The Hero of Benghazi
“There was a great battle here long ago,” the colonel said to his aide, waving his good hand across the wide, windswept horizon past the parapets of the harbor wall. “And a great leader stood where we are standing, and he looked across the strait as 400 ships set sail from the mainland. Over 100,000 Turks landed on these shores defended by our forefathers, and tried to raise their standards from the heights of this glorious fortress.”
“Four hundred ships carried 100,000 Turks?” the captain apprehensively asked. “That would make, let’s see, 100,000 divided by 400. Drop a few zeros and that’s 250 men per ship. Did they have ships that big back then, Colonello Umberto?”
“That’s not the point of my story, Capitano Lamperti, although your math is precisely on target. If only your military prowess were as sharp. But I digress. The Grand Master, a resolute and pious Frenchman named Villers de l’Isle-Adam, along with 700 brother-knights of the Order of St. John and 500 of the finest Venetian archers, stood their ground. For months, the siege lasted, until one day, exactly 421 years ago this month, the treacherous sultan, Mehmed the Conqueror, hurled his elite Janissaries against these resolute walls...”
“But, colonello, if the Grand Master was resolute, can you fairly say that the walls were resolute also? How can this be?”
“It doesn’t matter. The point is that the battle rose to a feverish pitch and the vastly outnumbered knights and archers held firm. The Turks withdrew to their camps and the siege continued. And now we are faced with the same threat as the brave knights of old.”
“The Turks are coming?!” the wide-eyed captain cried. “I thought they were neutral!”
“No, you imbecile. There is talk that our government has agreed to an armistice with the Americans. Surely, you are aware that our German allies are not too happy about this latest turn of events in Rome. The Germans will be coming to Rhodes, for us, their former comrades in arms, and you know what they say about two lovers when one has scorned the other?”
A blank stare told Colonel Umberto that the captain did not know what they said about spurned lovers. Perhaps he had not been unlucky in love, or maybe he had never been in love to start with. He figured the latter.
“We will be thrown into prison for the rest of the war unless we make a stand, just like the knights against the Turks.”
“Scorned lovers throw their mistresses in chains?” the captain asked. “I don’t understand.”
“You are impossible, Lamperti. It is a good thing the war is almost over.”
Umberto sighed as they left the ramparts behind, entering the cobbled streets of the old city. Faded Fascist banners hung limply from the eaves of ancient buildings in the nearly deserted market, unmoved by the faint, salty breeze from the Mediterranean as if signifying the dying dream of revived Roman glory. The echoing of their footsteps reminded the well-tanned colonel of that distinguished age long ago, when l’Isle-Adam rallied his men in the face of the bloodthirsty Turks. However, the Turks were no Germans, with their Stukas, tanks, and flamethrowers. Just as the intrepid defenders of Rhodes four centuries earlier, he would lead his fellow Italians against a numerically and militarily superior force, and, God willing, he would be the one to pull it off.
Umberto knew firsthand the futility of facing the Nazis; he had fought alongside them in two wars: Spain in ’36 and Libya in ’41. But that is what made him the man of the moment. He knew their brilliant tactics and their few weaknesses. If only he could convince the general, that ancient shell of a warrior who ruled the island as governor-general, to see it his way.
The colonel and his aide walked up Ippodon, the famed Street of the Knights, toward the Palace of the Grand Masters, where the erstwhile governor held sway over the rapidly crumbling empire. Soldiers were busily making last-minute preparations for the inevitable arrival of the Germans. Sandbags and barricades were being hastily constructed across the ancient cobblestone street, in hopes that the Germans could be held at bay until their new allies, the British, could arrive like the horse cavalry of the famous American moving pictures. Rumors abounded through the Italian garrison of a roving band of Anglo commandos in the Aegean, hopping their way across the Dodecanese like errant mountain goats.
Umberto found the octogenarian governor-general holed up in his war room inside the tower keep, trying to stay awake as his agitated, self-occupied advisors fastidiously moved tiny wooden ships around a gigantic table map of the Aegean.
“Good afternoon, generale,” Umberto said, without the usual salute to Il Duce. There really was no point in it, since the once required salutation had been quickly dropped after Mussolini was deposed in July. “I see your preparations are in order for our defense.”
“Ah, Umberto, just the man I wanted to see,” the general said with a renewed glean in his eye. “The hero of Benghazi comes to me in my need.”
“Don’t forget Wal Wal and Albania too,” Lamperti added, before a stern look from the colonel silenced him.
“Ah, yes, you served in Abyssinia and Albania. How I forget. Umberto, tell me, how did we do in those glorious campaigns?”
“They’re not important, generale...”
“Indulge me, Umberto. I am an old man and need to hear tales of valor, especially when we need inspiration for our impending clash with our old friends, the Germans.”
