Our sergeant spoke to the SS men and in no time an argument erupted. I glanced at Kaz, but this was no time to ask for a translation. Behind us, more shouts broke out, and I saw the wounded from the trucks being led toward the train. The lead SS guy was yelling something at the sergeant, his hand on the pistol in his holster. That was a mistake, since the sergeant held a Schmeisser MP-40 submachine at the ready and had a squad of men on the way. He and the other soldiers pushed the security detail aside and waved the wounded and their medics on board. There was a lot of indignant shouting, but the SS knew they were outnumbered, and by actual combat soldiers at that. They retreated to a corner of the platform and glared at everyone who looked their way, lighting cigarettes and shaking their heads.
The sergeant gave us a smile and a wave as the train pulled out, crammed with travelers, the wounded, and perhaps a few other fugitives. I couldn’t help waving back. I even smiled. It was one crazy war.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Italian partisans, ” Kaz whispered. “They mined the road, then machine-gunned the convoy. The captain said he headed here to put the wounded on the train for Viterbo, since it was the fastest route to a military hospital.”
“That’s why the SS was checking papers: looking for partisans,” I said. “We’re lucky he took a liking to us.” The groans of the wounded increased as the train took a curve. Stretcher cases were laid over the seat backs, and the less seriously wounded lay beneath them, or sat up if they could.
“I don’t know if we need to worry, Billy,” Kaz said, in a very low whisper. “I think our papers are real. Have you studied them? The letters have Vatican watermarks.”
“Even so, my guess is those SS bastards are going to want to get back at these boys for being pushed around. When we get into Viterbo, I’d bet on a heavily armed reception committee. Watermarks or no, I don’t want to get caught up in that.”
“But we have someone to meet at the station,” Kaz said. “Trust in the Lord, Father Boyle,” he said in a louder voice as the conductor passed us by. The train moved slowly on switchbacks around a mountain, and then sped up on the downside. Kaz and I finished what food we had left, and watched the countryside slip by. We were running along a riverbed now, in a narrow valley with a parallel roadway. I watched the wounded, and was glad they were all well enough to move and speak, even if in moans. I didn’t want to go through last rites again. It was one thing to kill an enemy soldier in combat-bad enough, but necessary. But Hans’s death came after the adrenaline of the fight, one more fatal aftermath, a passing that lingered for the living to witness longer than anyone wanted. I wished for death at a distance, if I had to deal in it at all. Not as close as Hans, with his wide blue eyes and wet tears, fooled in his last moments by another soldier in disguise.
“Jabos!” one of the Germans yelled, his head out of the window, craned at the sky. I knew that much German. Jagdebomber was the word for fighter-bomber, the curse of anything moving, and this train was moving straight and slow. I looked out of my window and caught a glimpse of two single-engine aircraft banking away, probably getting set up for a run. They looked like P-47 Thunderbolts, and that was bad news. They carried rockets and bombs, along with eight. 50-caliber machine guns, which could turn these cars into toothpicks within seconds. Voices rose into frantic screams as the word spread, a cacophony of German and Italian that didn’t need translation. The train seemed to pick up speed, the engineer probably pouring everything on, opening up the throttle and hoping to outrun the deadly planes. But where was there to go?
We rounded a curve and I could see what he was heading for. A bridge spanned the river we’d been following, and then the tracks entered a tunnel in the next hill. Plumes of white steam flowed from the locomotive; the chug-chug sound sped up, as the pistons drove the wheels faster. The engineer opened the steam whistle in one long, mournful note, for no reason I could see, except that I knew I’d do the same.
The snarl of the two P-47s grew louder, turning into a steady drone as they dove and then leveled off, setting up for a strafing run. “Get down,” I said to Kaz, throwing him to the floor between the seats and covering him with my body. I felt the train take the curve leading to the bridge, too fast maybe, but not too fast with death descending upon us. We slid against the wall as the car entered the turn, and heard the first bursts, the rapid chatter of the. 50-caliber rounds getting closer until the first ones hit home-shattering glass, splintering wood, flinging bodies into ripped and bloody pieces. It only lasted a second until a new sound assaulted my ears, a harsh metallic pinging as we reached the bridge and bullets pelted the steel girders, some hitting the train, others ricocheting away.
