Dolce Vita Murders (DI Nick Jellicoe Series Book 4) by Murray Jack

Author:Murray, Jack [Murray, Jack]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: UNKNOWN
Published: 2023-01-09T00:00:00+00:00

16

Italy 1944

Monte Cassino, Italy: April 1944

He’d arrived late to the party. It was there on their on the faces of the young men, aged beyond their years. Worry lines flared out across mouths tightened with tension and fear. Sunken, bloodshot eyes looked on, dully and in acceptance of the inevitability of what lay ahead. Yes, he’d arrived late to a party without broads and booze and all the good things he’d enjoyed right up until the moment they had shipped him over here. To Europe. To Italy.

To the war.

Nineteen years old. All around him where old men of the same age. He tried to talk to a few of them, but their replies were monosyllabic. He later learned this was not because they were rude or, indeed, tired although they clearly were. It was because they had seen dozens if not hundreds of young men like him arrive and die. They had reached the point where to make friends was an invitation to suffer untold grief.

But that came later.

So much he would understand would come later and later would only be days away. The platoon was pressing hard against the Germans who were dug in around what was left of the monastery. For months then weeks the Americans had thrown everything they could at them, but they would not move. In fact the act of throwing so much at them had only created the conditions by which the Germans could hold on. They rubble at Monte Cassino made for an excellent cover. The Germans exploited this to the full.

Over the first few days the boy learned how to dig himself in to avoid shrapnel. He learned how to look at death and not flinch. He learned to shoot a rifle at other human beings. Slowly all of these things became easier. After a week he was almost a veteran. Almost but not quite.

The first confirmed kill, at least in his own mind, came after ten days when they attacked the outer perimeter. One German soldier left his head up too long and ‘pop’, he had him. If this had happened the week previously he would probably have been sick. It wasn’t quite so bad as he’d thought. At least not then. Later when the dreams came it was worse. That was for the future. Then, as suddenly as they’d started, the dreams stopped. It was not so much an act of will as acquiescence to the core of a man’s nature, the very soul that we do not talk about and can barely acknowledge; we are killers. Bizarrely he thought of the time he used to go to church. How his mother would insist he confess his sins. What would he say now. What would be his penance?

That he survived Monte Cassino was a surprise to him. However, getting out of Anzio with only a shaving nick was miracle. He left Monte Cassino after it finally fell in May 1944 and ended up in an even greater hell hole at the Anzio beachhead.

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