Ceriana’s got colitis. Did you know that? They say he’s very ill.’

‘Perhaps another camel will wander into the camp. Beats me how the last one got through our minefield.’

‘Didn’t you hear, Carlo? You must have been away on attachment. The British had cleared a path through it in the night. Five metres wide. We had to get the mobile sappers out to re-lay the whole damn thing.’

‘But you ate the camel?’

‘Of course. It made a very tasty ragout. Didn’t we save you any?’

Mautino shook his head. ‘It wouldn’t have kept. But I’m sorry to have missed it. Perhaps another one will come.’

Santini spoke: ‘If it does, sir, then we should really worry. The Brits’ll be right behind it.’

Ruspoli wondered what his family would make of him eating camel. He supposed that at some point one of his ancestors might have done the same. Perhaps on a crusade. They were princes of Florence, a warrior family. But while one ancestor fought with distinction at Lepanto against the Turks another was a poet. It was often the way with Italian soldiers. Fighting and poetry went hand in hand. They had raised a regiment in 1708 to defend the Pope against the Austrians.

He thought of the family home, high on the hilltop in Umbria. Castello Ruspoli with its acres of olive groves and vineyards. What he would give now for a sip of that heavenly wine or just one of those olives. He supposed that his elder brother Costantino was thinking the same thoughts wherever he now was on this damn battlefield. At fifty-one he must have been one of the oldest men in the fighting. But he was still fit. Ruspoli knew where Costantino’s unit was meant to be, but in this war who knew if anything was where they told you it was. As for little brother Carlo, the baby of the family and still in his thirties, well, it was anyone’s guess where he might be, flying his fighter across the desert skies, chasing the RAF.

It was amusing he thought, that the family should be able to trace its origins back to the Scots. To Marius Scotus from somewhere called Galloway, after whom he had been named. His mother of course was French. Pauline Talleyrand, great-great-niece of Napoleon’s foreign secretary. He knew that across the sand a Scottish division and a regiment of Free French were waiting to attack them. Not least, his own mother-in-law, his darling Virginia’s mother, was English. So how could he hate the enemy? So much irony. But then he supposed that was what war was all about. Absurdities, like the camel and Luigi’s spanner.

But they were all Italians here. Mostly men from the north and whatever their families’ origins, high or humble, he respected them. They were his men, all of them. Men like Aroldo Conticello, the baker’s son from Orvieto and Umberto Galati, just nineteen, from Pavia, who liked to wear his hair long. How it infuriated his company commander, thought Ruspoli. Tenente Piccini was forever shouting at Galati to get a haircut but Galati would only ever have a trim.

He would come back and protest: ‘It’s enough, Tenente. Just enough.’ But back he would be sent to the battalion barber only to return too soon and then Piccini would shout again. Ruspoli smiled. Such things were necessary when death stalked a battlefield looking for his next victim. Anything to keep the men amused. Ruspoli was still thinking about them as he walked along the trench. It was eerily quiet. Perhaps there was something in what Mautino had said. This was not right. He’d be happier when that report came through. He heard voices up ahead and stopped. The men were talking. Intrigued, Ruspoli stood and kept silent and listened.

‘So tell me this, Lorenzo. Why are the Germans our allies? My father fought against Rommel himself at Monte Matajur, Caporetto, in the last war. He was wounded. Never recovered. Now that German butcher’s our commander. Where’s the sense in that?’

‘Actually, General Frattini is our commander. And Rommel’s no butcher, Giovanni. He’s an honourable man and a good general.’

‘Frattini? In your dreams, Lorenzo. Don’t get me wrong. He’s one of the good ones, the general. Wasn’t he our commander when we formed? But now even he has to take orders from the Germans.’

Another voice cut in: ‘And what about the Yanks? Some of the guys have got cousins living in the States. What if they end up fighting against them?’

Ruspoli rounded the angle of the trench. On seeing their CO the men stood up and snapped smartly to attention. Ruspoli waved them down: ‘Not here, boys. America hasn’t sent any troops here yet. Don’t worry, you won’t meet an American in this desert let alone fight against one. Besides, do I look worried? You know me. I was born in New York. My brother too. Then we came home to the motherland. How do you think I’d feel killing an American? You might say I am one myself. So shoot me!’

They laughed together. But their smiles turned quickly to looks of concern with the arrival of a runner. Twenty-three-year-old Captain Pietro Bonini saw Ruspoli and saluted, then paused to get his breath back. One of the best in his regiment, thought Ruspoli. A shrewd boy who always had a knack of being in the right place at the right time.

‘Bonini. You have news?’

‘The radio’s down, sir. Nothing. So I ran to Division. I had the good luck to encounter Colonel Guiglia.’

‘The radio wizard?’

‘The very same, Colonel.’

‘That man has a nose for radio signals. He can guess their contents long before our deciphering teams get it. Heaven alone knows how he does it. So what’s up?’

‘There’s going to be an attack.’

‘We know that, Pietro, but when?’

‘Well, Guiglia said, “Mark my words, Capitano. It’s a question of hours, not days!”’

Ruspoli said nothing. He looked into the dark, frightened eyes of one of his men and then turned back to Bonini. ‘You’re quite sure that’s what he said, Pietro?’

‘Certain, Colonel. He said that the British radio activity had really fallen off. There’s something going on in the southern sector. Down here in fact, between Qaret el Homar and Somaket e Gaballa. His men had picked up lots of messages meaning nothing. You know, “X279, I’ll call you back”. That sort of thing. He seemed certain, sir. And he was sweating.’

Ruspoli nodded. He knew exactly what Guiglia meant. The attack was imminent. And there was no doubt in his mind. They would come tonight.