I liberated the American vehicle, hot-wiring the ignition as Crazy Dancer had taught me. This was more like it!
The general had invited me to dine, and dine we did. We were escorted with bows and compliments to the best table in the best restaurant in the city, whose only wall was bolstered by sandbags.
“I don’t suppose the menu is to be believed,” I said, looking over the elaborate bill of fare.
General Tuker chortled and read aloud such specialties as duck, prime rib of beef, and Yorkshire pudding. I craned to see. These items were indeed listed in a flowing, calligraphic hand.
I looked at him questioningly.
He was delighted to inform me, “Stocked from the senior officers’ mess. We have the food, they have the atmosphere.”
“What a great idea,” I said approvingly as I looked out over the bay. It was a magnificent panorama. Perched on a hilltop, we were unable to see the pulverized destruction.
Wine with the meal, and my tiredness floated away. Alongside the roast beef and Yorkshire pudding was the best pasta I’d eaten before or since, made with mussels, calamari, prawns, and scallops baked in a mushroom sauce. By the second glass of wine I forgot I was dining with a major general and commanding officer of a division. He was a fascinating conversationalist, a scholar, and author of several military treatises. I wondered what he would have to say about Cassino after the war. I hoped he could report that we’d won it.
Over claret he discussed the problem of the monastery. “A thousand-pound bomb, even if well placed, would be quite useless.”
“It’s a shame that such a beautiful old building must be destroyed at all. You don’t suppose the monks still inhabit it? Are you certain they were evacuated? And what about the art treasures and documents?”
“The Germans are good about sparing art and documents. About the abbot and any remaining monks, I don’t know. They may have also given shelter to refugees. It’s quite possible. And someone thought there was a deaf-mute servant. In any case we’ll give notice before we attack, broadcast a warning.”
Our American transport got us back to the front in record time.
OUR TROOPS HUDDLED against winter snow turned to slush. A grayness lay over the mountain like a scrim. Below in the valley it was no better: the marsh was a sea of mud. The depressing landscape matched the uncomfortable circumstances in which the waiting men found themselves. They were too miserable to sleep or read. Water was rationed, as it had to be brought seven miles by mule, so shaving was out. Although one enterprising soldier was using the dregs of his tea to moisten his stubble. Several men had settled down to writing letters home. Most sat and stared at the monastery. Everyone knew by now that its total extinction was imminent. We had been told officially that reinforcements in the form of the 4th/6th Rajputana Rifles were on the way. Two more battalions of Gurkhas held the valley.
The objective was point 953, a promontory close under the defending walls of the monastery. It seemed an appalling route to me, but then, as my friend had told me, the Gurkhas were renowned as mountain fighters. Somewhere, although they had not yet arrived, was a company of Maori sappers, also known as New Zealand’s “wild Irish.” Their job was to remove those deadly Schuh mines with which the place was strewn. This was difficult, as they were simply little wooden shoeboxes with a minimum of metal, making mine sweepers all but useless, while the snow hid them from visual detection. When they did show up, the Maoris were a cheerful bunch. They didn’t bother with salutes, but waved smilingly at their officers.
With the addition of so many troops the plan must be to attack simultaneously, again from the southwest and the north, a route that had been chiseled out by the Americans in the first, failed attempt that preceded my tour of duty here. But with the seasoned Indian division backed by the 2nd New Zealand, it was felt we had a chance. The wait now was for all these forces to get into position. If they attacked with strong air cover it might work. I frequently checked the sky—slate and gray, but no shielding fog.
I heard engines and glanced up. Not the Mitchell medium-range bombers we were expecting but Flying Fortresses all the way from Africa. Weren’t they early? The troops from India had barely arrived, and the New Zealanders weren’t in position yet.
The planes, dipping slightly, flew directly at the monastery. The bomb bays opened. Were the monks still there? Were they kneeling at the altar chanting the antiphon of the Blessed Virgin? The explosions sent up tremendous clouds of brilliant orange, punctuated by smoke and dust shot through with yellow flashes. Had they finished “Beseech Christ on our behalf” before those words were swallowed in this unchristian baptism?
