by David King
The halftracks crawled out of the pass like prehistoric armored lizards from subterranean caves. The first turned sharply west, hesitated as if appraising the situation and then turned south directly opposite the Jerry armor. A second and a third followed confidently, then a blast boomed hollowly in the tank and flames shot from the opened hatch. The halftracks scurried away, stopped, considered, and came back to the column with their guns blasting. They drove straight down the line of halftracks and tanks, Wilson's force of ten halftracks and five armored cars. Some of the Jerry armor exploded or blew at the seams as they took direct hits in their fuel tanks or ammunition. All was confusion at the CP when Troy stood, and so many fires were burning it looked like one enormous bonfire.
Although he did not think anyone would observe him, Troy went to the sheltered side of the dune and trotted back in flickering light. The whine and blast of exploding shells continued. Torn and flying metal crashed and jangled. The fires lighted up dark bellied clouds from burning oil. The air was heavy with lung-filling odors of fusil and cordite, and the tart taste of the battlefield dripped like juice.
Troy listened carefully for a new tone, a different pitch in the whine of the shells, but none of the Jerry' weapons was returning the fire. They were taking a plastering, being blasted to hell in small pieces and apparently none of them was manned with a crew to ram shells in the seventy-fives, unless there had been a crew in the tank on the road. That tank had looked as if it had been ready to go somewhere.
Troy saw the jeeps ahead and climbed to the top of the dune. He plunged to the sand beside Moffitt with a good flying bellyflop. The doctor, with Tully and Hitch, was watching the fireworks that extended from the pass to the flame-roaring camp. Moffitt rolled on his side and examined Troy from hair to toes with eyes that sparkled with amusement.
"Nightfighter camouflage?" he inquired casually.
Troy ran a mud-smeared hand over a mud-caked face and glanced at his shirt and trousers. They looked as if they had been soaked in India ink.
"Uniform of the day," he observed. "You blew the dump."
Moffitt nodded. "It's a good show. Did you run into something unexpected? I thought I heard an explosion down your way before Colonel Wilson started firing."
"They'd managed to get a tank on the road," Troy said, searching the area around the camp and the road. "Where has everyone gone?"
"A few, not more than half a dozen, vehicles drove out toward the Jerry line," Moffitt said. "The men on foot who escaped ran south, mostly. I expect they'll realize by morning that they never will make Sidi Abd and wait for us to pick them up."
The halftracks were grinding past the burning camp and not wasting a shell on it.
"Let's get on to the second act," Troy said.
"Right-o, old chap," Moffitt said. "I understand this has a smashing climax."
Troy slid down the hill and vaulted in the back to his gun. He gripped the spade handles and whirled it around. Moffitt was at his gun, Troy noticed. There would be Jerries in the sand hills who would like nothing better than a pot shot at the Rat Patrol. Tully jumped the jeep off in the lead. They crested the dune and plunged toward the road. The column of halftracks and armored cars still was moving south. Wilson soon would circle and try to get a few nips at the enemy's rear before Dietrich realized, too late, what the strategy was.
"Dietrich get away, did you notice?" Troy called to Tully.
"He got away but not very soon," Tully said. "Nobody got away very fast. They didn't know what was happening, things was going like that. They just sort of swarmed aimless like ants when their hill's been dug up. It wasn't until Wilson started pouring it on the Jerry armor that Dietrich came to. He lit out in his armored car like there was hornets in his pants."
"Into the field?" Troy asked.
"Yeah," Tully said. "If I was him, I would of headed for home."
Even with Dietrich in command, there would be confusion in the field, Troy thought. His armor was spread over a front twelve miles long. Dietrich had an apparent distinct superiority over Wilson with twenty-five or more tanks remaining against Wilson's halftracks and armored cars, but Wilson's force was a unit ready to strike, and Dietrich did not have more than two tanks to a mile plus a few halftracks. And Wilson had a plan. His strategy would work, Troy was certain.
