< World War II - The Wave of Steel (4) >
July 1, 1940
Northernmost Italy, Trentino-Alto Adige (South Tyrol) – The Italian Defense Line
"Food's here, food!"
"Yeahhh!"
When the combat rations arrived at the Italian defense line, the Italian soldiers who had been dozing off against the trenches jumped up and scrambled out.
"In, in order…"
The non-commissioned officer's attempt to maintain order was utterly aningless.
With bloodshot eyes from lack of sleep and food, the soldiers rushed forward, frantically wrestling with each other to grab the combat rations of canned pasta.
Discipline was long gone; it was nothing more than a desperate scene of n trying to fill their starving stomachs during a brief lull in the bombings and shellings.
The ss cooks frantically boiled water, and the soldiers opened their cans, sprinkled sauce powder over the dry pasta, and poured the boiling water in.
But before many could even get water, a scream-like shout echoed out.
"Air raaaaid!"
"Goddammit! Fucking German bastards!"
Private Carlo Rossi, who had luckily been the last to pour water into his pasta can, whipped his head around. Seeing the wave of steel covering the sky, he let loose a now-familiar stream of curses.
Carefully holding the can of pasta so as not to spill the water, Private Rossi began to run breathlessly toward the trench.
"Aaargh, it's hot, fuck!"
In the rush, he saw a poor soul who had burned his hand, dropped the al he'd been given after so long, and was now staring at the ground with a dumbfounded look on his face.
"Bernardo, what are you doing, you crazy bastard!"
Carlo cursed as he saw his friend from his hotown, Bernardo, all alone pouring water into his own can of pasta while everyone else was frantically running for the trenches.
"I'm, I'm just, so hungry…"
His eyes bloodshot, Bernardo finally picked up his water-filled can of pasta and turned toward the trench, only to be riddled by a fighter's machine guns and collapse.
"Fuck."
Faced with a sight that was all too common but impossible to get used to, Carlo turned his head and ran along the trench line.
As he was running, a German bomber flew overhead, and almost simultaneously, an explosion erupted right next to him.
"Ugh!"
Carlo covered his precious al with his body to protect it, taking a face full of dirt and dust on his head and back as he ran with all his might.
The sounds of explosions, strafing machine guns, and screams erupted from all sides, but he couldn't care less.
"Pant, pant, fuck. Damn it. Goddammit."
Only after diving into a shelter tunnel connected to the trench did Carlo gasp for breath.
He took off his helt, shook out the dirt inside, and dug at his ears to get the mud out.
It didn't make much of a difference, doing so with hands already caked in dirt, but the terrible sensation, like a sharp knife carving up his mind, prevented him from thinking rationally.
"Carlo. What about Bernardo?"
"Dead.
Fuck…"
At the words of Pietro, who was from the sa hotown, Carlo stopped digging at his ear and replied with a gaunt face. Of all the n who had co from their hotown of Crotone in southern Italy, only two, including themselves, were left in the company.
"Damn."
Belying the stereotype of talkative and emotional Italians, that was the only reaction the two n, worn down by the front, showed to the death of soone from their hotown.
An explosion roared overhead, and the dirt he had just so painstakingly cleared out rained down on his head again. Carlo cursed, furiously brushing it off before putting his helt back on.
Even in the midst of it all, he didn't forget to shield his precious al with his body.
This horrible situation had been repeating for three days now.
Bombing, shelling, bombing, shelling, bombing, shelling.
The incandescent light bulb hanging from the tunnel's ceiling flickered every ti the ground shook with an explosion.
"Those German devils, sons of Satan…"
Carlo muttered blankly, his eyes bloodshot.
The German Army had been repeating its bombings and shellings for three straight days, giving the Italian soldiers no ti to rest.
Even before the massive casualties, the Italian army was losing its humanity.
They would try to get so sleep, only to be startled awake by the roar of explosions.
Soldiers who couldn't overco the constant fatigue and tension would pass out, only to be killed when the attacks resud, never waking up.
"What a shitty state to be in, without even firing a single shot."
Carlo didn't react to his friend's despondent words.
Being unilaterally attacked without being able to do anything was nothing but frustrating.
The German Army was truly relentless, pouring down a terrifying barrage of shells and bombs.
Not a few Italian soldiers were buried alive when their trenches collapsed, left to wait for death underground.
Amidst the non-stop bombing and shelling that didn't even allow them to eat in peace, no one tried to dig out the trenches to save their comrades.
