by Shaun Clarke
were clipped to the bomb racks, also ready for dropping. Unable to be heard above the roaring of the engines and the wind, the despatcher signalled for the men to get
ready, then he pointed to the lamp above his head. The light was still off.
Glancing behind him, Marty saw that the other
paratroopers were wriggling into their ‘chute harnesses,
fidgeting with their weapons and checking their
equipment yet again. Though they were clearly nervous,
they wanted to make the jump, to get it over and done
with.
The red light came on.
With two minutes to go, Captain Kearney, leading
the drop, was first in line at the open door, waiting for
the green light. When it flashed on, the despatcher
slapped Kearney’s shoulder and he threw himself out. The second man, Bulldog Bellamy, moved up to the
jump position and waited for a similar slap on the
shoulder. The first line snaked out and went taut, then it
trailed slackly from the door as Kearney fell freely. ‘Go!’ the despatcher bawled, slapping Bulldog on
his shoulder, and he, too, threw himself out, leaving the
jump position free for Marty, who took a deep breath. Feeling even more nervous, he inched forward until
he was standing at the open doorway, hammered by the
roaring wind. Looking down, he saw a terrifying black
void. Bulldog’s line had snaked out, but it suddenly
went taut and then just as quickly slackened again. ‘Go!’ the despatcher bawled.
Marty felt a rough hand slapping his shoulder, then,
before realizing that he had jumped, he was plummeting
through the void with the wind of the slipstream
slapping at him. The combined noises were deafening–
growling aircraft, roaring wind, snapping parachute and
cords – as he held himself upright, heels together, waiting for the slipstream to release him and let him drop vertically. This it did within seconds. There was a sudden, violent tugging, the wind abruptly ceased its roaring, then he dropped through darkness and silence,
looking for the ground.
He saw nothing but darkness.
By now he should have felt, or at least seen, the
ground, yet the darkness below him seemed bottomless.
He continued drifting down. Suddenly, as he gripped the
rigging lines, preparing to swing himself clear of
potential harm, he was smashed against a rocky stretch
of desert. Hitting the ground with a painful jolt, he
rolled over and tried to stop, but was dragged a good
distance by the fierce wind. Managing to roll again, this
time onto his belly, he wrestled to control the rigging
lines, collapsing the canopy. Breathless and battered,
with sharp pains darting through him, he was snatched
away again by another strong gust of wind, then
dragged at great speed over a desert floor of abrasive
gravel that cut and burnt his skin. Eventually, however,
he managed to punch the release box, unravelling his
harness and rolling to a stop. Then he passed out.
Regaining consciousness, he found himself lying on his belly. Rolling onto his back, arched over his bulky rucksack, he saw patches of stars between drifting storm clouds and, below them, the pale white flowers of other parachutes descending not too far away.
‘Bloody hell!’ he whispered. Attempting to stand, he was almost knocked off balance by the wind. Hissing granules of rock-dust stung his face, made breathing difficult, and finally forced him to turn downwind, into the desert, hoping to find the rest of his team there. Feeling minute and lost in the vastness of the desert, hurting from his numerous cuts, abrasions and bruises, he hiked a long way, for what seemed like forever, through a raging sandstorm that had reduced visibility almost to zero.
When he reached what he thought was the DZ, there was no one in sight. He was all on his own, lost in the desert… in a raging sandstorm… in the dead of the night. He heard only the howling wind.
Fighting to regain his breath, gritting his teeth against the pain of his cuts and bruises, he checked that his Bergen straps and webbing were in one piece, then switched on his torch and headed resolutely into the storm. Eventually, after what seemed like an eternity, he saw the light of another waving torch, then a second, and finally heard voices calling out in English.
Advancing toward the other waving torch-lights, he came face to face with Captain Kearney and Sergeant Bellamy, both smeared in a film of sand and dust, leaning into the howling wind.
‘Anyone else with you?’ Kearney asked.
‘No, boss. What about you?’
