The Sand Panthers

by Leo Kessler

  ‘When?’ Slaughter demanded angrily, stubbing out his cigarette in the white of one of the fried eggs, as if he were grinding out the socket.

  ‘Do not worry, my friend,’ the Chief answered easily. ‘We shall earn your Horsemen. Perhaps in three nights.’

  ‘When?’ Slaughter persisted. He knew his Blue Veils, his ‘boys’ as he always called them to his superiors in Cairo. One had to pin them down; they were as skittish and as capricious as women.

  ‘Three nights, I have said,’ the Chief replied. ‘Like all infidels, they will rest at night. We will not. We will catch them, Englishman, and then –’ The Chief grinned at him over his veil, though there was no real warmth in his faded old eyes. ‘Then,’ he echoed, ‘we shall ensure that they never leave the desert.’

  Slaughter shuddered in spite of the fact that the Blue Veils had been his lovers and employees ever since he had begun to use them for espionage purposes against the Italians in Libya in 1935. They would slit the Germans’ throats and unspeakable atrocities would follow that. Slaughter, his voice suddenly dry and husky, asked: ‘Where?’

  ‘The Great Ascent,’ the Chief said simply and with a gesture of finality tossed his cigarette into the fire. It flared up for a moment, illuminating the old man’s perverted face, and eyes which flashed with cruel anticipation of the slaughter to come.

  SECTION THREE:

  THE OASIS

  ‘Madam is the bravest of the brave. Not even Nasser and Sadat surpass her in courage and hatred of the English.’

  Major Mustafa, Egyptian Army, to von Dodenburg, Ain Dalla Oasis

  ONE

  It was furnace-hot. In that heat the sand shimmered a crazy wavering blue. Wearily the column steered its way onwards.

  ‘It’s the khamsin,’ the ‘Prof’ explained through cracked lips. ‘Blows in from Central Africa across hundreds of kilometres, being heated more and more all the way.’

  Von Dodenburg had never experienced a wind like this before, not even in the Caucasus. It was not like the heat that came from the sun, from which there was some relief in the shade. The khamsin was a searing, blistering heat that made one blink with shock, as if an oven door had been flung open to release a fearsome blast of burning air.

  ‘Jesus, Mary, Joseph!’ Schulze groaned, ‘you’d think it was bad enough with the Tommies and those Niggers out there somewhere trying to croak us – without this shitting wind roasting the nuts off us!’

  The almost unbearable heat was also making the young drivers of the sections of the column commanded by the two 18-year-old second-lieutenants more and more careless. Time and time again they drove into patches of soft sand because they were not alert enough and the whole column had to stop while the trapped vehicles were dugout.

  In the end, when yet another of Seitz’s Mark IVs became bogged down in soft sand, von Dodenburg’s temper got the better of him. He stopped the column, ordered Matz to drive back to where the weary young tank crew were staring numbly at the vehicle, which was up to its bogies in sand, and bellowed ‘Seitz and Meier to me – at the double!’ Both officers dropped from their vehicles and shambled wearily across to where von Dodenburg stood grimly on the turret, hands clamped to his hips. ‘At the double!’ he bellowed again. ‘Get the lead out of your damn tails, will you!’

  Sergeant Doerr, whose halftracks had not bogged down once because his drivers were exceedingly scared of him, guffawed. But the rest of the Wotan men were too weary to laugh even at the sight of two red-faced, sweat-lathered officers doubling through the sand as if they were green recruits back at Sennalager. Gasping painfully, their shirts black with sweat, the two of them came to a halt in front of von Dodenburg and stood to attention.

  Von Dodenburg’s red-rimmed eyes flashed angrily. ‘You call yourselves officers,’ he barked bitterly. ‘Officer means someone who commands, leads, makes decisions, advises. You two pathetic creatures have done none of those things. You have idled in your turrets and allowed your men to make the decisions – the wrong ones. That’s why tank after tank of yours has bogged down. Well, I have had enough of it. You must be taught to be officers the hard way!’

  He turned to the crestfallen corporal in charge of the tank which had bogged down. ‘All right, get all of your crew except the driver out of there, corporal!’ The crewmen dropped to the sand and stood staring up at their crimson-faced CO. ‘Corporal, clip off the turret shovels and give them to the officers!’

