roar—this time behind them. Dick whirled to see the radio, which had
been left on the shore, rise into the air and spread into a hundred
pieces along with rocks and earth. Crouching low, he ran down the slope
to the shore, with Max and Lefty and Bert immediately behind him. At
the shore line he turned, grabbed two of the cords which were hooked to
the Tommy guns wedged in the rocks. He gave them a gentle pull, and the
others did the same with their cords. The gun chattered from the ledge
above them, and they knew the Germans would not try to rush the crest.
They’d wait for the mortars to do the trick. As the four Americans slid
into the water, still holding their cords, they saw a shell dig a
mighty hole in the rocky earth just behind the crest, where they had
been not one minute before.
“There go two of the Tommy guns!” Dick said. By this time they were up
to their chests in the water.
“One last burst before we swim,” he commanded tersely. He pulled on his
two cords. One was limp—attached to one of the guns that had been blown
up by the last mortar shell. But the other tugged the trigger, and he
heard the stuttering fire it gave forth, along with the other guns that
were still functioning.
“Swim for it—and fast!” Dick shouted to his companions.
They heard another roar behind them, then another in quick order, then
a third. By this time they were swimming swiftly toward the other
point, and it was not far away.
“Don’t bother to go under,” Dick muttered between strokes. “We don’t
care if they do see us now.”
His clothes felt heavy, like lead weights holding him back. In trunks
he could have made the distance in a minute; now each forward push was
short. But suddenly he felt his feet strike the bottom, and he pushed
forward rapidly up the point of land.
There were no more bursts of shells behind them as they ran for the
woods. But just as they plunged into the thick tangle of trees, the
chatter of machine guns blazed behind them and the zing of shells
filled the air. Bert fell to the ground and Max went down beside him.
With a quick motion he rolled Bert and himself behind a boulder. There
Dick crept up to them.
“Go ahead!” Bert said. “They got me in the leg. They’ll be swarming
over that stretch of water in a minute.”
“Oh, no, they won’t!” Dick said. “Remember—we’re all picked swimmers.
And we dropped our guns. They’ll come after us only if they can keep
their guns, and I don’t think they can manage it with ’em.”
Machine-gun bullets still spattered around them intermittently, and
they could hear the angry, bellowed orders of a German officer across
the water behind them.
“He’s telling ’em to cross over,” Max said. “He’s telling ’em we’ve got
no guns and to go ahead after us!”
“Well, I’ve got the answer for that,” Dick grinned. He reached inside
his shirt and pulled out a waterproof pouch. Ripping it open he
extracted a service automatic, dry as a bone. Heading around the rock
as he hugged the ground, he wriggled forward about ten feet in the
underbrush. There, peering through the branches of a bush, he saw the
Germans on the opposite point. Standing on the crest was the officer,
still bellowing orders to his men, who moved slowly forward toward the
water. They didn’t like the idea of making that crossing.
Dick steadied his right arm on the ground, aimed the automatic
carefully, and squeezed the trigger. The German officer’s angry words
were cut short. He looked startled and dismayed, as if someone had
played an unfair trick on him. His hand went to his chest, he looked
around him for a second, and then toppled forward from the ridge,
rolling to the shore below. The German soldiers looked at his body a
moment, then turned and scrambled back up the little hill as if death
itself were chasing them. In two seconds they were all on the other
side of the hill. Dick grinned and ran back behind the rock where Bert
and Max waited for him. A tentative machine-gun burst followed him, but
he was safe behind the rock.
“I don’t think they’ll come across now,” he said. “I got the officer,
the one who was telling them we had no guns. At least they won’t be
coming for a little while, until another officer makes them do it. Come
on! Up you go, Bert!”
Max and Dick lifted Bert and carried him rapidly forward through the
trees. Fifty feet further along they found the rest of their men, and
Dick counted them quickly. Yes—they were all there.
“Jimmy,” he said to one of the men, “you take over with Max to carry
Bert here. The others will spell you once in a while. I’ve got to go
ahead to find that old aqueduct. Follow me!”
He led the way briskly through the trees, and the men, still dripping
from their swim, followed him without a word. They climbed the sloping
hill for a quarter of a mile, then cut down sharply toward the shore of
the reservoir again. They could see the placid water through the trees
ahead when Dick stopped them.
