by Leo Kessler
Outside, an unshaven, weary-looking aircraftsman was singing tonelessly, "And the mate at the wheel, had a bloody good feel, at the girl I left behind me." Behind him at the Iraqi positions, flares were beginning to sail into the air all along the hill line.
Jeeves frowned. At the back of his head, a cynical little voice hissed, "Soon there's going to be a lot of girls to be left behind." Then he dismissed the cynical thought from his mind. There was a job to be done and he and his lads were going to do it come what may. "You," he snapped at the weary airman. "Get yourself a shave when the water ration comes up. You're a disgrace to the RAF in that state."
"Yessir," the airman said dutifully and without rancour. Air commodore or not, he wasn't going to waste any more precious water shaving. His daily pint of the precious fluid was going to go right down his throat in the form of char when it came up. They were all for the chop one way or another, shaven or unshaven. When the two officers were out of earshot, he resumed singing again about that unfortunate engine driver who disintegrated when his boiler bust, and how the survivors "found his bollocks, and the same to you... Bollocks..." It seemed to him to be the most suitable dirge under the circumstances.
***
"Buy combs," the old hare growled. "Buy frigging combs, there's lousy times ahead!"
The Vulture looked hard at the old sweat with the scarred, brutal face, as he joined the other heavily laden troopers climbing aboard the Iraqi trucks. Like most of them, he was drunk, and for once the Vulture didn't object. They had good reason to be drunk. They were disillusioned and depressed, just as he was, in this godforsaken country that lay 'behind the moon', as his troopers swore.
Although they had come so far to help the natives, they had been treated poorly, re-armed with antiquated weapons that dated back to the first war. Even their food was not to soldiers' taste: rice mixed with obscure sauces, and not even a glass of beer to wash the muck down with, due to the locals' religious prejudices. As for women, the ordinary low-ranking stubble-hopper's great compensation, they had turned out to be shapeless creatures, hooded and cloaked from head to foot in black, who hurried away as soon as a soldier looked at them, as if they might be raped the very next instant.
But, for the Vulture, who was interested in neither beer nor women, it was the Iraqi officers who most aroused his ire. They were a pack of scented, fancy-panted idiots, who purported to know their business, but obviously didn't. It was nearly a week now since they had sent up a brigade to attack the RAF base at Habbaniyah. But despite the glowing success reports they had fabricated for the benefit of the rebel politicians under Raschid Ali, that brigade had achieved nothing apart from shelling some of the Tommy positions and killing a few unwary soldiers with their snipers. The Tommies, on the other hand, had inflicted heavy casualties on the natives and their supply columns with their obsolete training planes converted into fighter-bombers.
As far as the Vulture could ascertain, the Iraqi brigade would continue their siege of the Tommies for ever and a day under present circumstances unless, as he had told Dietz, the Wotan adjutant, "we pull their damned chestnuts out of the fire for them. And you know what that means, Dietz, don't you?"
Glumly the adjutant had nodded his understanding and had said, "Wotan attacks without Iraqi support and we get a real pasting."
"Exactly."
Now, as his troopers prepared to mount up and set off in the convoy bound for the positions of the Iraqi Brigade in the hills to the west of Baghdad, the Vulture's brain raced electrically as he attempted to find some way out of the impasse. For he knew he wasn't going to waste his life here. What he desired from life was more important to him even than those powdered boys with their plucked eyebrows who haunted Berlin's main stations at dusk, delightful as those boyish pavement pounders were. With a longing that was almost sexual, he fervently desired the general's stars that his dead father had once worn. When he had achieved that, he would allow himself to be posted from the SS – he had had enough of being the Führer's shitty Fire Brigade. Wotan's losses were simply too high. He'd aim for a nice safe desk job in the Berlin High Command and let the other fools win the medals and get shot at. There the only action he could anticipate would be in bed with those youthful pavement pounders and their lovely, hairless bodies.