Keeping his head low to avoid the howling wind and
sweeping sand, Bulldog Bellamy waved his free hand, indicating the wadi running east to west. ‘Corporal Lester and Private Williams are over there, sheltering in the bed of the wadi. We haven’t seen any of the others so far. Only those two.’
‘What about the weapons and supplies?’ Marty asked with a sinking heart.
‘Probably dragged halfway across the desert, like the rest of the men,’ Kearney said, sounding grim. ‘A couple of crates landed in the wadi, near Lester and Williams, but they were smashed to pieces and their contents were strewn all over the place. I don’t think we’ll find much.’
‘Let’s go and check,’ Bulldog said.
Marty followed the other two across the flat plain, to where Red and Tone were crouched in the dried-up wadi bed, grateful for its protection from the freezing, howling wind. Sliding down into the wadi, behind Kearney and Bulldog, he came to a rest beside his two dispirited friends.
‘What a balls-up,’ Tone complained.
‘Shut your mouth, Trooper,’ Bulldog said, ‘and help us check what we have here.’
‘Yes, boss!’ Tone snapped.
They didn’t find much. One of the smashed crates contained Lewes bombs without fuses. There were also some rations, but only enough for one day, and ten litres of drinking water in twelve aluminium bottles.
‘Not even a radio or beacon,’ Kearney said bitterly. ‘So we can’t find out how the other teams are faring or where Captain Stirling is.’
‘I suggest we find the rest of our own team,’ Bulldog said, ‘then head back to the RV. With no food or weapons, with no means of communication, we have to assume the mission’s over.’
‘We won’t assume any such thing,’ Kearney said with conviction. ‘We can still do something, damn it! We can’t be too far from that airfield and I’m going to find it. At least, while we’re here, we can reconnoitre the area and go back with some information about enemy troop movements. If we can’t attack them, we can at least do that. Now let’s go find the rest of our men by criss-crossing this area about five miles north and south, east and west. Stick close together and use your torches. All right? Let’s go!’
Deeply dispirited, but encouraged by the conviction in Kearney’s tone of voice, Marty and the others climbed wearily to their feet, clambered up out of the wadi, then advanced into the desert in single-file formation, with Sergeant Bellamy out front on point, acting as scout, and Marty bringing up the rear as Tailend Charlie.
Following Kearney, they criss-crossed the area, moving first north to south, then east to west, always fighting the howling storm, waving their torches up and down while calling out repeatedly, ‘Team One! Over here! Team One!’ It was an exhausting business, but gradually, one by one, other lit torches were seen being waved back, distant voices were heard, and the rest of the men gradually materialized like ghosts in the murk. Eventually, nearly two hours later, all the men except one had been found. After searching another thirty minutes for the last man, Corporal Barker, they assumed that he had either been killed or was hopelessly lost in th
e desert.
‘No point looking any more,’ Bellamy said pragmatically. ‘We’re just wasting our time. Either he’ll make his own way back or he won’t. What say you, boss?’
‘I say we send most of these men back to the RV,’ Kearney replied, ‘while a four-man team – an officer, an NCO and two privates – tries to find that enemy airfield. We can’t do much damage, but we may pick up useful information. We’ve still got our personal weapons and handguns, so we can at least defend ourselves. What say you, Sarge?’
‘I say let’s do it.’
Kearney grinned. ‘Thought you might.’ He glanced at the other men, then settled his steady gaze on Marty. ‘What about you, Private Butler? Do you want to go back with the others or try your luck with us?’
‘I’m with you, boss.’
‘Private Williams?’
‘Yes, boss,’ Tone replied.
Nodding, Kearney turned to another sergeant, the rake-thin, hard-asnails Mike Byrne, and said, ‘Can you and Corporal Lester manage to get the rest of the men back to the RV? It should be less than fifty kilometres from here and the LRDG will be waiting there for you.’
‘No sweat,’ Byrne replied, standing up from where he had been squatting on the sand and slinging his submachine gun over his shoulder. ‘You leave it to me, boss.’