“Wait here while I have one quick look,” he said. “Put Bert down, and
give him first aid—but fast. Then two others take him when we’re ready
to go again.”
The sergeant moved forward to the water’s edge swiftly. In a moment he
stood on a huge pile of old rocks which stretched like a wall along one
edge of the man-made lake for a distance of about sixty feet. Here was
the old dam from the days of the Romans, and stretching away from the
wall was the arching aqueduct, spanning a narrow but deep chasm.
“Still standing, all right,” he said to himself. “But not too strong.
Those pillars look pretty crumbly, but we’ll have to chance it. Spread
out—then there won’t be much weight at one time.”
He hurried back to his men in the shelter of the trees.
“How you feeling, Bert?” he asked.
“Okay, Sarge,” the big soldier replied, but Dick could see the pain
behind his smile. “Sorry to cause so much trouble this way. Don’t let
me hold you up.”
“Rot! You’re not holding anybody up,” Dick said. “Let’s get going.
Spread out about ten feet apart going over the old aqueduct up ahead.
It may not be too strong, but we’ve got to chance it. If it’s stood all
these centuries it can stand another half hour for us.”
Dick motioned Max to lead the way, and he stayed behind. Max stepped
from the trees, on to the old stone wall and then to the aqueduct. He
marched across it at a steady swift pace, and another man started off
behind him after he had gone about ten paces. Dick watched carefully.
There were three men on the ancient structure—now four. Max was only
about ten feet from the other end.
“He’s across!” Dick exclaimed, as Max turned at the other end and waved
both arms with a smile. “Okay, let Bert and his two carriers go next.”
The wounded man and his companions stepped on the aqueduct. Their pace
was slower than that of the others, and everyone watched without a word
as they made their way slowly forward. It seemed to Dick that he must
be holding his breath.
There was almost a cheer from the men as the wounded soldier and his
two carriers made the other side of the gully. Then the remaining men,
with Dick at the end, followed quickly, without any concern about the
old aqueduct.
On the other side, Dick explained briefly the course they would have to
follow to get back to their own men. It was a roundabout circle over
two ridges of hills, and across one stream that had to be forded. But
they felt sure they would meet no enemy forces on the way, as their
path covered wild country off the main routes.
The going was slow because the men all felt a letdown after their
forced marches of the day. Now they felt safe, sure that they had
eluded any pursuing force that might come after them.
“As a matter of fact,” Max said to Lefty, “I don’t think anybody’s
following us. Those boys at the dam must’ve got word of the battle down
in the Pass. They’re probably heading back down there now. I hope
they’re too late.”
“This was a pretty good shindig, wasn’t it?” Lefty commented. “First
time we’ve really had something of what we wanted. We really did a
paratrooper’s job today.”
“Yes—pretty good, pretty good,” Max replied, with a sigh. “But I didn’t
get my forty Nazis. I figure I only got about eleven myself.”
“No—you got to look at it this way, Max,” Lefty said. “What we did up
here made it possible for our boys down in the Pass to wipe out a few
thousand. So really you got a lot more than forty.”
Max smiled. “I like the way you put it,” he said. “But I want to do it
personally.”
They had a quick meal before climbing another hill, digging food out of
their ration cans. When they went on again, Max was walking beside Dick
Donnelly.
“Pretty smart operation, Dick,” Max said. “You really handled it swell
all the way through.”
“Thanks, Max,” the sergeant replied. “But I was lucky that we were able
to get away so soon and didn’t have to pin those German forces down for
another hour or so. We couldn’t have got out if we had had to do that.”
“No, but you were prepared for every break we did get, and you took
full advantage of it,” Max said. “That’s what counts. Why they don’t
make you a general is more than I can see.”
Dick laughed. “Wait till I get us back to our forces safely before you
congratulate me,” he said. “I hope I’m taking you in the right
direction.”
But Max had no doubts. Dick obviously knew where he was going. And even
though the group of men went more and more slowly as the afternoon wore
on, it was from nothing but weariness. They knew they would get back to
their headquarters under Dick’s guidance.
But it was late—almost sunset, when they saw ahead of them the crest of
the hill on the other side of which was the ledge where they had landed
that morning.