The thought of a job in Berlin as a 'rear-echelon stallion', as they were called contemptuously by the front-line stubble-hoppers, cheered him up for a while, but not for long. For that same old hare standing behind him in the truck who had warned his comrades that it was time to buy combs, now growled to no one in particular, "It looks to me, mates, that this one is gonna be a shit or bust op... Yes, take my word for it – shit or bust."
The Vulture opened his mouth to order the big ape to shut up, then thought better of it. The old hare was right again. It was going to be a 'shit or bust' operation. But now he knew, with the one hundred per cent clarity of a sudden vision, that as soon as the 'shitting' started, Obersturmbannführer Hans-Egon Geier, known as the Vulture, was going to order 'bust'. His mind was made up. He – Wotan – were going to survive. His mood improved vastly, his gaze no longer taking in the frightening immensity of the barren plain in front of him, he stood erect and, waving his hand above his head, cried, "Los! Panzer marsch!"
Slowly, but gathering speed by the instant, the long convoy started to roll forward into the unknown.
CHAPTER 20
McLeod was exhausted – and frustrated. It had been seven long days now since Raschid Ali had started his rebellion, and he, personally, felt he had done little to stave off the impending fall of the great Habbaniyah Air Base. Now he knew from British Intelligence, trickling in from their sources still in the capital, that the Germans he had failed to stop a couple of days back were on their way to reinforce the Iraqis besieging the base. Old Iraqi hand that he was, he knew he could run rings around the Germans, who were real greenhorns in the desert. But he knew, too, he had little chance of stopping the advance on Habbaniyah unless a miracle happened. And for the moment, as he peered through his field glasses, he couldn't see any particular miracle on the horizon, just a troop of old-fashioned Iraqi cavalry and an ancient armoured car that had been supplied to the Iraqis by the British authorities. He guessed they were being used as an advance guard on a recce by the Germans.
He lowered his glasses and considered the deployment of his troops. He was in a splendid ambush position, his armoured cars dug in in a hull-down position on a slight rise in a sharp bend on the road from Baghdad. The height and the curve would certainly force any vehicle to slow down to make an ideal target for his gunners. Naturally he had anticipated that the Germans, experts and professionals as they were, would lead with a reconnaissance party, just like the Iraqi one he had just spotted. Under normal circumstances, they would check the road on both sides, especially down below at the ideal ambush spot.
But McLeod thought he had taken care of that eventuality. Half an hour before, a string of camels and mules had passed along the road, goaded up the height by their Iraqi drovers with the normal unthinking cruelty of their kind – they had used sticks with rusty nails in the ends to make the animals keep up the pace. That had caused them to defecate. McLeod had spotted immediately the use to which he could put the still-steaming turds. Once the caravan had passed out of sight, he and his crews had sneaked down to the road and commenced hiding the small Gammon bombs beneath the animal faeces. The Gammons, used as primitive anti-personnel mines, would see off any recce of the general area. He was happy with that.
But he wasn't happy with his own force. Out of the original squadron of a week before – what now seemed another age – he had exactly three 'runners', and one of them was beginning to act up. Three armoured cars, armed with a two-pounder cannon or Vickers machine guns against what Intelligence estimated was a battalion of crack German infantry. If it had been the Iraqis, McLeod knew a surprise attack, such as he was planning, would have sent the enemy running, pulling off their boots in panic so that the
y could run faster. But with the Germans, he knew of old from his experiences in the trenches back in 1917, it was different. They might break and run initially. But they'd be back again in double quick time; their professionalism, iron discipline and, he supposed, bravery would see to that. What chance then did his three armoured cars, with limited ammunition, manned by a handful of weary men, stand?
Now, however, McLeod could no longer concern himself with such problems. The enemy reconnaissance party was coming ever closer. Now there was only one problem: should he run or should he stand and fight? For a moment he took his gaze off the advancing enemy and focused a quick glance at his men. They were just ordinary chaps, he knew. They had been dragged from their civilian world of pub, pictures and palais de danse and forced to become fighting men. They knew little of empire, save that bit taught them in their council schools, about 'all that red on the map'. What did the King-Emperor and Iraq really mean to them? Children and products of the Depression, their main concern had been to find and keep a job in such hard times. Why should they risk their lives for a concept that meant little to them? Why die now for this arsehole of the world when the Labour politicos were telling them that after the war they would participate in a 'brave new world'? He was a regular, a "lifer" as the conscripts called his type. He was paid to die, but should he sacrifice their lives? And for what?
