· Musso's Nazi pals who have been kicking them round for so long. But rather than take a justified risk we missed the boat again; and as we failed to show the flag the Eyeties knuckled under.'
Gregory nodded. `Yes, we ought to have made the Anzio landing in September instead of last week. How are things going there?'
1. Historical note: See Arthur Bryant's Turn of the Tide, based on the
war diaries of Field Marshal Viscount Alanbrooke, pages 557-8.
`They're not. The whole Italian campaign is one hell of a mess. What's more the Generals have landed themselves with just the sort of party they always swore they would avoid. All of them were junior officers in the First World War. Fought at Loos, Ypres and that other bloodbath, the Somme. Never again, they said; never again will we expose troops to wholesale slaughter. And Churchill laid it down that whenever a battle looked like becoming a sloggin' match it was to be broken off. Then what happens? The Army is sent to fight its way up Italy. Two-thirds of the country's rugged mountains and rushing. rivers. No room for manoeuvre. Poor devils have got to fight for every yard of ground and are held for weeks while being shelled to blazes in the same position.
`It's more than six months now since this crazy business started with our landings in Sicily. The wurst-eaters have had all that time to fortify their Gustav Line along the Grigliano and Rapido rivers. The whole thing is stiff with steel and concrete pill-boxes and they've got us pinned down there. In the centre of the line there's a damn' great mountain with the monastery of Casino on top. No getting round it. The place has got to be taken by assault and the fighting there now is just about as bloody as it was at Passchendaele. The only solution was a landing at Anzio. If it had come off we should have outflanked the whole German line. But it hasn't, because a bun-headed American General was given command and he's bungled the whole job.'
Gregory raised his eyebrows. `Tell me more. I haven't heard a thing about this.'
`Neither, thank God, has the British public as yet, else they'd be yellin' for his head on a pole. He's a feller named Lucas. The great battle-launched at Cassino on the 12th was to draw down all the enemy reserves from central Italy; and it did the trick. What is more our deception people did a splendid job. They foxed the wurst-eaters completely and handed Anzio to Lucas on a plate. His troops got ashore with hardly a shot fired. By midnight he had landed thirty-six thousand men and three thousand vehicles. Our Guards Division, bless 'em, was in the van and ran true to form. They penetrated sixteen miles inland. Sixteen miles! And they cut the road between Rome and Cassino. Then, what does this moron do? He thinks he'd like to wait for his armoured corps in case there might be a battle. So he recalls all his advance troops back to the beach and makes them sit there for two days. Two days, mark you! And for all that time the road to Rome was open. The Italians have informed us since that the Germans had sent every man jack they had up to Cassino and a single mechanized battalion could have seized the city.'
Grabbing the neck of the magnum, the Baronet picked it up. Then, seeing that it was empty, he thrust it back and rang the bell. Still scowling, he muttered, `I've always said that the one thing wrong with a magnum is that it holds too much for one and not enough for two. We'll open another to keep us going till lunch.'
`That's fine by me,' Gregory agreed, `I haven't tasted the real stuff for eight months. But what a shocking story. What's the position now?
'Owing to Lucas's bungling, he got himself boxed in and darn near chucked back into the sea. Must give it to the sauerkrauters that they know how to meet a crisis. God only knows where they found them, but they rushed up about twenty thousand men. On the third day it was touch and go. But Alex went in himself. Saw every Brigadier in the outfit personally and restored the situation. Battle at Casino couldn't be broken off, of course. And the Anzio beach-head averages only four miles in depth, with our people thick as flies on it, taking casualties from every shell that comes over. So now we've got two bloodbaths on our hands.'
`And to think how different things might be if only we had gone into Sardinia.'
`Yes, we'd be in the valley of the Piave by now and at far less cost. Alex would have been preparing for a drive in the spring by the route through the Julian Alps that Napoleon took. By summer we'd be in Munich and Vienna. Would have saved us from the immense task of preparing for a Second Front, too; and all the risks entailed by buttin' our heads against the house-painter feller's Atlantic Wall. But we haven't even got Rome yet so I would put my shirt on it that the historians will assess Alan Brooke's having pushed us into going into Europe by way of Sicily as about the biggest strategic plunder of all time.'
`An invasion of the Continent from England is definitely on, then?
'Yes. Roosevelt and Churchill gave Uncle Joe their word on that at Teheran. I don't have to tell you to keep a still tongue a your head. Anyhow, you'll pick up all the lowdown about it when you get back to the War Room. It's scheduled for the first week in May and detailed plannin' for it is going ahead full steam now. As you may know, Oliver Stanley and his Future Planners did all the ground work as far back as early '42, and he pot's been kept bubbling ever since. Churchill's never been keen on it because it's against all sense to attack a powerful enemy at his point of greatest strength. He's always favoured using our sea power to go in through the Balkans. Dead right too. We could have taken our pick of a thousand miles of coast where the enemy's very thinly spread and so far from home that it would take him weeks to build up a front. But
Americans have been all for a cross-Channel show from word go. Our people had all they could do to stall them off from getting themselves and us a bloody nose last year. We had to agree, though, to rev up the planning. About the time you went to Germany, General Morgan was appointed top joy of a show called C.O.S.S.A.C. with a big combined staff and they've been at it hammer and tongs ever since working out the nuts and bolts needed for the job. So when you go back you'll hear talk of nothing but Mulberries and landin' craft.'
`Who's going to command the big show?'
`Eisenhower.'
`What do you think of him?
'Grand chap. Mind, he has yet to prove his abilities as a General. Alex ran the show for him in North Africa. But as a person you couldn't have a better. He has buckets of charm, has the sense to listen to what other people have to say and is determined that there shall be no jealous bickering. He's told his own staff that if any of them don't get on with the British they'll get a ticket for the first ship home.'
`Oh come, now,' Gregory smiled, `you can't really mean that you approve of one of our Allies?'
`What's that? Insolent young devil! Nonsense! I've never said a thing against the Americans. Splendid fellers. Their generosity is boundless and if you don't lay the law down to them they're eager to learn. Fight like tigers, too, once they've been shown how. It isn't their fault that most of their top men have nothing but sawdust in their heads.'
At that moment the door opened and Erika was shown in by the parlourmaid, who also brought the second magnum. With cries of joy, the lovers embraced while Sir Pellinore opened the champagne and soon Gregory was telling Erika of his escape from Malacou.