Swordpoint (2011) Read Online Free Page A

ammunition or vehicles; the improvement of medical facilities; or merely the sorting out of the quarrels between the cook and the mess sergeant. He was also well-known in the army as a bridge player, though Tonge had noticed that he liked to win and that if he didn’t he was inclined to sulk.
    His handsome face puckered with concentration, he bent over the map spread across the general’s desk, his plump white hands moving swiftly across its surface.
    ‘I thought a straightforward head-on attack across the river by Brigadier Tallemach, sir,’ he was saying, ‘with Brigadier Rankin to leap-frog through him.’
    Tonge rubbed his knee. Part of it was missing and when the weather was indifferent, as it was now, it ached.
    ‘Not sure Tallemach’s the man for the job,’ he said slowly. ‘He’s not young any more.’
    ‘He’s only forty-five, sir.’
    ‘With colonels of twenty-seven, it’s still not young.’
    ‘He has a good record, sir. And he uses his head. Rankin’s noted for his doggedness. He’d be just the man to burst out of the bridgehead.’
    Tonge glanced at his brigadier. Sometimes, he thought, Heathfield was inclined to let his enthusiasm run away with him. On the other hand, he appeared to be clever and he had ideas.
    ‘Are you sure all your details are right, Wallace? This bit about German morale, for instance?’
    Heathfield spoke stiffly. ‘That’s what Intelligence says, sir,’ he said. ‘It seems to be borne out by the facts.’
    Tonge wasn’t so sure. Heathfield was newly promoted and fresh out from England and Tonge wasn’t confident he was yet properly attuned to Italy.
    ‘Well,’ he agreed. ‘I have to admit 9th Indian Brigade’s a bit rigid but, given a plan, Rankin’s got the courage to pursue it to the limit. He’s like a bulldog when he gets his teeth into something.’ He nodded. ‘Very well. Go ahead. Let me see what you propose. But if things don’t look auspicious, we have to be prepared to call it off and try something else. And we might have to, because some of our armour’s been taken away.’
    ‘We’ve been given the South Notts Yeomanry, sir; Churchill tanks. We’ve also got 19th Div. artillery in addition to our own.’
    ‘It should be enough.’ Tonge looked at Heathfield. ‘I have to see the army commander and then go down to Caserta to Army Group. It looks like being your baby for a day or two. Think you can manage?’
    Heathfield smiled. He had no doubts whatsoever. ‘I’m sure I can, sir.’
    ‘Right. Remember 11th Indian’s not ours and we can’t call on them for the time being.’
    ‘I have it, sir.’
    Heathfield tapped his notepad, and Tonge nodded. ‘How long were you intending for the planning?’
    ‘A fortnight, sir.’
    Tonge grunted. ‘You’ve got four days,’ he said.
    And that was how it happened.

Four
    Lieutenant-Colonel Yuell’s men awoke in empty houses, schools and war-battered villas, in tents and stables and barns, anywhere they could be packed in.
    Known to the rest of the army as ‘Dean’s Dandies’, because, in the days when a regiment was virtually the private property of its colonel, a certain Colonel Joshua Dean had lavished on their uniforms enough of his personal fortune to give them fashion parity with the cavalry, the North Yorkshires consisted of 22 officers and 642 other ranks. Or to be more exact, at that moment, 21 officers because Second-Lieutenant Marsden had overturned a jeep outside Caserta and been carted off to hospital with a broken leg; and 622 men because one man had died after an operation following a burst appendix in Naples, two men had fallen drunk out of the back of a lorry, and seventeen more had gone down with a recurrence of malaria contracted in Sicily and a variety of other illnesses. There were four rifle companies, the HQ company, and battalion headquarters, all ruled over by the awesome figure of the regimental sergeant-major who was appropriately named Mr Zeal.
    ‘When James VI of