by Max Hennessy
The noise of aeroplane engines died and there was nothing left except the flickering flames. As they watched, a fire engine, complete with a mixed Arab and civilian Italian crew, arrived. They stood watching the flames, shouting at each other and wondering what to do, then an army lorry appeared and the crew started to douse the flames with sand and a foam appliance. Eventually it was dark again.
‘It’s time we were away from here,’ Dampier whispered.
‘Perhaps ’twould be a good idea first, sir,’ Rafferty suggested gently, ‘to see what we could pick up.’
‘Pick up? Why?’
‘Sure, sir, we’ll not get away in daylight. We’ve got nearly twenty-four hours to kill. So we might as well make ourselves look like part of the scenery.’
Dampier gave him a quick look, then he swung round on Clegg, his mind working quickly.
‘Those Italian uniforms you said you had,’ he said.
‘Yes, sir. We used them in a sketch.’ Clegg was still a little nervous of Dampier, who seemed bad-tempered and more than a little hostile. ‘There was this German officer and these Italian soldiers—’
‘We’ll discuss that later,’ Dampier snapped. ‘In the meantime, let’s have the uniforms.’
Clegg looked startled. ‘Yes, sir. I’ll dig ’em out.’
‘And let’s have this Corporal Morton, who speaks Italian, over here.’
Morton, cool, sardonic and indifferent to rank, appeared in front of Dampier.
‘You speak Italian?’ Dampier asked.
‘Yes.’ Morton was never one to waste ‘sirs’ on officers. His degree was inclined to make him think he was one up on them and they, like schoolboys, ought to address him as ‘sir’. ‘Also German.’
‘Good at it?’
‘Perfect.’
Dampier was conscious of Morton’s indifference but he didn’t push the matter at that moment.
‘How perfect?’ he asked.
‘Perfect type of perfect. I was brought up in Switzerland near the Italian border and spent two post-graduate years at the University of Florence. I lived with Italian students and worked for three years in Naples. I shared rooms with a Count Barda and often visited his home. His favourite trick was to introduce me to fascist officials and, when I said something unpleasant about Mussolini and they were on the point of arresting me, to point out that I was British so they couldn’t do much about it.’
Dampier was impressed. He looked at Rafferty. ‘Could you go with Mr Rafferty here and scout round those wrecked lorries to see if there’s anything we can use to help us escape?’
Morton looked startled. ‘I’m not a fighting soldier, sir.’
Dampier glared. ‘In 1918 when the Germans broke through on the Somme front,’ he pointed out testily, ‘cooks, butchers, clerks and mechanics found themselves in the line. Doubtless, if they were there, also actors. As they did at Dunkirk. This time, it seems the Italians have broken through.’
Morton considered. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Very well. I’ll have a go.’
‘Sir,’ Rafferty prompted.
Morton studied the warrant officer coolly. ‘Sir,’ he agreed reluctantly.
‘Thank you,’ Dampier said.
Morton hadn’t moved. ‘For what it’s worth – sir—’ he continued, ‘we also have Driver Caccia who speaks Italian.’
In the end it was decided that Morton, Clegg and Caccia should accompany Rafferty and pick up anything the warrant officer thought worthwhile, and that they should go immediately while the Italians were still shaken by the air raid.
While the others disappeared into the trees, where Dampier’s vehicles were hidden by the ruined warehouse, the salvage party headed for the burned-out lorries. The owners had withdrawn with their column to the safety of the desert but it was obvious they would more than likely very soon be back. Thin columns of smoke were still rising into the sky and, scattered around, showing the haste with which the Italians had disappeared, were abandoned dixies, a rifle, a pouch containing half a dozen of the light percussion grenades of Japanese manufacture that the Italians used, items of equipment such as belts and side packs, even a few scraps of clothing – two or three jackets, one an Italian sublieutenant’s and one a sergeant’s, an overcoat, two caps, three steel helmets – a few straw-covered chianti bottles and several undamaged cans of petrol and water.
