Picture of Defeat by Max Hennessy

Author:Max Hennessy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Canelo Digital Publishing Limited
Published: 2020-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

They were finally clear of the front line and in what ought to have been friendly territory. That it was not entirely friendly soon became obvious from the number of times they were stopped and their presence questioned. The Allied Military Government had arrived, with its officers – town majors, engineers, garrison troops, claims and hirings offices, military police, pay masters, displaced persons units, even the YMCA. Not being fighting troops, they were far less casual than the men whose chief concern was staying alive, and very quick to be officious.

They were also now in the Zona di Camorra, and Pugh was uneasy because they were a long way from the main road and the hills seemed empty of life.

Tamara glanced at him sideways. ‘You are worried, Piu,’ she said.

‘Yes.’

‘You expect trouble?’

‘This is bandit country. It’s dangerous.’

She shrugged. ‘Everything is dangerous in Italy.’

However, at last, Pugh’s authority was beginning to carry weight. Since the field security people were considered even by a few of the British to be a form of British police, his papers invariably brought a response. Officers and sergeants withdrew their objections to the passage of the hearse, even to the presence of Marco, Foscari, Tassinari and Tamara. And, in the end, an Indian muleteer appeared with a length of rope to put a whipping on the splintered shaft to strengthen it so they could continue.

By this time the weather had improved a little and the sleety rain had stopped, the clouds had cleared, and there was even a suggestion of blue in the sky. A cookhouse had been established in an old warehouse in the main street of the town of Posticci, and the petrol cookers had settled down to a steady glow that could produce 700 breakfasts in just over an hour. The streets were full of dirty-faced weary men just down from the line, their noses twitching at the smell of bacon that hung in the air.

Around them, small Italian boys were touting for their sisters, and in odd empty houses soldiers had started scrubbing the floors, doing their best to get rid of the lice and bedbugs before they started to live in them. Outside the town the ditches were filled with all the rubbish of war – cartridge cases, broken weapons, German helmets – but the shops appeared to be functioning after a fashion, to say nothing of a small, indifferent cinema.

The Via Garibaldi was packed with men in khaki, and there were two restaurants, mostly filled with officers. There was also a false air of gaiety that came from the rapid turnover of money, because the men just down from the line were anxious to spend – on anything, knickknacks, booze, or women, it didn’t matter much – and the people of the town, hungry and desperate for money, were only too willing to sell.

Nobody looked twice as the hearse moved among the traffic. Fiorello, the black plumes drooping about his ears after the rain, plopped his great splayed feet down in the mud, his expression one of utter contempt.

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