‘Good man. Get going.’ Kearney waited until the seven men had disappeared into the murk, then he said to Bulldog Bellamy, ‘Right, let’s head for Gazala. Single file as before. I’ll take the first four hours out on point, you and Corporal Williams will cover arcs of fire to the left and right respectively, and Corporal Butler will bring up the rear as Tailend Charlie. We’ll switch around every four hours to ease the tension on all of us. Agreed?’ Marty and the others nodded their agreement. ‘Excellent,’ Kearney said. ‘Let’s move out.’
Turning away, he marched resolutely into the storm, heading in what he judged from the position of the stars was the direction of Gazala. The others fell into single file, with Bellamy directly behind Kearney in what would normally be the PC, or Patrol Commander, position. Tone was between him and Marty, whose position in the rear, as Tail-end Charlie, was the most nerve-racking and exhausting of all.
They marched throughout the dark morning until the grey light of dawn broke. Only then did they lay up for a short break and a few nibbles of their emergency rations, all of them shivering with cold in the freezing wind. Exhausted from hours of having to turn repeatedly backwards to check their rear, as well as constantly keeping an arc of fire to the left and right, Marty was convinced that he would not be able to get to his feet again. He was wrong. In fact, he stood up without thinking and marched with the others when Kearney relentlessly led them away again, this time taking his bearings from the ‘Trig el Abd’.
‘What’s the Trig el Abd?’ Marty asked during another brief rest period.
‘A track line in the desert,’ Kearney explained. ‘It was formerly used by the camel trains of the slave trade, then by Axis and Allied vehicles, depending upon which one was holding the area at any given time. If we follow it, we should reach our destination, so let’s start marching again.’
They marched on in single file. After a hike of about sixteen kilometres, with the freezing morning giving way to a fierce, dry heat that lasted until dusk, they reached a featureless desert plateau leading to an escarpment. Creeping carefully along that line of cliffs and lying belly down in the fading light, they were able to see the glittering, pale-blue sheen of the Mediterranean beyond the parched, dusty, coast road.
‘That road,’ Kearney informed them, ‘is the main supply route for the German and Italian forces loosely holding a line from the sea at Sollum, on the Egyptian border, about a hundred and eighty kilometres east of Gazala. They must use it a lot.’
Seeing the MSR and the constant flow of Axis traffic heading along it in both directions, they realized that they had been dropped south of their intended DZ, only fifteen kilometres from the coast.
‘There’s no airfield here,’ Sergeant Bellamy pointed out as he lay belly down beside Kearney on the escarpment and studied the distant MSR through his binoculars. ‘We’re miles away, boss.’
‘But the journey hasn’t been wasted,’ Kearney replied stubbornly. ‘We’ll stay here for a bit and gather as much info as we can on the troop movements along that MSR. That’ll be something, at least.’
Bulldog sighed with a mixture of weariness and admiration. ‘Yes, boss,’ he agreed.
They laid up all night and recced the MSR the following morning. Kearney and Bulldog took turns at studying it through their binoculars and entering details of the troop convoys into the logbook. Late that afternoon, however, black clouds formed in the sky, threatening another storm. Hoping to find shelter, they advanced to the very edge of the escarpment, where they resettled themselves in a dried-up wadi bed, which they planned to use as an observation post, or OP. This was a mistake.
When the clouds broke in a deluge of rain, Marty was astonished to hear a sudden roaring and, looking along the wadi bed, saw that it was rapidly filling up with water. Flash flood! he thought, disbelievingly. The rain then poured down with the force of a tropical storm, striking the sand like bullets and making it spit and splash, becoming spurting mud, as the bed of the wadi swiftly filled up with water. With startling speed, this rising water turned into a stream, then became a fast-flowing river that threatened to sweep them away.
‘Get out!’ Sergeant Bellamy bawled.
Practically submerged and losing most of their personal weapons, they hurriedly clambered up out of the wadi, where they were exposed to the full force of the storm, lashed by a freezing wind and hammered relentlessly by the still-torrential, deafening rainfall, which forced them back down to the ground.
‘Jesus!’ Marty gasped. ‘Christ!’