There was also a sheaf of letters, which they found fluttering in the breeze among the bushes, a folder of orders and an inventory of supplies, signed, sealed and delivered, with the name of the man who appeared to be the quartermaster general at Derna, one Commandante de Brigata Ruggiero Olivaro, as well as a supply of empty requisition and inventory forms which were clearly about to be filled in. Obviously the commander of the Italian column had just received new equipment or supplies and was about to receive more and had not yet done his paperwork. Outwardly none of them seemed to be of much value and Clegg was about to toss them aside when Morton snatched them from him and handed them to Rafferty.
‘Italian army forms D3801 and C2947, sir,’ he pointed out. ‘Inventories and requisition forms. Very convincing if anybody asks to see our papers.’
Rafferty grinned. Having been in the army all his adult life and for a great deal of it concerned with stores, he always felt that official forms – especially signed ones – were worth their weight in gold. If you possessed something you weren’t supposed to possess, sneaked on the end of a signed list it at once became official, and he immediately appreciated what Morton was getting at.
‘Good bhoy,’ he said. ‘How did you know what they were?’
‘Used to be in Intelligence, sir. It was one of my jobs to go through these things.’
In addition there was an Italian flag and a picture of the Italian king, Victor Emmanuel.
‘Looks like a startled ferret,’ Clegg observed critically. ‘We only want one of Mussolini and we’re Italian patriots.’
They had just thrown the last of what they’d found into a heap and were unscrewing insignia from the remains of the shattered lorries when a small scout car drew up. An Italian sergeant climbed out.
‘Da dove viene?’ he asked.
Morton jabbered back at him. He seemed satisfied and gestured at the burning remains of the lorries before jabbering again at Morton.
Morton shrugged. ‘È la guerra!’
The sergeant stared round him, his large dark eyes sad, then he spoke again. Rafferty listened quietly. The only word he could pick out was ‘Mussolini’.
Morton and the sergeant talked a little more, then the sergeant climbed back into the scout car, swung round and drove away.
‘What did he want?’ Rafferty asked.
‘He wanted to know where we’d come from and who we were. I told him we were a recovery group sent to salvage what we could.’
‘Good, good.’ Rafferty nodded approvingly. ‘What else?’
‘He said in effect that it was a bloody mess and I said, “C’est la guerre.” It’s an opinion most soldiers seem to hold. Then he went on a bit about Mussolini sitting on his fat backside in Rome and leaving people like him to fight the war he’d started. I agreed, he seemed very satisfied, and we parted the best of friends.’
‘Good bhoy. Good bhoy.’
Even Morton seemed pleased at Rafferty’s approval.
‘Did he say what was going on?’
Morton’s mouth moved in his cold smile. ‘I got the impression that the Italian generals have been growing a bit fed up with the way the Germans have been pushing them around and wanted to have an advance of their own. The Germans didn’t think they were capable so the Italians decided to show what they could do and the Germans agreed to back them up if they managed to break through. I gathered the troops themselves weren’t quite as keen as the generals but that they pushed our lot out of Zuq, nevertheless.’
‘Did he say when the column was coming back?’
‘They aren’t. He said they were on the move eastwards after our lot.’
&
nbsp; ‘Right, boy, let’s get as many of these signs as we can, then we’ll bring up the three-tonner and mebbe have a sniff around to see what we can find.’
With daylight, the storm had gone and the air was sweet and the sky serene in a mass of gold and vermilion clouds. The inhabitants of the town, slipping back in with the Italian lorries from the desert, had been badly shaken by the air raid and near the little harbour a tremendous argument was going on. An ammunition ship was on fire and the ammunition was smouldering while everybody discussed whether they should move it out or not. Those who lived and worked nearby were eager to see the back of it while those who didn’t couldn’t have cared less.
By this time scattered lorries, in ones and twos and in groups, were moving eastwards from the lorry park near the fort on to the road that ran through the town. None of the occupants looked twice at the four men in Italian jackets and caps standing by the Bedford lorry bearing a scorched red and green palm tree insignia and the words Combattere, Obbedire, Vincere on the side.
