by Tom Gamble
‘It was Fresquin and his cronies,’ said Bassouin, his face growing momentarily cold. He grimaced and looked down into his plate. ‘How could a colleague—a professional companion and fellow civil servant—have done that? I’m still nonplussed by the act. They kept me under house arrest for a couple of days and then took me north on a train. There was talk of me crossing at Tangiers. I suppose I was to be judged once in France—awful.’ He looked up, noticing his guests’ moroseness and smiled. ‘But things took a turn for the better, n’est ce pas?’
‘You managed to escape,’ said Summerfield, bringing a forkful of bullied beef to his mouth.
Bassouin shook his head. ‘No—sheer luck, in fact. In Tangiers, for no apparent reason, my two guards just walked away—I don’t know why. Walked away in the street and left me there. Naturally, I did the same—in the opposite direction!’ He laughed and Summerfield and Jeanne joined in, relieved. ‘Looking back, I suppose they knew what it was all about and their hearts weren’t in it. Nothing to do with political opinions or concern for one’s country. Arresting a man simply because he was a Jew…scandalous.’ Bassouin repeated the word, almost in a murmur and fell silent, letting out a deep sigh. For a moment, lowering his head, Bassouin looked as though he were silently praying. Summerfield glanced worriedly at Jeanne. ‘That’s why they took her, you see,’ said Bassouin, at last.
‘Took?’ said Jeanne.
‘Sarah—my daughter.’ Jeanne sat back and Summerfield noticed that her left hand was shaking. ‘Rumour has it that she was sent to a camp of some sort near Paris, then to Alsace. At the time, they thought it was just for a few months—time enough for the threat to peter out and the war to calm down. Later, we learnt what the camps were really for.’ Bassouin looked up, a watery sheen on his eyes. ‘Sarah who loved life, everyone and everything in it,’ he said, aware of the futility of his words. ‘I have no hope.’
Jeanne leant forwards, at the same time darting a glance at Summerfield, and placed a hand on Bassouin’s. The man’s face grew soft and tender and he gave her forearm a little stroke with his free hand, much as though he were soothing his lost daughter. A few moments of silence passed and then, with a change of face, hardened now, Bassouin drew back and looked at Summerfield.
‘We must fight this evil, Harry. Fight it and stamp it out like we do a foul insect. Only then can we rest and pick up our lives.’
Summerfield nodded, Bassouin’s words making a shiver run through him. ‘Jean—I want to help. Don’t know how though.’
‘Can you shoot—or was that old Lee Enfield just for show?’
‘I can shoot,’ returned Summerfield, avoiding Bassouin’s eyes.
‘And you have used it in combat, I see,’ said Bassouin, a look of sympathy appearing fleetingly on his face. ‘I know how it feels, too, Harry. But we do these things—through duty, fear or simple instinct to survive. And there are those who use a rifle through hatred or doctrine. These latter types, these criminals—be they German, Italian, Vichy French or any other man driven by some mad ideology—must be fought. The light and softness of this world depend on this.’
‘A noble cause,’ said Summerfield, not without irony. ‘Perhaps I have forgotten about causes—I have seen a few men die, you see.’
‘You speak English, French—Spanish, too, I believe—and Arabic. You can ride and shoot. You know how to survive.’
‘And take a bearing without a compass!’ snorted Summerfield, glancing at Jeanne. ‘I couldn’t find my way across a public park, Jean. I nearly got us killed out there.’
‘So you will learn,’ said Bassouin, flatly. ‘The LRDG—know what that is?’
‘We met with a certain Captain Barnes,’ nodded Summerfield.
‘Barnes—yes, I know him. Very British,’ said Bassouin with a trace of a smile.
‘Very.’
‘But don’t let appearances fool you. The man is a professional soldier and an engineer par excellence—it was he who blew up the rail link at Sebha Oasis. Without him, Rommel would have sent an uppercut into Montgomery’s balls. Monty wouldn’t have liked that,’ added Bassouin, shaking his head. ‘The British can use your expertise, Harry. More than that, the Free French need your expertise. De Gaulle wants us to play a bigger part in the fight. What we have here, scattered about the Chadian desert, is just the beginning of an army that will liberate not only Africa, but France and Europe too at the sides of our British and American allies.’