  Silently the Corporal did as he was commanded and stood to one side, leaving the young officers staring down at the implements in embarrassed bewilderment.

  ‘Now, you two. You will clear the sand away from this one by yourselves till the driver can start,’ von Dodenburg. announced grimly, ‘and you will clear away the sand from every other one of your vehicles that bogs down after this, personally and unaided! Perhaps that will teach you both to ensure that your drivers and commanders don’t sleep at their posts. Now get on with it!’

  Embarrassed, hurt, on the brink of tears, the two young officers began the back-breaking task of clearing the tracks, watched by equally embarrassed and sympathetic Wotan troopers.

  Thereafter there was no further bogging down of vehicles in the rest of the column, but the mood among the men, von Dodenburg knew, was rebellious. He longed to reach the Ascent and leave the hell of the Great Sand Sea.

  * * *

  That morning passsed with leaden feet. At midday, von Dodenburg allowed the column to stop to prepare a meal. Here and there a soldier dropped to the sand gratefully and tried to urinate. But the exercise was very painful. Their kidneys had suffered too much from the batterings and joltings of the last four days and the men had to clutch the sides of the vehicles to fight back the burning pain as they emptied their bladders. For the most part, the men crouched where they were, all spirit knocked out of them by the hellish terrain.

  Von Dodenburg dropped stiff-kneed to the sand and inspected his men. Their sweat-stained shirts were already bleached a faded yellow and their desert boots had turned near-white in the rays of the sun. Their faces were hollow and bronzed. Already they looked like veterans, as if they had been in the desert for years like the men of the Afrikakorps. But von Dodenburg knew that their appearance was deceptive. The men were not desert veterans; they were simply exhausted.

  Behind him, the ever-present Schulze, who himself must have lost five kilos so that even his massive frame seemed shrunken, put the CO’s thoughts into words. ‘The wet-tails are knackered, sir. What they need is plenty of drink and to be out of this hellhole to wherever we’re supposed to be going.’ He looked curiously at the Major.

  Von Dodenburg did not rise to the bait. Instead he grunted: ‘Break out an extra half a litre this midday. And with that he stalked off, leaving Schulze staring after him in angry bewilderment. Finally, the big NCO spun round and cupping his hands round his mouth shouted: ‘All right, you bunch of lovely lads, Sergeant Major Schulze has got a treat for you! By special permission you can all have an extra half litre of camel-piss, known to you as water this afternoon!’

  Later, concealed by a convenient dune and sharing his last bottle of champagne (Cooled expensively in a five litre can of gasoline) with Matz, he grunted moodily; ‘I’d just like to know where we’re going, Matzi? I really would!’

  Matz pumped another squirt of the precious gas over the bottle propped in the sand to keep it cool and answered lazily, ‘Wherever it is, Schulze, it can’t be worse than this. Nothing can.’

  ‘Ay,’ Schulze said dourly, ‘that’s what you say. But I don’t know so much.’ He stared at the silent, shifting dunes all around and shivered, in spite of the tremendous heat. ‘This shitting sandpit puts years on me Matzi…. Give me shitting old Timmerndorf1 any day.’

  * * *

  That evening in their laager, revived a little by the cooler breeze of the night, the ‘Prof’ chided von Dodenburg in his stiff, professorial way, saying he felt that the young Major was too hard on his men.

  Von Dode
nburg stared at the elderly academic across the blue flickering flames of the gas fire and said harshly: ‘You might be one of Germany’s leading Egyptologists, Prof, but I’m afraid you know little of soldiering, especially the kind of soldiering we of the Armed SS are used to. We cannot sustain ourselves with hope, for there is no hope for the SS. We cannot sustain ourselves with thought – belief in a cause,’ he uttered the words with a sneer – ‘faith that there is ultimately something of worth in what we are doing. There isn’t!