The officer’s jacket they had picked up had had a bundle of Italian banknotes in the pocket and, while they hadn’t the courage to use the money to buy anything, they were able to fill up the watercans they had found at a standpipe in the street before heading back to the warehouse where the others waited.
In the courtyard of a wrecked building the Italians had erected a cookhouse. Fires were burning and several large iron cooking pots were simmering, and men with dixies were waiting in a queue. The smell of cooking meat and tomatoes reminded them how hungry they were. A few of the Italians waved and shouted and vehicles passed, towing guns, but nobody stopped them.
When they reached the ruined warehouse Dampier had been busy. He had taken one of the flats from the Ratbags’ equipment and erected it. On it were scratched some of the few Italian words Dampier knew – 64 Unito di Riparazione.
‘Thought I might as well make us look as if we belonged here,’ he said proudly.
Stuffing the documents they had salvaged into his already bulging briefcase, Rafferty smiled approvingly but Morton gave it a cold look.
‘It’s Unità,’ he said. ‘Not Unito.’
With the tools and equipment that Clutterbuck and his cronies had been pretending to use, Dampier had set up a repair unit of sorts to go with the sign. A sullen Clutterbuck had lifted the bonnet of Dampier’s car and had his head in the engine space.
Dampier explained. ‘I thought some show of activity might put off anybody who came our way. After all, if the British army has vehicle depots in the desert, surely the Italians do, too. It seems to me, Mr Rafferty, that we have certain advantages that other units might lack. Such as two men who speak excellent Italian, a set of Italian tools, which, though it might not pass muster at an inspection, will do for the time being, two mechanics, one of them one of the Italian speakers; and one – Clutterbuck – who’s skilled with Italian Lancias and, I might add, possesses certain other skills, such as deluding the authorities. In addition, we possess three Italian uniforms.’
‘More now,’ Rafferty smiled. ‘We picked up two more jackets and several caps.’
Dampier nodded, looking like Napoleon outlining the plan for Waterloo to his marshals. ‘Disadvantages: we seem to be totally surrounded by enemy troops. But I’ve done my best to make us look like a functioning Italian unit so no one will bother us and we can make plans to disappear as soon as we get the chance.’ He looked round at the others in his pompous military fashion. ‘When we move, the staff car will lead, the heavy vehicles following. I’d better wear the Italian officer’s jacket and cap, I suppose.’
‘No, sir.’ Morton’s voice jerked their heads round. ‘Not you. Me!’
Dampier stared for a moment. ‘What do you mean, you?’
‘Can you speak Italian – sir?’ Morton’s look had become sardonic.
‘Dammit—!’
‘I may be only a corporal in the British army – sir’ – Morton was obviously enjoying himself – ‘but in the Italian army, I would have to be the officer. Because I speak the language. If we’re addressed by an Italian officer it wouldn’t be a corporal who would answer him. It would be the officer.’
‘Good God!’ This was something that hadn’t occurred to Dampier.
‘We can fit us all out now either with an Italian cap or a helmet. That ought to be enough to have us accepted at first glance as Italians. If anyone comes, those of us who can’t speak Italian would be wise to remain in the background and leave the talking to those who can: Me. And Caccia.’
‘Who gives the orders then?’ Dampier asked.
‘Oh, I do, sir.’ Morton was smiling and self-confident. ‘However, it would be necessary to consult with you and Mr Rafferty, naturally. It might be wise, in that case, if Caccia wore a sergeant’s stripes and you wore a private’s uniform because, as I’ve discovered from experience, private soldiers are seen and not heard.’
Dampier went red but Rafferty was smiling. ‘The boy’s got a point, sir,’ he said. ‘Mebbe, sir’ – Rafferty’s eyes were twinkling – ‘we could arrange for you to be the general dogsbody. Just for the twenty-four hours till we leave, of course. Fillin’ in the forms and bringin’ in the refreshments an’ runnin’ the errands.’
‘Filling in the – bringing in – Good God!’
‘That way, sir, you’d always be handy for a little whispered consultation.’ Rafferty seemed to be enjoying the joke enormously and he turned to Morton. ‘Would that be what you had in mind, boy?’
