dark faces lifted to the slopes, were now providing good practice for
the riflemen above them. The Italian officers' voices, high-pitched
and excited, called down fire upon them, and swiftly each of these
defiants was hit by carefully aimed fire and fell, some of them kicking
and twitching.
The firing had lasted almost twenty minutes now, and there were few
targets still on offer. The machine guns traversed expectantly, firing
short bursts into the heaped carcasses, shattering already mutilated
flesh, or tore clouds of dust and flying shale from the rounded lips of
the deep water holes, from the cover of which a sporadic fire still
popped and crackled.
'My Colonel. 'Castelani touched Aldo Belli's arm to gain his
attention, and at last he turned wild-eyed and elated to his Major.
'Ha, Castelani, what a victory what a great victory, hey? They will
not doubt our valour now.'
'Colonel, shall I order the cease fire?' and the Count seemed not to
hear him.
'They will know now what kind of soldier I am. This brilliant victory
will win for me a place in the halls-2
'Colonel! Colonel! We must cease fire now. This is a slaughter.
Order the cease fire.' Aldo Belli stared at him, his face beginning to
flush with outrage.
'You crazy fool,' he shouted. 'The battle must be decisive, crushing!
We will not cease now not until the victory is ours.' He was
stuttering wildly and his hand shook as he pointed down into the bloody
shambles of the valley.
'The enemy have taken cover in the water holes, they must be flushed
out and destroyed. Mortars, Castelani, bomb them out.' Aldo Belli did
not want it to end. It was the most deeply satisfying experience of
his life. If this was war, he knew at last why the sages and the poets
had invested it with such In glory. This was man's work, and Aldo
Belli knew himself born to it.
'Do you question my orders?' he shrieked at Castelani.
'a) your duty, immediately.'
'Immediately,' Castelani repeated bitterly, and for a moment longer
stared stonily into the Count's eyes before he turned away.
The first mortar bomb climbed high into the clear desert dawn, before
arcing over and dropping vertically down into the valley. It burst on
the lip of the nearest well. It kicked up a brief column of dust and
smoke, and the shrapnel whinnied shrilly. The second bomb fell
squarely into the deep circular pit, bursting out of sight below ground
level.
Mud and smoke gushed upwards, and out of the water hole into the open
ground crawled and staggered three scarecrow figures with their
tattered and dirty robes fluttering like flags of truce.
Instantly the rifle fire and machine-gun fire burst over them, and the
earth around them whipped by the bullets seemed to liquefy into a
cascade of flying dust, into which they tumbled and at last lay
still.
Aldo Belli let out a hoot of excitement. It was so easy and so deeply
