A Good Clean Fight

by Derek Robinson

  Davis noticed some stiff triangular pennants in the back of the car. Lampard chose two and fitted them into sockets on the wings. Meanwhile Dunn had discovered a briefcase, forced the lock and found various official papers and quite a lot of money. Lampard took charge of it all. “You never know,” he said.

  He reckoned it was about fifteen kilometers to where the jeeps were waiting and he hoped to cover the distance without meeting a roadblock. But quite soon he saw the familiar solitary red light in the middle of the road; and simultaneously he felt the double action of fear and excitement: a sudden tightening of the stomach muscles and a lively surge of blood to the head and neck. This roadblock must have been added since the supposed bomb attack on the other post. It would be interesting to see how alert the guards were.

  They were very alert, and very respectful when they saw the pennants flying on the wings.

  A sergeant hurried forward and clicked his heels. He saluted. Lampard made a languid acknowledgment, more papal than military. He let the sergeant get out two or three words and then said, “Sh-sh-sh.” He put his finger to his lips, and nodded toward his passenger. The sergeant bent at the knees until his head was level with theirs. He began whispering. Lampard shushed him again. Using his hand to hide his words from his passenger, he said, slowly and softly: “Oberst . . . Max . . . von . . . Rommel.” The sergeant’s eyes widened. Lampard nodded. He could see the sergeant thinking: I never knew Rommel had a son in the army, but then maybe it’s not his son, maybe it’s a nephew or a cousin, anyway he’s still a Rommel, I’d better watch my step . . .

  Lampard made a show of looking at his watch. He frowned and inched the car forward. But now the sergeant had a clipboard, and he needed information for it. While he whispered his question, Lampard leafed through the bundle of official papers, chose the two most impressive, added some of the money, and handed it to him. In exchange he took the clipboard and scribbled something illegible. “Heil Hitler,” he whispered. He aimed a finger at the pole-barrier and gestured upward. “Heil Hitler,” the sergeant whispered as he took back the clipboard. There was six months’ pay in his hand. This had never happened before. Lampard inched the car further forward. Greed and duty fought for the sergeant’s soul. Duty lost. The barrier rose. The car and the trucks accelerated into the night, the same night that concealed the sergeant as he stuffed the money in his pocket, telling himself that Rommel knew best.

  At two-twenty the patrol reached the jeeps, transferred the rucksacks of bombs, hid the trucks and the car, and set off for Barce. Lampard took the corpse of the Oberst as a good-luck token.

  By three a.m. they were back in familiar terrain, the western foothills of the Jebel. Lampard wanted to be above Barce by four, which was absurd, and so he set an absurd pace, or tried to, racing along the wandering and rocky trails with headlights full on, skidding and slithering around S-bends in blind faith that he could cope with anything he found when he emerged. Once he failed completely: steering hard right, he could not stop the jeep drifting broadside left, over the edge and down a long, steep patch of rattling scree. Just a little steeper and the jeep would have rolled, bent the Vickers twin machine guns and probably broken a couple of necks. As it was, a few degrees saved them from anything worse than brief terror. The other crews helped manhandle the jeep up to the track. Lampard roared on.

  Yet they paid for his impatience. The scree had ripped a tire; within minutes the jeep was thrashing that wheel to death. He forced himself to sit on a rock, in silence, while others changed it. They were far more competent. As soon as the final wheel nut was tightened, he started up and men scrambled aboard. It was three-fifty. Mike Dunn kept a constant check on the time. He had said very little since they left the airfield at Al Maghrun. Everyone else, including Sergeant Davis, followed Lampard without question; Dunn felt that he had said his bit and if nobody listened there was no point in saying it again. He experienced a sense of fatalism that kept fear at bay. Jack was the boss. Maybe Jack knew best, after all.