"Here the Arabs come." Porky' Peters, the fattest man in the squadron, broke into his urgent reverie. "Served up on a silver platter, like, sir. Cor, fuck a duck, they won't know what hit 'em, sir, will they?"
"No, they won't," he heard himself replying with new enthusiasm. His mind was made up. "All right, lads, stand by yer guns."
Now the reconnaissance party was spreading out to both sides of the road, with the armoured car itself on the dusty white road, its turret moving slowly from side to side like the snout of some primeval monster scenting out its prey. The cavalry had drawn their swords and the watching men could see the sun gleam off the curved sabres. But the Iraqis didn't look one bit martial, despite the drawn sabres. Indeed, McLeod could almost sense their fear as they approached the curve in the hill road, as if they already suspected that trouble lay behind it somewhere. "Wait till yer see the whites of their eyes," he joked quietly in order to relieve the tension.
"I'll be happier, sir," Porky whispered back, "when I see the whites of their arses when they do a bunk."
The others laughed and McLeod felt ever more confident; the men were bearing up well.
Five minutes passed on leaden feet. The cavalry were spreading out even more, the riders stopping their mounts every now and again to search the horizon, or bending over their saddles to check the ground below. McLeod prayed they didn't suspect that there might be mines there. That would be fatal to his daring, almost suicidal, plan.
Meanwhile the little enemy armoured car was slowing down as it rumbled into the curve at the pass. Behind McLeod, the armoured car armed with the two-pounder cannon – not very powerful, but with enough punch, McLeod believed, to penetrate the Iraqi's armour – swung the gun round and started to focus on the Iraqi vehicle, which was now doing less than ten miles an hour.
Tension mounted. McLeod could sense a nerve ticking at his temple, and his shirt was wet with sweat and clinging to his back unpleasantly: all signs of high tension. He ignored them and concentrated on what was to come, knowing that the one to strike the first punch might well be the winner.
The gunner peered through his sight. He tried to ignore the beads of sweat dripping from his forehead and threatening to blind him. Slowly, with an air of finality, the armoured car, moving at a snail's pace, now crept into the circle of calibrated glass. Gently, very gently, the gunner's hand, again damp with sweat, fell down and found the firing lever. He clenched his wet fist around it. The enemy armoured car was now almost stationary as its obviously fearful commander took it round the end of the curve, wondering probably what awaited him there.
McLeod wet his lips, which were suddenly very parched. "Ready, gunner?" he asked in a husky voice. God how he wished the nerve would cease ticking!
"Ready, sir."
"Range two hundred."
"Two hundred, sir." The gunner adjusted his sight slightly. He could see every detail of the enemy car now – the rusty rivets, the oil trace leaks, the fresh wet marks where someone had pissed against its bullet-proof tyre.
McLeod counted to three. Suddenly he felt a great burst of energy surge through his emaciated skinny frame. "Fire!" he yelled with all his strength.
The almost unbearable tension relieved at last, the gunner pulled the firing lever. A boom. The sharp crack of the armour-piercing shell leaving the two-pounder. Their armoured car reared back on its back axle, like a wild horse being put to the saddle for the first time. To its front, the sand twirled up in a sudden yellow cloud. Next instant there was the white blur of an armour-piercing shell zipping flatly across the intervening distance at the Iraqi vehicle.
At that range, the gunner couldn't miss. There was the hollow boom of steel striking steel. The enemy vehicle shook violently, as if struck by a gigantic fist. For a moment nothing seemed to happen. Then, suddenly, startlingly, it sagged. Both rear tyres burst. It sank to the ground. An instant later a black mushroom of smoke started to rise from its open turret.
