Chapter 117
Chapter 117
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 117
Chapter Title: The Iron Wave (4)
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July 1, 1940
Northernmost Italy, Trentino-Alto Adige (South Tyrol) – The Italian Defensive Line
“Food’s here! Rations!”
“Whoooa!”
The moment combat rations arrived at the Italian defensive line, the soldiers who had been dozing off against the trench walls scrambled to their feet.
“In, in an orderly line....”
The non-commissioned officer’s attempt to maintain order was utterly meaningless.
With bloodshot eyes from lack of sleep and food, the soldiers charged forward, jostling frantically to grab a can of pasta.
There was no semblance of military discipline left; it was merely a desperate scene of starving men trying to fill their bellies during a brief lull in the bombing and shelling.
A cook frantically boiled water while the soldiers popped open their cans, sprinkled sauce powder over the dry pasta, and poured in the boiling water.
But before many of them could even get water, a scream ripped through the air.
“Air raid!”
“Goddamn it! Those fucking German bastards!”
Private Carlo Rossi, who had luckily just managed to pour water into his pasta can, snapped his head around. Seeing the steel wave descending from the sky, he let out a now-familiar curse.
Carefully holding the can of pasta so as not to spill it, Private Rossi began to sprint toward the trench.
“Agh, hot, fuck!”
He saw some poor soul who, in his haste, had burned his hand and dropped his long-awaited meal on the ground, now staring at it with a look of utter devastation.
“Bernardo, what the hell are you doing, you crazy bastard!”
Carlo cursed as he saw his friend from back home, Bernardo, still pouring water into his own can of pasta while everyone else was running for the trenches.
“I’m… I’m so hungry, so hungry....”
With reddened eyes, Bernardo finally picked up his can and turned toward the trench, only to be riddled with machine-gun fire and collapse.
“Shit.”
It was a common sight, yet one he could never get used to. Carlo turned his head and ran along the trench line.
As he ran, a German bomber flew overhead, and almost simultaneously, an explosion erupted beside him.
“Ugh!”
Carlo threw himself over his precious meal to protect it, taking a face full of dirt and dust on his head and back as he scrambled forward. Explosions, the rattle of machine-gun fire, and screams erupted from all sides, but none of it mattered.
“Hah, hah, shit. Dammit. Goddamn it.”
Only after diving into a dugout connected to the trench did Carlo gasp for breath, taking off his helmet to shake out the dirt and digging at his ears to clear them.
It made little difference, given that his hands were already caked in grime, but the horrifying sensation, like a sharp knife carving through his mind, prevented him from thinking rationally.
“Carlo. What about Bernardo?”
“He’s dead. Fuck....”
At the question from Pietro, another man from his hometown, Carlo stopped digging at his ear and answered with a dry expression. Of all the men who had come from their home in Crotone, in southern Italy, only the two of them were left in the company.
“I see.”
Contrary to the stereotype of talkative and emotional Italians, that was the extent of their reaction to the death of a man from their hometown, their senses dulled by the battlefield.
An explosion boomed overhead, and the dirt he had just painstakingly brushed off rained down on him again. Carlo cursed, wiped it away furiously, and put his helmet back on.
Through it all, he never forgot to shield his precious meal with his body.
This hell had been repeating for three days now. Bombing, shelling, bombing, shelling, bombing, shelling.
The incandescent bulb hanging from the dugout ceiling flickered every time the ground shook with an explosion.
“Those demonic Germans, sons of Satan....”
Carlo muttered blankly, his eyes bloodshot.
The Germans hadn't given the Italian troops a moment's rest, relentlessly bombing and shelling them for three straight days. The Italians were losing their humanity long before they were losing the battle.
They would try to snatch a moment of sleep, only to be jolted awake by the thunderous explosions. Soldiers who succumbed to the constant fatigue and tension and passed out often never woke up, killed in their sleep when the attacks resumed.
“What a mess. Haven't even fired a single shot.”
Carlo didn't respond to his friend’s dejected words. Being attacked so one-sidedly without being able to do anything was nothing short of demoralizing.
The Germans were truly relentless, their shelling and bombing horrific. Not a few Italians had been buried alive when their trenches collapsed, left to wait for death.
In the midst of the ceaseless bombardment that didn't even allow them to eat in peace, no one tried to dig out the trenches to save their comrades.
A short while later, the unending screams, shouts, machine-gun fire, and explosions ceased.
