train was composed entirely of closed and lightless wagons, and once away from the bridge area the four SAS men found themselves cloaked once more in the relative safety of darkness. They raced towards the road, occasionally stumbling over rough pieces of ground, expecting to hear gunfire behind them at any moment, but the German troops were either very green or unusually disorganized, and none came. Reaching the road, Farnham resisted the temptation to seek the safety of the high ground they already knew, instead ploughing on through the orchard opposite. From this they emerged into an open field, which in the darkness seemed to stretch for miles.
This was the escape route they had decided on earlier that night in the OP. If anyone got separated from the party the plan was to rendezvous a quarter of a mile north of the tiny hill village of San Giuseppe, which was itself about six miles east of San Severino. The spot in question might be a swamp or a local trysting place – their map was somewhat limited, to say the least – but if Corrigan and Imrie escaped from the Germans then that would be where they’d expect to find their comrades waiting.
And then they could all cheerfully hike their way to the sea.
Farnham suddenly felt cold all over. The remaining radio had been in Corrigan’s bergen, and that was still lying where Corrigan had left it, on the floor of the railway hut. They had no way of contacting the Navy, and if they missed the pick-up there would be no second chance. How could he have been so stupid?
As they tried to hurry across the wet field, slipping and sliding in the mud, he told himself it was done, and there was no point in dwelling on the fact. They still had forty-eight hours to go, or two whole nights. The Germans would be looking for them, but they couldn’t have that many men in the area, and with any luck the Anzio landing – which would be starting in an hour or so – would give the enemy something more important to think about.
He became aware that Rafferty had stopped a few yards ahead of him. ‘The railway’s only just over there,’ the younger man said, pointing to a dark line of bushes away to their right. ‘Don’t you think we’d be better off walking down the track than wading through all this muck? Just for a while, anyway. They can’t follow us with their lorries, can they? And if they try backing up that train we’ll hear it coming.’
It was a good idea, Farnham realized. Rafferty’s brain seemed to be working better than his own. ‘Let’s do it,’ he said.
The four men struggled across the last thirty yards of mud, bulldozed their way through the line of bushes and on to the track. Away to the right, they could see nothing of the station half a mile away – only the faint yellow glow which hung above it.
As they started walking in the opposite direction Farnham tried to think himself into the mind of the ranking German. He would know the intruders couldn’t have got far, but he would have no idea of their direction, and the night was dark enough to hide an army. As regards the four of them, he would wait for daylight before casting a net. As regards the other two, Farnham realized with a sinking heart, he would immediately seek to slam the door on their escape route.
Maybe Corrigan and Imrie would find a way of crossing the river or scaling the cliffs, but their map hadn’t suggested any. If it had, they would have made the initial approach from that direction.
He put the problem to the back of his mind and concentrated on adjusting his step to the evenly spaced wooden sleepers. Rafferty was about ten yards in front of him, Tobin about ten to his rear, McCaigh a similar number behind the Welshman. Their training was showing, Farnham thought, and about time too, because so far this operation had hardly covered the SAS with glory. Two dead men, the unit split up, one radio broken and another left behind, an over-hasty retreat from the scene of the action.
But at least the bridge was down.
They walked on, ears alert for the sounds of a train or motor traffic on the nearby road, but in half an hour only one motorcycle dispatch rider, also heading east, disturbed the dark silence. They had, by Rafferty’s estimate, walked about three miles when the mouth of the tunnel suddenly emerged out of the gloom, and a few yards more when the rain started to fall. By the time they had reached the shelter of the portal it was coming down with a vengeance.
According to their map the tunnel was about three-quarters of a mile long.
‘It’ll keep us dry,’ Rafferty argued.
‘We’re already wet through,’ Tobin protested. Nor did he like the idea of a walk in the pitch dark. ‘And we’d be like rats in a trap,’ he added.
Farnham wasn’t sure why, but he agreed with him. Taking the tunnel felt a bit too much like walking into the spider’s parlour. He looked at his watch. It was almost three o’clock and they were probably about three miles from San Giuseppe. ‘We’ll go over the top,’ he announced.
The next two hours were among the most miserable any of the four men could remember. In the teeth of a near-gale, with the cold rain whipping into their faces, they stumbled across two ranges of hills and climbed in and out of one deep valley. Wet through and freezing cold, their only consolation lay in their complete invisibility to the enemy. But then again, if the Germans were out searching for them in this weather, more than just Hitler needed his head examined.
At around five Farnham called a halt. They were crossing a small valley similar to the one they had camped in two nights before, and the low branches of the trees, once they were hung with groundsheets, could offer a temporary bivouac and the prospect of cooking up some soup to warm the blood. If they just pushed on, Farnham decided, there was every chance they’d blunder past San Giuseppe in the dark. They couldn’t be far from the village, and if this weather kept up they wouldn’t have much to fear from spotter planes, especially in the first hour of half-light.
It took McCaigh only a few minutes to get the hexamine stove set up and a couple of cans heating. ‘I wonder where the stupid bastards have got to?’ he muttered to no one in particular.
‘What went wrong, do you think?’ Tobin asked.
‘Must have been a faulty time pencil,’ Rafferty said. ‘I can’t see Morrie making a mistake.’
‘Yeah,’ McCaigh agreed. ‘He was good.’ He gave the soup a final stir. ‘At least it was quick. The miserable bastard wouldn’t have known what hit him.’
The others murmured agreement.
‘He had a wife though, didn’t he?’ Tobin asked.
Rafferty frowned at him. ‘Yeah,’ he said curtly. The thought of getting killed wasn’t so bad, but he found it hard to think about leaving Beth with no one to look after her and the baby.
Bending over the soup, McCaigh remembered his dad’s line about 1918 – ‘All those women in black, and not enough men left to satisfy half of them.’ There was no woman praying for his return – well, maybe a few here and there were offering up the odd wishful thought – but his sixteen-year-old brother Patrick would probably go right off the rails if someone wasn’t there to keep an eye on him.
Half an hour later, Farnham’s claim that he could detect a lightening in the eastern sky was received with some scepticism, but a few minutes more and even McCaigh was willing to admit that the shade of darkness had slightly changed. Now the swirls of mist and rain were being painted in charcoal grey rather than black; the difference, he said, was ‘like night and night’.
They pulled down their groundsheet roofing and started off once more. San Giuseppe turned out to be only a few hundred yards away, and they were almost on top of the