‘That’s it exactly, sir.’ Morton seemed to have taken a liking to the Irishman.
‘For the rest of the uniform, sir,’ he went on, ‘well, everybody wears little else but shorts and shirts – even the other side’s shorts and shirts occasionally, and sometimes not even as much as that. The only thing that’s different is headgear and we have plenty of that. We’ve got a German officer’s cap and jacket in the props basket so, if the Italians come, we can be Germans. As I discovered in Intelligence, the Italians are afraid of the Germans and never ask them too many questions. But if the Germans come, we can be Italians who don’t understand the German language. It should cover a lot of mistakes.’
Rafferty clearly approved but Dampier looked startled.
‘Good God,’ he said again as Morton stalked away. It was clear he regarded with some alarm the fact that his whole world, the whole military set-up, was being inverted, with the lowest form of animal life suddenly promoted to the top and the top levels demoted to the bottom. It was worse than a mutiny.
Chapter 3
Within minutes they had been transformed into Italians in Italian caps or helmets, with Morton in the officer’s jacket looking like the juvenile lead in a musical comedy. The mostrine – the coloured flashes on the collars of the jackets which indicated which regiment the owners belonged to – were all different but that provided no problem; they’d noticed that as often as not these were lacking anyway, because the supply situation from Italy was so bad they couldn’t be obtained, and half the Italians did without them.
Caccia jerked his jacket straight, pleased, like any good ladies’ man, with the fit. ‘How do I look?’
‘Like Pinocchio,’ Clegg said.
Caccia stared down at the three red stripes on the arm of the grey-green jacket. ‘I reckon I look like two of cheese,’ he said. ‘Why do I have to be the sergeant?’
Morton looked at him coldly. ‘Because you’re a sergeant type,’ he said.
‘And you’re not, I suppose?’
‘The Italians are particular whom they commission in their army. They like them to look the part. You look like an Italian grocery assistant.’
Caccia looked up. ‘That’s what I was.’
‘Exactly. And that’s why you don’t look like an Italian officer. They give stripes to grocery-shop managers but never commissions. They’re more particular than our lot.’
There was one overcoat – the Italians always seemed to wear overcoats even when the sun was at it
s hottest – so they gave it to Jones. He was small and looked swamped in it but his scruffy appearance bore a fair resemblance to some of the Italian soldiers they’d seen and the oversize coat completed the picture.
‘You could turn round in that without it moving,’ Clegg said.
They were a strange-looking lot. Only Morton seemed at all smart. Because he was tall and slim, the officer’s jacket fitted him as if it had been made for him, but the rest of the jackets and hats were mostly on the small side.
Their boots were dusty but somehow it added to the disguise because the Italian soldiers on the whole were a pretty careless lot and mostly wore their cheaply-made uniforms and board-hard overcoats as if they were tramps. In the desert everybody looked much the same, anyway, and for everyone – Germans, Italians, British, Free French, Australians, New Zealanders, Indians, South Africans, Poles – in summer the dress was normally never more than shirts and shorts, the shorts worn according to the military fashion of the country which issued them; the British ones were as wide as and almost as long as Oxford bags, to let what breeze there was blow where it would be most useful, the South Africans short enough to be almost indecent. The only thing that varied were hats, badges and boots, though the Italian officers enjoyed their plethora of badges and buttons rather more than most. At the other end of the scale, Australian officers were quite content to have their badges of rank drawn with a blue pencil on their naked shoulders.
‘It might,’ Morton suggested to Rafferty, ‘be a good idea if we don’t shave too often. The Italians don’t go in for it much.’
Rafferty smiled. ‘I hope you can convince the colonel,’ he said.
* * *
To Dampier it was a strange feeling to wear a jacket with no insignia on his shoulder. When he’d joined the army in 1914, he’d been granted a commission at once because of the school he’d attended, so that there had never been a day in uniform when he hadn’t had the advantages and privileges of an officer, and it seemed odd suddenly to be shorn of them.