Summerfield looked Bassouin in the eyes and pondered the words. He felt Jeanne looking at him too, wondered what she thought of it all. And Raja and the mountains? said a voice from within him. His heart winced—how he missed them.
‘You know, Jean. I—I have become different. I feel as though I don’t belong here—among the white men.’
Bassouin smiled and gave a nod of understanding. ‘What did Barnes tell you about the LRDG?’
‘He said they were riff-raff,’ answered Summerfield, thinking back to the surreal encounter.
‘Individuals, free-thinkers, odd-balls, adventurers, lovers of North Africa and the desert,’ continued Bassouin. ‘They could never fit in with the European rain, the constraint of thought and behaviour, the stuffiness. A few months back, when we took Koufa, a raiding party was decimated by the Italian Saharianna. Out of thirty men, only ten got back—and they got back not because they knew how to use a compass, read equations or draw up artillery quadrants. They got back here, most of them wounded, because they were rebels, because they loved this great, wide desert and its peoples and wanted to pursue the fight to set them free.’
Bassouin fell silent, letting his words sink in. Mechanically, he returned to his food and took a couple of mouthfuls before raising his head again.
‘And what else would you do, Harry? Stay here and die of boredom? Try to return to Morocco and risk getting caught by the Boches or Vichy patrols?’
Summerfield clasped his hands together. A clock ticked on the wall behind them. The faint sound of music drifted in from a wireless set.
‘You were always a convincing man, Jean,’ he said, with a smile of irony.
Bassouin grinned. ‘I can ensure that you’re given a lieutenant’s bar on your shoulder tab.’
‘Not a pip? French, then?’
Bassouin shrugged. ‘Here, we are all the nations of the world. You’ll be with British, French, Gabonese, New Zealanders, Tuaregs, Rhodesians, Senegalese, Indians and heaven knows what else.’
‘And if I want to leave?’ said Summerfield, raising his gaze.
Bassouin chewed for some moments, thinking it over. He drew in his shoulders and inhaled. ‘You will have a loose contract. Let’s say you are on a par with the Tuareg tribes—not exactly a mercenary, not exactly enlisted, but fighting with us in a common cause until the time comes to stop. I will try to see to it that you have the proper papers.’
Summerfield calculated a while longer, weighing up Bassouin’s offer, thinking of what Raja would say—probably scold him, knowing her—then gave a little nod. ‘Until the time comes to stop fighting,’ he echoed. Then, turning to Jeanne: ‘And you, Jeanne?’
Jeanne looked surprised. ‘Me?’
‘It is a good question,’ agreed Bassouin.
‘I—I hadn’t thought about it.’
‘Will you be staying—here?’ offered Bassouin, turning from Jeanne and glancing across to Summerfield.
Summerfield raised his eyebrows and shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. Jeanne has a priority to take care of.’ He turned to her. ‘Jeanne?’
‘Would you like me to leave you alone for a few minutes?’ offered Bassouin to both of them.
Jeanne gave a slight smile. ‘Thank you, Jean. But no need—really. Harry and I have talked about the situation. You remember the day I became a fiancée? Now I have Jim to wait for.’
Bassouin swallowed—a sign that the decision had been registered. ‘I can get you to Cairo. Things are safe there,’ he nodded. A few seconds of silence passed in which the m
usic from outside grew louder—jazz—and then he clicked his tongue, his arms raising and falling in a gesture that meant so that’s it. ‘Harry. I’ll introduce you to your new colleagues—a mad, good-hearted bunch of misfits and damn good soldiers by the way. I think you’ll find a home there.’
Bassouin rose and Summerfield followed, a little reticently, as though having second thoughts. He wavered a little above Jeanne and she looked up. They remained looking at each for several instants and then she slid her hand around his and clasped it.
‘Goodbye,’ said Summerfield and with a brief nod, withdrew his hand and walked out.
Once outside, on the flattened sand of the parade ground, Bassouin gently tugged Summerfield aside and for a moment the older man looked a little lost.
‘Is anything wrong, Jean? Have you decided not to enlist me after all?’ added Summerfield with irony.
‘Harry—you know that I appreciate you. Ever since I met you at that stuffy dinner event at the Lefèvre house, your…your difference made me like you straight away.’
