Up For Grabs

by Max Hennessy

  The queue was a quarter of a mile long. Among the camels and donkeys blinking at the flies, small boys were darting about offering their sisters to anybody who would listen. Egyptian labourers were asleep in the shade, their heads on the rails, knowing that the vibration when the train came, or Allah, or both, would warn them in good time. A tatty-looking fruit cart, its wheels sagging at weird angles to the frame, stood nearby, its driver asleep underneath. Just astern, a donkey, its backside tattooed with its owner’s name, dozed in the shafts of a cart as big as a wheelbarrow. There were also a flock of fat-tailed sheep that seemed to draw their sustenance from discarded cigarette ends; a field gun on a truck; a funeral coach pulled by two sway-backed horses; a youth on a bicycle with a small trussed pig lashed to the handlebars; carts laden with sand apparently on their way to top up the desert; an Arab stallion which kept trying to mount a donkey mare; and a camel with a load of straw, a bell on its neck, a red lamp slung to its behind for after dark, and wearing an expression of considerable unease because it was closely backed up by a tank whose driver kept revving the engine to show his impatience.

  Despite the non-arrival of a train, the level-crossing keeper, having obviously decided he had collected enough customers, opened the gate at last and they all went away like the field heading for the first fence at a point-to-point. The donkey’s legs seemed to twang like harp strings as it took the strain; it was followed by the wobbling cyclists impeded by their robes and the addition of a pillion passenger – sometimes even two. And the whole tribe of them trailed away to the west.

  After their night-out, none of the Desert Ratbags, all dressed in shirts and shorts like everybody else in the desert – even the Germans and Italians – was feeling at his best, but they found the sign to Zuq and headed west, careful to keep plenty of distance between them and other units because, to a man, they had no wish to get too involved with the army in case someone thought of making them soldiers again. They spent the night at a camp run by the Military Police, who weren’t expecting them and weren’t interested, taking the view that they were an unnecessary appendage to the war and even begrudging them food and drink.

  ‘Where do we sleep?’ Clegg demanded.

  The policeman he asked gestured at the empty desert. ‘Anywhere you like,’ he said. ‘There’s plenty of room.’

  They woke to a violet-streaked dawn with a smudge in the south that grew rapidly, spreading outwards at either end. It rushed towards them, an enormous crimson cloud tearing in from the horizon, and arrived in a red whirlwind of dust, raw, burning, covering everything, hissing and beating at the ground, the sun a vague purple sphere above. Clegg started to sing ‘Sand in My Shoes’.

  * * *

  Unknown to the Ratbags, Dampier’s group was just ahead, moving along roughly the same route.

  On the way up, they stopped at a café where a bored Egyptian in a greasy evening suit served them with coffee. On the wall was a picture of King Farouk and his bride, taken when both had been a lot younger and slimmer, and, nearby, RAF lorries were dumping stores to make a new airfield. It was here they bumped into Albert Micklethwaite, a war correspondent from Nottingham who was anxious to get a lift forward so he could do a few interviews with men from his home town.

  Micklethwaite was plump and pink, his uniform didn’t fit him, and he hadn’t been long in the Middle East, where for most of the time he hadn’t had the faintest idea what was going on. But, with everybody else called up, he had been the only reporter available when his editor had been accredited a war correspondent, and he had been sent out to see ‘what the local lads were doing’.

  Micklethwaite had long since decided he didn’t like Egypt. Within two days of arriving he had acquired a rash of prickly heat and been stung by a fly which, judging by the effect it had on him, had a poison sac as big as a cow’s udder. He had no sooner recovered when he’d had his wallet lifted and, before he could report it, had been asked for his documents by a military policeman. Unable to prove he was what he claimed to be, he had been whipped into the Bab-el-Hadid barracks, where the Special Investigation Department of the Military Police had their headquarters, and it had landed him in endless difficulties, which he had only just managed to sort out. He had found a few men from Nottingham around the base camps but they were hardly suffering for their country, and an indignant telegram from home had insisted that he get among the fighting troops. In desperation he had scrounged a lift west with the B echelon of a lancer regiment who, having just informed him they were about to swing south, had advised him he had better scrounge a lift from someone else.

