For God and Country. Mark Bowlin
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stared disbelievingly at Captain Waller Finley-Jones. “And why in God’s name would I want to do that?”
“Sam, as you chaps said long ago, we’ve seen the elephant. But for all the hard fighting that we’ve done, it’s been a slog on the beaches and in the mountains and the valleys. I’m saying we should get a close look at the street fight that’s going on now and take the lessons learned back to the division.”
“Yeah, I understood the words the first time, Waller. We sometimes even speak the same language. I just wanna know why I would want to.” Sam shook his head. He had no desire to go to the front lines to see urban warfare up close, no matter how altruistic the motives might be, but he knew that Perkin would be enthusiastic as soon as he heard of it. If Perk was going, he would feel honor-bound to go as well.
“Rome, Sam. Rome. Once we breach the Gustav Line, there’s nothing between us and Rome. No spring line, no summer line. Just open valley. But when we get to Rome, if the Germans don’t have the humanity to make it an open city, it’ll be our Stalingrad. There’ll be fights for every street, every row house, every piazza, stone by stone, yard by yard. It’s what’s happening just ten miles from here in Ortona. The Canadians are fighting the German’s 1st Paras, and it’s a laboratory of modern warfare. We should go see that laboratory for ourselves.”
“I ain’t a scientist, damn it, I’m a cowboy.”
“Oh, don’t be such an old bones, Sam. We won’t go into action, just observe it. And think through what I’ve said—even if we give Rome a miss, there’s a thousand hamlets, villages, towns and cities between here and Berlin.”
“What’s a hamlet?”
“It’s a small village.”
Sam shook his head, “Why wouldn’t we just shell the damn thing?”
“I think you’re missing the point, Sam.”
“No, Waller, I think you’re missin’ the damn point. This is my vacation, remember?”
Finley-Jones smiled at his friend. He knew that although Sam was grousing, he would come around. “It’s too cold to sit on the bloody beach, isn’t it? Come on, we’ll wake up, get some bangers and chook, and then just go have a look see.”
“What the hell’s bangers and chook? I already told ya, you ain’t gettin’ me in a whorehouse.”
Finley-Jones smirked, “Pity. No, bangers are sausages, although a little blander than those ones stuffed with hot peppers that you gave me. I shan’t forget that, and I will enjoy my revenge someday!”
The memory of Finley-Jones eating jalapeno-stuffed sausages drew a laugh from Sam. He asked, “Ain’t my fault your food’s tasteless. Why do you call ’em bangers?”
“They have a rather unfortunate tendency to explode.”
“Oh. That’s swell. Exploding sausages and chook—which is what? A detonatin’ biscuit?” Sam picked up his Garand and began to break it down for cleaning.
“I keep telling you, real biscuits are what you might call cookies; your biscuits are rather unimaginative scones; and chook . . . well, chook are army eggs.” Powdered eggs to be exact, but Finley-Jones thought he’d leave that out.
“Army eggs? You mean the green ones?”
“Only if properly cooked in copper pots, you know. What do you say?”
“I’m cleanin’ my rifle, ain’t I?”
1745 Hours
Eighth Army Headquarters, Vasto, Italy
A British orderly brought in two pots of tea and a tray of ham and butter sandwiches at the request of Colonel Scrope. Perkin sent Kulis to find the rest of their party and tell them to go ahead and find something to eat, and that he would track them down later.
“So, y’all think you know what Grossmann’s going to do next? Have any thoughts then on where he might be?”
“We do,” said Ackernly. He seemed to be collecting his thoughts as he absentmindedly put two teaspoons of sugar into an empty cup and then poured a little milk onto the sugar. Only after he had stirred the two together did he add the steaming tea.
Scrope spoke while the civilian tended to his tea. “Captain Berger, what we’re going to tell you is classified most secret. Sorry, top secret—old habits die hard. I can’t stress enough that this information needs to be closely guarded, and that unauthorized disclosure of what we’re going to tell you could severely compromise the Vatican and His Majesty’s Government.” Scrope had an intense look on his face, and to emphasize his point, he said again slowly, “Compromise His Majesty’s Government.”
“I understand, sir. Does this have something to do with Father Riley?”
Ackernly raised his hand as if to indicate he wanted to tell the story. He took a sip of tea first, and in a quiet voice he said, “Yes and no, young man. Riley is involved, but it goes much farther than a low-level priest. Have you ever heard of Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty?”
“No, sir.”
“O’Flaherty is one of Riley’s fellow Irishmen in the Vatican. Another Jesuit. Whereas Riley was in the Jesuit Curia before being stranded in southern Italy, O’Flaherty is assigned to the Vatican Curia. If you’re not familiar with how they run things in God’s little acre, the Roman Curia are the administrative offices of the Church. They help develop, promulgate, and administer Church policy, and O’Flaherty is considered a fast-track chap. Brilliant, overly Irish, and a scratch golfer of all things.”
“Overly Irish?” Perkin asked.
“Well, yes, despite his good deeds which I’ll detail momentarily, he’s not a fan of the British Empire. He is, what one could say, that truly rare beast—a good, devout, fearless man. But a man who grew up in the shadow of the Irish Civil War and partition, and the Black and Tans. I don’t think he’d cross the street to help King George.”
“So, what’s his connection to Grossmann?”
“I’ll get to that . . . O’Flaherty was arrested by British forces in Southern Ireland in ’21, but was released without any further action. It appears to have been a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He graduated from Mungret College in Limerick and was ordained in ’25. Most of his time as a priest has been spent at the Vatican, although he has traveled extensively and he was assigned to what was essentially a diplomatic mission for a year in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. He also completed a mission in Palestine and, significantly, spent two years, ’36 to ’38, in Czechoslovakia.”
“So he’s had the opportunity to view the jackboots firsthand.”
“Exactly. Beginning during the North Africa campaigns, O’Flaherty began to visit the prisoner of war camps here in Italy, serving as an English interpreter to another Vatican official. He was always friendly to all the lads, including the English ones, and he would bring back names of the fellows he met and broadcast them over the Vatican radio. It was a great help to many families whose boys were reported as missing in action, when in fact they were prisoners of the Italians. When some of them later escaped in the confusion following your landing in September, they made it to Rome and sought out O’Flaherty. He put some of them up in his apartment—in the German College no less—and others were sent into sympathetic Italian homes. It appears that his sympathies were not just to the Allied boys but to anti-fascist Italians, Jews, and, well, anyone needing protection from the Germans.”
“How did he come to your attention?” Perkin was intrigued by the story of the Irish monsignor and was wondering how this would affect him.
“A couple of different ways, actually. Believe it or not, both of our countries still maintain a diplomatic mission to the Holy See. Although O’Flaherty is not working with us by any means, he lets our chap at the Vatican know who he’s got under his wing, and they pass him funds to help finance