I Am Canada: Sniper Fire Read online

  I enlisted in the fall of ’42. I told Ma and Pa I wanted to prove that I was a good Canadian — that we all were. But that was only part of the reason. I wanted to get out of Red Deer. I wanted to get away from the hateful looks of suspicious neighbours. But there was more to it than that. I wanted a bigger life. I thought it would be exciting to go to war. I wanted to find out if I was brave. I know better now. I know more about war, but I still don’t regret my decision.

  So I hitched a ride into Red Deer and found my way to the armoury, headquarters of the 20th Field Regiment. I took my .22-calibre rifle with me, the one I used to hunt rabbits and squirrels. I had an idea that if I showed them that I could handle a rifle, they’d enlist me right away. That’s how green I was. A grinning corporal pointed the way to the orderly room, where I found the warrant officer poking at the keys on a typewriter. I started to pull the rifle from its leather case. He glanced up. He didn’t even ask me how old I was. He just growled, “We don’t take kids!” and went back to typing.

  But when I was on the way out, the grinning corporal took pity on me. “You really want to do this?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “I really do.”

  “You might have better luck with the Eddies,” he said, “if you don’t mind marching. They’re looking for recruits. You’ll have to go there though. To Edmonton.”

  I had to get him to explain what he meant about marching. I didn’t know how armies were organized, the difference between artillery, which is what the 20th Field Regiment was, and an infantry regiment, like the Edmontons. It was more complicated than I had imagined.

  “And by the way,” he added, as I set out for the train station. “Lose the rifle.”

  “Really?”

  “Baby stuff,” he said.

  It turned out the Eddies were, in fact, recruiting. No one batted an eyelash when I said I was nineteen, though it was two years north of the truth. I had smudged the date on my birth certificate, but they hardly glanced at it. Soon enough — so soon it surprised me — they shipped me off to England.

  Pa could have stopped me from going. He wanted to, I know, but how would it look? They might think he was undermining the war effort and send him back into detention. So he let me go.

  * * *

  When I was in school, I hung out with guys who liked what I liked, who shared the same interests as I did. The army’s different. You get close to the men in your unit whether you want to or not. Of course, being close isn’t the same as being friends. It’s like family that way. You’re stuck with the people you’re related to. But Danny and I were friends.

  I arrived in the south of England in time to take part in a series of exercises. We landed on beaches, climbed cliffs and took part in war games. It was all new to me. I had been plunked down in the unit to fill a hole left by soldiers who had been transferred out or fallen sick. Most of the rest of the battalion, the men I was training with, had been in England for a year or more. They’d been through scores of lectures, drills and route marches, and had a much better idea than I did about how to survive on a battlefield. Without them, I wouldn’t have lasted an hour.

  They all played a part in my education. The Gaffer is regular army, a Brit who moved to Canada, and a lifer, not a volunteer. A lot of lifers look down on those of us from civvy street who signed up “for the duration,” that is, until the war ends. Not the Gaffer. “Doesn’t matter to me,” he says. “If you can tell your boot from your butt and walk upright, that’s good enough. I can do the rest.”

  I got to know the others in my section gradually. Strong John Stonechild kept to himself, but whenever I was in trouble, like struggling to manhandle heavy boxes, he was there to give me a hand. The O’Connor brothers are a pair of cheerful Irish toughs. Paddy worked in a warehouse before the war and Derrick was a cook. Baby-faced Doug McDonald is ever-so-quietly efficient, a good guy to have in your corner. And then there was Danny.

  He was a farm boy from Alberta. His parents emigrated from Poland, and mine from Italy, but it seemed like we had lots in common. He liked reading even more than I did. But he was handy too. He could fix anything — if the army had any sense at all, he’d have been a sapper. He’d have been good at building bridges and planting mines. After the war he wanted to be a racing car mechanic and take part in endurance races, like the LeMans 24-hour. It’s a big deal in France. I’d never heard of it but, because Danny was crazy for it, I wanted to see it too.

