THREE ROUNDS GUNFIRE - Italy 1944

From his position on the hill top,
camouflaged by a netting draped over two rocks,
he sat in the early morning sunshine
and observed the scene below through his binoculars.

He checked his map again
and spoke its map-reference coordinates
into the microphone which hung round his neck:
“fower niner seven” he enunciated,
in that precise way that he’d been taught
at the radio course he’d once attended,
“six niner thurree. – all quiet.”

At that moment, his attention was diverted
to the white road on the opposite hillside,
down which a camouflaged truck advanced slowly
in a cloud of white dust.

“Fiyiv zero wun, six niner fiyiv,” he said,
“thurree rounds gunfire – fire!”
The distant sound of the truck’s engine
was drowned by the scream of artillery shells
passing over his head
and the ‘crump – crump – crump’ of their flashing explosions
on the distant roadway;
one of them scoring a direct hit on the slow moving vehicle.

“Fiyiv zero wun, six niner fiyiv,”
he said into his microphone –
“target destroyed – cease fire.”

He lowered his gaze
to the small village in the valley,
as the early morning mist started to rise slowly
to reveal its red-roofed houses and deserted streets
still sleeping in the sunshine.