Even as he lay there with the others, hardly believing what he was seeing, the river in the wadi became a raging torrent that swept baked sand and gravel along with it as it took the line of least resistance and roared along between the high banks. To make matters even worse, the storm and flash floods, which were filling other wadis, had blotted out the light over the landscape and made surveillance of the MSR impossible.
‘Damn!’ Kearney exclaimed in frustration, wiping rain from his eyes. ‘We’ve lost out again. Even I’m willing to call it a day. Let’s start back to the RV.’
‘If nothing else, we can fill our water bottles,’ Bellamy reminded him. ‘Let’s get somethingout of it.’
‘Good thinking,’ Kearney said.
After filling their aluminium water bottles from the downpour, they headed back to the Trig el Abd, then turned inland on the start of what they knew would be a 65-kilometre hike. Though completely drenched, they marched throughout the night and eventually managed to leave the torrential downpour behind them.
About three hours before last light, when their soaked clothing was stiffening with frost and all of them were shivering dangerously in the freezing cold, Kearney led them towards where he judged the RV to be. There, he had been informed, ‘A’ Patrol of the LRDG would be shining a Tilley lamp from a hill as a welcoming beacon. When the light did not materialize, Kearney realized that being dropped well away from the original DZ had caused him to miscalculate the distance back and that they still had a long way to go.
‘To hell with it,’ he said in disgust. ‘We’ve already been thirtysix hours in this bloody desert, so let’s at least snatch some sleep.’
It was just before last light when they slumped down in the shade of a sandy hillock and slept the sleep of the dead. Awakening shortly after first light the following morning, when the others were also stirring, Marty noted that his soaked, frozen clothes were mercifully already drying out in the rising heat of daybreak. Feeling only a little better, he and the others moved out again in the midday haze. By then, the heat was murderous, scorching their skin, blistering their lips, and filling them with a relentless thirst that compelled them to finish off th
e water they had gathered from the rainfall the previous day.
Late that afternoon, just as Marty was starting to feel that he might go mad from thirst, the weather turned yet again, becoming much cooler, and, more importantly, bringing back a brief rainfall that enabled them to top up their water bottles. Replenished and cooled down after their long, thirsty march, they continued the arduous hike across the scorched, barren desert plain, until, like a merciful god, the sun started sinking again.
No sooner had Kearney estimated that they were only twenty kilometres from the RV than he spotted movement far to the south. Raising the binoculars to his eyes, he made out nine figures heading for the Trig el Abd.
‘One of the other teams,’ he said. ‘Come on. We can’t give up now, lads. One more night should do it.’
‘I can’t march another night,’ the thoroughly exhausted Tone said, ‘I just can’t make it, boss.’
‘If you don’t do it alone,’ Bulldog Bellamy retorted, ‘you’ll do it with my boot up your arse. Now start walking, Trooper.’
Tone kept moving. All of them kept moving. They marched throughout another night, stopping only to observe a sudden, fierce sandstorm that blew up in the distance, just about where the other nine men had been seen.
‘Poor bastards,’ Marty murmured, knowing that the sandstorm would be hell for men who would already be on their last legs.
‘Rather them than us,’ Sergeant Bellamy said, pragmatic to the end. ‘Now save your breath and keep walking.’
When the sandstorm had abated – its outer edge had swirled across them – they marched on again, finally laying up in the early hours of the morning, dropping off almost immediately, and once more sleeping like dead men.
Awakening just before first light, Marty saw what he thought was a low star in the sky. However, when they continued their hike and drew closer to the glowing object, he saw that it was the promised Tilley lamp of ‘A’ Patrol, LRDG, shining in the south, no more than a few kilometres away.
They had made it back.
Though nearly in a state of collapse when they reached the LRDG camp, they still had to report to a dejected Captain Stirling, who had also made it back by the skin of his teeth. The report was given informally by Captain Kearney while Marty, Tone and Sergeant Bellamy sat on the ground around him and Stirling knelt on one knee in front of them, poking distractedly at the sand with a short stick, as if not really there.