Beneath a Frosty Moon by Rita Bradshaw

Author:Rita Bradshaw
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan

PART FOUR

Hell Has Many Forms

1944

Chapter Fourteen

The morning was soft, bright yet ethereal, but the sun was already warming the air and Jed knew by midday it would be very pleasant. He had never given any thought to Italy, or to any other countries apart from Britain come to that, until he had been sent overseas not long before Italy completed her military about-face by declaring war on Germany in October the previous year. Germany had been her ally until little more than five weeks before this, but when the Italians had surrendered the wave of atrocities and looting that the Germans had engaged in had shocked new recruits like him. The old hands had been far more philosophical about the reign of terror by the Nazis.

Jed and his unit had been part of the Allied force trying to inch its way up the boot of Italy – ‘like a bug on one leg’ as Winston Churchill had put it – and they had run into stiff resistance north of the Volturno river. The Nazis had transformed the lovely Benedictine monastery at Monte Cassino into an almost impenetrable fortress, and at the time Jed had feared that every single British soldier would be wiped out. The Apennines made ideal shelter for Nazi machine-gun nests; there were few roads and the land was marshy. Fog had hampered Allied planes and winter was around the corner. That had probably been his lowest point since he’d joined up.

He stretched and his stiff limbs protested at the movement. He and several of his comrades had spent the night sleeping on the covered verandah of an Italian farmhouse, and although the long, low, stone building was beautiful on the outside it offered nothing in the way of luxuries. Not that they expected any. The area was full of crumbled ruins of buildings, and although it had become clear that Germany would lose the war, the Nazis were an enemy with whom you took tactical liberties at your peril. The German army was tenacious, ruthless, frugal and well led, and counter-attacked whenever the opportunity presented itself.

The area bristled with Italian partisans who, although mostly an undisciplined rabble, were brave and fought well. Many of them were clothed in rags without boots and were armed with antiquated Italian and Turkish weapons. They had passed one such column on the march the day before, and Jed had silently reflected that it was one of the most heterogeneous collections he’d ever seen or was likely to see. There had been mules, donkeys and horses; old men, young men and girls; and every conceivable garment from umbrellas to wooden shoes. The convoy had been singing and smoking, shouting and laughing in a fantastic moving caravan of humanity, and Jed had found himself wondering what they thought of him and his comrades. He and the others were making their way back to camp, having got separated from the rest of their patrol in an ambush two days ago. The patrol hadn’t realized the village they’d been approaching was Nazi-held and had been hopelessly outnumbered.

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