  These were the guys I got to know best. We saw a lot of the captain, of course. Captain Trehan has a round face, pink cheeks and thick eyebrows. He keeps an eye on us. He’s smart, I think, and doesn’t put on any airs. The Gaffer looks up to him, which means a lot. Lieutenant Gold is a fan of the captain too. Gold was a bookkeeper before the war and he’s a stickler for detail. I often see him poring over papers and maps. I like the way he thinks about things. One time, when we were still in England, I was doing guard duty. He caught me reading a book. He gave me heck, but then he asked me what the book was. Turned out he had read it too.

  “I can’t quarrel with your taste in literature,” he told me. “Just, you know …”

  “Sir?”

  “Don’t let me catch you slacking off again.”

  * * *

  They called it “hardening.” What they meant was that the training we went through in England was like nursery school compared to what they put us through next. In May 1943 we boarded the train for Scotland. For the next six weeks we were made to work as we had never worked before.

  In England, we were sent out on cross-country marches. In Scotland they made us run. In England, we practised unopposed beach landings. In Scotland they fired live ammunition over our heads. In England, we honed our bayonet skills by lunging at straw dummies. In Scotland, a commando unit from the Royal Marines showed us how to kill with our hands.

  The Gaffer loved it. “Maybe, just maybe,” he said, “you lot will be of some use, after all.”

  We got one last week off in London. And then we went to war.

  * * *

  We sailed for Sicily at the beginning of July. We made it through the campaign there together, Danny and me. We survived the heat, the mountains, the dust and the disease. At one time nearly half the company was down with malaria or jaundice. And then there were the Germans.

  After Sicily, the landing in Italy in September was easy. And the push from there was a steady slog against an enemy that mostly used hit-and-run tactics. It wasn’t fun, but it wasn’t as vicious as Sicily had been, at least until we got to Colle d’Anchise, where we fought off the Panzers until the Ontario Tanks arrived too late to save Danny.

  Chapter 3

  Baranello

  October–November 1943

  Sometimes the army just ticks you off.

  Colle d’Anchise was two days ago and we’re supposed to be moving on. There are five or six outfits all snarled at a single crossroads. A bunch of MPs and NCOs are waving their arms and insisting that their unit has the right of way. Hundreds of vehicles are jammed together. Engines are roaring, gears are grinding and nothing is moving. Typical army.

  And the weather stinks.

  We’ve found an old barn not far from the road that still had some roof on it. This gives us shelter from the rain. The Gaffer brews tea. In the afternoon, Paddy and Derrick set off to see what they can scrounge for supper. There are no hot meals coming our way in this messed-up situation. We’ll be cooking for ourselves or eating compo rations. Eventually the boys come back with bread, a few eggs and hard cheese. “All I need to make an omelette,” says Derrick cheerfully. In the meantime, I write letters.

  I write home. That’s easy. I tell them I’m fine and that I’m not seeing much fighting. I complain about the food and the weather. It’s what they want to hear and it’s what I want to tell them. Then I write a letter to Danny’s parents, which is really hard. Danny had showed me pictures of them: his mom, with her apple cheeks and soft eyes, his dad, with his bushy moustache and high
forehead. It’s going to be tough for them to carry on, knowing that Danny is gone. It’s going to be tough for me.

  Finally I write to a girl Danny got to know at the Beaver Club in London. I know she really liked him. She told me. There’s no way she’ll know he was killed if I don’t tell her. I wish I could tell her myself, in person, but who knows when I’ll be back in London?

  Maybe never.

  * * *

  We’ve got reinforcements!

  The traffic jam was sorted out, finally, and we got shifted into this mountaintop village, Baranello, for a bit of rest and recreation. I’ve been given a billet in a barn with chickens. It smells bad, but headquarters says I’ll be sleeping with the poultry for only a few days. Meanwhile, three men have been added to our section, all of them as green as grass.

  The old man among them is Jimmy Philpott. He’s tall and gangly and never stops moving. He never stops talking either. It’s hard to tell if he is scared or just too eager to be friends. He says in civilian life he was the foreman on a road gang.

  Doug thinks he’s been in trouble with the law. “He just looks like he’s had a hard life,” he says.

  “Well, he looks strong enough, at least,” says Paddy. “I’m not so sure about the other two.”