  Dampier looked at him in astonishment. ‘A war correspondent?’ he said. ‘One of those fellers who write all that tripe in the newspapers? All that about lean, hard warriors in Cairo? “Bronze, suntanned and muscular.” “Uniforms showing the wear and tear of their hard living.” My good chap, most of the people in Cairo are fat and flabby, with uniforms starched and pressed ready for the next session at Groppi’s.’ He snorted. ‘Too many damn women in Cairo. There weren’t women about in the last war.’

  Rafferty lifted his eyes heavenwards. It was a complaint he had already heard many times.

  ‘Wives were supposed to have been banished to South Africa,’ Dampier went on. ‘But a lot got jobs as secretaries and stayed on, and when you tick somebody off for her bad work you find she’s the bloody brigadier’s better half.’ He lifted an angry face to stare at the newspaperman. ‘The Gezira Club’s full of women and you can play polo and tennis and swim and be watched by crowds as leisurely as at a Test match at Lord’s on a hot day. No wonder the chaps in the desert call them Groppi’s Hussars, the Gaberdine Swine and the Short Range Desert Group. The bloody place’s full of drones of both sexes. Cairo, my good chap, is in perpetual conference. On welfare, passive air defence, morale, sport, entertainment, improvements to hostels, but never, it seems, on fighting the war. Very well’ – he dismissed Micklethwaite with a careless gesture – ‘jump in. We’ll take you forward.’

  * * *

  Grudgingly fitting the chastened Micklethwaite into his little caravan, the Inspector of Equipment moved on at first light, driving fast before news of what he was up to arrived ahead of him. Most of the stores they had unearthed so far had turned out to be honestly held against emergencies by frustrated men who had grown used to having their requests ignored by Cairo. Because so many orders came down the pipeline, no one really knew what they should hold, anyway, so they held as much as they could for safety.

  ‘When you can’t get the stuff, sir,’ one dogged stores warrant officer caught with three hundred extra suits of battledress admitted, ‘you hang on to it against the time when it’s needed.’

  Another unit was found to have seven surplus shirts per man for the same reason, and yet another, a field battery, held a hundred new tyres, none of which fitted any of the vehicles they ran. ‘It’s because when you get new vehicles, sir,’ the quartermaster argued, ‘you can’t get the bloody tyres for them, so we hold ’em just in case.’

  The attitude of the men who had stood with bared teeth against the enemy was different again. They carried loot and weren’t ashamed of it. They’d won it from the Italians in a fair fight and, despite orders to the contrary, were not going to hand it in. Every old hand rode a motorbike or in a motor car or lorry, fitters had tools they’d previously only dreamed of, medical officers had equipment they’d never seen since their training; every wrist sported a watch, every officer and sergeant wore Zeiss binoculars, and everybody had dainty Biretta automatics and cameras, all obligingly supplied by the Italians during Wavell’s 1940–1 campaign.

  ‘After all,’ one cavalry unit’s engineer officer, weary of fighting a running battle with the sand and the engines it was wearing out, said, ‘if we don’t keep them, the bastards in Cairo will, and they haven’t even fought for them. We once captured a crate of Zeiss X12 binoculars and, because we were new to the game in those days, we sent them back to base. They never arrived but, wh
ile our chaps were still using X6 glasses, when I was on leave I saw staff bods going to the races with X12s that could well have come from the lot we captured.’

  Far from being unsympathetic, Dampier agreed to say nothing provided a few pairs of the X12s were turned over to him. They weren’t new and one or two were even damaged, but honour was satisfied.

  ‘Even if we haven’t caught many thieves,’ he observed to Rafferty as they headed for their vehicles, ‘we’ve surely frightened back a lot of stores.’

  They had made a respectable start but dozens of vehicles were still missing. Hundreds had been torn apart to provide the spares the forward troops couldn’t get in any other way, but many more had crept into repair units which refused to admit having them because they were being used to convey sergeants to and from the mess.

  ‘They come under the heading of BLR, sir,’ Rafferty pointed out. ‘Beyond local repair. It’s a very useful label, especially when they’re not.’

  Dampier sighed. ‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘that we have to expect that, like laxative pills, we’re probably doing more good than we realize.’

