Eastern Passage (13 page)

The wine did Fran a lot of good.

“If we have to go down in flames,” she said, with a sidelong glance out the porthole at the red-hot exhaust belching from the nearest Merlin engine, “at least we’ll go in style.”

We descended into Goose Bay, Labrador, an hour before dusk, landing at a nominally Canadian, but effectively American, air force base. While the plane was being refuelled, we were herded into a bleak hangar by a U.S. armed escort. The task of our slouching and slovenly G.I. guards presumably was to prevent the Russian spies amongst us from taking pictures of Sabre jets and a score or more B-52 bombers parked in the dim distance.

Darkness had fallen before we took off for the ten-hour voyage across the ocean. Our seats were beside the starboard wing, and one of the Rolls-Royce Merlins seemed only an arm’s length away, spitting a long stream of blue flame. The bellowing thunder kept us from sleep. We squirmed fearfully in our seats the long night through, and got no good of it.

The morning of a sunny spring day had dawned when we made a lazy swing over the green islands of Arran and Kintyre before descending into a Royal Air Force base at Prestwick. There were no armed guards here – only a family of young jackdaws perched on a roof ridge, nerving themselves for first flight. Whenever an aircraft roared off the
runway, they would teeter forward yearningly then, at the last moment, lose their nerve and scrabble back up the ridgepole.

Airborne again, we flew south at low altitude, avidly taking in the sights. Great numbers of small, round ponds scattered in fields and woods near Liverpool piqued Fran’s curiosity. What could they be?

“Bomb craters,” I explained. “German bombs which missed Liverpool or were jettisoned by Jerry pilots anxious to head for home. Look at them now! Pretty little frog ponds for cows to drink out of and kids to paddle in.”

And so to London, which had become a madhouse as it prepared itself for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. The city was so heavily be-draped and bedecked with webs of scaffolding, miles of bunting, and forests of flags that we could hardly get a peek at her face.

If not much else was visible, St. Paul’s was still able to float its dome above the tinsel. I flagged a cab to take us there. When the driver heard I had been in London during the Blitz, he volunteered a guided tour of the bombed-out and un-reconstructed wastelands behind the cathedral. The spectacle of those endless blocks of rubble was a stunner for Frances.

“I could never have believed the bombing was that bad. How did anyone survive?”

“Few would have if the Nazis had been able to do what they intended. The idea was to blow and burn London right off the map. Show us what Total War really meant. Knock Britain to her knees. Only the RAF’s guts and Goering’s stupidities prevented the whole city being reduced to slag.”

“Aye,” said our driver, “they bastards would have buried us. And yet there’s folks thinks we ought to feel guilty-like for what we done to German cities when we got the upper hand. Guilty!” he spat out the cab window. “Cor! When I hears that from a fare, I brings him here, for a look-see whether he likes or no.”

We toured the cathedral. Then it was time for a pint and a sausage roll in a nearby pub before tackling the Tower, which was high on Fran’s obligatory list. It seethed with visitors. We walked the old stones, viewing jewels, Cockneys, cannon, Beefeaters, dungeons, Bostonians, old armour, Torontonians, et al., until I’d had a surfeit.

My attention strayed to the Tower ravens. One old fellow standing in the middle of a bit of greensward was amusing himself by playing the tourist. He would peer incredulously at some fragment of brick or stone then shriek astonishment to a circle of fellow ravens, while casting gleeful looks at passing humans. I tipped him a conspiratorial wink.

I lay awake for a while that night thinking about the Tower ravens; the myriad coots, ducks, geese, and swans on the park ponds; the house sparrows, starlings, and pigeons in the squares; and something else our taxi driver had told us about. Foxes, stoats, weasels, hedgehogs, rabbits, and pheasants were all colonizing the urban wastelands produced by the bombing. “It’s old Mother Nature taking back her own,” he’d said. Nurturing that consoling thought, I drifted off to sleep.

On Monday morning we took delivery of a spanking-new, claret-coloured Hillman Minx convertible, which we named Elizabeth in honour of the young queen. Liz was the first car (Lulu Belle excepted) I had ever owned, and very sporty she looked as we made our way out of London into Kent, where the smoke of the city soon gave way to a translucent haze of sea air drifting inland from the distant Channel.