The cavalry scattered at once. Slashing their whips and reins against the sweat-gleaming flanks of their mounts, they spread to left and right, crouching low in their saddles in the same instant that the other two gunners opened up with their Vickers machine guns. In a lethal white noise, five hundred bullets a minute zipped towards the riders. Here and there men were ripped from their saddles. Riderless horses, some dragging their masters behind them by the stirrup, ran crazily across the desert in an attempt to escape that deadly white killer. Not for long. Almost immediately they ran into the turds hiding the anti-personnel mines.
What happened now wasn't war – it was a cruel heartless massacre. Horses flew through the air. Great haunches of horseflesh littered the desert in a disgusting blood-red chaos. Others were down on their forelegs, eyes wild with fear, struggling to rise and get away from this place of sudden, violent death. To no avail. They moved and hit another mine, shattering their bodies so that in some cases the gleaming white ribcages were revealed, glittering like polished ivory against the setting of that blood-red gore.
Their riders fared no better. They swung themselves off their mounts in their panic, or tried to control the crazy bleeding steeds, which danced on their hind legs, pawing the air in crazy fury with their forelegs. But the riders didn't get far. Trying to dodge the death-bringing little brown pats of faeces, they invariably stepped or slipped into another and were abruptly reduced to the size of dwarves, standing somewhat ludicrously, bewildered momentarily, before they overbalanced and fell forward on their bleeding shattered stumps, dead before they hit the ground.
The Vulture realised immediately what had happened. He could not see what was happening beyond the curve, but he guessed. The damned fool native reconnaissance party had run straight into an ambush or something of that kind and, by the sound of the screams and the agonizing cries coming from round the bend, they were getting the worst of it. He didn't hesitate. Trained professional that he was, with nearly two years of combat behind him, he cried to a startled, white-faced Dietz. "De-bus. You take right flank... I'll take the left... At the double now... Schnell... dalli, dalli, Leute!"
His old hares reacted at once. "Los!" they cried to the greenhorns. "Come on, you greenbeaks. Out... Los, Menschenskinder! Do you want to live for ever, you dogs?"
Within the minute, the soldiers were dropping from their trucks and forming up into skirmish lines on both sides of the stalled convoy, with both Dietz and the Vulture leading from the front, as good SS officers should.
The panzer grenadiers, for most of the Vulture's remaining men were grenadiers – armoured infantry – lacked the cover of the tanks with which they usually worked. Still they kept t
heir old formations, avoiding the inexperienced soldier's tendency to group together and make a better target for enemy fire in extended orders, with NCOs to left and right flank and their officers out front setting an example. They advanced to the tiny British position on the hillside beyond the cover, as confident as ever that no one could withstand the SS, especially SS Wotan, the elite of the elite. They came on slowly, bodies slightly bent, as if fighting a strong wind, weapons held at the high point across their young bodies, eyes fixed firmly on their front. But even the old hares among them were tense, their bodies held rigid, awaiting that first chatter of death and the hard steel striking their soft flesh.
None came. Squadron Leader McLeod was just as much a veteran as were the old hares. He knew his men were scared. Who wouldn't be, facing the advance of several hundred armed Germans with only a handful of men? They'd tend to open fire before the Germans got within the killing ground if he didn't watch them; and he couldn't allow that. Every round now counted; every round would have to find a target. "Steady on, lads," he urged in a low voice. "Stand fast, we've got the buggers by the short and curlies. Steady." Whether his words encouraged his men, McLeod didn't know. But while they fiddled with the bolts of their rifles, as nervous soldiers did, they didn't open fire. Only the gunner in the lead armoured car moved, switching his turret from side to side, as if impatient to begin the killing.
McLeod frowned. He'd kill a great many of the Germans if he could catch them at short range. But what if the SS didn't panic, break and retreat? What then? They'd swamp his positions and that would be that. Now was the time, if he was to save his little command, to give the Germans a short sharp shock and then run like hell.
He shook his head. He knew he couldn't do that. If the Germans didn't break and run under that first volley of withering fire, he knew in his heart of hearts he wouldn't run for it; he'd fight to the end.