As fast as it began, the strafing stopped as the aircraft pulled away, their quarry out of reach. Darkness blanketed the chaos as the train took to the tunnel and the engineer hit the brakes, the squeal of metal on metal harsh and insistent as he struggled to stop before exiting cover and giving the Jabos another chance. Men fell, tumbling over each other in the dark. Cries came from the wounded, mixed in with the tinkling of glass as it fell from shattered windows. I helped Kaz up, and as lights came on, we did what we could to sort the living from the dead.
We carried the dead into the last car, and the medics treated the newly wounded-soldiers and civilians alike-as best they could. They seemed to be short on even the basics, and I didn’t see any sign of sulfa powder. I should have been glad, since it meant that some of the Krauts would undoubtedly die of infection, but it was hard to wish any more suffering on the poor devils riding this train. No one questioned my English, and I didn’t worry about our papers. Kaz translated for the Germans and Italians, as we checked the patch of sky ahead for Jabos. Funny how shared suffering and near-death turns them into us pretty damn quick.
The locomotive pulled out of the tunnel, slowly at first, as if sensing a trick. It was late afternoon, and I hoped that all the P-47s in Italy were back at their bases, pilots safe in the officers’ clubs, drinking and telling tales of blowing up trains. It seemed they were, and as we picked up speed, the mood lightened, survivors glad to be alive, the dead stored away in the back car like a memory stuffed in the far corner of the mind. We stopped in a village as the sun was setting, a small castle tower at the top of the hill watching over the countryside. I hoped the Germans didn’t have troops up there; it would be a shame to destroy such an ancient and lovely thing, not to mention the village clustered below it. But it would make a perfect observation post to call in artillery strikes on anyone within miles. Maybe I should make a mental note for the report I’d write up when this was over. Or maybe I’d pray the Germans took off when we finally broke out of Anzio and took Rome. Not very military of me, I know, but I was wearing the Roman collar, and I couldn’t help hoping for mercy and peace.
We stretched our legs and kept an eye out for the Gestapo, who harbored no such good wishes. The train whistle bellowed, and as the night sky lit up with stars, we pulled away from the village station for the final run to Viterbo and our rendezvous with an OSS operative and a load of produce bound for the Vatican. It was a simple plan, really, and stood a good chance of working, given that the agent was in place and could be trusted. The only problem was that no one had clued in the Royal Air Force.
We saw the glow in the sky, a distant smudge of light at first, every time the train took a curve and gave us a view to the south. Probably the pathfinders, dropping incendiaries. Then the searchlights came on, stabbing at the black sky, hoping to pin a bomber for the antiaircraft batteries. It looked like Viterbo was getting hit, and hit hard. As in most Italian towns, the rail line and the main roads likely went through the center, which is where the bombers would aim, going for the transportation hub surrounded by churches and homes, where generations lived close together, away from the threat of the open countryside. Little could they have known.
The train slowed, then stopped, the engine releasing great gusts of steam as if sighing at the destruction ahead. We felt the ground shake with explosions as the bombs fell, and covered our ears against the thunder of antiaircraft batteries until the noise receded, the fury of both sides spent, the silence stunning in its fullness. The train nudged itself forward, moving slowly and carefully in case of damage to the tracks. Smoke drifted through the broken windows, along with the acrid smell of burning fuel and rubber, the air punctuated by secondary explosions, the sign of another convoy caught in the conflagration. We neared the city center, bathed in the yellow light of flames rising from ruined buildings, licking the night sky. Firemen worked a hand pump, sending a pitiful stream of water against a wall of fire and smoke. Trucks and armored vehicles lay in the road that ran alongside the tracks, broken and cast aside as if they were playthings. Soldiers stumbled around them, bleeding, burned, and in shock. We rolled on.
The train halted short of the station, which lay in ruins. No one said a word as they gathered their belongings, helped the wounded, and got off next to a piazza that somehow had not been badly damaged. The dead were left
