Officers and other ranks alike were volunteers. They needed to be, for staying in the desert for weeks on end, short of food and short of water, is not everyone’s idea of fun. But these men had deliberately chosen this life, and few units could compare with them for morale.
When our preparations were completed, we left Siwa. The L.R.D.G. had provided us with the Arab head-dresses which they wore themselves. We were delighted with them. Apart from their romantic appearance, they were extremely practical articles of equipment. They were cool to wear and gave good protection against the sun, and, when you were not wearing them, you could use them as a towel or a dish-cloth or spread them over your face and go to sleep, oblivious to sun, sand and flies.
At first the going was good — a surface of hard smooth gravel over which we bowled along at forty miles an hour. Then, a little further on, we struck our first patch of soft sand and were soon out pushing and pulling in the midday sun, while our vehicles plunged and floundered helplessly. Desert travel is a succession of such contrasts, but, under the expert guidance of the L.R.D.G., we fared on the whole remarkably well, encountering a minimum of difficulties.
First we drove almost due north for 80 miles or so in the direction of Sollum, which brought us to the Wire. This was a barbed-wire entanglement, six feet high and thirty feet wide, running southwards for two hundred miles from the coast along the Libyan-Egyptian frontier, which had been erected ten years earlier by Marshal Graziani at a cost of a quarter of a million pounds, in the hope of better controlling the permanently disaffected native population of the province of which he was governor. But by now there were a number of gaps in it, and through one of these we slipped, like rabbits into a bed of lettuces.
During the first days we moved from dawn till dusk. Taking off our shirts, we drove in nothing but drill shorts and sandals. The Libyan sun was blazing hot, but at the speed at which we were moving there was always a breeze and we did not feel its heat. At midday we stopped briefly for lunch — tinned salmon or sardines and tinned fruit, unwonted luxuries included in the L.R.D.G.’s special scale of rations. Then, when the wireless operator had made contact with Siwa and the navigator checked our position, we climbed back into our trucks and drove on till sundown.
After driving for twelve hours or more, the evening halt would be something to look forward to. Night falls quickly in the desert and the air grows suddenly cold. All at once you would feel the need of every scrap of clothing you possessed. Supper did not take long to prepare: hot bully stew; tea, and sometimes a tot of rum. It was cooked over a desert fire, made by pouring some petrol into a tin filled with sand, which then burned with a steady flame for a surprisingly long time. After we had eaten, and filled our water bottles from the water tank in preparation for the following day, we would sit round the fire muffled in our greatcoats. Robin had a white Hebron sheepskin coat. Sometimes when the day’s signals had been sent and received, the wireless would be turned to more frivolous uses and we would listen to jazz music, or to Tommy Handley, or to the eight o’clock news from London. Or to Lili Marlene, the new German chanteuse, singing her special song for the Afrika Corps from Radio Belgrade, now in enemy hands:
Unter der Laterne,
Vor dem grossen Tor …
Husky, sensuous, nostalgic, sugar-sweet, her voice seemed to reach out to you, as she lingered over the catchy tune, the sickly sentimental words. Belgrade … The continent of Europe seemed a long way away. I wondered when I would see it again and what it would be like by the time we got there.
Soon the fire would die down and we would seek out a soft patch of sand on which to spread our sleeping-bags. We slept soundly under the stars with a cool breeze playing on our faces.
The noise of the cook getting breakfast woke you before dawn. From your sleeping-bag you watched the desert fire flare up against the lightening sky. There were five short minutes more before you need get up. Then ‘Come and get it’ shouted the cook, rattling his can, and you crawled out of your sleeping-bag, pulled on your boots, collected mug and mess-tin and stumbled sleepily over to the fire.
It was a good breakfast: porridge, sausage, sometimes tinned bacon, biscuit and hot sweet tea. Afterwards you cleaned your mug and mess-tin in the sand, for water was too precious to waste on washing up; rolled up your bedding roll; helped load the trucks; and drove on. Soon the sun was high in the sky and you could shed, first your greatcoat, then your sweater, and then your shirt.