“If you insist. In the first battle of Wal Wal in ‘34, my men were overrun by the Abyssians and I was wounded.”
“But didn’t the Abyssians use spears and arrows?”
“Yes, that is correct. Not my finest hour. But we managed to carry the campaign...”
"How were you wounded?”
“By an arrow.”
“An arrow? Where?”
“At Wal Wal, in Abyssia.”
“No, Umberto, where were you wounded by the arrow?”
“In my lower back area, sir, but we managed to carry on despite...”
“In your bottom? You were hit by an arrow in the ass?”
From the corner of his eye, Umberto saw the captain restrain a snicker. He cleared his throat to silence his erring officer and continued.
“Yes, generale, but I managed to...”
“So, how about Albania? Were you not a hero there?”
“Sir, my company was repulsed by the Greeks near the Albanian frontier, and we fell back with heavy losses. Once again, I was wounded...”
“In the ass?”
“No sir, I was hit by a tank.”
“By a tank? A Greek tank? I didn’t even know they had tanks.”
“No, one of ours. It was retreating faster than we were. I was nearly killed.”
This time Lamperti’s snicker turned into a boyish giggle not so easily stifled by a firm rebuke from his commander. Umberto turned back to the general.
“One of our tanks was retreating from the Greeks?”
“Yes, but they were many and we were few. But we held them off in Albania until the reserves could be brought forward.”
The old man continued his probing attack. It felt as if Umberto were undergoing a dental examination.
“So then are you not really the hero of Benghazi?”
“I never said I was a hero. However, when we were evacuating the city in the face of the advancing Australian army, I was wounded when...”
“Nevermind, Umberto. I don’t think your daring exploits are inspiring us in our time of need. Maybe we should just surrender to the Germans and get it over with.”
“Well, sir, that is what I wanted to see you about. I have a brilliant plan to save the city and drive the Germans into the sea...”
The general broke down, laughing, with unrestrained tears of joy flowing down his wrinkly, bright red face. His frail, nearly emancipated body trembled with long suppressed mirth like an asinine earthquake, and he began beating his deeply polished desktop with gleeful abandon. The rest of the room joined in, mocking Umberto with the implied blessing of the ancient general. Not surprisingly, the piercing, hyena-like guffaw of Lamperti was loudest of all. Umberto found himself subconsciously rubbing his maimed left hand, the result of his injuries in Benghazi two years ago. Funny, how he found solace in such a simple pleasure, massaging the tender flesh that sent tingles all the way up his shattered arm.
Fortunately, the outburst mercifully ended, save that of Lamperti’s insubordinate snickering. Why couldn’t he find loyal, trustworthy officers, Umberto wondered. It shouldn’t be too much to ask for, but it was war, and he’d take whoever was available, even if it were the spoiled son of one of Rome’s richest bankers. He cleared his throat to silence his wayward subordinate, but it was the general’s stare that reeled Lamperti in.
“So, Umberto,” the general said, wiping away a tear from his eye with the back of his hand. “Forgive me, but I have not laughed like that since I was a boy. Hard to believe, no? But, that is not why I wanted to speak with you. I know your intentions are altruistic, but I have already made arrangements for our defense.”
“What part am I to play in your plan, generale? How can I be of service?”
The general nodded at one of his attentive advisors who instantly sprang to the table map and pointed a long wooden pointer at a point halfway down the east coast of the island.
“There is your objective,” the general continued. “I want you to take a company of men and secure our airfield at Lindos.”
Lindos! Umberto could not believe his ears! Did the old man not realize that the battle with the Germans would be fought in the streets of the old city? Why was he being pushed out of the battle? Apparently, he was being punished, but why? Was it because of the arrow in his ass? Or perhaps it was the harried exodus of his troops across the Albanian frontier from the failed invasion of Greece, not to mention his embarrassing near-death experience on the bottom side of a tank? The general did not even know about the humiliating fratricide episode in Benghazi just as he was leading a counter-attack against the Tommies from Down Under, so that couldn’t be it. Or could it? Maybe the senile old fart knew more than he let on.
The general’s strategist rambled on about defensive fields of fire, anti-aircraft artillery positions, and the expected route of the German attack, while Umberto found himself subconsciously nodding along. His moment of martial glory had passed him by. There would be no Turks at the gate, no chivalrous melees along the walls, and no place in history for a three-times wounded, washed up, forgotten colonel on a backwater island at the edge of the empire. And what kind of empire had it been? The New Rome had lasted scarcely 20 years, and Umberto was unceremoniously being tossed out on his ear. Or maybe it was his ass. It sure felt like he had been shot in the posterior one more time.
3 comments:
You haven't posted in over a year. How's your book going?
I haven't worked on this one for quite a while. I'm trying to shop the novel I completed a few years ago first.
Nicely written! I love the wry humor and the repartee between Umberto and Lamperti. I'm looking forward to more...
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