When the smoke cleared, there was a murmur from the troops. It was a miracle. The monastery stood. Seemingly, it had not been affected by this first deadly run. A second pass, and a third. It stood, with no discernible damage. At 1400 hours it was the turn of the Mitchells. As each successive smoke cloud dissipated, the pounding began to show. The windows appeared larger and their frames were jagged. There was a fissure in the walls, and the roof was beginning to look uneven.
Then, as I watched, the west wall of the building collapsed. I remembered the refugees—had they knelt and chanted with the monks? Tuker had mentioned a warning salvo. But there was none. The planes had appeared too early out of the sky.
Demolishing the monastery was only part of their job; they were to provide air cover for the assault. But when the monastery crumbled, they considered their mission accomplished and left, with Tuker shaking an impotent fist skyward.
The fury of the bombing had been fury in a vacuum, wasteful and tragic. That beautiful centuries-old abbey was gone.
The planes had gone too. Whether deliberately or not, Air Command had not been given the full picture. The monastery was the target, they wiped it out, they left. Air cover was not on their agenda. Too many generals, too many egos vying for headlines back home. Egg would have said, “Too many cooks spoil the broth.”
Planes or no planes, the attack was ordered, and hell opened before my eyes. They moved out, two platoons, the third following in reserve. They crawled silently along Snakehead Ridge toward point 953. The men set their feet so as not to dislodge a stone or stumble. It was easy to turn an ankle carrying a heavy Bren gun or a flamethrower.
The Germans opened up. Withering fire caught the climbers in the open. Machine guns, mortars, grenades—and mines, the area had not been properly cleared of mines. The rubble that had been the monastery now provided ideal cover for German gunners.
Our men were picked off. Stretcher bearers began bringing down the wounded. I passed among them with gauze and morphine. The Rajputana Rifles reached what looked like a belt of scrub. Instead, it was a thicket of thorn, breast high. I began pulling them out of wounds along with shards of barbed wire. I had never seen such vicious lacerations.
Their colonel was shot through the stomach and lay looking up at me. I stopped the bleeding. The morphine was used up. We were short of basic supplies. I had to watch him die. There was one Gurkha stretcher bearer who again and again climbed over those exposed crags to bring in another fallen shape. He must have made sixteen trips into that inferno. This time he was halfway back when the soldier at the other end of the stretcher was hit, and fell, barely fifty yards from me. I rushed out and grabbed his end of the stretcher. He struggled to his feet and tried to help, but ended up leaning on my shoulder. Somehow, the Gurkha and I brought them both in.
The Gurkha nodded at the chaos we had just left. He was asking for my help, and I went with him. A barrage of mortars exploded around us. When it cleared sufficiently to see, the man we had come after was dead. The Gurkha signed that he had spotted someone farther on, but by now I was confused as to where I was and where our lines were.
A shape loomed out of the dust. Another stretcher bearer—only something was wrong. He was wearing the wrong uniform. I stood still, grooved into the rock I stood on. He’d have to kill me, of course. Instead he said, in passable English, “
You’re lost?”
I nodded. I couldn’t speak.
“That way.” He pointed. “South of that rock. That’s where you want to be.”
“Danke schön,” I whispered, hardly getting it out.
“English?” he asked.
“Canadian.”
“Good luck,” he said, and disappeared in the other direction.
“Good luck—” But he had gone.
My Gurkha, who had stood silent and motionless during this exchange, told me such meetings between the lines were not uncommon. Unofficial, unsanctioned, it nevertheless happened as both sides respected a mutual low-level grunt truce and evacuated their wounded.
The attack was repulsed, and the Germans held on to the Gustav Line. It was almost three months later that our forces took Monte Cassino.