Our course, now that we were through the wire, lay roughly north-west. The desert was sometimes flat, sometimes broken and undulating; sometimes sandy, sometimes hard and stony; in colour a mixture of greys and browns and yellows and reds, all bleached by the sun and merging one into the other. We came upon nothing resembling an oasis; but in some places the rains had produced an ephemeral crop of coarse grass and scrub. Once or twice we saw gazelle, tiny creatures hardly larger than hares, bounding away in front of the trucks. One night I killed a snake as it was crawling into my sleeping-bag. One day a Beaufighter flew over us and we felt uncomfortably conspicuous with our enemy recognition mark exposed to view.
Soon we were parallel with Gazala where, further north on the coast, the two armies were facing each other. In our own very small way, we were turning the enemy’s flank. From now onwards we would be behind his lines, and must look out for trouble.
For the last part of the journey we travelled by night and lay up by day. Our routine was reversed. We moved off after supper and stopped to bivouack at first light. Breakfast would be more welcome than ever. After a long chilly night’s drive, straining our eyes in the darkness for unseen obstacles and pitfalls, we found that there was a lot to be said for a dram of whisky stirred into our porridge. It made a sustaining and stimulating mixture which I can warmly recommend as a breakfast dish to all engaged on similar enterprises.
Our first care when we halted was to camouflage our trucks against observation from the air. We usually chose as a stopping-place a dip in the ground, or some rocks, or a patch of scrub. Carefully disposing our vehicles so as to make the best use of such cover as there was, we would then set about blending them into the background, with bits of scrub and camouflage nets stretched right over them. The L.R.D.G. trucks were painted with a bold design of rose-pink and olive-green, which, oddly enough, made them practically invisible against the desert. Later the S.A.S. adopted the same camouflage, and several times I was caught with a vehicle in the open by low-flying enemy aircraft without the pilot seeming to notice us.
Our camouflage completed, we would settle down to try and get some sleep. But it was hard to escape the glare of the sun which beat down mercilessly, pursuing us, as it rose higher, from one dwindling patch of shade to another. Then there were the flies, which appeared by myriads in a place where, an hour before, there had been no sign of life, and buzzed and crawled over your face as you lay. It was hard, too, lying there sweating, with nothing else to think of, to forget how thirsty you were. But in the end exhaustion would get the best of it and you would drowse off and wake to find the cook warming up the bully stew in readiness for a start at dusk.
On one such day, as we were dozing fitfully beside the trucks, we were brought back to our senses half-way through the morning by a shout from the look-out man, who came running up to say that he could see something moving on the skyline. In turn, we took the glasses and peered at it, distinctly recognizable as a motor vehicle of some kind and now disappearing rapidly over the horizon.
Where we were, we had to assume that any vehicle we encountered was an enemy one. And we could not afford to let an enemy vehicle get back to its base with the news that it had seen us. Snatching up our tommy-guns, David and I jumped into the battle-waggon and set out after it at top speed.
We soon began to gain on it. From nearer by it looked like a British truck, but there were too many of our trucks in enemy hands to go by this alone. When the driver saw us he accelerated sharply, and went careering wildly off across the desert, ignoring our sig
nals to stop. But our Ford was the faster car and we had soon headed him off and brought him to a standstill.
The truck stopped and two figures in grubby khaki shirts and shorts got out of it. We asked them who they were. ‘S.A.S.,’ they said resentfully with a strong foreign accent.
We thought we had them there.
But then they explained in guttural English that they were members of a South African Survey Unit, now engaged in surveying this part of the desert. When we pointed out to them that they were miles behind the enemy lines, they seemed mildly surprised. They didn’t, they said, bother about anything much except their work, and it hadn’t occurred to them that anything might be wrong until we had started to chase them. We advised them to be more careful in future and left them. They made off as fast as they could go.
Afterwards we wondered if we should not have perhaps examined their credentials rather more closely.