  At midday, they came to a group of tents and two fifteen-hundredweight trucks. Outside stood a painted sign: 38 Light Aid Duties, RASC. As the lorry stopped, a corporal appeared. Seeing Dampier’s rank, he saluted smartly and announced that the two men who worked with him were at that moment away.

  They got down to business quickly and almost at once it occurred to Dampier that something fishy was going on. On the benches were two engines and the shiny surface of the metal of the casings indicated that the serial numbers had been filed off. To Dampier that meant only one thing – that they were there illicitly.

  He had noticed that the corporal and the two missing men each had a tent to himself and that their beds were made from inner tubes stretched across the welded frames of old cars. Ammunition boxes stood alongside them for toilet sundries, mess tins were used for soap dishes, car-inspection lamps for reading in bed, and each man had a War Department padlock for securing his kitbag and a Tannoy for listening to the communal radio – kept in another tent nearby which looked as though it had been fitted out as a dining-cum-living room. There was a remarkable absence of oil, petrol, drills, lathes and tools.

  ‘You’re not very big,’ Dampier said.

  ‘No, sir.’ The corporal, a smooth-looking man with a Ronald Colman moustache, was all attention and military alertness. ‘At the moment there’s just the three of us. There was a sergeant and two privates but they was told to report back to base.’

  ‘Who’re you attached to for rations and so on?’

  ‘Base Depot, RASC.’

  ‘And the other two men?’

  The corporal answered briskly. ‘At the parent unit, sir. Returnin’ a vehicle what belongs to the Royals. They’re also picking up petrol. We’re a bit low at the moment. I expect ’em back tomorrow.’

  ‘I’d better have your names.’

  ‘025, Corporal Clutterbuck, R., sir.’

  ‘Full number.’

  Clutterbuck looked wary but he gave his full number, and those of the missing two men, whose names turned out to be Dow and Raye.

  ‘Dow, Raye an’ me,’ Clutterbuck said with a large smile that was designed to show willingness, open-heartedness and honesty. Dampier wasn’t deluded.

  ‘Where are your tools?’ he demanded.

  ‘’Ere, sir.’ Clutterbuck indicated an array of personal tools set out on a folding table which appeared to be doing duty as a workbench.

  ‘These are Italian tools,’ Dampier pointed out.

  Clutterbuck was not put off. ‘Everybody’s got Italian tools, sir. They’re good. Italian screwcutters is the best there is.’

  When Dampier asked to see the inventory, it appeared to have disappeared in the last move forward.

  ‘You know ’ow it is, sir,’ Corporal Clutterbuck said earnestly. ‘Things get lost.’

  It didn’t satisfy Dampier but he continued to display the polite expression that was the stock-in-trade of all trained investigators when they sensed problems. ‘What about other stores?’ he asked.

  Clutterbuck waved vaguely at a tent that turned out to be full of clothing, blankets, tyres and jerrycans of petrol, all of which, as Dampier well knew, were the currency of deserters.

  He spoke quietly to Warrant Officer Rafferty. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Sure, I’m thinkin’ they’re adrift, sorr,’ Rafferty said cheerfully. ‘Deserters. I bet they’ve been at this for months, movin’ about in the blue, pretendin’ to be a workshop and gettin’ petrol where they could.’

  ‘That’s what I think, too.’ Dampier turned to Clutterbuck. ‘What do you use to repair vehicles?’ he asked. ‘I see no drill, no lathe, no spare batteries, no oxyacetylene gear, no electric equipment.’

  ‘We don’t do electrics, sir.’

  ‘I’ll bet you don’t. You’re not a repair outfit at all. You’re deserters, aren’t you?’

  Clutterbuck looked a little sick. ‘Well, we was attached to 71 Vehicle Repair Depot but they moved off and left us behind to check the stores. I think they forgot us and there we was.’

  Dampier could well believe it. The desert was full of men who seemed to be attached to nothing and were responsible for nothing.