A mont later, the ceaseless screams, shouts, machine-gun fire, and explosions stopped.
"Did it stop?"
There was no answer.
Both Carlo and Pietro began to eat the canned pasta they had so preciously protected, even as they were covered in dirt.
The sauce was bland and the pasta was bloated, it was not sothing one could call delicious by any stretch of the imagination, but it was still one of the better combat rations of the era, and the two starving n devoured it greedily.
But their first enjoyable al in a long ti was short-lived. A roar that had beco paranoia-inducing, the sound of an incoming shell, shook the ground above them.
A shower of dirt rained down, settling onto their food.
"Fuck! You fucking German sons of bitches! Just let us eat! You bastards!"
Carlo scread in a fit of rage, but his shouts only echoed inside the dugout where they were hiding.
Even that was soon drowned out by the constant explosions hamring the ground.
Unlike the intermittent impacts of aerial bombs, the light bulb on the ceiling flickered as if it were dancing a precarious jig from the continuous chain of artillery strikes.
Carlo and Pietro looked at each other for a mont, but then, as if on cue, they started shoveling the dirt-covered pasta into their mouths again.
It was sickening, but they couldn't throw away a warm al when they didn't know when they would eat again.
Though they were Italians who loved to chat during als, the two dry and exhausted n focused on eating, making only quiet chewing sounds.
The explosions outside seed to be having a conversation in their stead.
It was in that mont that a distinctly different sound, like sothing cracking, was heard amidst the explosions.
"Huh?"
The mont the two n, who had been engrossed in their al with pasta sauce sared around their mouths, looked up, the ground of the dugout, which had been enduring the endless bombing and shelling, finally began to collapse.
"N-no! No!"
Terrified, the two dropped the cans of pasta they had been clutching so preciously and desperately tried to get out of the dugout, but the dirt fell too quickly, blocking the entrance.
"F-fuck…"
They knew better than anyone that no one would try to save their comrades buried like this.
After all, they had just abandoned their own comrades in the sa way.
As both n stood speechless, the flickering light of the precariously swaying bulb cast a miserable glow on the canned pasta spilled on the floor with each tremor and shower of dirt.
"I-I can't die like this. Fuck… Stefani is waiting for ."
Carlo was in denial.
He took out his entrenching tool from his gear and tried to dig at the entrance, but trapped underground, digging the dirt alone, a way out was a distant prospect.
"You dig too, you bastard!"
"…Don't waste your strength."
His friend was no help.
"Fuck! I will never die like this!"
A long ti passed, he had no idea how long. Carlo sat leaning against the wall, despondent, his hands blistered and broken.
The wall of dirt blocking the entrance, far from collapsing, had only grown thicker from the dirt constantly pouring from the ceiling.
The ceaseless noise of the bombing and shelling, and the falling dirt, only filled them with the anxiety that their dugout could collapse at any mont, just like the entrance.
The light from the bulb, their only source of stability, continued its precarious dance, further eroding their sanity.
The stench of excrent that had begun to pile up in one corner also tornted them.
"Fuck! Fucking German bastards! Sons of bitches!"
Carlo was enraged.
"Shut the fuck up, you crazy bastard!"
Pietro, who had been listening in silence, had finally reached the limit of his patience.
"What, you jerk? If you hadn't said that Mussolini, that idiot, was the one to make Italy the greatest and convinced
to enlist, I wouldn't be in this ss!"
"Even if it wasn't for , you would have been conscripted by now and thrown onto the front lines as a greenhorn recruit! You should be grateful you're still alive because you have so experience!"
"What did you say, you shaless bastard!"
Carlo was about to lunge at Pietro, but just then, a shell hit the ground directly above them, and the light bulb, unable to endure any longer, fell to the floor and shattered.
A deathly blackness enveloped the inside of the dugout.
"…Sorry."
"I'm sorry, too."
Now, the only thing the two n could rely on was each other's voice.
More ti passed.
"Pietro, you alive?"
"Yeah."
The only consolation was his friend's voice coming from the darkness, and Carlo slowly began to sob.
Carlo started to compromise with reality.
"Fuck.
If I knew it would be like this, I should've just immigrated to Arica. I would've taken Stefani, and if you ca with us, we wouldn't be in this ss…"
"…You're right.
Ha. I was crazy.
To think I saw that idiot, the Duce, as great."
"If, if I get another chance, I won't fight like an idiot following orders. I'll just let the idiots die amongst themselves and desert."