Between us and our destination, running from Agedabia northeastwards to the sea, lay the Trigh-el-Abd, an ancient caravan route between the coast and the interior. It consisted of innumerable trails, spreading over a wide stretch of country, and was strewn along its whole length with the whitened bones of camels, and no doubt of men, who in the course of centuries had fallen by the way and been left to die.
Of more immediate interest to us was the fact that it was also strewn with ‘thermos’ bombs. These handy little devices, the size and shape of a thermos flask, were broadcast by the enemy over areas where they thought that our patrols might pass. Half covered by loose sand, they were hard to see and, exploding, did considerable damage to any vehicle that drove over them. We accordingly timed our departure from our previous stopping-place so as to perform this part of our journey in daylight, and, keeping a sharp look-out for bombs, emerged unscathed on the other side.
After crossing the Trigh-el-Abd, we skirted round to the east of Msus, where there was an enemy garrison, and turned in a northwesterly direction towards the coast. Now, more and more frequently, we came upon little groups of burnt-out tanks and trucks, some bearing enemy markings and some British, some with the mangled bodies of their crews still in them, reminders of the bitter fighting of the previous winter. Sometimes, too, the wrecks of aircraft, fighters and bombers, lying where they had crashed far out in the desert, would loom up like ghosts in the moonlight.
Then, one morning, after we had driven all night, first light showed us a completely new landscape. Instead of the Libyan Desert, we might have been in the Highlands of Scotland. We were driving across brownish-green hills and moorland thickly covered with scrub, with here and there stunted trees. The spring flowers had faded, but the wind was heavy with the scent of wild thyme. We passed a Moslem shrine with its tattered banners, such as I had seen in Central Asia. We passed a heap of stones, marking a well, the earth round it trampled by sheep, goats and donkeys.
We had reached the Gebel Akhdar — the Green Mountain — the hilly country which lies south from the coastal plain and which was to serve us as a temporary base. We were within a few hours’ drive of Benghazi.
Well watered, by comparison with the desert, the Gebel was fertile enough to support the flocks and herds of the Beduin who dwelt in it. These were nomads for the most part and, like the people of Siwa, belonged to the Senussi sect. Their bitter hatred of the Italians made them the loyal allies of anyone who, like ourselves, was fighting against them. We were thus, in a sense, in friendly country. There was water, too, and, by desert standards, reasonably good cover. Apart from occasional punitive expeditions or search parties, the enemy were inclined to keep out of the whole area.
To the north and east the Gebel fell away abruptly in a steep escarpment at the foot of which lay the coastal plain. Coaxing our trucks across country, along goat tracks and dried-up water-courses, we made our way to a point near the top of the escarpment from which, twenty miles away across the plain, we could see the white walls of Benghazi and beyond them the blue Mediterranean shimmering in the sunlight. Then, camouflaging our trucks among the plentiful natural cover, we camped near them on the sandy bed of one of the dried-up water-courses or wadis with which the Gebel abounds.
We did not remain alone for long. We had not seen any Arabs on the way, but they had seen us and now several of them came to visit us. We gave them cups of tea and they gave us eggs. Then we showed them a photograph of Sayed Idris es Senussi, head of their sect and grandson of its founder, who at that time was living under British protection in Egypt. They fingered it admiringly, looking first at it and then at us and grinning.
It was May 20th. We were to go into Benghazi on the twenty-first. We had another twenty-four hours. That night, as we lay in our sleeping-bags, we could see the flashes of the bombs bursting over the town. The R.A.F. were doing their stuff. The moist sea breeze was relaxing after the dry air of the desert and we were soon asleep.
Next morning we made our final preparations. Weapons were cleaned and ammunition counted out and distributed. The rubber boats were taken out; inflated; deflated; and packed up again.
Our friends the Beduin came back and watched us. This time they were accompanied by an Arab we had not seen before, a more sophisticated figure wearing a trilby hat and carrying a neatly rolled umbrella. The newcomer, whom we named the City Slicker, spoke fluent Italian and showed more interest in our affairs than we liked. Reports had reached us of Italian agents sent into the Gebel to watch for British patrols and report on their movement. Could this be one? It looked as though he might be. We were debating as to the wisdom of taking him into protective custody, when, looking round, we found that he had gone.