‘It’s reciprocal,’ said Summerfield, beginning to frown. ‘But I don’t see what…’
‘Difference,’ repeated Bassouin, inwardly. ‘I suppose that just about sums things up. I’m pied-noir, you know—a mixture of French, Jewish and Algerian.’
‘I remember you saying,’ said Summerfield, more puzzled than ever.
‘Now that Sarah—my daughter—has gone,’ continued Bassouin. ‘And that the Lefèvres were so tragically killed. What do you think if I asked for Jeanne to consider me as her—as her…’
‘As her father?’ obliged Summerfield.
‘That’s correct,’ said Bassouin, feigning nonchalance.
‘Well—I—I think that would be a very kind gesture,’ replied Summerfield, fighting to retain his surprise. ‘Actually, she always did mention how close she felt to you. She considered Sarah as a sister. In fact, I even confused them at one time.’
Bassouin smiled, a trace of nostalgia on his face, and with a little gesture gave the sign for them to continue walking towards the officers’ mess.
‘She is different, too, isn’t she?’ said Bassouin, oddly, as they sauntered.
Summerfield nodded and glanced across.
‘A beauty,’ he said. ‘She’s not completely European—not the northern type, in any case. She once told me she had terrible problems coping with that. Apparently her parents would explode whenever she mentioned it.’
Bassouin hummed in agreement and seemed to be reflecting on the shape of his shadow to the left of his brown ankle boot. ‘Such a thing could never have been mentioned, you see,’ he said matter-of-factly.
‘Sorry?’ Summerfield straightened up and his eyes met Bassouin’s.
‘The fact that I and Jeanne’s mother once had a fling.’
‘You mean—?’ Summerfield halted.
‘I suppose it doesn’t matter now—after everything that’s happened,’ added Bassouin, holding onto Summerfield’s arm. ‘The war, the treachery, the loss—it sort of puts things into perspective.’
‘Did Lefèvre know?’
‘Of course. As did my own wife. We chose to hush things up—wouldn’t have done any good to our image as the colonial moral keepers of justice and order, would it?’ Summerfield grimaced slightly. ‘Anyway—that’s what was chosen as an argument,’ added Bassouin. ‘Poor Jeanne’s mother—Agnès. I don’t think she and Philippe-Charles ever slept in the same bed together again. I suppose that accounted for their lack of any own children.’
‘My God,’ muttered Summerfield and then, suddenly remembering. ‘So what about Jeanne?’
‘You mean now? Well—of course I won’t tell her. And neither will you.’
Summerfield raised an eyebrow, meeting with Bassouin’s steady gaze. Despite his slight size, Summerfield felt suddenly quite intimidated by the look.
‘No, of course not.’
‘At least—I won’t tell her for the time being,’ continued Bassouin, distantly. ‘Let the water run and all that. But, do you know, Harry—I would just love to be able to walk her up the aisle one day.’ He laughed and Summerfield, feeling slightly dazed by it all, echoed him. ‘Well, Harry. Here we are.’
Summerfield followed Bassouin’s outstretched arm towards the entrance to the officers’ mess. There was a large, insolent slogan slapped on the brickwork in whitewash—To Rommel with Love.
‘Ready to meet your companions? By the way, I didn’t mention the odd custom they have when welcoming newcomers…’
59
November, 1942
Several thin black funnels of smoke rose up above the town of Safi on the western Moroccan coast and Summerfield watched, fascinated, as a flight of F4F Wildcats flew through them and roared overhead, past the fort topping the old city, and heading inland. A last look through his binoculars at the scattered houses and farms that announced the southern suburbs of the town and he nodded to the radio operator to give the order to advance. Slowly, in a V formation, the six remaining vehicles of Z patrol LRDG—a mix of Ford F30s and 30 cwt Chevys—crawled towards the first buildings, twin Vickers and Brownings sweeping the terrain with their muzzles.