  The youngest of the new arrivals is a fair-haired, moon-faced kid named Leonard.

  “He lied to get in, for sure,” says Doug as soon as he sees him. “No way he’s turned eighteen.”

  He does seem young. Also soft and simple-minded. He says the only job he ever had was grocer’s messenger, which figures. I can imagine him delivering groceries, but the idea that he might be able to kill someone … Even the Gaffer looks doubtful. Derrick has given him a nickname. He calls him Loon.

  The third recruit, Ray Toppi, is a pudgy man in his twenties. He wears wire-rimmed glasses that make him look like an inquisitive mouse. Because of the glasses, of course we’ll call him Specs. He was a lecturer at the university in Edmonton. He seems surprised to be here.

  “Well,” says Doug to the Gaffer, “you made soldiers out of the rest of us. I guess you can work with this gang.”

  The Gaffer makes a face. “Job’s not getting any easier,” he says.

  * * *

  I’ve been moved out of the barn. My new home is an outbuilding with a loft, which I share with Doug. The quartermaster’s crew has rigged up a couple of cots in the loft, making it snug. We share the building with two mules and a horse, but they don’t bother us. The old man who owns the place, Benedetto, would be happier if we didn’t know about them. He’s worried the army will take them away.

  Brigadier General Vokes has taken over the division from Simmonds, which makes him a Major General now, I guess. Vokes is like the Gaffer, a regular army guy, but the Gaffer is not a fan. He says Vokes is a conceited blowhard.

  “Monty is Monty,” says the Gaffer, meaning General Montgomery. “He wears his beret in a certain way and carries that fly swatter as a swagger stick. But when Vokes walks around with a fly swatter too, well …”

  “He just looks like an idiot,” says Derrick, finishing the Gaffer’s sentence.

  “He’s a good officer,” says Gold.

  Both Gold and the Gaffer like the new brigade commander, Brigadier Hoffmeister, who has taken over from Vokes.

  Lieutenant Colonel Jefferson stays in command of the Eddies, but they decided to change our name. It seems that calling us the Edmonton Regiment wasn’t good enough; now we’re the Loyal Edmontons. We’ve been buddies with the British Loyal Regiment (North Lancashire) for years, and we spent a winter in their barracks when we were in England. So I guess the change is meant to underline the linkage.

  “Doesn’t mean we weren’t loyal before,” says Lieutenant Gold.

  “Glad he cleared that up,” mutters Derrick.

  * * *

  Today there was a fight. It had nothing to do with the Germans.

  A bunch of us — the O’Connors, Strong John, Doug and the new boys — got a day pass into Campobasso, the nearest town, three or four miles down the road. The rear echelon, with help from the Salvation Army, has fixed the place up for our benefit. There’s a movie theatre, a men’s club and a handful of canteens They’re calling Campobasso Maple Leaf City because the Canadians have taken it over.

  We played darts at the club and then ate at a café. Afterwards, we wandered around until we found ourselves on the edge of town. A boy, about eight or nine, was standing in an alley between two houses. He gestured for us to follow him.

  “What the heck?” says Paddy. “We’ve got nothing better to do.”

  He’s a skinny kid. I catch up to him and give him a chocolate bar I’ve got in my tunic. He takes it and sticks it in his pocket.

  The kid — he tells me his name is Gino — leads us on a twisty path past fields and an olive grove to a barn. Only it isn’t a barn: it’s been turned into a sort of club.

  “Hey!” says Jimmy. “How about this?”

  There are lanterns on the rafters. The floor is beaten earth with straw laid over it. There are rough wooden tables and benches pulled up around them. In the corner, an old guy is playing the accordion. There are about twenty Canadians already here. I spot Freddy Whitelaw and a couple of others from the Seaforth Highlanders. Freddy sees me and waves me over.

  An older woman is serving wine. Some of the men have been here for a while. They have that look on their faces that Pa and his friends get when they’ve been drinking.

  “This is more like it,” says Jimmy. Paddy and Derrick seem to agree. Loon looks worried and Specs looks interested. Together they take over a vacant table. Doug and I head over to where Freddy Whitelaw is sitting.