Nothing changed, and another long stretch of ti passed.
Carlo began to grow depressed.
Would the day ever co when he could see his lover Stefani's face again?
"Carlo, you alive?"
"…"
"What, fuck, are you dead?"
"No."
Even the existence of his friend, who sighed in relief that he was alive, was no longer a consolation to Carlo.
Only a bottomless sense of helplessness and despair gripped him.
A long ti passed again, and now, the sound of bombing and shelling was no longer heard.
A deathly silence flowed over the surface of the earth.
Could it be that he was already dead?
Carlo, too, finally accepted reality.
"Pietro."
"…What?"
"We're probably going to die."
Silence fell, and after a long while, Pietro answered.
"Yeah."
Another brief silence.
Pietro spoke again.
"Followed the Duce like a fucking idiot when he was spouting bullshit about a great Ro, and now I'm gonna die in vain in this distant northern land. …I'm sorry."
"Hehehe, who was it that said they were going to die in style, like a true soldier of Italy?"
Carlo realized that even a person who was endlessly depressed and had given up on everything could laugh.
His empty head was blank.
In this space, thirsty, hungry, with only the stench of excrent stinging his nose, he felt no reason to live any longer.
After another brief silence, his friend spoke.
"Gloomy Sunday."
The lyrics were familiar to the people of this era.
"With a hundred white flowers,"
Gloomy Sunday, the Hungarian song sung by the people of Europe who were gripped by despair due to the Great Depression.
"I have walked into our room, my heart is tired."
Carlo also opened his mouth and began to sing with his friend.
The cracked and hoarse voices of the two n echoed in the dark space.
"Because I have known already, that you would not co-"
The face of the lover he had left behind in his hotown flashed through Carlo's mind.
"So I have whispered a prayer and a song of my love and pain, I am alone and I cry by myself-"
As Carlo shed tears at the thought that he would never be able to return to his hotown, a certain noise began to reach his ears.
"As I'm hearing the howl of the winter's moans-"
"Pietro."
"Yeah?"
It was the noise of tank tracks rolling, the sound of engines, and the sound of military boots on the ground.
It didn't matter if they were Italian or German soldiers.
The thought that soone, anyone, might save them instantly breathed life into his despair-ridden body.
Carlo fumbled for the entrenching tool he had tossed in the corner, cutting his hand, but he didn't care.
He picked up the entrenching tool and started banging wildly on the ceiling, shouting.
"There's soone here! Help us!"
His friend soon began to do the sa.
"Help us! We're underground!"
There was a brief murmur from above.
It was hard to tell what they were saying through the ground, but the fact that there were people there gave them hope.
---
July 4, 1940
Southernmost Austria, South Tyrol – The Wreckage of the Italian Defense Line The Italian defense line, having been rcilessly worn down by continuous bombing and shelling, began to retreat the mont the German Army advanced, offering no resistance.
No, it was less a retreat and more a collapse and flight.
The German Army, aside from the air force losses to unlucky anti-aircraft fire or aviation accidents, succeeded in breaking through the Alpine defense line almost without spilling a drop of blood.
Heinz Guderian, a War College classmate and friend of the Chief of the General Staff Erich von Manstein, was leading the vanguard of the offensive with Manstein's full backing.
From his seat in a Panzer IV, Guderian watched as Captain Roger Michael, the greenhorn Manstein had assigned to him as an aide, returned.
"Why has the advance stopped?"
"Ah, well. It seems there are Italian soldiers trapped inside a collapsed trench.
They're asking what to do…"
"What to do? We pass them by. We have places to be."
Guderian spoke resolutely, without a hint of reconsideration, and Michael replied with a slightly timid expression.
"But General, the Vice-Chancellor has been making the rounds, repeatedly insisting that we minimize casualties among surrendered enemies and civilians. Will this be alright?"
"Have they surrendered?"
"Pardon?"
Guderian asked the flustered Michael again.
"Have they surrendered, and we killed them?"
"N-no, that's not it."
Guderian nodded and added.
"Then there's no problem. They are the ones who bombed Tyrol, executed His Highness the Prince, and invaded Germany first. This has nothing to do with the Vice-Chancellor's request."
"…I understand."
To Michael, who still wore a conflicted expression, Guderian said with a bitter smile.
"Captain, this is war."
The German Army crossed the Italian defense line in the Alps, succeeding in securing a bridgehead for the capture of Italy.
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