At two hundred yards they received a pot shot from behind a low lying wall. While Summerfield waved to his left wing to fan out and accelerate, the two remaining Chevys on his right slewed to a halt, a well-practiced manoeuvre, to provide covering fire. In the lead jeep—a Willys—Summerfield shouted ‘Step on it’ and the driver immediately ground through the gears, thrusting the little vehicle over the gravel and sand in a charge towards the hidden marksman. At fifty yards, a small, grey figure wearing what looked like a fireman’s helmet bolted from behind the wall throwing his weapon behind him in an attempt to run to the cover of a nearby hut. Barely ten paces into his panic-stricken sprint and the figure was hit full in the back by a fierce flurry of bullets from the Vickers and disintegrated, one leg flying off at the knee and the head and right arm jerking free from the torso and kicking up dust as they hit the ground. Slowing down, Summerfield glanced briefly at the mess over the wall, stopping to study the old Lebel rifle the Vichy marksman had carried, its stock snapped off by a bullet. ‘Forwards,’ he ordered, giving the sign to resume formation.
Safi was a sprawling fishing and phosphate town of ramshackle factories and canneries that looked oddly out of place with the old city. Summerfield could see both from his advancing jeep—the fractured roofs of the factories, hit by shells from the naval forces off the coast and the huddle of ancient buildings rising chaotically to the mount with its fort that overlooked the sea. At 4.30 that morning, after a thirty-minute bombardment from the battleships and cruisers offshore, the southern hook of Operation Torch—35,000 American troops—landed in and around the port and city. Air support, Avengers and Wildcats, strafed and bombed Safi’s airfield and communications complexes, moving on to disable Vichy reinforcements heading in from the north.
At the same time, sixty miles away to the south of the city, Summerfield had seen the flashes light up the dawn sky, the wind carrying the weak rumble of the big guns across the desert plain. When they arrived, the city was almost completely under Allied control, most of the Safi garrison now prisoner and milling about on the beachhead under American guard. A few scattered and desperate groups loyal to Vichy remained, carrying on a useless—and to Summerfield, senseless—struggle in the honeycomb of streets up in the old medina.
There was debris everywhere—tyres, crates, clothes, shoes, weapons, empty shell cases, abandoned cars, dead dogs and bodies, mostly civilian. As they drove warily through the suburbs and its shanty town and into the streets of the city, the odd pop of a rifle followed by the crackle of machine gun fire echoed faintly off the sheer walls. A heavier thump in the vicinity, which made them instinctively duck for cover, informed them of the presence of mines. Judging the danger to be real enough, Summerfield and two corporals got out and walked ahead of the vehicles, arms levelled, on the look out for trip wires a
nd the tell tale sign in the gritty streets of freshly turned earth.
Approaching the central mosque, they came across a wide crossroads under the control of a detachment of GIs. In the middle, sitting cross-legged and with their hands on their heads, were twenty or so Vichy soldiers dressed oddly in the pigeon blue fatigues of the beginning of the war. Among them were three German sappers, at the moment Summerfield’s patrol group entered the square, being lifted from the others and taken away. Summerfield held his hand high, a sign for the column to halt, and got out. A quick scan of the open space found him what he was looking for—an officer. He walked over, conscious that the GIs were eyeing his Arabic headdress with a mix of curiosity and disdain. Conscious, too, that a strange fish-like smell pervaded the place.
‘Lieutenant Summerfield,’ he introduced himself, giving a half salute and offering his hand.
‘Jesus—wasn’t expecting the Limeys here at all,’ said the officer, a small, tough-looking lieutenant with a mop of black hair all gummed back beneath his helmet.
‘Not really Limeys,’ said Summerfield, cocking his head at his column. ‘About eight different nationalities in the odd bunch.’
‘Oh,’ replied the American, looking a little ill at ease. ‘Anyway, glad to have you here. Second lieutenant Clanger, 3rd US Infantry division.’
‘Clanger?’ repeated Summerfield, unable to avoid his look of surprise.
The young American officer smiled sheepishly. ‘Yeah—that’s it, I know. You can’t imagine what I get from these guys,’ he added, shaking his head at his men. ‘Still—kinda hardens you up going through school ‘n’ that.’
‘Hmm,’ agreed Summerfield. ‘I’ll buy that. By the way, wouldn’t swap a few ciggies, would you? This black stuff we have is like lighting up creosote.’
As the two men swapped cigarettes and lit up, the sound of an explosion over near the port shook the air.
‘Sardines,’ said Clanger with a grimace. ‘We hit beach and ran into a mountain of them rotting on the sand. Had to wade through the shit—which may explain the smell around here.’