  And for a time, things went right: for long spells it was like a night exercise, careering round the hills, steering by the stars, trying always to avoid losing height. Things also went wrong. Twice they drove slap into an Arab camp. The first was small, they reversed out and found a way around it, dodging sleepy Arab children who were dazzled by the headlights which, to them, had arrived with all the sudden mystery of meteors. The second was big. Lampard saw a tent jump at him, swerved, and found himself in a sea of sheep. They panicked, which meant the whole night was full of angry Arabs chasing their property. The patrol sat motionless for three minutes until the chaos eased. Sergeant Davis gave the oldest Arab he could see two pounds of sugar and a big packet of tea. They shook hands. The old man seemed well pleased.

  Sometimes the trail faded out and they had to search for another; sometimes there were too many trails. Lampard halted at a five-way crossroads and had to guess. While he was guessing, Dunn’s jeep reported a puncture. The jack kept slipping; in the end, half the patrol held the jeep up while the wheel was changed. Lampard had gone on: he was exploring the right-hand trail. It led up a wadi and the wadi led nowhere. Dead end. He heard firing behind him and knew his luck had finally run out. You couldn’t dash about the Jebel without meeting a German patrol, sooner or later.

  Headlights off, he went back down the wadi in an anxious crawl, the firing getting steadily louder. He crept around a bend and saw it: flying needles of red and yellow bouncing off rocks in a confusion of directions, like sparks in a steel mill. All the fire was coming from the enemy. Lampard approved. If they thought they’d won, they might quit.

  Meanwhile there was nothing he could do except watch. It was four-twenty. He sat on the warm bonnet of the jeep to comfort his backside, which had taken a beating from too many rocks recently.

  Dunn walked out of the night and sat beside him. “I reckon five machine guns and a dozen rifles,” he said. “We’ve got the jeeps behind some boulders.”

  “This is a dead end.”

  “Ah. Well, come and join us.”

  “If I drive down there, they’ll clobber me.”

  “Not if we keep their heads down. We blaze away, you make a dash for it.”

  “No. Too exposed.” Lampard drummed his heels against the radiator. “Why haven’t they outflanked us?”

  “They tried. Made a hell of a noise. We sprayed a few rounds their way and they made even more noise going back. I think they’re pretty new at this game.”

  “Huns?”

  “Sounds like it.”

  “Right. Tell you what. We’ll outflank them.”

  “We’re not strong enough.”

  “They don’t know that. Pick four men, send two to each side of the enemy position with a couple of Stens and some grenades. While they’re making nuisances of themselves I’ll sneak down. Then they rejoin and we withdraw.”

  “OK.” But Dunn did not go. “There’s another way, Jack. We can just leave this jeep here.”

  “I’m not going to abandon a vehicle.”

  That was that. Dunn hurried back to the patrol, explained Lampard’s plan and began selecting men. “Walters and Connors,” he said. “Smedley and . . . urn . . .”

  “Me,” said Peck.

  Dunn hesitated.

  “Yeah, Peck’s best,” Sergeant Davis said.

  “Is that a fact?” Smedley said to Peck. “You never told me.” He was picking out weapons.

  “Why keep a dog and blow your own trumpet?” Peck said. He stuffed extra grenades in his pockets.

  Lampard released the brake as soon as he heard the fierce crack of the first grenade. He let the jeep coast down the wadi until he was sure the German gunners had swung round to answer the attacks on their flanks. Then he took his foot off the clutch. The engine fired. He drove half-standing, peering ahead, straining to see rocks that often were gone before he could twist the wheel. At least one rifleman tried to stop him: bullets made firefly-sparks as they struck the ground, and one or
two stung the jeep. The wadi widened and ended. He turned square into the trail, all four wheels spitting stones until they gripped and rocketed him toward the elephant-sized boulders beyond which the patrol waited. An enemy machine gun searched with short, probing bursts. It ruined the face of a boulder but it couldn’t find Lampard. He was safe.

  Walters came back, sweating and pleased. Connors came back with a dislocated finger and without his Sten; it had gone flying when he tumbled down a gully. Smedley came back with a bloody face: stone splinters had sliced his cheek open. Sergeant Davis snatched Connors’s hand when he wasn’t looking, straightened his finger with a clean jerk and caught him as he fainted. Peck did not come back.