“Did it stop?”
There was no answer. Both Carlo and Pietro began to eat the canned pasta they had so preciously protected with their bodies, getting covered in dirt in the process.
The sauce was bland and the pasta was bloated, far from what anyone would call delicious, but it was one of the better combat rations of the era, and the two famished men ate it greedily, as if it were a feast.
But their first enjoyable meal in what felt like an eternity was cut short. The all-too-familiar, neurosis-inducing whistle of an incoming shell was followed by the ground shaking above them. A shower of dirt rained down, settling into their food.
“Fuck! You goddamn German sons of bitches! Let us eat! You bastards!”
Carlo screamed in fury, but his voice only echoed inside the dugout they were hiding in.
Even that was soon drowned out by the continuous barrage pounding the earth.
Unlike the intermittent impacts of aerial bombs, the relentless artillery fire made the lightbulb on the ceiling dance precariously.
Carlo and Pietro looked at each other for a moment, then, as if on cue, they resumed scooping the dirt-laced pasta into their mouths.
It was nauseating, but they couldn't afford to waste a warm meal they might not get again for who knew how long.
Though Italians loved to talk during meals, the two hollowed-out men focused on eating, the sound of their chewing the only noise they made.
The explosions outside seemed to be having a conversation in their stead.
It was in that moment that they heard a distinctly different sound amidst the blasts—a cracking noise.
“Huh?”
The two men, absorbed in their meal with pasta sauce smeared around their mouths, looked up just as the dugout, which had withstood the ceaseless bombing and shelling, finally began to collapse.
“No, no! No!”
Startled, they dropped the canned pasta they had cherished so dearly and scrambled to escape the dugout, but the entrance was already caving in, blocked by falling earth.
“God… damn it....”
They knew better than anyone that no one would try to rescue them. They themselves had already given up on buried comrades in the same way.
Neither of them could speak. As explosions continued to shake the earth, causing more dirt to fall, the flickering light of the swaying bulb bleakly illuminated the spilled pasta on the floor.
“I… I can’t die like this. Shit… Stefani is waiting for me.”
Carlo refused to accept it.
He took out his entrenching tool from his pack and tried to dig at the entrance, but trapped beneath the earth, digging alone was a futile effort.
“You dig too, you bastard!”
“...Don’t waste your strength.”
His friend was no help.
“Fuck! I refuse to die like this!”
After a long while—he had no idea how much time had passed—Carlo sat leaning against the wall, his hands raw and blistered, utterly defeated. The wall of earth blocking the entrance hadn't budged; if anything, it had grown thicker from the dirt constantly trickling down from the ceiling.
The incessant noise of the bombardment and the falling dirt only amplified their anxiety, a constant reminder that the dugout could collapse completely at any moment, just as the entrance had.
The flickering light from the bulb, their only anchor, danced precariously, further fraying their nerves.
The stench of excrement, which had begun to pile up in a corner, also tormented them.
“Fuck! You fucking German bastards! You sons of bitches!”
Carlo raged.
“Will you shut the fuck up, you crazy bastard!”
Pietro, who had been listening in silence, finally reached the end of his patience.
“What’d you say? If you hadn’t told me that idiot Mussolini was going to make Italy the greatest and talked me into enlisting, I wouldn’t be in this fucking mess!”
“Even if it wasn’t for me, you’d have been drafted by now and thrown onto the front lines as a greenhorn recruit! You should be grateful you’re still alive because you at least have some experience!”
“What did you say, you shameless bastard!”
Carlo lunged at Pietro, but just then, a shell struck the ground directly above them. The lightbulb, unable to withstand the shock, finally fell and shattered.
A deathly, pitch-black darkness enveloped the dugout.
“...Sorry.”
“I’m sorry, too.”
Now, all they had to rely on was each other, their only conversation partner. More time passed.
“Pietro, you alive?”
“Yeah.”
His friend’s voice from the darkness was his only comfort, and Carlo slowly began to sob.
Carlo started to come to terms with reality.
“Fuck. If I knew it would be like this, I would’ve just immigrated to America. Taken Stefani with me. If you’d come too, we wouldn’t be in this mess....”
“...You’re right. Hah. I must have been crazy. To think that idiot Duce looked so great.”
“If, if I get another chance, I won’t fight like an idiot just because I’m ordered to. I’ll let the morons kill each other and just desert.”
