of home and he envied them the fact that they had seen that blessed place such a short time ago.
The question was a ritual.
Ruspoli sat in his ‘office’: an unstable folding chair behind a table made from ammunition boxes in the command trench that lay a few metres behind the front line of his unit’s position. The Raggruppamento Ruspoli, made up from the VII/186th and the VIII Battalion of paratroops and several artillery batteries. Just under one and a half thousand men in all. Not that there were 186 regiments of paras of course. In fact there were just two. But they were the elite fighters of the Italian army and jealously proud of the fact.
As he prepared to listen to the familiar reply Ruspoli munched at what was left of a hunk of dried salami that the cook had been keeping for him specially. Having handed out a few slices to his battalion officers, he was now savouring every last mouthful. Ruspoli was a fine-featured man of fifty, younger-looking than his years, with a thin moustache as dark as his black hair and small yet kindly brown eyes.
His orderly, Luigi Santini, laughed and replied: ‘Well you know, Colonel, how long we’ve been waiting for those anti-tank guns?’ He held up the spanner: ‘I reckon that this is the only way we’re going to be able to fight the enemy tanks when the attack comes. We take them to bits bolt by bloody bolt.’
The young men laughed. Ruspoli too, although he had heard the joke more times than he could remember. The fact was that the men sitting around him now were mostly a new intake, there to replace the dead and wounded from the last attack. It was a habit of his, to invite them to meet him face to face when they joined the unit. He liked to think of them all as a family.
You could easily tell the new boys from the veterans, and boys they were, barely out of school. For one thing their uniforms were still the original colour and had not been faded by the sun. He cast his eye around the newcomers, and smiled as he saw that they still wore their tunics buttoned. Most of the old lags had their shirts forever undone to reveal their thin, sun-browned torsos. Their fatigue caps had long since lost any semblance of shape; most too had discarded the distinctive tropical topees. Helmets were more practical and the only effective defence against the redhot shards of shrapnel that at some point during the day were sure to make an appearance in the trench. These were not of course the usual low-sided Italian infantry helmets. For these men were paratroops, ‘Folgore’ and their hats were made to withstand a drop from a flying aeroplane. Ruspoli did not mind the lack of smartness. He was no stickler for dress. What did it matter on the battlefield as long as you fought well? But sometimes though, he longed for the old days, the parade grounds, the pomp and the marching bands.
Ruspoli turned to the new boys: ‘Any of you sing?’
One of them looked sheepish and coughed and said nothing. But another, lean and grinning pointed at him: ‘Of course, Marco is a great singer. He was studying at the conservatoire in Milan when he volunteered. Eh, Marco?’
The sheepish one smiled: ‘Si, Colonel.’
Ruspoli nodded: ‘Good. That’s very good. What can you sing then? Opera? Verdi, Puccini?’
‘Si, Colonel. All opera. Puccini best of all.’
‘Bene. Well then, you must sing for us some time. The general loves opera and since the gramophone got hit by a shell splinter we’ve missed our music here. Santini, remember that for me. I’ll hold you to it.’
Ruspoli brushed three flies off the salami, popped it into his mouth and looked across at Santini, still grinning at the new boys. They think that the spanner story really is a joke, he thought. But he knew that it was true. If the current situation held up then the only way they would be able to defeat the British tanks would be to undo them bolt by bolt. The long-promised guns had still not arrived and with every day Ruspoli could feel the attack building. He sensed it on the wind. He was quite sure that the British and their allies would come soon. Before the winter set in at least. Montgomery and his generals wanted to push them back to Tripoli and according to reports they had enough armour now and the men to do so.
And all that he and his men, his paratroops could do was sit and wait. The Germans were their masters. Gave them their orders, told them how to die. And all for what, he wondered. He and his men, like all the Italians in this accursed place, had come here to fight for their Duce, for the dream of the new Italy, and instead they now found themselves at the whim of another country. And who was to command them? Divisional HQ had told him that Rommel had flown home sick. So they were left with his deputy, the redfaced General Stumme.
Ruspoli turned to his second-in-command, Captain Carlo Mautino de Servat, who was seated on an ammo box close behind him, and spoke quietly, ensuring that Santini and the others could not hear. ‘Carlo, did I tell you the latest casualty figures? Major D’Esposito told me yesterday, at HQ.’
‘No, Colonel.’
‘A thousand of our officers and fourteen thousand other ranks dead and wounded in all Divisions since the last push. Funny thing is the Germans have apparently lost roughly the same. So why do you think then that they still moan about us always running away, about us refusing to fight and expecting them, the Germans, to win back our colonies for us?’
Mautino shrugged: ‘I heard from a German officer last week, sir. Nice fellow, in the Fifteenth. He told me how well supplied we were. Assured me that we had better provisions than them. Plenty of wine, water, meat and bread.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I laughed and told him he was wrong. That we lived on a quarter-litre of water a day and that we hadn’t seen any fresh meat or fruit or vegetables for a month.’
‘What did he say to that?’
‘He laughed. He didn’t believe me. Asked me to remember him and send back a case of wine.’
Ruspoli shook his head. ‘No one believes anyone any more out here, Carlo. Nothing is real. Think about it and you start to see mirages. Like Morgana le Fay.’
He was referring to the wispy figure that appeared in front of you if you stared into the desert for a long time, as many of them did when on guard duty. It seemed to take the form of a woman, wrapped in a long robe and sometimes carrying water pitchers. He’d seen it once or twice. That’s when you knew you had been out in the sun too long. He wiped his forehead. Even under the camouflage netting the day was oppressively hot. He called to his orderly.
‘Santini. Direct those boys to their companies, will you. You, Marco. I look forward to hearing you sing.’ As the replacements were taken away he turned back to Mautino: ‘I suppose it’s occurred to you that we’re an embarrassment to the Germans?’
‘No. Not really. How, sir?’
‘Well, think about it. The great Colonel Ramcke and his paras teach us how to drop from the sky. How to act like proper Wehrmacht soldiers. We’re trained up for Operation Herkules. We’re told that we’re going to take Malta. Then what? The operation is called off. Cancelled by personal order of Hitler himself. Why? He doesn’t want to lose his precious Fallschirmjäger like he did in Crete. Of course he’s got other things for them to do. There’s Russia for one thing. But what about us? Good Italian troops? Impossible. The Germans can’t admit to that any more. We’re meant to be cannon fodder. So we’re sent here, to the bloody desert. We are paratroops, by God! Paratroops. Airborne. You know what Folgore means, Carlo? Of course you do. Lightning. We go in like a thunderbolt. We’re not bloody rats to fight and die in stinking trenches.’
Mautino, the youngest son of a family of Piedmontese aristocrats, looked down at his boots, concerned that his colonel had lost his temper, an increasing occurrence over the past few weeks. ‘I know, sir. I thought that they were going to drop us over the Suez Canal. We all did. That we would be the first into Cairo at the head of the advance. With the Duce on his white horse.’
‘Well, we all thought that, Carlo. Until they took our ’chutes away. Then we knew.’
Another voice joined in from behind them: ‘It was when