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Second Corps, the Vulture gave the assembled officers of his Battle Group Wotan a little lecture.
    Standing in front of the new command post which he had set up between two prominent hillocks that Schulze had already nicknamed Twin Tits, he rasped:
    `Gentlemen, this is where we are going to stand. I have no further orders from Smiling Albert' - he allowed himself a cold little smile at the nickname - 'than these - stand and fight!'
    He flung out his hand in an expansive gesture and the assembled SS officers stared around at the barren mountain top, covered in the debris of war, which seemed such an offence to the noble dignity of the snow-capped peak towering above them.
    `In essence, gentlemen, we have an area of four square kilometres to defend and some fourteen hundred men to do it with? Now, I don't need to tell you that that is not a very large number of bodies. So what are we going to do?'
    He paused, tugged at the end of his monstrous nose which had turned salmon pink in the biting cold.
    `We must make this peak so costly to the Amis down there in the valley that they will give up in the end. Every man in this battle group who dies - and there will be plenty, you can be sure of that - must take six Amis with him. But as you can fully appreciate, we cannot do this if we do not make the most of the natural defences of this place.'
    He pointed his riding crop at a couple of the lanky Tyroleans idly scratching at the frozen rock a few metres away.
    `Not like that, of course. Ground, as you all know from your studies at Bad Toelz and since, is the raw material of the soldier, just as his weapons are his tools. A foolish inexperienced soldier does little with that raw material; an experienced solider shapes it exactly to his purpose. What then is the purpose of this peak which we now hold? At the moment it is simply an observation point. But is also an automatic target of attack by the enemy who not only wants to knock out this observation point, but also wants to use it for his own observation purposes. Thus, in modern warfare, the advance of an attacking army is from one piece of high ground to the next.'
    Major von Dodenburg let his eyes wander over the sterile earth of the mountain top, pitted with shell holes and littered with jagged pieces of rusting shrapnel like the scabs of some ugly skin disease. His gaze passed over the slope, covered with belts of ammunition, abandoned weapons, grenades which had not exploded, rags of uniform, paper - plenty of paper – and here and there, crumpled bodies, on to the Liri Valley below. In spite of the haze, and to the left a man-made smoke screen, he could see the Allied lines quite clearly: silent, with no visible movement, but somehow sinister in their very silence. `I have discovered in my years in the military,' the Vulture was saying, 'that the Army fits in well with a certain form of laziness. Army life is divided very equally between moments of hardship, fatigue, danger - and periods of inactivity. We had the former yesterday. Today - and every new day that dawns before the Amis attack - you gentlemen and your men are in for the latter.'
    `What do you mean, sir?' Schwarz asked, always eager for an opportunity to inspire the cynical veterans of the Wotan with National Socialist purpose and enthusiasm.
    `I mean, my dear Schwarz, that the men are going to dig, dig and dig yet more until they reach hell, as far as I am concerned.' The Vulture's voice rose harshly. 'Gentlemen we are going to turn Peak 555 into a fort that will never be taken. It will become a running sore for the Allies' His hard blue eyes swept round their eager faces, glowing in the cold air. ‘For if we don't stop the enemy here, gentlemen, Cassino over there will go, and with it the whole Winter Line. And if the Winter Line goes, we have lost Italy. The war will arrive then on the Reich's own doorstep and I don't have to tell you what that would mean to our hard-pressed homeland. Meine Herren , that is