The last pull up that hill was a tough one, and the men grunted as
their feet slipped on the rocks. When they were halfway up, they were
spotted by an American at the crest, who gave a whoop of pleasure at
what he saw. In a moment, others were scurrying over the crest of the
hill and running down the slope toward the weary soldiers of Dick
Donnelly’s gang. Among the first to reach them was Lieutenant Scotti.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: _Dick and Max Walked Happily up the Hill_]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Dick, my boy!” he shouted. “What a sight for sore eyes! You made it
back! And from the looks of you, by swimming, too!”
Dick smiled back weakly. “Yes, sir, we took to the water,” he said
wearily. Suddenly he felt as if he could not move another step. As long
as the responsibility for the detachment had been on his shoulders, he
kept his spirits up, encouraged the men to keep going. But now he could
relax, and he did. He just wanted to sit down where he was and go to
sleep.
Without a word, Lieutenant Jerry Scotti slipped one of Dick’s arms over
his shoulder and helped him the rest of the way up the hill. Other men
had taken Bert in their arms and still others helped the weary Donnelly
gang over these last steps.
Over the crest of the hill, they went down to the ledge, where they
were surrounded at once by their friends. Dick went with Scotti to
report to Captain Marker, who beamed at him.
“To be perfectly honest, Sergeant Donnelly, I didn’t expect to see you
and your men again,” he said. “Yours was almost a suicide mission. Did
you bring all your men back with you?”
“Yes, sir,” Dick said. “Private O’Leary got a slug in his right leg and
Latham one through the left hand. No other casualties, unless you count
sore feet. We had to abandon all of our equipment, though.”
“Of course, of course,” the Captain said. “You’ve done a fine job,
Donnelly, a particularly fine job. And I know you’ll be glad to learn
that the battle of Wadizam Pass is over. A complete victory! About
fourteen hundred Germans dead, two thousand captured. Some few got away
into the hills.”
“That’s wonderful, sir,” Dick replied. “How did it go here?”
“Lieutenant Scotti will give you the details, I know,” the Captain
said. “Now there are trucks waiting on the road below to take us back
to the Pass. You men need some rest.”
On the way down to the trucks, Jerry Scotti told Dick about the action
at the ledge. The Germans had tried over and over again to advance
straight up the hill, and many had been cut down. When they unlimbered
the mortars, they did a lot of damage, with the Americans losing twenty
men in the entire action.
“It would have been worse,” Scotti said, “if the Rangers and regular
troops hadn’t cleaned up the Pass itself so quickly. They sent a bunch
up here, and they took the Germans from behind. It was all over in half
an hour then.”
That night Dick Donnelly slept the sleep of the good and the just—for
eleven hours, along with the rest of his men. And the next day they
moved back to the parachute troops base.
“Well, that’s that,” Tony Avella said, as they sat under the shade of a
tree. “Best action so far. I guess everybody’s happy but Vince
Salamone, who sat this one out in the guardhouse.”
“Yeah, the home-run king is fit to be tied,” Max said. “But I bet he’ll
be a good boy from now on. He doesn’t want to miss another little
tussle like this. Wonder what we’ll get next?”
Although the men themselves quickly dropped the subject of the Wadizam
Pass battle, concentrating their thoughts on the future, it was not so
lightly passed over in headquarters in a city behind the lines where a
three-star general went over reports of that action with others of his
staff.
“That Wadizam Pass action was brilliant,” he said. “General Ackerly
planned and executed it without a flaw. And I thought it would take us
another two weeks to get past that bottleneck.”
“Yes, and he had some good men under him,” said one of his aides. “That
paratroop company really pulled the Germans away with their feint.
That’s why the Rangers cleaned up everything so quickly. When the
frontal attack came, there was almost nothing left to do.”
“Captain Marker should get a promotion for that,” the three-star
general commented. “But what I like best is that suicide squad they
sent out to the dam never really expecting to see them again. And they
all came back! I’m glad Captain Marker gave us such a complete report
on that action. I have an idea we’re going to be able to use a crowd
like that for some special tasks when we get to Italy.”
CHAPTER SIX
SPECIAL MISSION
Dick Donnelly and his friends were not thinking of Italy. They were
thinking of more immediate objectives—Bizerte, Tunis, and the driving
of Rommel’s Germans into the Mediterranean. During the course of that
action they were kept a little busier than in their first few weeks.
There were no complaints of inaction such as had filled the air
previously.