  ‘Our sole purpose is to kill and to avoid being killed ourselves. The function of German industry is to put the weapons into our hands so that we can blow a hole in some unfortunate Russian or Tommy head. We exist as rock-bottom, guilty animals, who must be taught to survive, kill the other animal before he kills you.’ His voice softened as he saw the horrified look on the other man’s face and he concluded almost gently. ‘The men must be hard as a favour to themselves, for the weak ones don’t survive…’ He emptied his coffee. ‘Now let me change the subject.’ He leaned forward so that none of the men could hear him. ‘When will we reach the Ascent?’ he asked.

  ‘Is that where we are heading?’

  Von Dodenburg nodded.

  Professor Reichert’s faded elderly eyes flickered, as if he were going to say something hastily, but evidently he thought better of it, for when he spoke he said simply:

  ‘If my calculations are correct – early tomorrow evening.’

  For a few moments von Dodenhurg absorbed the information, listening to the soft sounds of the camp settling down for the night: the hiss of urine on the still sand; the clatter of canteens being put away; the lazy banter of men lying sleepily in their bags, talking of the things all soldiers talk about – war and women. Then he said: ‘Prof, what can you tell me of the place?’

  ‘The Ascent? There is not much I can tell you, Major. I’ve never been there myself. In my days in Egypt all this was named the Devil’s Country and one kept out of it. Besides the handful of British who did penetrate it were not too happy about having Germans poking around it, especially after the Pact of Steel2. However this I do know. One of their officers – a certain Major Clayton seems to have discovered it, apart from the Arabs naturally who have probably always known about it, in the late twenties. According to the few descriptions I have heard of it, it is a great curving ramp of sand running up to a rock wall.’

  Von Dodenburg nodded. It was roughly the same description that Rommel had given him. ‘Can you tell me any more?’ he asked. ‘What are the conditions that we may be expected to face tomorrow night, for example?’

  ‘Not very much, Major, I’m afraid. Narrow gullies, framed by high rocks which I would expect would be too steep and too high for your tanks to climb.’

  ‘You mean we shall leave the Great Sand Sea through some sort of gully feature, which is already known to the Tommies?’

  ‘Yes indeed. After all we of Afrikakorps Intelligence have known that the British have been using the Ascent since 1940. Indeed they call it the “Easy Ascent”.’

  ‘So if they knew we were coming, that is one of the places they would be waiting for us?’ von Dodenburg demanded with sudden urgency.

  ‘Yes, that is if they had enough of their special desert troops to cover the spot, which according to Major Samt of Afrikakorps Intelligence they don’t. They are all up at the front…’ He stopped suddenly. The other man no longer seemed to be listening. For what seemed an age, von Dodenburg crouched there in front of the fire, lost in thought. Then he made up his mind. He rose to his feet. ‘Sergeant-Major Schulze!’ he called. ‘Get me Sergeant Doerr of the panzer grenadiers at the double.’

  ‘At the double, sir,’ Schulze’s huge voice came floating back through the glowing darkness.

  Von Dodenburg looked at the ‘Prof’. ‘Now Doktor Reichert, I’ve got a little task for you this night before you sleep.’

  ‘Major?’

  ‘I would like you to prepare a route to the Ascent for a one-eyed sergeant, who isn’t too bright,’ von Dodenburg said with a smile on his face. ‘And at the double, Prof, if you please…’

  Notes

  1. A popular beach near Hamburg.

  2. Alliance between Mussolini and Hitler.

  TWO

  Von Dodenburg stared back along the column in the dawn light. There was a distance of fifty metres between each tank, as he prescribed the night before after they had reached the approach to the Ascent. He nodded to himself in satisfaction. His lesson had paid dividends. The two second-lieutenants had their crews well in hand now.

  He turned and faced his front. The track which ran towards the Ascent was dangerously narrow – just broad enough for one vehicle – and as the ‘Prof’ had predicted, they were hemmed in on both sides. To their right, the naked rock wall rose steeply above them, while to their left the abyss fell away to an unknown depth, veiled still in the pre-dawn mist. The approach was a dangerous place.

  ‘Are you all right, Matz?’ he called, pressing his throat mike.

  ‘I went on the crash course, sir,’ Matz answered cheerfully enough, although the prospect before him would have daunted the most experienced tank driver.

  ‘All right, roll ‘em!’