The jeeps speeded along the column. The fires were bright enough for Troy to recognize the features of individuals. Wilson was in the lead halftrack, wearing his white varnished helmet and standing very erect and proud, a noble figure of a military leader and a prime target for a slug in the chest. When he saw the jeeps, he waved them back. Troy laughed and pointing with one hand at Wilson, waved with a pushing, downward sweep with the other to indicate he should sit. Now Wilson laughed. He actually looked happy.
"Let's go," Troy shouted to Tully.
"Where?" Tully asked.
"In front of Wilson's halftrack," Troy said, roaring with laughter. "We'll lead the armored column a ways. That ought to give Wilson fits."
The jeeps bounded ahead of Wilson's vehicle and side by side led the parade. Troy and Moffitt each took stances leaning out into the desert with their guns swiveled to the sides as if they were guards for the party. A pistol shot and another cracked and when Troy looked around, Wilson had fired into the air. He wasn't angry or annoyed at their antics. He was laughing and joining the fun. Troy took off his hat, waved it at Wilson and shouted, "Hurrah!"
"Shove off," he called to Tully. "Maybe we can find something to do."
It was light now, the curious blue early light that made everything visible without any seeming illumination. The jeeps drove south, then west fast, leaping crazily over the dunes. It was just abandon. Troy realized there wasn't much more they could do. Not in the light of day. This was a battle for the heavies and the Rat Patrol would serve best by staying out of the way. He looked back and saw Wilson was taking the almost identical path as the jeeps.
"About twelve miles straight west, pick out a dune with a view," Troy told Tully. "We'll have breakfast. We can always move if we don't like our seats."
"Hey, Sarge," Tully said, turning his head, dropping his jaw and feigning amazement. "You don't mean our work for the day is all done so early?"
"This is yesterday's work we're finishing up, son," Troy sternly informed him.
Tully found a good high dune where they could watch for miles around. Wilson's column looked like a toy train back in the distance. To the north and east in his glasses, Troy saw three slow-moving specks, two tanks and a halftrack. Dietrich apparently was calling his armor away from the positions they had held to assemble them somewhere near the center of the line for a stand. Wilson had counted on that. It was part of his strategy. Troy looked back and saw that Wilson's column had veered to the north and was going to take a first nip. This small engagement should take place just about sunrise, he thought, getting into the front seat and settling comfortably beside Tully. Hitch and Moffitt parked alongside. They broke out their coffee jugs and sandwiches, ate leisurely and when they had finished, had second cups of coffee with their cigarettes.
"The show is about to start," Moffitt announced. He was standing and watching through his glasses.
Troy focused on the play. Wilson's column had outdistanced the tanks, cutting them off. Now the halftracks drove straight toward them, but before they were within effective range of the tank's big seventy-five, the halftracks and cars split, circling and coming in hard from the rear. Troy saw smoke and flashes and a moment later heard the dull distant thudding reports of the shelling. The battle was brief and scarcely interesting. Wilson had clear numerical superiority here. Troy couldn't tell whether Wilson had shot off the treads of the armor or whether shells had pierced them, but they were disabled. Crews of five men each climbed from the two tanks. No one left the halftrack. It must have taken a direct hit. One of the armored cars dropped from Wilson's force and stayed with the ten men as they started trudging back toward the road. Wilson's column drove s
traight west.
"Let's move," Troy said lazily, "I think Wilson will take one more nip at this end."
"Is that his strategy, Sarge?" Tully asked, starting the motor. "Take them two or three at a time?"
"Only the ones he can take without any trouble," Troy said. "Dietrich has probably called most of his armor to his station so he'll have a striking force."
"And Wilson's going against all them tanks with his handful of halftracks?" Tully exclaimed.
"I wouldn't want to tell you and spoil the surprise," Troy said, laughing.
The jeeps spurted across a flat stretch after leaving the dune. The sun blazed brightly and the sand already was turning lighter as the last of the moisture evaporated. The day would be hot, Troy thought. About five miles from the dune where they'd breakfasted, Troy pointed to a good sand hill half a mile to the north.