I REMEMBER HEARING several wounded praying in Polish. I had come to recognize these brave fighters in their long gray-green coats. They had lost their homeland early on, but now, as the Germans retreated, they had hope for the first time. The final operation itself was spearheaded by a Canadian corps under Major General Sir Oliver Leese. The way it played out, as I heard afterward, Leese, by taking and holding the Liri Valley, strengthened us at Cassino. The combined pressure breached the German defenses in a number of places, and allowed the Americans to push up the coast, while the British entered the valley. Cassino, that great wall, fell to the Polish Corps May 18, 1944.
The Germans could not withstand this concentrated drive and gave way even in the Alban Hills. The road to Rome was wide open.
Many times in these last months my hand strayed to Egg’s crucifix, which I wore inside my shirt. On the same chain was tied a gray and white feather. I thought of Crazy Dancer at the most unexpected moments. I think because I expected to be dead by now, and I wanted him to guide me as he had that old chief. I wanted to walk in his moccasins.
It was haphazard, I felt, whether one survived this madness or not. It depended on such things as going for a drink of water or scrounging up more morphine, or deferring getting the bandage rolls that were needed. You were or you were not in a certain place when the shell made a crater of it. Nurse Lander could have asked someone else to dump the basin. Nurse Lander could have stayed in Canada and not volunteered in the first place.
Funny, I didn’t know where in Canada she came from, or even her first name. All I remembered—she was the one who kept everybody’s spirits up, the first to wade into the mud and help with the plasma. She didn’t hesitate to drag a dead soldier to the burial row, her blond hair flying. And her own body had been added to the pile. I hadn’t had time to think about her until now. I thought about the German stretcher bearer too. I hoped he’d survived.
I stroked my feather and Egg’s cross. I’d been kept alive and relatively sane. Soon I would be entering the Eternal City.
DAYS LATER WE were strung out on the road to Rome. It was a victory march, but probably not recognizable as such. We were a straggling line of exhausted, dirty, exultant beings. Of all the conquerors that over the centuries had taken Rome we were certainly the least likely and the most ragged. Our vehicles were in no better shape than we were. How we could have used Crazy Dancer! Overheated motors, clogged fuel lines, blown tires were the norm. Sooty, blackened, fed a vile mixture of gasolines, they rolled on.
I was driving again, simply because it was assumed I would be. When we got to Rome I planned to apply for a proper army vehicle license. In the meantime I was part of the long line wending its way, with a recalcitrant sun showing itself occasionally.
Then the engine sputtered, the jeep bucked under my hands and came to a stop.
“Get that thing off the road.”
“Yes sir.” I outranked him, but on the road those directing traffic have ultimate authority, even over generals. Besides, we nurses had never had time to learn army protocol, and it wasn’t expected of us. I jumped out of the jeep and with the help of a couple of MPs pushed it into a field of cauliflowers. I opened the hood. Thanks to Crazy Dancer I had seen enough engines to recognize that a wire from the distributor had burned through. I borrowed the foil from a pack of cigarettes a soldier had dropped out of line to inhale. I twisted the ends of the wire around each other and splinted them with bits of foil.
Getting back into the jeep, I tried to start it when a sudden explosion racked the column ahead—where I would have been if the jeep hadn’t acted up. A land mine sent pieces of trucks and people showering down. Something penetrated my body.
I thought it was the sound. I didn’t realize I’d been hit. But the flying metal fractured my right elbow, all three bones, humerus, radius, and ulna. I was taken back to the same casualty station I’d helped set up. I pleaded with Dr. Farnsworth, who was still with us, to operate there and then. I had seen him perform miracles in the field. Otherwise, it would mean being air-lifted to London, and a circuitous route home.
Farnsworth, bless him, agreed without argument, commandeered a surgical nurse, and woke up our anesthetist. My elbow was x-rayed, and he went to work, asking me if I minded baling wire.
“Doctor,” I said, “I’m wearing a crucifix. Would you mind taking it to Rome with you? The Pope needs to bless it. And when he does, it’s to be sent to Sister Eglantine, Charity Hospital, Montreal, Canada.”
“Don’t fret,” he said. “It’s as good as done. I’m sure His Holiness will not refuse a good Anabaptist.”