Reaching Dover, we booked into the Hôtel de France, which, unfortunately, had been spared destruction by the German siege guns across the Channel on Cap Gris Nez. The food was abominable; the service surly; the bedding damp; and relays of motorcyclists staged impromptu races around the block throughout the night. At dawn the gulls took over, perching on our window ledge to scream lewd comments and maledictions at us.

Next morning at the Western Docks we watched fearfully as our pretty little car was seized by a gantry crane, swung high into the sky, and dropped into the ferry’s hold. The vessel sailed in heavy fog, which lifted as we approached France at Gris Nez. We stared in awe at the monolithic gun emplacements from which the Germans had shelled England. They looked ready to let loose another broadside at any instant, but their day was done. Even before war’s end, they had been outmoded by launching ramps from which flying bombs and V-2 rockets were lobbed at London.

Once ashore, we headed south toward the distant Mediterranean, stopping for a night at Avalon, an ancient place perched on a granite outcrop overlooking a tributary of the Seine. The town was in the throes of a huge party honouring the Maquis – guerrilla fighters in the recent war who, despite the abject surrender of their country by Petain, had persisted in a long and bloody struggle against the Nazi invaders.

As Fran and I made our way down one of the steep and crowded streets toward the heart of the town, we were accosted by a hatchet-featured man wearing the distinctive beret of the Maquis. He introduced himself as Georges Roussel and forthrightly asked what we were up to. When I explained that I was a Canadian army veteran retracing my wartime travels, he kissed both of us fervently then slapped his beret on
my
head.

“But how wonderful! We are comrades, non? You and your
petite
must help celebrate beating the bastardly Boche!”

He brooked no argument. Taking us one on either arm, he guided us into the crowd, stopping here and there to introduce us to his many friends. It was as if we had been born in Avalon and had returned there after a long absence. Nothing was too good for us. We visited so many cafés and drank so many toasts that we lost count of everything, including time. I remember marching behind brass bands in the blue-clad ranks of Resistance fighters, being dazzled by fireworks, and – vaguely – being escorted back to our hotel by a
crowd singing “Auprès de ma Blonde” at the tops of their voices.

We were seriously tempted to stay a while in Avalon for I had a great interest in the Resistance fighters and wanted to learn more about them, but I was impelled to reach the scene of our own battles as soon as possible. So we slipped out of Avalon next morning, bound south for Italy down the old Route Napoléon.

Reaching the shore of the Middle Sea, we drove east to Menton, where a charming Italian customs officer welcomed us to his country. The temptation to linger in one of the many little villages on the Italian Riviera was great, but since we still had many miles to go we pushed on to Milan, then eastward along the broad Po Valley. A few miles beyond Bologna, we turned off the main highway onto a dirt track where, in 1944, the German army had stopped the northward advance of First Canadian Division.

I was on familiar ground.

Crossing the Senio River, we came to Bagnacavallo, in whose ruined houses my companions and I had sought shelter from shells, freezing rain, and the imminence of death during Christmas week of 1944.

A small hotel overlooked the central square. We parked Liz and pushed aside the beaded fly curtains of the ground-floor
ristorante
to enter a dark and cavernous room that was marvellously cool and silent except for the buzzing of a bluebottle. An old man emerged from a back room to serve us sticky glasses of Marsala.

“You seem really far away,” Fran murmured to me as we sipped the strong sweet wine.

“I’ve been in this room before, and slept upstairs,” I said, “only then the whole front wall had been smashed open and we parked our jeep in here. One night a shell came through the roof, failed to explode, and bounced down two flights of stairs to whomp into the driver’s seat, where we found it next morning, harmless as a sleeping cat.”

It may have been the Marsala, or perhaps the white heat shimmering off the walls of Bagnacavallo. Or it may have been the odour of urine, wine lees, cooking oil, and dust – the “burnt umber” smell of small Italian towns. Whatever. The floodgates of memory were swinging open, releasing a deluge of recollections.

Winter is not the season to fight battles on the Adriatic coast of Italy. We Canadians had learned this the hard way during the winter of 1943. The high command, however, either had not learned the lesson or in 1944 deliberately chose to ignore it.