"About there," he said, "ought to be a ringside seat."
"Whatever you say, Sarge," Tully drawled and put the jeep on the top.
Hitch and Moffitt drove beside them and Troy found Wilson's column without using his glasses. About three quarters of a mile away, he had closed with two tanks using the same tactics he'd used with the first. He was shelling them at close range and had both of them in trouble. The tanks and the reports of the guns stopped abruptly. No one opened the hatch of either tank. The desert was silent. Wilson drove north. He was not far from Dietrich's position, Troy thought. The jeeps followed the halftracks and two armored cars at a distance.
Tully climbed another high dune and Troy told him to stop. He turned his glasses to the northeast and then the northwest but found nothing. He looked north and about two miles off saw moving black spots where Dietrich's armor was converging. The tanks looked like flies crawling on sugar. Wilson's force was headed straight for the Jerries.
"Hey, Sarge, is Wilson nuts!" Tully cried. "Now he's starting to circle around them. What's he going to do, make them chase him until they run out of gas?"
"That isn't a bad idea," Troy said, looking again to the northeast. This time he found what he wanted—three, four, five tiny black spots crawling over the desert. He handed the glasses to Tully and pointed. "Keep looking until you find something, then tell me what you see."
Tully searched for several minutes before he said, "I see some dots moving out there. Is that what you mean?"
"Try northwest, there should be some there by now," Troy said.
This time Tully said quickly: "Yeah. Half a dozen. Hey, they're tanks!"
"Sherman tanks," Troy said. "Ours."
"How'd they get out of the minefield?" Tully asked excitedly.
"They came out around it," Troy said, smiling at the surprise that awaited Dietrich when he became aware that he was caught in the jaws of a nutcracker. "Wilson didn't leave a safe path in that minefield, but it was laid out in concentric circles so the tanks could come out around the edge of the last circle. Last night he ordered the Shermans to pull out of the pits after the Jerry tanks left their positions opposite. He'll keep circling Dietrich just out of range until the Shermans close in or Dietrich gets wise and beats it."
"Why that's cuter than a bow on a hound dog's tail!" Tully exclaimed admiringly. "I never gave Wilson credit for that kind of brains."
"Neither did Dietrich," Troy said, laughing.
Not a shot was being fired by either Dietrich's or Wilson's forces in the field. Wilson continued his slow circle and Dietrich, with his gas low, held his formation in position, although by now, Troy thought, Dietrich must be getting a little uneasy and wondering just what was up. He retrieved his glasses from Tully and looked east and west again. The first of the Shermans were coming into focus, those beautiful, ground-hugging hulks with their low silhouettes and seventy-five millimeter guns in fully rotating turrets of three-point-two-inch armor. The tanks looked as if they were tearing up the desert at their top speed of twenty-five miles an hour but the sand hadn't dried out completely and they were leaving no telltale trails hanging in the air.
Another five minutes, ten at the most, and they'd be within range. All of them apparently were coming to do battle because their lines stretched in diagonals at both sides as far as the glasses would reach. Now Dietrich must have seen them because his armor suddenly moved out to the south, forming into a line. Dietrich didn't like the idea of the squeeze play at all. Wilson withdrew farther to the west. He wasn't going to risk being caught in the range of Dietrich's seventy-fives. Dietrich struck south at the head of the column. The Shermans came on.
"Well, chaps, that is the end of the assault on Sidi Beda," Moffitt said pleasantly.
"Dietrich will be back," Tully drawled and rolled a matchstick. "He always is."
"Not for a while," Troy said. "He won't have anything to come back in."
"Sarge," Tully pointed out. "He's getting away with about twenty tanks and some halftracks."
"You're forgetting, Tully," Troy said. "The Shermans are after him and he's plumb out of gasoline."
