On the cannon, no one was looking anywhere except at the man in command, still with his hand held up and palm flat. He obviously had a very good idea of how long he needed to deploy the Schneider, which, no doubt, already had its first shell loaded, while to aim it was simple, the barrel being at a very low elevation. All that was needed was to push the gun into place in the middle of the road.
The sound of motors had increased — the column was moving, but no shots were fired. Cal was watching a classic ploy to draw your enemy on, but nothing could be done. He needed the defenders to be engaged; the last thing he could cope with, and that had applied from the outset, was that they should know about the presence of his boys until they were committed to the forward battle.
The hand was now doing a sort of bouncing movement, clearly he was eager, which was the point at which Cal motioned for his lads to spread out across the roadway, his admonition, with a finger at his lips for silence, received with nods. There was enough light now to just see the faces of these youngsters and it took him back years to observe no fear, just determination. It was the same look he had seen on the faces of the men he had led into battle in 1918 and it had not lasted long.
He had five kneeling, five standing, Cal to one side with his rifle raised. He held his aim on that observer, and as soon as his hand moved from stop to go, Cal pulled the trigger and dropped him. The sound of his shot had no sooner filled the square, oddly sending aloft a flock of flapping pigeons, than the front rank of his Olympians followed, their target the bunched figures around the cannon wheels, their instructions five rounds rapid. As their standing oppos opened fire, they were busy reloading.
Vince and his lads emerged from the left to rush into the square even before Cal’s squad had got off one mag apiece, yelling like banshees as they attacked what remained of the men set to push the gun — not many, for they had suffered badly. Those remaining were trying to spin the light field gun round, one man on the lanyard that would set off the charge; he was Cal’s next victim, taking a bullet in the chest that sent him flying back, the rope still clasped in his hand.
The cannon went off and the shell tore uselessly into the front of the church, doing, at such short range, massive damage. But there would be no reloading; Vince and his lads were too close and those still standing abandoned the cannon and ran, this while Cal brought his squad out into the square, eye ranging over the tops of the buildings, the church in particular.
He shouted to them to get forward and grab the line of artillery shells while he put a full magazine into the bell tower as a precaution, the ring of the cast metal adding a mournful cadence to what was now a cacophony of noisy gunfire, which included at least one machine gun, as the defenders attempted to stop the Republican advance without the use of the weapon on which they had been relying.
Vince’s lads had tipped the wheeled cannon on its side and his boys were running back to where Cal stood, rifles now slung, with the artillery shells cradled like babes in arms, so far without anyone taking a hit. Broxburn Jock yelled at him, his face alight, asking to disable the vehicles by taking out their tyres, but Cal shook his head and indicated it was time to withdraw.
With no trucks or cars the Falangists would be forced to stand and fight, but that might mean him having to take on a number of them in a fight he could not control, which in a maze of buildings and alleyways was inevitable. Better to get out of the way of an enemy who would probably take the chance to retreat, some of them highly capable Civil Guards. There was also the problem of some very fired-up Republican fighters whom, when they got inside the town, he did not trust not to kill their own.
Vince was with him and, as was right and proper, he made no attempt to question Cal’s orders, he merely formed his boys up in a way that allowed them to fall back in good order and act as a rearguard for the squad in front, loaded with shells, forming a line of five, then a second the first could retreat through, always with a set of rifles ready to shoot anyone who showed their face, until they were back at the ditch.
‘Dump the shells,’ Cal shouted, before he began to organise the whole party for what he expected was about to happen, lining them along the ditch in squads so as to concentrate their fire, Vince taking up position at the mid-point. He was shouting orders; there was no need for quiet now.
‘If they are pushed back they are going to bugger off out of here in their trucks and maybe we can give them a fright.’ The cheers that got annoyed him. ‘But only fire when ordered, and that might mean letting some of the bastards through.’
Tempting as it was to ambush the whole lot, it would be too much to expect that he could so decimate them that he would have greater numbers than they. He would have instead what he had already avoided, a battle with people who were desperate and motivated, who probably outnumbered him, were probably better armed than his lads and who, even if he beat them, would kill or maim a number of the boys he led.
Cal knew better than most that you could not fight without the risk of casualties and he had often said he had seen too many in his time. Yet he had a bunch of untrained enthusiasts under his care and it was more important to him to keep up the spirits of these young Olympians, rather than have them ruined by seeing their mates die. They had done really well on this mission, their morale was high and that was the way he wanted it kept for now.
The sounds of battle were still audible, including the boom of explosions that indicated grenades were being employed, but by whom there was no way of telling. The fight at the bridge was continuing, but if Laporta pressed home his attack, and everything Cal had seen up until now indicated he would, there could only be one outcome. The sound of the first car, an open-topped Hispano Suiza packed with blueshirts with weapons held aloft, some sitting on the body, had been masked by the noise of gunfire, but it burst out from the last of the houses at speed, well ahead of anyone following.
There was no way the lads in the first squad, who had been obliged to sit it out in this ditch while their mates had disabled that cannon, could resist such a tempting target. On top of that frustration, they knew only too well what these fascists had done, had seen the results of torture, murder and rape, and had they not come to Spain and the People’s Olympics to send them and their ilk a message?
They let fly without any command being given, and if the volley that raked the car was ragged and did not much more than pepper the bodywork with holes, it was only the first, and those that followed, with a fraction more time to aim, were deadly and directed at the passengers, not the car. The driver was a clear casualty as his windscreen was shattered before his amazed and frightened eyes, then the car steered away and into the opposite ditch, throwing into the air, as it shot to the far side, all of those who had been extra passengers.
Cal had his pistol out and was running up from his ditch, half an eye on the road from the town. He raced across the road and stood arms outstretched looking for movement, barely aware that Vince was beside him, his rifle aimed into the field where lay the twitching bodies of those who had been tossed clear. They fired simultaneously, Cal at a passenger moving in the car, Vince at one of those figures who had got up and was staggering trying to run, this being no time for mercy.
‘Leave the rest,’ Cal shouted as he heard a truck engine, amplified by being in the narrow confines of the buildings that enclosed the street, and as he ran back his shout had both anger and volume. ‘Hold your bloody fire and get your heads down.’
The truck roared into view and Cal had a fleeting glimpse that told him it was a Civil Guard wagon, open-topped and packed. He knew he and Vince must have been seen by the driver and whoever else was either in the cab or on top of it, just as they would see the back of the Hispano Suiza sticking up out of the ditch. Would they stop, that was the question, and if they did how many men were they carrying and of what calibre would they be?