Before the anesthetist clapped the mask over my face, I saw the bolt intended for my elbow.
THE HOSPITAL SHIP was hazy. I’d get used to the roll and then it would start to pitch.
I remember nothing of the crossing. I was in and out of morphine dreams, in which I had tumbled off the world and was trying to climb back on, but the globe rotated and I couldn’t manage.
The ship’s chief medical officer bent over me, explaining in a kindly voice that I would not in the future have the use of my right arm. “Oh, and practice your signature with your left hand.”
A nurse without the use of her right arm?
I FOUND MYSELF a patient in ward B, one of my own wards. They’d put me at the end and curtained it off for privacy.
I didn’t like being a patient. Still, I think it should be a requirement for every nurse and doctor. You see things from a different point of view. For instance, the bedpan. The position is antithetical to human beings, but tied into an IV stand it’s difficult to get up and take it with you into the bathroom, which was what I did.
Sister Egg popped in every day to scold me. “You’re giving us so much trouble, Kathy, that I know you’re better.”
I confessed to her my fear over the loss of movement in my arm.
“You’ve seen enough to know what therapy can do. We’ll bring you right along.”
I redoubled my efforts, squeezing a ball in my hand when I was too tired to do anything else.
The strangest thing about being back from the war was that no one wanted to hear about it. I tried innumerable times to convey my impressions of the other nurses, accounts of the roads, the scenery, what it was like to be under bombardment, how we went about setting up a clearing station, triage, evacuating priority-three patients, having dinner with a major general—bedbugs. So many things. They’d piled up in me with no opportunity to assess them. Even Egg was too busy to listen. Civilians, I thought, deliberately shut out the war. And I remembered myself—hadn’t I always gone to the ladies’ room or to buy popcorn when the Movietone news showed hospital ships unloading wounded? It was too much to absorb, too much grief, too much anguish, and no frame of reference.
But it was too bad. Because along with the horrors and the glimpses of hell, there were some wonderful things about the war. The way wounded men hauled unconscious buddies into the station. Nurses and doctors forgot the civilian pecking order and helped each other with the most menial duties. Frontline combat erased rank, sex, and color. Not once in Italy did anyone question my copper skin.
A joyous note in the midst of this
sere landscape, a package arrived and out tumbled Sister Egg’s crucifix and a note from surgeon Farnsworth. He had indeed marched into Rome, and an audience with the Pope had been arranged. The Pope was highly interested in the Anabaptist service and blessed the crucifix on the spot.
The pupils of Sister Egg’s eyes rolled up out of sight. It scared me until I realized it was sheer ecstasy.
My arm was becoming more flexible, but I had a long way to go before it could be considered usable. Egg made a mark on the wall. I was ambulatory now, and only the incapacity of my arm kept me from working. I walked my fingers painfully up the wall again and again, morning, noon, and night, aiming for Egg’s mark. At times I’d flinch from even starting.
Then it happened: one glorious day my fingers crawled up the wall and touched the mark.
I went flying to Sister. She looked at me calmly through round spectacles and went with me to verify my performance with her own eyes. “Excellent,” she said, and made a new mark higher than the first by a good six inches.
Two weeks later my arm was almost well. Follow-up X rays showed that Dr. Farnsworth had been as good as his word. There was the bolt, hammered into the humerus, and the baling wire twisted around the fragments of the two forearm bones. Twenty years down the road arthritis might set in, but the best preventative was to build up the muscles and exercise them daily.
This prescription was exactly what I wanted. I took up my duties as though I had never seen Maj. Dr. Farnsworth mop the blood from the tarpaulin floor, as though I had never performed Miller-Abbott suctions at midnight under flashlights when the generator quit, or transfused with wrong-size needles—the only ones I had—or looked into eyes of anguish and seen eighteen-year-olds meet death calling for their mothers, or had an enemy wish me good luck on the field of battle.
My father had put me back together. I had been able to manage Monte Cassino. Now I must do the same for my life.