17
One of the better things about being in the Rat Patrol, Troy thought, was that with your irregular hours of duty, the commanding officer didn't give a hoot what you did with your time when you weren't on an assignment. Unless he happened to want you on your day off. Troy was taking a tepid shower and he was humming.
It was the afternoon of the day Dietrich's forces had been defeated, thoroughly whipped, crushed to nothingness on the plateau above Sidi Beda. It had been a clean sweep. The Shermans had continued after Dietrich's tanks until they had run out of gas. Twenty tanks in good running condition except they had no more gasoline. The five-man crews had surrendered them without a shot being fired. Dietrich, with a handful of halftracks and armored cars, had scampered toward Sidi Abd. Maybe they'd make it.
Troy wrapped his towel around his waist after he'd shaved and walked from the shower room into the barracks where no other military personnel was present except the other three members of the Rat Patrol, who were pounding their ears. They were wasting an afternoon that was theirs to do with as they pleased when all other men were on duty. He stepped into freshly pressed khakis washed thin enough to be cool, pulled on newly shined boots and clapped on his bush hat. The duty, beat up, thoroughly disreputable bush hat that had ridden through a hundred, or was it a thousand, missions. He wore the hat jauntily and he swaggered out of the barracks down the military avenue where the asphalt was bubbling and MPs patrolled in armored cars. It was a hot day, a very hot day, but not too hot to take Ray to the beach. They'd have a swim in the blue Mediterranean or perhaps get a native boy to take them out for a sail in one of those dinghy-like boats, then go back to the apartment at sunset for a cold bottle of beer, the fresh fish salad she'd promised three days before, and the whole evening alone with her.
He swung into the narrow alley across from HQ that led to the Fat Frenchman's, but caught himself up short when he got there. A jagged, broken-edged hole gaped where the door had been and the steps leading down had disappeared. Two MPs with tommy-guns stood inside the cellar.
"What happened? Where is Ray? Is she safe?" Troy shouted, chilled to the bone. He ran and leapt into the hole.
The MPs barred his way.
One, a cherub-cheeked sergeant with a rosebud mouth and a bass voice that seemed to rumble from the cavern of his guts, said, "Take it easy, Troy. We can't let you in. We can't let no one in. That's orders."
"But Ray," Troy yelled, "Is she safe?"
"You mean the girl?" the sergeant asked and smiled a tiny smile. "She your babe or something? Yeah, she's safe. Couldn't be safer. She ain't here, though."
"Where is she?" Troy demanded in agony.
"You'll have to ask at HQ where she is. They'll have to tell you," the sergeant said. "But don't worry none. I can tell you she ain't hurt and she's safe."
"What is all this?" Troy yelled. "What about Laurentz?"
"You mean the Fat Frenchman?" the sergeant said innocently. "Yeah, he's safe. He's with her."
"All right," T
roy said, relieved that at least Laurentz and Ray were together. "Now tell me what happened. How did the wall get blown in like that?"
"Look, Troy, you're all right, you're an okay fellow," the sergeant said soothingly. "We all heard about what you done and how it was. You're personally great. I'd tell you if I could but we got orders that we ain't to say nothing to nobody. You got to go to HQ for the dope."
"Hell!" Troy said disgustedly. "But you're sure Ray and Laurentz are okay?"
"Look, I tell you, I give you my word," the sergeant said. "They ain't got a scratch on them. Now go on to HQ, will you? We got our orders."
"Yeah, I know," Troy said, turning, half running down the alley to HQ.
He'd been afraid of something like this when he'd left.
He'd told Laurentz to bar the door. Some crazy Arab terrorist who hated the infidels had done this. Or maybe some crackpot French collaborator who thought the Jerries really were coming and wanted to show how he felt about the loyal French who thought the Allies were great. He knew he should have told Wilson to keep an eye on the cellar. Now Wilson had to have two of them on duty all the time.
He slammed into the first sergeant's office. Peilowski looked up and sucked in his breath as if he were unpleasantly surprised.
"Peilowski," Troy said in a growl. "Where are the Frenchman and Ray, that's his niece?"