As December approached, First Canadian Corps was ordered to “burst out” of the narrow corridor of coastal plain lying between the mountains and the Adriatic Sea, then sweep north past the coastal city of Ravenna and open the way for a triumphant advance by the rest of British Eighth Army into the Po Valley and northern Italy. The staff officers at Allied Forces Headquarters who contrived this grandiose plan and cheerfully code-named it Operation Chuckle had decreed that we Canadians would have the honour of making the breakout.

We were ordered to begin by attacking across three major rivers, several canals, and innumerable drainage ditches all running between high and steep embankments from the mountains to the sea. All were in spate, and their waters – mountain torrents – were bitterly cold. Each was defended by elite German troops well dug in and well armed.

Chuckle began December 2. The following day the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment tried to force a crossing of the high-banked Lamone River. The weather was atrocious. Rain, sleet, and snow were turning the coastal plains into a half-frozen quagmire. Nevertheless, as darkness fell on December 3, Baker and Charlie, the two assault companies, began sloshing their way over a flooded landscape toward the start line, which was the base of the southern dyke containing the raging Lamone.

Ten minutes before midnight, our saturated soldiers reached the dyke and flung themselves down on sodden ground to snatch what rest they could before zero hour sent them scrambling up the slope and over the top. The minutes swiftly passed, until suddenly the night exploded with sullen thunder as our artillery fired the opening rounds of a great barrage intended to keep the German defenders deep in their dugouts and slit trenches until the Canadian infantry was on top of them.

Captain Cliff Broad, Baker Company’s commander and my close friend, was lying just below the crest of the near dyke when our barrage began. He flattened himself to earth at the wail of approaching shells, which, instead of exploding amongst the enemy, came thundering down on Baker and Charlie companies. The earth shook and heaved. Red and yellow flashes illuminated the charnel scene as shrapnel sliced through steel helmets, bones, and flesh. A biting white smoke added its special horror as phosphorous grenades hanging from men’s belts were hit by shrapnel and exploded, immolating those who carried them.

The barrage ceased, and for a moment the living lay in the awful silence of the aftermath, immobile, stunned. Then the cries of the wounded began – a threnody of agony. Half the men of Baker were dead or wounded. Charlie, which had gone into battle with a strength of only two platoons, was now reduced to less than one.

The regiment should have been immediately withdrawn. Instead, it was told to carry on as planned, and the remaining two infantry companies – Able and Dog – were ordered forward. They plodded up through a false dawn that provided just enough light to avoid trampling their dead comrades scattered below the dykes and somehow managed to scramble across the river, scale the far bank, and dig themselves in while enduring a ferocious enemy counterattack.

Reinforcements were desperately needed, but none were available. Cliff Broad took the forty or so survivors of his company across
the Lamone and into an attack that drove the Germans back some three hundred yards. Then Baker’s men were forced to go to ground in the middle of a vineyard by a hail of mortar bombs and small-arms’ fire. Enemy tanks began to converge upon them. Nevertheless, they held until it was all too obvious that to remain where they were would be to die where they were.

Broad gave the order to get out.

Dragging some of the wounded and under intense fire, the survivors scuttled back to the river. Some drowned during the crossing. The remainder, joined now by what was left of Able and Dog, tumbled over the crest of the southern dyke and rolled heavily down its slope. Now they were back at the start line where, nine hours earlier, they had suffered a holocaust from our own guns.

For five days the weather drew a shroud over the Lamone killing grounds. Rain beat down unceasingly. The soil became so saturated that slit trenches filled almost as soon as they were dug. Wet snow plashed a wasteland that had once been neatly patterned vineyards and fields. The only shelter to be found was in a few stone-built farm buildings, which were being methodically pulverized by German guns.

Relationships between us and the remaining civilians grew closer. Since we shared a world of destruction, we began to share other things. Cans of bully beef found their way into the pots of pasta that nurtured
paesani italiani
and
soldati canadesi
alike. An old woman mixed hot wine with the juice of a few scrofulous oranges to put heart into patrols that had to feel their way into the black, bullet-studded nights.