  I’ve had wine at home. I’ve had beer since I joined the army.

  “Go on,” says Doug. “It won’t hurt you.”

  “Okay,” I say. “Why not?”

  Freddy has pals at Brigade HQ. He tells us the Germans are making a stand along the Trigno River. This is part of the Winter Line we’ve been hearing about, where the Germans mean to stop us from advancing any farther. Freddie’s friends say the British 78th Division is getting beaten up pretty bad.

  “Here’s to the 78th,” says Doug.

  “May they give as good as they get,” says Freddy.

  We put down our mugs and are thoughtful for a moment. Then Freddy says, “Whatever happens on the Trigno, you know they’re resting us up for a reason. We’re next.”

  “That’s right,” says Doug.

  I feel sad all of a sudden. I tell Freddy about Danny Kurlowicz. Since we stopped in Baranello, I’ve been thinking about him a lot. About his parents and his girlfriend. And not just about him. So many others have been hurt, taken sick or died.

  “The enemy is always in front of you,” I tell Freddy. “You see him coming. You see death coming, if you know what I mean — either his death or yours. It’s not a surprise.”

  “Huh,” says Freddy.

  “But your buddies are beside or behind you. When they get hit, it’s sudden and secret, sort of. You turn around and see them. It was like that with Danny. I turned around and he was on the ground. Too fast for me to feel anything.”

  The wine is affecting our mood. Or maybe, now that we aren’t marching or fighting, or even waiting to march or fight, we’re thinking of things we haven’t thought about for a while.

  There’s a commotion across the room, where we left Paddy, Derrick and the others. Jimmy is in the middle of it. We hear stray words above the din.

  “Bloody Eddies,” says a Seaforth Highlander.

  “Where’s your skirt?” sneers Jimmy. He means the Highlanders’ kilt.

  “Shut your gob!”

  “I’ll shut yours …”

  They start to push each other. Paddy’s on his feet, trying to separate them. One of the Highlander’s pals gets involved and soon he and Paddy are pushing too. I wonder if I should be helping Paddy, but Freddy is unconcerned.

  “Idiots,” he says. Both he and Doug stay se
ated, so I do too.

  Some men like to fight. I saw it in England when the guys got bored. Others stay out of it. Jimmy’s in the middle of this one. He throws a punch and takes one to the chin. It seems to surprise him. The O’Connors are brawling too. Soon there’s a dozen men involved. The fighters are in the middle, the rest of us around them, thinking the fighters will soon wear themselves out. Then someone throws something. One of the lamps is knocked down from the rafters and the straw on the floor catches fire. It happens so fast, at first we don’t see how bad it is. There’s a flash and then flames. The fight ends in an instant. A couple of the boys try to stamp out the fire, but it spreads too fast. The barn fills with smoke and everyone scrambles for the door.

  A few of us stay and watch as the barn burns down. There’s no way to put out the fire. We stand with the old guy, his accordion now silent at his feet. The owners, the woman and her husband, stand beside us. She’s sobbing; he looks grim. Gino is off to one side. I watch as he takes the chocolate I gave him out of his pocket. He unwraps it carefully, breaks off a chunk and starts to eat.

  The next day Jimmy is called up before the captain. According to most reports, he was the one who started the fight. He’s one of those guys who gets mean when he’s been drinking.

  Meanwhile, for the rest of us, all passes into Maple Leaf City have been cancelled until further notice.

  * * *

  It snowed! I didn’t know it snowed in Italy.

  It came on suddenly, a blizzard of wet snowflakes carried on a swirling wind. While it lasted, you could hardly see ten feet in front of you. When it lifted, a thin white blanket coated the cobblestone streets.

  Now, a few hours later, all traces of snow are gone. But gosh it’s cold!

  To keep them busy, Hoffy has organized lectures for officers: Lieutenant Gold disappears for hours each day. The rest of us are put to work as well. Two hours of exercise and drill in the morning and then an hour on the rifle range. It turns out Specs is a pretty good shot. Jimmy isn’t bad, but Loon is struggling. The Gaffer tells me to help him out.