Meanwhile, in their corner of the wadi, Cooper, Seekings and Rose were getting the explosives ready: unpacking the bombs and limpets and fitting the time-pencils and detonators to them. Suddenly there was a sharp report and an oath. We hurried across to see what had happened. A detonator had exploded in Corporal Seekings’s hand. He was not badly hurt, but his hand was out of action and there could be no question of his going with us. We were one man short.
It is an ill wind … The crack of the detonator had hardly died away, when Randolph appeared, jubilant. His exclusion from our expedition had been a sore point, but this, it seemed to him, made everything easy. Already he was oiling his tommy-gun and polishing his pistol in preparation for the night’s work.
Such keenness, David felt, could not be left unrewarded. A spare N.C.O. who had come with us as a possible replacement in an emergency, was told, much to his disgust, that he would not be needed, and Randolph took Corporal Seekings’s place.
We set out in the late afternoon. Two of the L.R.D.G. trucks came with us. It was getting dark as we reached the escarpment. We followed the bed of one of the smaller wadis down into the plain, easing the battle-waggon as carefully as we could over the rough ground and boulders. Here and there we passed little groups of Arabs working in the fields. They waved to us and we threw them cigarettes. The going was difficult and it was not till ten that we reached the main Barce-Benghazi road, where the L.R.D.G. trucks were to leave us. It had taken us five hours to do fourteen miles.
Round about us on the plain we could see the camp fires of the Arabs twinkling in the dark. We lit a fire too and brewed up. It was cold and the hot strong sweet tea was welcome. Then we said goodbye to the L.R.D.G., told them to expect us for breakfast in the morning, switched on our headlights and drove off. David and I sat in front with Gordon Alston between us. Randolph and the two N.C.O.s sat in the back. David was driving.
Once we had left the desert and were on the smooth tarmac road, we noticed that the car was making an odd noise. It was more than a squeak. It was a high-pitched screech with two notes in it. Evidently one of the many jolts which they had received had damaged the track-rods. Now the wheels were out of alignment and this was the result.
We lay back on our backs in the road and tinkered. It was no use. When we got back into the car and drove off again, the screech was louder than ever. We could hardly have m
ade more noise if we had been in a fire engine with its bell clanging. It was awkward, but there was nothing we could do about it now. Fortunately it did not seem to affect the speed of the car.
Soon we were passing the high wire fence round Regima aerodrome. We were not far from Benghazi now. We were going at a good speed and should be there in five or ten minutes. I hoped that the Intelligence Branch were right in thinking there was no road block. It was cold in the open car. Feeling in my greatcoat pocket I found a bar of milk chocolate that had been forgotten there. I unwrapped it and ate it. It tasted good.
Then, suddenly, we turned a corner and I saw something that made me sit up and concentrate. A hundred yards away, straight ahead of us, a red light was showing right in the middle of the road.
Chapter IV
Short Weekend
DAVID jammed on the brakes and we slithered to a standstill. There was a heavy bar of wood across the road with a red lantern hanging from the middle of it. On my side of the road stood a sentry who had me covered with his tommy-gun. He was an Italian. I bent down and picked up a heavy spanner from the floor of the car. Then I beckoned to the sentry to come nearer, waving some papers at him with my free hand as if I wanted to show them to him. If only he would come near enough I could knock him on the head and we could drive on.
He did not move, but kept me covered with his tommy-gun. Then I saw that beyond him in the shadows were two or three more Italians with tommy-guns and what looked like a guardroom or a machine-gun post. Unless we could bluff our way through there would be nothing for it but to shoot it out, which was the last thing we wanted at this stage of the expedition.
There was a pause and then the sentry asked who we were. ‘Staff Officers,’ I told him, and added peremptorily, ‘in a hurry.’ I had not spoken a word of Italian for three years and I hoped devoutly that my accent sounded convincing. Also that he would not notice in the dark that we were all wearing British uniform.
Eastern Approaches Page 24