Max Burckhardt missed one battle when he was in the hospital with a
touch of fever. Lefty Larkin was killed in another battle, and a few
other casualties cut down their numbers somewhat. Bert O’Leary had been
sent back to a main hospital for his leg to heal, but young Latham’s
hand wound had kept him out of only two actions. Vince Salamone, after
his release from the guardhouse, had become the greatest battler of
them all, making up for lost time with a vengeance.
It was in the invasion of Sicily that the group first met George
“Boom-Boom” Slade. He was not a paratrooper, really, but he found
himself joining more and more paratroop actions. Slade was a master
sergeant and a demolition expert. He knew dynamite and nitroglycerin as
well as most soldiers knew their Garand rifles. He knew the
construction of bridges, dams, radio towers, so thoroughly that he
could place a small blast in exactly the spot that would crack the dam,
or demolish the bridge, or topple the tower. Naturally, his constant
work with explosives had given him the nickname of “Boom-Boom” and he
didn’t mind it.
“Funny,” he said one day, “but I’ve gotten so I love blowing up things.
You work with something long enough and you get to like it, I guess.”
He did not look like a man who would love explosives. He was short and
rather slight in build, with mouse-colored hair and a colorless face.
The glasses he wore made him look like a rather timid student. He was
quiet and mild, a gentle person who liked to feed stray cats and dandle
babies on his knee.
But when he set to work at his profession, he changed. Dick Donnelly
had been amazed the first time Slade went along with them in Sicily.
They were to hold one bridge and blow up two others behind the German
lines. Lieutenant Scotti had stayed with the force at the bridge they
were to hold for the advancing Americans, while Dick went off with
Slade and a few others to blow up the bridges on two side roads.
Dick could not believe that this mild little man could possibly be a
demolition expert. In the first place, he hated jumping from a plane in
a parachute, but never mentioned the fact. Dick knew it by the agonized
expression on Slade’s face. Then once on the ground, he acted as if he
didn’t know where to turn, and just followed Dick around like an
obedient, if slightly frightened, dog. But when they reached the first
bridge, Slade changed. He stood off and eyed the structure, almost
forgetting those around him. Dick had meanwhile placed his men to hold
off any German patrols that might chance that way, but he kept his eyes
on Slade. In less than two minutes, the little man had decided exactly
where the charge of dynamite should be placed, and set at that job with
a swiftness and precision that was wonderful to watch. In five minutes
more they all withdrew some distance and the bridge was blown up. One
end rose in the air about six feet as the other end cracked, and the
entire center span fell into the bed of the stream below.
Slade went back for a quick look at his work and seemed pleased.
“Good,” he muttered to himself. “Our engineers can get another span
across there for our own men in half an hour.”
That had been the idea—to blow up the bridge so that it could not be
used by retreating Germans but could be used by advancing Americans
after only a short delay. The Germans would be too hard-pressed by the
Americans to take the half-hour necessary for the repair. Foot-troops
would be able to ford or swim the stream, but trucks and heavy guns
would be caught—and captured!
After the first bridge demolition, Slade, once more the meek
subordinate, had turned to Dick, and had trotted along behind as
Donnelly headed for the second bridge, two miles away. There had been a
short fight there—with four German soldiers left to guard the bridge.
Slade wasn’t much good in fighting, Dick saw. Not that he was afraid—he
was just ineffectual. The other men with Dick were among the best, and
the Germans had been disposed of quickly. Slade did an even faster job
on the second bridge, and then the whole party had cut back through the
woods to join Lieutenant Scotti and the main force of paratroopers at
the bridge which had been held open. Scotti had been amazed to see them
return so quickly, thought something must have gone wrong. When Dick
Donnelly told him about the blowing up of the two bridges, the
lieutenant had looked at the quiet little Slade with admiration.
“I never knew a man whose nickname fitted him less,” he said. “He
doesn’t look like a man called ‘Boom-Boom’!”
“Except when he’s about to blow up a bridge,” Dick replied.
There had been a good battle when the retreating Germans tried to take
the bridge back from the paratroopers. But Scotti’s forces had been
augmented by other parachute companies which had been on other
missions, and they succeeded in holding off the Germans until the
advancing Americans on the other side had caught up with them. And then
the Germans, caught between the two fires, had been annihilated.
