After the first bridge demolition, Slade, once more the meek subordinate, had turned to Dick, and had trotted along behind as Donnelly headed for the second bridge, two miles away. There had been a short fight there—with four German soldiers left to guard the bridge. Slade wasn’t much good in fighting, Dick saw. Not that he was afraid—he was just ineffectual. The other men with Dick were among the best, and the Germans had been disposed of quickly. Slade did an even faster job on the second bridge, and then the whole party had cut back through the woods to join Lieutenant Scotti and the main force of paratroopers at the bridge which had been held open. Scotti had been amazed to see them return so quickly, thought something must have gone wrong. When Dick Donnelly told him about the blowing up of the two bridges, the lieutenant had looked at the quiet little Slade with admiration.
“I never knew a man whose nickname fitted him less,” he said. “He doesn’t look like a man called ‘Boom-Boom’!”
“Except when he’s about to blow up a bridge,” Dick replied.
There had been a good battle when the retreating Germans tried to take the bridge back from the paratroopers. But Scotti’s forces had been augmented by other parachute companies which had been on other missions, and they succeeded in holding off the Germans until the advancing Americans on the other side had caught up with them. And then the Germans, caught between the two fires, had been annihilated.
Max Burckhardt insisted that this Sicilian action had been the best of all they had taken part in. He had seen more men in the hated Nazi uniform go down under a withering fire, and he had talked to some of the prisoners afterward. They always seemed a little surprised to find a man speaking perfect German, with a family in Germany, fighting against them this way, and Max enjoyed watching their bewilderment, and enjoyed seeing the first doubts creep into their minds about whether or not their Fuehrer really would lead them to victory in this war against the democracies.
After the tough fighting in Sicily, Captain Marker’s company of paratroopers—but the Captain was a Major by this time—had been given a three weeks’ rest in Algiers. They enjoyed it immensely until they learned that they had missed the landing at Salerno because of their furloughs. But later they were based on the Italian mainland, not far behind the advancing American and British troops fighting their way up the peninsula. When the advance slowed down, became bogged in mud and then stopped by the Germans who entrenched themselves in the hills and fought for every inch of territory, the three-star general went into a huddle with his staff.
“We’ve got to pull an ace out of our sleeves,” he said. “We won’t get going until we’ve taken Maletta, and we’re still twenty miles away from it. Yes—we’ve got to pull a fast one.”
“Like the Wadizam Pass action?” an aide suggested.
“Well—not quite,” the general said, “but it gives me an idea.”
He studied the map of the region around the town of Maletta. It was a small town. More than a village, it was still not a city of any great size or importance, until this moment. There was a junction of two railroads there—and also of the two main roads leading north. Other roads which cut across the many hills were steep and almost impassable for heavily motorized and mechanized forces. The Americans knew they would have to drive straight up the Maletta valley to that town and take it. Then they could really move ahead. Until then they were stuck. And cracking Maletta looked like an almost impossible job because of the peculiarities of the land around it.