  They waited three minutes. Lampard had the body of the Oberst placed at the side of the trail, pistol in hand, facing the enemy. As an afterthought he scattered the remains of the money all about. “Should give them something to think about,” he said.

  Still no Peck. Enemy fire had tailed off. Only an occasional bullet fizzed by.

  “It’s four-forty,” Dunn said. “You can forget Peck.”

  “What d’you reckon?” Lampard asked Smedley.

  “Dunno, sir.” His words were weakened by the hole in his cheek. “We split up. He was firing, running about, making them think there was ten of him.” He shrugged. “Dunno, sir.”

  The jeeps retreated at speed behind spurts of covering fire, and stopped after a quarter of a mile.

  “You can bet your boots that Jerry patrol has raised the alarm,” Dunn said. “There’s still time to reach camp before dawn.” This night seemed to have lasted a week.

  “Jolly good,” Lampard said. Dunn felt he had been talking to himself. “Sergeant Davis!” Lampard called. “Casualties?”

  “One bullet through the leg. Some cuts from rock splinters. Smedley’s face you know about. That’s all. The jeeps are OK. We lost a bit of petrol from the jerricans. You can smell it.”

  “That’s all right, then.” Lampard walked to the edge of the track and stared into the night. “Barce is down there. You can see the road from Benghazi.”

  Dunn saw nothing but blackness. “Even if we got inside, the sun would be up before we could plant half the bombs,” he said. “Barce is a bloody big airfield. You remember.” Lampard said nothing. “It’s four-fifty,” Dunn said. “We simply haven’t got the time.”

  “Bags of time. And won’t they be surprised?”

  Lampard took the patrol out of the Jebel by the simplest possible means: he let gravity do the steering. As long as the jeeps were going downhill he knew they must be heading more or less north or northwest, toward the road that linked Barce and Benghazi. Often gravity was not a safe guide and he had to turn and drive along the contours until he found a track that the jeeps could skate down without falling out of control. Nevertheless, the night was full of the howling of gearboxes and the bellow of engines and the clash of metal on stone. This is insane, Dunn said to himself, over and over, until the word insane lost all meaning and became just a noise in his head.

  They reached the bottom at five past five. Lampard did not pause. He bucketed across the fields and mounted the road at five-fifteen. That was when he stopped for a briefing.

  “We’re not going to bomb their aircraft,” he announced. “No time. We’ll machine-gun them. Strafe ’em. First we leave bombs alongside this road, all the way to the airfield. Thirty-minute fuses. Save a few for the checkpoint at the gate. Short fuses there. We drive into Barce like the clappers of hell, shoot the daylights out of it and leave the same way.” He described his plan in detail, giving each jeep its position in the attack and each man his task. “All understood? Good. Off we go.”

  * * *

  An airman shook Paul Schramm awake at four fifty-five a.m. and gave him a piece of paper. It was a teletype. The message came from the headquarters of an infantry regiment based eight miles away, toward Benghazi. It was a copy of a signal received by the regiment from one of its patrols in the Jebel. Schramm had asked the regiment to inform him immediately if a patrol made contact with the enemy. Now, it seemed, one had. That was what the teletype said. Any normal person could have understood it in ten seconds. Fifteen, if he needed to find his reading glasses. Schramm was not normal at four fifty-five a.m. His eyes might be open but his brain was made of congealed fog.

  He washed his face and read the teletype again. Then he put on his reading glasses again and this time it made some sense.

  Time. What was the damn time? He found his watch and it said eleven-thirty. Impossible. Idiot watch was upside-down. Two minutes to five. Dawn in an hour. The SAS never raided just before dawn, it was crazy, how could they get away?

  He telephoned the station duty officer, the duty NCO in charge of airfield defense and the ops officer in the control tower, each with the same message: risk of raid, stay alert. They did not sound alarmed. They had heard it before.

  Next he telephoned the duty officer at Regimental HQ. “Any developments?” he asked.

  “The shooting’s over. They pulled back. Our men are looking for bodies.”