  It didn’t take long to get the story clear. Dow and Raye, both corporals like Clutterbuck, had been deserters for a year now and had roped in Clutterbuck because he had picked up Arabic through working with mechanics at the Base Repair Depot. Following the usual practice, he had been given money by an Egyptian with the smiling assurance that it was to help the brave British soldier enjoy himself, and he had overstayed his leave until he had become classed as a deserter. Not fancying what might be coming to him, he had found himself being introduced to Dow and Raye, who said they could use him in their organization.

  Finally disappearing with them into the Cairo underground, Clutterbuck had been away from the army now for four months, even accepting twenty pounds to drive a stolen lorry loaded with contraband between Egypt and Palestine. Despite wives in England, Dow and Raye had even married Egyptian girls, and turned Mohammedan to justify it.

  ‘Didn’t anyone ask questions when you turned up here?’ Dampier asked.

  ‘No, sir.’ Clutterbuck was looking distinctly uneasy now. ‘When we went to 97 MU, we told ’em we was attached to 86 Repair Unit but ’ad lost touch, so they supplied us. When we’d tapped them a bit, we went to 86 Repair Unit and told them we belonged to 97 MU. We drew rations and petrol, and people brought vehicles in for repair. We even actually did a few. I worked on Lancias afore the war and, as a lot of vehicles comin’ in was captured Lancias, people thought ’ighly of me.’ He seemed proud of his work. ‘I once did one for a brigadier and ’e slipped me a few bottles of wine to show ’is appreciation.’

  Dampier was all for collaring the brass to set an example to the lower orders and he pounced at once. ‘What was his name?’

  Clutterbuck backed away. ‘Oh, I couldn’t tell you that, sir,’ he said. ‘What you might call business ethics.’

  ‘Honour among thieves, I’d call it,’ Dampier growled. ‘Go on.’

  ‘We wasn’t never involved in drugs, sir.’

  ‘How about stolen weapons?’

  ‘I think Dow and Raye ’ad a go at it. They took ’em back to Cairo and the Egyptians ran ’em southwards aboard feluccas. They carry fifty foot of sail and can outrun any of the launches of the Gyppos’ Inland Water Transport Board. I never got in on that, though. They wouldn’t let me.’ It seemed it was only pure chance and the greed of his companions that had prevented Clutterbuck becoming even more deeply involved.

  ‘They wasn’t the only ones,’ he went on. ‘After every advance every bloody Arab in the desert was in the arms game. If there was minefields they used their wives to walk ahead of ’em. I once saw three of ’em outside Zuq, every one of ’em with a stolen Lee Enfield, all pointed up with metal and studded wi’ jewels like the
y do wi’ their guns. Gold bands round the barrels an’ stocks an’ the butt plates replaced wi’ silverwork. They even ’ad ’and-carved bullets. Special for killin’ important people, they said. After all, the police was at it as well, wasn’t they? Not just the Gyppo police neither. One of ’em was an orficer in the Special Investigation Branch.’

  ‘And what about those spare engines in there with their serial numbers filed off?’

  Clutterbuck sighed. ‘There was six originally. But Dow an’ Raye loaded four of ’em up and set off for Cairo with a pile o’ spare parts an’ tools. Dow’s got two taxis an’ ’e needs to keep ’em runnin’. An’ it’s ’eavens ’ard for civvie outfits to get spares.’

  ‘It’s also heavens hard for the chaps at the front to get them.’

  ‘Yeh – well.’ Clutterbuck gestured heavily. ‘After all, there’s more than one REME major in Cairo and Alex what does up civvie cars cheap. You can buy ’em cheap, too, when they can’t get spares, then all you ’ave to do is refit ’em an’ sell ’em at a good profit. There’s fellers back in the Delta makin’ thousands. Raye changed ’is cash into gold an’ ’ad it made into bangles for his girlfriend. She’s a walkin’ bloody bank account.’

  It finally emerged that Clutterbuck’s involvement in the garage business had not been entirely honest even before the war because in those days he had been engaged in changing the colours and removing the serial numbers of stolen cars.

  As he grew more and more convinced that he’d been left to hold the baby, Clutterbuck came up with still more evidence. 38 Light Aid Duties was only a small part of a larger organization which encompassed British soldiers – NCOs and officers included – Egyptians, Maltese, Greeks, Jews and Syrians, with a headquarters in the Sharia Marika Nazli, near Cairo Main Station.