Max Burckhardt insisted that this Sicilian action had been the best of
all they had taken part in. He had seen more men in the hated Nazi
uniform go down under a withering fire, and he had talked to some of
the prisoners afterward. They always seemed a little surprised to find
a man speaking perfect German, with a family in Germany, fighting
against them this way, and Max enjoyed watching their bewilderment, and
enjoyed seeing the first doubts creep into their minds about whether or
not their Fuehrer really would lead them to victory in this war against
the democracies.
After the tough fighting in Sicily, Captain Marker’s company of
paratroopers—but the Captain was a Major by this time—had been given a
three weeks’ rest in Algiers. They enjoyed it immensely until they
learned that they had missed the landing at Salerno because of their
furloughs. But later they were based on the Italian mainland, not far
behind the advancing American and British troops fighting their way up
the peninsula. When the advance slowed down, became bogged in mud and
then stopped by the Germans who entrenched themselves in the hills and
fought for every inch of territory, the three-star general went into a
huddle with his staff.
“We’ve got to pull an ace out of our sleeves,” he said. “We won’t get
going until we’ve taken Maletta, and we’re still twenty miles away from
it. Yes—we’ve got to pull a fast one.”
“Like the Wadizam Pass action?” an aide suggested.
“Well—not quite,” the general said, “but it gives me an idea.”
He studied the map of the region around the town of Maletta. It was a
small town. More than a village, it was still not a city of any great
size or importance, until this moment. There was a junction of two
railroads there—and also of the two main roads leading north. Other
roads which cut across the many hills were steep and almost impassable
for heavily motorized and mechanized forces. The Americans knew they
would have to drive straight up the Maletta valley to that town and
take it. Then they could really move ahead. Until then they were stuck.
And cracking Maletta looked like an almost impossible job because of
the peculiarities of the land around it.
“Maybe a variation of the Wadizam technique would work,” the general
said. “Let’s go over the possibilities.”
For hours the men planned, checked, threw out one plan and devised
another. Three days later they called Major Marker to them and went
over the plan with him.
“Just about six men, that’s all,” the general said. “It sounds like a
tiny force to send on this job, but a larger one would be spotted and
rounded up. They’d trip over their own feet. But six men—yes, they
might be able to do it if they were really good men. After your other
successes, Major, we concluded you might have the men under your
command.”
“Yes, I’ve got the men,” the Major said with a smile. “I’d like to go
along myself.”
“Can’t spare you for this job,” the general said. “We need you too much
elsewhere.”
“What do you need especially?” the Major asked. “What special
qualifications must the men have?”
“Well, most of them should speak Italian—and well, too,” the general
said. “You might have someone who speaks German along, too, because
it’s Germans we’re fighting. The Italians will work with the
underground, of course, and they’ve got to be able to make the
underground accept and trust them. Then, among them, you must choose a
really good radio man and a demolition expert.”
“I’ll do it, sir,” the Major replied. “I can pick my men without any
trouble. And they’re men who’ll do the job if it can conceivably be
done—and maybe they can do it even if it’s impossible!”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: _Major Marker and the Men Went Over Their Plan_]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Oh—like the gang which came back from the dam in the Wadizam Pass
action?” the general laughed. “They did the impossible.”
“Yes, I’m thinking of some of those same men,” Major Marker replied.
“Who shall give them their instructions?”
“I’ll do it myself,” the general said. “Can you have them here tomorrow
afternoon?”
“Yes, sir,” the Major replied. “Tomorrow afternoon—six picked men.”
And so it was that six men set off with Major Marker for the general’s
headquarters. At first they did not know that was where they were
going, but the Major told them after they were speeding along the road
in the big command car. Then they were more mystified than ever. The
Major would say nothing but, “Something special. Very interesting job.
Wish I could go too.”
Next to him sat Lieutenant Jerry Scotti, who was to be in command on
this mysterious mission. There was Dick Donnelly, second in command,
and Corporal Tony Avella for the radio work. Taking up enough room for
almost two men in the rear seat was Private Vincent Salamone, the
home-run king of baseball in peacetime, the toughest paratrooper of
them all in war. As the Major later remarked to the general, “Everybody
in Italy knows the name of Vince Salamone. He’s an idol over here just
the way he is at home. He’ll win over the Italians in a minute!”