  Matz pressed his starter. The tank’s engines burst into life at once. The roar echoed and re-echoed back and forth. Von Dodenburg glared at the heights to his right. They were empty; then he concentrated on the task ahead, as Matz slipped out the clutch and the Mark IV began squeaking forward in low gear. Behind him the rest of the column followed.

  The going was difficult, very difficult. In that confined space there was no leeway for even a fraction of an error. One slip to the left, the slightest skid, the merest extra pressure on the tracks and the 25-ton tank would hurtle over the side into space. In spite of the dawn cold, von Dodenburg found himself sweating furiously.

  But the little driver seemed to have ice-water in his veins. Listening over the intercom, von Dodenburg could hear Matz’s breath coming at steady regular intervals; he wasn’t even cursing as was his wont when the driving became difficult. Matz was concentrating every ounce of alertness he could summon up on the task in hand.

  Metre by metre the metal monster clambered up the steep track. In the turret, Schulze and von Dodenburg cocked their ears anxiously to one side, listening urgently for the first sound of cracking shale or any sign of slipping which would carry them over the side. But none came. The tank crawled on.

  Now they were totally boxed in, perhaps some fifty metres away from the summit beyond which lay the Ascent. Silently, not daring to disturb Matz’s total concentration on the job of driving, von Dodenburg nodded to Schulze. The big NCO understood. They had discussed it the night before. He raised machine pistol and leaned back, levelled it at the towering height above him. On the left of the turret, von Dodenburg did the same, aiming his machine pistol at the edge of the track, as if he half expected some enemy or other to appear over the side at any moment.

  * * *

  ‘Here they come, Englishman,’ the Blue Veil Chief hissed, raising his head from the ground, ‘I can hear them.’ Slaughter could not hear a thing, but then he did not have the phenomenal hearing of the desert Arabs. He nodded to Youssaf, the 16-year-old Blue Veil who had become his lover during the midday break they had taken the day before after three days and nights without sleep. Shyly the handsome boy with his fluttering, coalblack eye-lashes touched Slaughter’s hand and then the two of them ran towards the gap in the rocks to the right of the spot where the uphill track ran into the Ascent. All around them, the Blue Veils did the same, merging and disappearing into the surroundings in a flash. Slaughter raised his Tommy gun, while the boy prepared his ancient, curved-butt rifle. They would fight together – and if necessary die together – as was the custom of the Blue Veils. Up front the aged Chief took one last look at his men’s positions and apparently satisfied, ducked into a hole himself. The trap was well and truly set.

  * * *

  The
big tank breasted the rise. Instantly von Dodenburg saw the danger – small round depressions in the sand to their front. ‘Stop!’ he yelled desperately.

  Matz had seen them only a fraction of a second after the Major and realized too what they were. He braked furiously, The tracks locked. Tearing up sand, rock, scrub, the tank shot down the incline with Matz fighting it frantically to a stop. He managed it. It came to a halt with its front sprockets hanging over the edge of the drop.

  The next vehicle – the truck laden with supplies, driven by the Italians – was not so successful. The little Sicilian driver ran straight into the line of mines. There was a tremendous explosion. Its front axle shattered, the driver slumped over the wheel behind the gleaming spider’s web of the smashed windscreen, the big truck went plunging down the escarpment, completely out of control. Half-way down it struck an outcrop and went sailing high into the air, somersaulting to the bottom in a fantastic avalanche of sand, rock and bodies. With a great crash it disintegrated there.

  Von Dodenburg had no time for the unfortunate Italians. Behind him on the trail, the long line of vehicles had ground to a confused halt and tankers were running up to the top to find out what was the trouble. Von Dodenburg cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled ‘Get back…for God’s sake, get back there!’ But even as he spoke, the Blue Veils sprang up from their hiding places and from the steep rock face to the left of the trail. A trooper went down, clutching his stomach. Another clapped his hand to his shoulder with a yelp of pain, swung round by the violence of the slug’s impact. Another slapped the ground face-forwards without a sound. Then they broke and fled for the cover of the tanks. The Arabs had them completely pinned down, unable to use their big cannon because they were boxed in by the rocks and the narrow trail. Now it was man against man.