Saying it changed nothing, and another long stretch of time passed.
Carlo began to sink into depression.
Would he ever see his lover Stefani’s face again?
“Carlo, you alive?”
“....”
“What, did you fucking die?”
“No.”
The presence of his friend, who sighed in relief to find him alive, no longer brought Carlo any comfort. Only a boundless sense of powerlessness and despair consumed him.
A long time passed again. Now, the sounds of bombing and shelling had ceased. A deathly silence reigned above ground.
Maybe he was already dead.
Carlo finally accepted reality.
“Pietro.”
“...What?”
“We’re probably going to die.”
Silence fell. After a long moment, Pietro replied.
“Yeah.”
Another brief silence. Pietro spoke again.
“Following the Duce like a fucking idiot when he was spouting all that bullshit about a great Rome, only to die for nothing in this godforsaken northern land. ...I’m sorry.”
“Hehehe, who was it that said they were going to die a glorious death, like a true Italian soldier?”
Carlo realized that even a man who was utterly depressed and had given up on everything could still laugh. Nothing came to his empty mind.
Thirsty, hungry, with only the stench of excrement piercing his nose, he felt no reason to continue living in this space.
After another brief silence, his friend spoke.
“Gloomy Sunday.”
The lyrics were familiar to people of this era.
“With an armful of flowers,”
It was the Hungarian song, “Gloomy Sunday,” sung by the people of Europe who had been gripped by despair during the Great Depression.
“I entered our room, my heart so weary.”
Carlo, too, opened his mouth and began to sing with his friend. The cracked and hoarse voices of two men echoed in the dark space.
“For I already knew that you would not be coming-”
The face of the lover he had left back home flashed through Carlo’s mind.
“So I sang a song of love and sorrow, and all alone, I quietly wept-”
As Carlo shed tears at the thought that he would never return home again, a noise began to reach his ears.
“Listening to the screaming howls of winter-”
“Pietro.”
“Yeah?”
It was the sound of tank treads, engine roars, and the crunch of military boots on the ground. Whether they were Italian or German didn't matter.
The thought that someone, anyone, might save them instantly infused his despair-ridden body with life.
Carlo fumbled for the entrenching tool he had tossed in a corner, cutting his hand in the process, but he didn't care.
He grabbed the shovel and began to bang it wildly against the ceiling, screaming.
“There are people here! Help us!”
His friend soon followed suit.
“Help us! We’re underground!”
There was a brief commotion from above. The earth muffled the sound, making it hard to understand what was being said, but the fact that there were people there gave them hope.
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July 4, 1940
Southernmost Austria, South Tyrol – The Ruins of the Italian Defensive Line
The Italian defensive line, worn down by continuous bombing and shelling, began to retreat the moment the German army commenced its advance, offering no resistance.
No, it was less a retreat and more a complete disintegration and flight.
The Germans, with almost no losses aside from a few aircraft downed by unlucky anti-aircraft fire or accidents, had successfully broken through the Alpine defensive line.
Heinz Guderian was on friendly terms with Chief of Staff Erich von Manstein, having been his classmate at the War College, and was thus actively pushed by Manstein to lead the offensive.
From his Panzer IV, Guderian watched as the fledgling Captain Roger Michael, assigned to him by Manstein as an aide, returned.
“Why has the advance halted?”
“Ah, well. It seems there are Italian soldiers trapped in a collapsed trench. They’re asking for instructions on how to proceed, sir....”
“How to proceed? We move on. We have places to be.”
Guderian spoke with decisive finality, leaving no room for debate. Michael replied with a slightly timid expression.
“But General, the Vice-Chancellor made a point of emphasizing that we should minimize casualties among surrendered enemies and civilians. Will this be alright?”
“Have they surrendered?”
“Sir?”
Guderian repeated his question to the bewildered Michael.
“Have they surrendered, and are we the ones killing them?”
“N-no, sir. That is not the case.”
Guderian nodded and added.
“Then there is no problem. They are the ones who bombed Tyrol and assassinated His Highness the Prince. They invaded Germany first. This has nothing to do with the Vice-Chancellor’s request.”
“...Understood.”
Seeing the still-conflicted look on Michael’s face, Guderian said with a grim smile.
“Captain, this is war.”
The German army crossed the Italian defensive line in the Alps, successfully securing a bridgehead for the invasion of Italy.