  “I see.” Schramm tried to imagine what it was like, clambering about the Jebel, searching for something that might not exist, in a very black night, with a lethal enemy somewhere in the darkness. “Look . . . No offense intended, but how sure are you that the unit your men ran into really was British?”

  “It was armed, it had vehicles. What are the alternatives? Arab guerrillas? Deserters? Escaped prisoners of war? No. This outfit was too well organized. We took losses, major.”

  “You’re not going to like this,” Schramm said.

  That amused the duty officer. “Well,” he said, “if it’s too painful I shall just burst into tears, like we always do.”

  “Maybe it was another German patrol, working in the opposite direction,” Schramm suggested. The duty officer said nothing. “You’re biting your lip,” Schramm said. “I can smell the blood.”

  “Actually I’m eating a rather gruesome frankfurter. Well, I won’t say it’s never happened. Nothing benevolent about friendly fire. However, I can assure you that we have only one patrol operating in the Jebel right now. Just one.”

  Schramm got dressed. His mouth tasted foul so he brushed his teeth. When he turned out the lights and opened a window there was still no hint of dawn. Well, the aircraft were safe, that was the great thing. In fact, he rather wished the SAS would have a go at them, just to prove the infrared beam. Not that it needed proving: it had been thoroughly tested by local paratroops and they had always set it off, even when they knew it was there and tried to crawl under it. The telephone rang.

  “I don’t quite know how to tell you this.” It was the regimental duty officer again.

  “I promise to be brave,” Schramm said.

  “Here it comes, then. Our patrol in the Jebel has just found a body, and it’s an Oberst in his best uniform with a pistol in his hand. He wasn’t shot and his pistol is fully loaded. I expect you’d like to know how he was killed.”

  “Please.”

  “Strangled. Also there was money everywhere.”

  “Strangled.” Schramm thought hard. Was this some kind of gruesome SAS trick? If so, what did it achieve? He could think of nothing. It was a mistake to see the SAS everywhere. “It could be part of a black-market racket,” he said. “Maybe this officer of ours was doing a deal with some Italians, they ran into your patrol, assumed it was a trap, killed him and left at top speed. I bet you that’s what it was.”

  “Strangled,” the duty officer said. “That’s a funny way to murder a German officer in the middle of a gunfight.”

  “Mafia, probably. I expect strangulation is full of old-fashioned symbolism. You know what they’re like.”

  “Fortunately not.” The brutal crump of an explosion rattled Schramm’s window. “Hello!” the duty officer said. “Need help?”

  “No,” Schramm said. Heavy machine-gun fire broke out. “Yes!” he shouted, and dropped the phone.

 
* * *

  Guard duty was just killing time. Night guard duty was killing time that had died while you weren’t looking and so it went on forever. Eventually the body adjusted to this eternity. The heartbeat slowed, the eyes stopped searching, and the brain avoided all strenuous thought until it was barely ticking over.

  People who never had to do it kept saying how important guard duty was. People like the station commander kept on about vigilance. You never saw him at five in the morning, so how did he know what he was talking about? The trick of doing guard duty was very simple. Take it as it comes. That’s how you get through the night. Very, very slowly. You don’t try and work it to death. That can’t be done, because there is no work. You relax and you let the night set its own sweet pace. You can’t change it, so you take it as it comes.

  The two men on guard duty at Barce airfield main gate had been on their feet since two a.m. and they ached, literally ached, to sit down. Better yet, lie down. Their leg muscles were stiff, their knees hurt, their shoulders resented the weight of their rifles. Twenty minutes ago the NCO had opened the guardhouse door, told them to keep their eyes open, and shut it. Now he had his feet up, lucky bastard.

  Only one vehicle had gone through since two a.m. Barce was dead. The guard was due to be relieved at six. Best not to think about it. Best not to think about anything. Just take it as it comes. That was the only way to treat the war: take it as it comes. Thus the two men on guard duty were not excited by the unhurried approach of a pair of dimmed headlights. One man yawned, the other rubbed his eyes. The vehicle slowed, made a turn of more than ninety degrees, and stopped. Evidently it was about to return the way it came. “Schramm?” the driver said. “Herr Major Paul Schramm?”